Financing the First Revolution, 1775-1783
by Deanna Spingola

One of the biggest provocations for the Revolutionary War had been the Duties in American Colonies Act 1765 or the Stamp Act of 1765. Following Britain’s very expensive triumph (doubled their national debt) in the French and Indian War (1756–1763), the British Parliament retained their military forces in America. Members of Parliament did not recall them, as their friends and officers would be without a military job because the British population would justifiably oppose a standing army. Parliament imposed a direct tax on the colonies, which required the residents to use specially stamped or embossed paper produced in England for all of the colony’s printed materials including legal documents, newspapers, magazines and other items. The colonists had to use British currency to pay for this stamped paper rather than colonial currency. The British imposed this tax to help reimburse the expenses of 10,000 peacetime occupational soldiers in the North American colony.

Between 1776 and 1801, wealthy aristocrats, Henry Knox, a Freemason, Alexander Hamilton and Rufus King plotted to impose a monarchal government in America. Robert Morris, Hamilton and the others had the ideological and financial support from a little known historical figure, a son of Portuguese Jewish parents, Haym Solomon (1740-1785) who was born in Lesno, Poland. His family had fled from the Spanish monarch; he lived in Poland and then toured Europe where he gained knowledge of finances and learned to speak several languages. In 1772, he ultimately arrived in England, and similar to many of his associates, from there he went to New York in about 1775, where he became a broker for foreign trade, and joined the Sons of Liberty, a group of merchants and traders who reportedly opposed British rule. The New York Tammany Society, initially called the Sons of Liberty, housed the minutes of its meetings in the New York Public Library. In 1776, during the war, German Hessians, mercenary soldiers, brokered by Mayer A. Rothschild, and working for the English enemies, accused Democratic-Republican Societies, Solomon of spying. The British incarcerated him. Because he could speak German fluently, a Hessian General employed his services as an interpreter. After numerous other legal issues and at least two arrests by the British, the story is that he managed to buy his freedom from the guards with some hidden gold coins. Just because Solomon could speak German, he avoided execution by the British, and lent large sums of money to the Americans to finance a war largely promoted by leaders who happened to be Freemasons, does not prove a connection between Mayer A. Rothschild and Haym Solomon.

Solomon moved to Philadelphia where he helped found a large synagogue, and where he met George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris who soon relied on Solomon and his financial resources. There are numerous notes in Morris’ diary referring to Solomon and his valuable assistance. Solomon brokered several loans totaling about $700,000, with bankers in France and Holland. He even offered interest-free loans to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. He fell ill with tuberculosis at the end of the war while trying unsuccessfully to obtain repayment for his efforts. He died in 1785, leaving a pregnant wife and three children. When Washington had needed money to pay his soldiers, the international bankers loaned him money on the condition that he appoint Hamilton as the first Treasury Secretary. Washington’s soldiers were about to mutiny as they had not been paid and lacked essential supplies, so he sent a messenger to Solomon in Philadelphia to request a loan of $400,000 to pay and provide supplies for his troops. Solomon was at the synagogue when the messenger arrived. Solomon had a hurried conference with his friends. They left the synagogue and soon returned with the requested funds. There is speculation that Solomon contributed $240,000 to the total amount of the loan. Hamilton and Washington agreed to establish a central bank at the end of the war.

Jewish financiers funded the American Revolution as well as the war people mistakenly refer to as the Civil War. Haym Solomon financed the Revolutionary War while Seligman Brothers and Speyer & Company financed the North and Frédéric Emile d’Erlanger financed the South. Kuhn Loeb and Company financed the development of the railroad industry. Haym Solomon, highly regarded as a hero, may have been a Rothschild agent, based solely on circumstantial evidence. If he was associated with Rothschild, then the House of Rothschild financed both sides of the
American Revolution. International bankers avoid allegiances to any country. However, they will finance any government that accommodates the bankers who make huge profits through warfare. Ultimately, they seek to annihilate all governments in order to establish their own global governance. Financing war accomplishes the destabilization of a country and accrues great indebtedness, payable to the Rothschilds.

The Second Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, with The Ten Articles, released the U.S. from British control, who then felt threatened by the potential commercial rivalry by American business interests. American merchants sought profitable trade opportunities other than with England. The pioneer voyage of the Empress of China, a privateer refitted for commerce, captained by John Green, left for China on February 22, 1784 and returned to New York on May 11, 1785. A wealthy syndicate owned the ship, some of the richest men in the nation, including Morris who was active in slave trading and auctioneering, war profiteering and was an investor in a plantation. He was in the Pennsylvania Assembly and was a U.S. Senator (1789-1795) during which time he continued his private business endeavors. He voted against the Congressional motion for independence on July 1,1792.

On March 12, 1791, he contracted with Massachusetts to purchase thousands of acres in Western New York for $333,333. America had borrowed money from bankers in Spain, France, Holland
and private German interests that amounted to $77.1 million. The debt was comprised of foreign debt that totaled $11.7 million, federal debt that totaled $40.4 million and state debt was $25 million. Hamilton proposed that the federal government assume all of the state debts.794 He wrote, “All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.” The national debt, due tounpaid interest, increased after the war ended. It was a sizeable debt and there were unresolved factors between the states and the Union.796 Hamilton said, “A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.” George Hammond, the first British Ambassador to the U.S. (1791-1795), criticized the French who may have encouraged the American “discontents” to rebel against the British. He reported to his superior that he personally “was doing everything in his power to bring about a breach between France and the United States.” Secret conversations transpired between Hamilton and Hammond who favored a limited monarchy. In 1793, after the successful revolution, William Willcocks was a Hamilton representative and always added, “God bless the colonies” under his signature.

A single despot was a refuge from “the despotism of the many.” He favored the autocratic government that Rufus King and Henry Knox advocated. John Beckley, the Clerk of the House, was Jefferson’s loyal informant. He told Jefferson that while he was in New York in 1793, Sir John Temple showed him a letter from Sir Gregory Page Turner, a Member of Parliament, which confirmed that Britain considered Hamilton, King, and William L. Smith, of Charleston, South Carolina, as the main supporters of British interests in America. Hamilton, rather than Hammond, was their most effective minister. Turner counseled these men to attempt to change the government. If they met failure and the anti-Federalists assumed power, they could have asylum in England. Beckley said that Foreign Secretary William Grenville also confirmed this in a letter.801 According to the Columbian Sentinel, May 15, 1793, in Charleston, men belonging to the
aristocratic St. George Society (the English founded it in 1733) drank toasts to Britain’s King. Charles C. Pinckney, a Federalist and Constitutional delegate from South Carolina, didn’t approve of Smith’s monarchical inclinations, as noted in Pinckney’s letter to his brother, Thomas, October 5, 1794, in the Pinckney Papers in the Library of Congress.