menu_book Chapter 23

CHAPTER XXIII OF HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN AMERICA For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Betty B. HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN AMERICA by Peter Wernick INTERVENTION IN DAMASCUS

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST SWISS DISCRIMINATION The Jewish community of the United States as a whole had no difficulties with the outside world and no serious internal problems in the period of expansion which is treated in this part. The results of the treaty between our government and that of Russia, which was concluded in 1832, in which the rights of American Jews to enter

Russia on the same conditions as other American citizens were not safeguarded as explicitly as ought to have been done in dealing with a power so unfriendly to the Jews, had not become a apparent until nearly a half century afterwards, and must be ascribed more to oversight and ignorance of Russia's treatment of Jews than to willful neglect. Several unfavorable local decisions against Jews, as such, mostly in cases of violation

of Sunday laws or of exemption claimed by Jews from attending court on Saturday, were of an immediately more painful nature. But this question also did not become acute until a much later period, when there grew up communities containing large, poor, orthodox masses, for whom the observance of two days rest was a great economic hardship.

An occasional objection to a public functionary's forgetfulness about there being other citizens than Christians, which was sometimes noticed in Thanksgiving Day proclamations, would soon itself be forgotten by Jew and Gentile alike. The Jews were occasioning and experiencing very little difficulties, contributing to the work of developing the country and thus unconsciously assisting in preparing themselves and the general population for the larger influx of immigrants,

which were to come later. The Jews of America were therefore prepared to participate with the Jews of Western Europe in arousing public sympathy and causing diplomatic intervention in the case of the 13 unfortunate Jews of Damascus, who were imprisoned and tortured under the blood accusation of 1840. While the distance and the absence of the present means of quick communication delayed the action taken by the Jews of America until after the necessary assistance was rendered by European governments at the instance of the most influential Jews of England and France.

The steps taken by the Jews here and the noble response of the government under President Martin Van Buren, 1782 to 1862, is of real historical value and has been so regarded by Jost. It was for the first time that the Jews of the United States interested themselves and enlisted the interest of the government in the cause of suffering of Jews in another part of the world, and thus participated in that consolidation of the Jewish public spirit, which resulted from this memorable occurrence, and which justifies the statement made by Mr. Jacobs that, in a measure, modern Jewish history may be said to date from the Damascus affair, of 1840. There were now emancipated Jews in some countries who not only dared to come out in open protest against anti-Jewish outrages in other countries, but could also interest civilized governments to take official notice of such outrages, something unknown in former times.

The American government, on its part, did not even wait for the request of the Jews to intercede in behalf of the victims of barbarous cruelty, but of its own accord it sent instructions to its representatives in Turkey and in Egypt to do all in their power for the unfortunate Jews. The first meeting of Jews, for the purpose of uniting in an expression of sympathy for their brethren at Damascus, and of taking such steps as may be necessary to procure for them equal and

impartial justice was held in New York on August 19, 1840, and a letter containing the resolution which was adopted there was sent to President Van Buren under the date of August 24, to which the following reply was received. Washington, August 26, 1840. Messrs. J. B. Kersheed, Chairman, and Theodore J. Sykesis, Secretary. Gentlemen, the President has referred to this department your letter of the 24th of this month,

communicating a resolution unanimously adopted at a meeting of the Israelites in the City of New York, held for the purpose of uniting in an expression of sentiment on the subject of the persecution of their brethren in Damascus. By his direction, I have the honor to inform you that the heart-rending scenes which took place at Damascus had previously been brought to the notice of the President by a communication from our Consul at that place. In consequence thereof, a letter of instruction was immediately written to our Consul at Alexandria,

a copy of which is herewith transmitted for your satisfaction. About the same time, our charge d'affaires at Constantinople was instructed to interpose his good offices in behalf of the oppressed and persecuted race of the Jews in the Ottoman dominions, among whose kindred are found some of the most worthy and patriotic of our own citizens, and the whole subject which appeals so strongly to the universal sentiment of justice and humanity

was earnestly recommended to his zeal and discretion. I have the honor to be, gentlemen, very respectfully, your obedient servant, John Forsyth. The letter by Mr. John Forsyth, 1780-1841, to the Consul, which is mentioned in the above communication, was as follows. Washington, August 14, 1840. John Glidden, Esquire, United States Consul at Alexandria, Egypt. Sir, in common with all civilized nations, the people of the United States have learned with horror the atrocious crimes imputed to the Jews of Damascus,

and the cruelties of which they have been the victims. The president fully participates in the public feeling, and he cannot refrain from expressing equal surprise and pain that in this advanced age such unnatural practices could be ascribed to any portion of the religious world, and such barbarous measures to be resorted to in order to compel the confession of imputed guilt. The offenses with which these unfortunate people are charged resemble too much those which, in less enlightened times, were made the pretext of fanatical persecution or mercenary extortion to permit a doubt that they are equally unfounded.

The President has witnessed, with the most lively satisfaction, the effort of several of the Christian governments of Europe to suppress or mitigate these horrors, and he has learned with no common gratification their partial success. He is moreover anxious that the act of sympathy and generous interposition of the government of the United States should not be withheld from so benevolent an object, and he has accordingly

directed me to instruct you to employ, should the occasion arise, all those good offices and efforts which are compatible with discretion and your official character, to the end that justice and humanity may be extended to these persecuted people whose cry of distress has reached our shores. I am, sir, your obedient servant, John Forsyth. The following letter was addressed to David Porter, 1780-1843. The father of Admiral David D. Porter, who was then United States Minister to Turkey.

Department of State, Washington, August 17, 1840. David Porter, Esquire. Sir, in common with the people of the United States, the President has learned with profound feelings of surprise and pain the atrocious cruelties which have been practiced upon the Jews of Damascus and Rhodes, in consequence of charges extravagant and strikingly similar to those which in less enlightened ages were made pretexts for the persecution and spoliation of these unfortunate

people. As the scene of these barbarities are in the Mohammedan dominions, and as such inhuman practices are not of an infrequent occurrence in the East, the President has directed me to instruct you to do everything in your power with the government of His Imperial Highness, the Sultan, to whom you are accredited, consistent with discretion, and your diplomatic character to prevent or mitigate these horrors, the bare recital of which has caused a shudder

throughout the civilized world, and in a special manner to direct your philanthropic efforts against the employment of torture in order to compel the confession of imputed guilt. The President is of the opinion that from no one can such generous endeavors proceed with such propriety and effect as from the representative of a friendly power whose institutions, political and civil, place upon the same footing the worshipers of God of every faith and form,

acknowledging no distinction between the Mohammedan, the Jew, and the Christian. Should you, in carrying out these instructions, find it necessary or proper to address yourself to any of the Turkish authorities, you will refer to this distinctive characteristic of our government as investing with a peculiar propriety and right the interposition of your good offices in behalf of an oppressed and persecuted race, among whose kindred are found some of the most worthy and patriotic of our citizens.

In communicating to you the wishes of the President, I do not think it advisable to give you more explicit and minute instructions, but earnestly commend to your zeal and discretion a subject which appeals so strongly to the universal sentiments of justice and humanity. I am, sir, your obedient servant, John Forsyth. The Jews of Philadelphia held on August 27 a meeting for the same purpose in the vestry of the Mikwa Israel Synagogue, at which were present, besides the prominent Jews of the city, several representative Christian clergymen, Dr. Dukashe, Rector of St. Stephen's, Dr. Ramsey, a Presbyterian minister, and the Reverend Mr. Kennedy, all of whom spoke.

Isaac Leeser was the principal orator, and he argued that as both Christianity and Islam are derived from Judaism, if the last advocated ritual murder, the daughter religions would equally be guilty of the same practice. He contrasted the position of the Eastern Jews with that of their brethren in this happy land, and declared that while the Jews everywhere felt themselves true citizens of the lands in which they dwelt, they still retained full sympathy with their co-religionists throughout the world, especially when charges were brought against them which affected the honor and good fame of their religion. A series of resolutions were adopted and sent to Washington when Mr. Forsyth replied in similar terms to those he had used in his letter to the Jews of New York, and likewise enclosed a copy of his letter to Consul Glidden at Alexandria. Another meeting was held in Richmond, Virginia, where a resolution was adopted thanking the President for the prompt and handsome manner in which he has acted in reference to the persecution practiced upon our brethren in Damascus.

The Jews of the United States were also in open sympathy with the liberal movement in Central Europe, especially in Germany, which culminated in the revolutions of the year 1848. While there was no active cooperation or direct assistance in those times of slow communication, those who wrote from America described the conditions prevailing here as well-nigh ideal

from a liberal point of view. A poem by Sigmund Herzl entitled Auf Nach Amerika, which appeared in the Central Organ, published in Vienna in 1848 by Isidore Busch, born in Prague, Bohemia, 1822, arrived in New York, 1849, died in St. Louis, Missouri, 1898, in which America is described as a place where true brotherly love reigns supreme, where ignorance and base prejudice are entirely unknown may be taken as an example of the expression of that sentiment. When the great Jewish champion of the liberal movement in Germany, Gabriel Reeser, born in Hamburg, Germany 1806, died there 1863, visited America in 1856, he was greeted by

many former German revolutionary soldiers, both Jewish and Christian, and in New York they gave a public dinner in his honor. Jews in Philadelphia formed a Reser Club, which existed for a number of years. The first diplomatic difficulties which the government of the United States experienced on account of discrimination against its Jewish citizens occurred about this time, and strangely enough, it was not with Russia,

but with the Swiss Confederation. A general convention between the two republics was drawn and signed at Bern, November 25, 1850, by Mr. A. Dudley Mann, American Minister to Switzerland, on the part of the United States, and by Messrs. Drouy and Frey Heresey, on the part of the Swiss Confederation. This treaty and a copy of the instructions under which Mr. Mann acted, together with his dispatch of November 30, 1850, explanatory of the Articles of Convention,

were transmitted to the United States Senate on February 13, 1851, by President Millard Fillmore, 1800 to 74. Neither the treaty nor the papers accompanying it were ever made public, the ban of secrecy imposed by the Senate having never been removed. But President Fillmore himself, in the message transmitting the treaty, objected to it in the form in which it was presented. He said,

It is quite certain, continues the President, that neither by law nor by treaty nor by any other official proceeding is it competent for the government of the United States to establish any distinction between its citizens founded on differences in religious beliefs. Any benefit or privilege conferred by law or treaty on one must be common to all, and we are not at liberty, on a question of such vital interest and plain constitutional duty, to consider whether the particular case is one in which substantial inconvenience or injustice might ensue. It is enough that an inequality would be sanctioned, hostile to the institutions of the United States, and inconsistent with the Constitution and the laws. Nor can the government of the United States rely on the individual cantons of Switzerland for extending the same privileges to other citizens of the United States, as this article extends to Christians. It is indispensable not only that every privilege granted to any of the citizens of the United States should be granted to all, but also that the grant of such privileges should stand upon the same stipulation and assurance by the whole Swiss Confederation as those of other articles of the Convention.

The two most prominent men in American public life at that time, Senator Henry Clay, 1777-1852, and Secretary of State Daniel Webster, 1782-1852, strongly disapprove the discrimination which the proposed treaty provided. The former wrote, I disapprove entirely the restrictions limiting certain provisions of the treaty, under the operation of which a respectable portion of our fellow citizens would be excluded from their benefits. This is not the country nor the age in which unjust prejudices should receive any countenance. Webster wrote about the same time to a Jew who addressed him on the subject, presumably J.M. Cordoso. The objections against certain specialties of the Swiss Convention concerning the Israelites,

which you urge in your letter to me, have not escaped the attention of the Department, and I hasten to inform you that they will be laid before the Senate with the Convention. The letter is dated February 11, 1851. In the meantime, although it was asserted on behalf of Switzerland that the discriminations which it insisted upon were only a precautionary measure, a safeguard against the immense itinerant

Jewish population of Alsace. The two cantons of Basel vigorously executed a decree of banishment against the Jews which was promulgated November 17, 1851. The law was suspended for a few months because of a note sent by Emperor Napoleon III to the Council of the Federation in which he said that France will expel all Swiss citizens established in France in case the two cantons should insist on carrying out this law against the Jews. But while the negotiations were pending,

the two cantons carried out the law of expulsion, and no further steps were taken by France. About this time, there was set on foot in this country a movement to procure religious toleration abroad for American citizens generally. It appears to have been aimed at the persecution of American Protestants in Catholic countries, and the movement to secure redress in this direction culminated in a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives, December 13, 1852,

by John A. Wilcox of Mississippi, which declared that the representatives of this government at foreign courts be instructed to urge such amendments of all existing treaties between the United States and the other powers of the world, as will secure the same liberty of religious worship to all American citizens residing under foreign flags, which is guaranteed to all citizens of every nation of the whole world who reside under the flag of our Union.

Objection was made to this resolution as an encroachment upon the powers of the executive, action was delayed for a long time. A resolution of a similar nature, which was reported to the Senate from the Committee on Foreign Relations February 17, 1853, met the same fate. But all these discussions had the effect of the Senate refusing to ratify the treaty with Switzerland in the form in which it was sent to it. Mr. Mann thereupon proceeded to negotiate another treaty,

which while striking from it the clause objected to by the president and the other notable men mentioned above yet in another form inserted a clause the effect of which was the same as that of the clause which had been stricken out article one of this new treaty read as follows The citizens of the United States of America and the citizens of Switzerland shall be admitted and treated upon a footing of reciprocal equality in the two countries, where such admission and treatment shall not conflict with the constitutional or legal provisions, as well federal as state and cantonal, of the contracting parties. Despite the previous and many subsequent protests from numerous Jews, and also despite the attention of the government, which was attracted to the case of A. H. Gutmann, an American Jewish citizen who was ordered expelled from the canton of Neufchatel in 1853, the treaty containing the above article was ratified by the Senate November 6, 1855. Ratifications were exchanged two days afterward, and the treaty was proclaimed November 9, 1855, by President Franklin Pierce, 1804-69, when William Learned Marcy, 1786-1857, was Secretary of State. In 1856, the above-mentioned Mr. Gutmann, who had remained in Nefshetel by special permission,

again requested through the American minister to Switzerland, Mr. Theo S. Fay, the intervention of the United States government against his expulsion. In his letter to the State Department, Mr. Fay states it as a matter of fact that the treaty between the two republics does not grant to Israelites the right of domicile in Switzerland. And in a second letter, he says that it may be superfluous to repeat that the obnoxious clause in the treaty was unavoidable without a revision of the federal constitution of Switzerland.

He also repeats that the admission of American Jews would necessitate that of Jews of other nations, and particular inconvenience is apprehended from the usurious, Israeli-ish population of the French province of Alsace. This second Guttman case became generally known and public sentiment was aroused against the treaty. The result of the agitation was apparent even in the general press of the country, and many protest meetings were held. Memorials drawn and forwarded to Washington and committees appointed to consider the matter.

A delegation of prominent Jews went to the Capitol in October 1857 and presented a memorial to President James Buchanan, 1791 to 1868, who gave an explicit promise to remedy the wrong of which the Jews complained. The declaration of the President on the subject was so emphatic that most of the leaders and promoters of the agitation were completely satisfied that the question was already settled in their favor. Dr. Einhorn wrote in his Sinai, We feel satisfied that the Israelites of the United States may feel implicit confidence in the executive and that their rights as citizens of the United States will be zealously maintained.

Dr. Wise in The Israelite wrote, No doubt was left in the minds of the delegates, but that this matter is settled as far as we are concerned. Rabbi Leeser, however, was not so well satisfied, and he did not agree that all agitation ought now to cease, but thought it advisable for all the congregations that have not yet acted to draw up memorials and send them to the President to show at least that the interest

in the question was not confined to the four states represented at Washington on the 31st of October. long diplomatic correspondence followed, with reciprocal requests for information about the condition of the Jews in both countries, with urgent requests from Washington that something be done, and with explanations from Mr. Fay that the cantonal laws or constitutions would have to

be changed before favorable action could be expected. In November of the same year, Mr. Fay wrote, I would wish carefully to avoid offering encouragement to the Hebrews, but he was now working diligently to carry out the desire of the president and was even collecting material to disprove the charges made by the Swiss against the Alsatian Jews. In November 1858, he wrote to Secretary of State Louis Cass, 1782 to 1866, that the mouths of all foreign governments and

preceding treaty makers have been until now closed by a plea about the Alsatian Jews. I think that after the raw sonnement, which I am now collecting, no Swiss authority will ever dare to advance that objection against us as an argument, and I am more and more of the opinion that it may become expedient to denounce our treaty until the expunction of the offensive clause. The results of Mr. Fay's investigations were incorporated in his Israelite note.

which was transmitted to the Secretary of State on June 3, 1859, and to the Federal Council of Switzerland on the same day. It had a salutary effect on Switzerland, where the Federal Council assisted in its circulation. A German edition of it was printed in St. Gall in 1860. The cause of the Jews in Switzerland gained much from this intervention of the representative of a foreign government in their behalf,

and the consequences were felt in other countries where the struggle for Jewish emancipation was then going on. According to a letter written by Mr. Fay in October 1859, the Bavarian minister told him that should he succeed in Switzerland, the Israelites of Bavaria would also be emancipated. The case of the Jews was making considerable progress

and other enlightened governments also made representations to Switzerland in favor of the Jews. Still nothing definite was accomplished under Buchanan's administration either. In March 1861, Rabbi Leiser expressed in the Occident his regret that nothing was done and wrote that he expected that nothing would be done until Switzerland herself will render the laws harmless by repealing through her cantonal councils all inequality laws existing against us. This prediction proved correct

for while the succeeding Secretary of State William H. Seward took up the matter with Mr. George G. Fogg, who was then minister to Switzerland, several years passed before another favorable report reached the State Department on the subject. The appointment by the government of the United States of a Jewish citizen, Mr. Bernays, as his consul to Zurich, created a stir in both countries and clearly indicated the favorable disposition

of the administration of President Abraham Lincoln towards the Jews. In 1864, Mr. Fogg wrote to Mr. Seward that the President of the Confederation, Mr. Dubbs, had informed him that the federal council were then disposed to so amend the treaty that no discrimination founded on religious belief should thereafter be made or endured by citizens of the united states within the limits of the swiss confederation the remaining cantons were removing

the jewish disabilities one after another but in some of them as in basel the hotbed of opposition and prejudice against the Jews, full civil rights were not granted until 1872, although the right of residence was freely accorded 10 years earlier. The new Swiss constitution, which was adopted in 1874, at last established full religious liberty and also made the question of treatments of aliens a federal as distinguished from a cantonal matter. It was not until then that the question was solved,

so to speak, automatically, but it is conceded the efforts of the government of the United States contributed to the result, although it could not attain its object by direct diplomatic negotiations. End of chapter 23