VIII.
THE CIVIL AND MILITARY STATUS OF THE JEWS IN JAMAICA.
In the West Indies, the Jews, though debarred from public office until late, contributed much to the public good. Their constancy and restless activity in behalf of the Government under which they served are chronicled by many historians. It were useless to give an elaborate account of their influence for good in the islands. It would lead us much too far to recount them, and in fact many things have been recorded of this nature by the present writer elsewhere.[112] If we mention the case of _Daniel Cordoso_, who was killed while defending Curaçao, from an attack of the English in 1805,[113] it is because his is the only one referred to by name in the history of that island. No doubt other researches will be made by the active members of the _American Jewish Historical Society_, in this direction, which will silence all calumny against our patriotism. As a fitting epilogue to these pages, we subjoin a "List of Jews appointed to civil and military offices in Jamaica, since the act of 1831," extracted from the official gazettes of the island, and presented by Sir F. H. Goldsmid, in his _Arguments advanced against the enfranchisement of the Jews, considered in a series of letters_, Second Edition, London 1833, pp. 39-40 (First Ed., London, 1831), arranged in the following chronological order:
1831.
October 15th MYER BENJAMIN, Gent., to be a Quartermaster.
October 24th MOSES GOMES SILVA, ESQ., to be a Provost Marshal-General.[114]
October 27th ALEXANDER BRAVO, Esq., to be a Magistrate and Assistant Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the Parish of Clarendon.
November 2nd PHILIP LUCAS, Esq., to be a Magistrate and Assistant Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the Parish of Kingston.
December 13th AARON GOMES DACOSTA, Gent., to be an Ensign.
December 31st DANIEL JACOBS, Gent., to be an Ensign.
1832.
January 19th ALEXANDER JOSEPH LINDO, Gent., to be a Quartermaster.
March 8th JACOB DE PASS, Esq., to be a Magistrate and Assistant Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the Parish Port Royal.
March 9th SAMUEL DELISSER, Gent., to be an Ensign.
April 27th ISAAC GOMES DACOSTA, Gent., to be a Quartermaster.
May 1st GEORGE ISAACS, Gent., to be a Quartermaster.
May 5th BARNET ISAACS, Gent., to be an Ensign.
July 6th DAVID LOPEZ, Gent., to be a Lieutenant of Artillery.
July 26th ABRAHAM ISAACS, Esq., to be a Magistrate and Assistant Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the Parish of St. Ann.
August 4th MOSES Q. HENRIQUES, Gent., to be an Ensign.[115]
It is evident from this brief and insufficient summary of our subject, that the Jews on American soil, north and south, east and west, were loyal, law-abiding citizens, noble philanthropists and exemplary patriots.
FOOTNOTES:
[105] For completeness' sake we reproduce this chapter from a recent sketch in the _Menorah Monthly_ (Vol. XIX), for September, 1895, pp. 145-148, entitled: _A 16th Century document written by David Ebron, a Jewish financier in America_. This newly discovered letter is perhaps the most important evidence yet furnished of the services rendered by the Jews in the discovery and financial improvement of America, and deserves to be incorporated in this work. The book containing a copy of this document was lately published in Madrid (1891), under the title: _Documentos Escogidos del Archivo de la Casa di Alba_. See for other
## particulars the above quoted article in _Menorah_, note. We intend
publishing Ebron's letter soon in the original.
[106] On the Marranos in Hispañiola and South America, Dr. Kayserling has published some interesting data in the _P. A. J. H. S._, No. 2; see also his _Christopher Columbus and the Participation of the Jews in the Discovery of America_ (New York, 1894).
[107] The writer of these pages, in another paper, treats of the sufferings of the _Marranos_ or New Christians in Mexico, Peru and Brazil from 1570 to 1750. See his article on "The Jewish Martyrs of the Inquisition in South America," in _P. A. J. H. S._, No. 4, (1895). Dr. Cyrus Adler furnishes in the same _Publications_, No. 4, a valuable sketch on the "Trial of Jorge de Almeida by the Inquisition in Mexico," 1590-1609, which sets forth the social condition of the secret Jews in that country at the end of the sixteenth century.
[108] The sources whence the materials contained in this chapter are taken, being for the most part accessible, and, as in a forthcoming essay on the _Jews of Martinique_, all the references will be incorporated in full, the writer merely quotes the following authorities: _Notice sur la famille Gradis et sur la maison Gradis ét fils de Bordeaux, par Henri Gradis_ (1875), _apud_ Graetz, "Die Familie Gradis," in his _Monatsschrift_, etc., Vol. XXIV (1875), pp. 447-459; XXV (1876), pp. 78-85; his _Geschichte der Juden_, Vol. XI (Leipzig, 1870), pp. 190, 200, 202, 223; see also Ad. Thierry: _Dissertation sur cette quest, est-il des moyens de rendre les juifs plus heureux et plus utile en France--(ouvrage couronné)_ Paris, 1788; and several books on the history of the Jews in Bordeaux. In our narrative of the career of the Gradis family we follow Prof. Graetz, in his _Monatsschrift_, _l. c._
[109] Cf. also Dr. Graetz, in _Monatsschrift_, Vol. XXIV, p. 557.
[110] This important fact is thus recorded by Prof. Graetz: (_Geschichte der Juden_, vol. XI, p. 190) "Gradis aus einer reichen und angesehenen Familie in Bordeaux, die grosse Bank- und ueber-seeische Geschaefte fuer die franzoesischen Colonien betrieb, eigene Schiffe ausruestete und dem franzoesischen Staate in den entfernten Besitzungen _durch Ausloesung franzoesischer Gefangener aus den Haenden der Englaender Dienste geleistet hatte_." See also the following note, which is still more explicit.
[111] Cf. Graetz, in _Monatsschrift_, vol. XXIV., p. 452: "... _Abraham Gradis gab einem Geschaeftsfreunde in London den Auftrag, den gefangenen franzoesischen Capitaenen und Commandanten auf seine Rechnung Alles zu verabreichen, was sie noethig haben sollten, um ihre Lage zu erleichtern_."
[112] Cf. G. A. Kohut's article on _Jews in St. Thomas, Jamaica and Barbados_, in the _P. A. J. H. S._, No. 4.
[113] See Koenen's _Geschiedenis_, etc., p. 307-8: "... Toen in 1805 de Engelschen een vruchteloozen aanval op dit eiland deden, de Joden, aldaar woonachtig, hun plicht ter verdediging van hetzelve moedig betracht hebben, zoodat een van hen, zijnde _Daniel Cardoso_, geboortig van Amsterdam, bij die gelegenheid gesneuveld is." Cf. also Van Hamelsveld, _Geschiedenis der Joden_, p. 363.
[114] This is analogous to the English office of Sheriff.
[115] This list was already published by the writer in an article on _The Civil and Military Status of American Jews_, in _Menorah Monthly_, Vol. XVIII, No. 4, pp. 256-7.
JEWS IN THE ARMIES OF EUROPE.
The purpose of the present volume, as its title indicates, is a review of the record and the status as patriot, soldier and citizen of the _American_ Jew. But the Jew is co-extensive with civilization, not only historically but geographically as well, and wherever civilization makes its way, there the Jew will be found exerting a positive influence in furthering its progress. He will be found at the nucleus and core of conservatism and order wherever order is akin to right, but he has never been wanting at the front of Revolution when wrong could no longer otherwise be righted.
Avoiding more than a passing advertence to Jewish military achievements in the beginning of Israel's history, in the later struggles against the Greeks and subsequently against the Romans; stopping but a moment to remember Joshua, and Gideon, and Deborah, the successive Maccabæan heroes, and the last desperate struggle for freedom that was led by Bar Cochba against Hadrian; passing down through all the martyrdoms of the Dark Ages to the present "nineteenth century," we come face to face with the fact that Jews have been present in European armies since the time of the Napoleonic wars. They were to be found in the ranks of all the combatants during that bloody prelude to the great political regeneration that is yet going on before us, and they have risen as far above the ranks as the prejudices of the Christianity-professing majority would admit.
In the successive Polish uprisings, in all the great political upheavals of 1848, and especially in the Hungarian revolution of that time, the Jews of their respective nationalities took a vigorous and aggressive part.[116] Their position in this regard was so positive and unmistakable that when those great socio-political disturbances had been quieted through the partial concession of popular rights by the monarchies of Europe, the Jews of Germany and Austria had reached a position where they could logically demand their political enfranchisement and the abolition of the mediæval restrictions which remained imposed on them. That they did not obtain a full measure of citizenship until after the establishment of the German Empire in 1871, is indeed true, and even yet the spirit of the Dark Ages is so far prevalent in Germany and in Austria (leaving Slavic Europe out of consideration as not yet modernized) as to preclude the advancement of Jews to the higher posts of the army. In France, however, since the French Revolution, and in Italy since the consolidation of the Kingdom, Jews have been advanced to the highest military commands. In both countries and especially in France, several Jewish soldiers at present hold the rank of General of Division, and quite a number, proportionately, that of Brigade and Regimental Commander.[117]
FOOTNOTES:
[116] ... "It is a gratifying proof of progress that the President of the Magyars (Kossuth) has promised freedom to those who equally with himself are struggling for the independence of their country, since it is said that there are no less than 35,000 Israelites in the Hungarian army." _Extract from a French newspaper reprinted in "The Occident," August, 1849. Phila.; Edited by Isaac Leeser._
... "It cannot be denied that already at that time the majority of the Magyar Jews were patriotically inclined towards the country which they called their home. As by magic, they felt themselves drawn towards the man who preached liberty and equality, and at whose hands they were expecting redemption from the Ghetto and from civil and political degradation. As a matter of fact, thousands of Jews, among them a general, fought in the Magyar army.... The contribution which the notorious Haynau levied upon the Jewish congregations was but a consequence of the loyalty to the man of the New Era, attributed to the Jews." _Dr. Adolph Kohut on "The Relations of Kossuth to the Jews," in the American Hebrew, N. Y., March, 1894._
* * * * *
To the above may be added the following testimony of General Julius Stahel, one of the active participants in the Hungarian Revolution, and who subsequently made a distinguished military record in our civil war.
NEW YORK, MAY 22d, 1895, _Hon. Simon Wolf, Washington, D. C._,
DEAR SIR:
I know from personal knowledge that many Jews fought in the battles for the independence of Hungary in 1848, with as much bravery and gallantry as the American Jew fought here during the late strife between the North and the South, and I also know that the late humane and illustrious apostle of liberty, Louis Kossuth, always fully appreciated the patriotism, loyalty and devotion of the Jews to the cause of Hungary during that great struggle for freedom.
Patriotism and bravery are not the birthright of one nation or race, but of all mankind.
Very sincerely yours, J. STAHEL.
[117] Referring to a newspaper item regarding the rumors of a duel between Capt. Cremieux Foa, a French cavalry officer, and a certain anti-Semite editor of a Paris newspaper, General Franz Sigel wrote as follows:
played by the Jews of Europe in all the various avenues of progress need not detain us here. The recurrent ebullitions of unreasoning prejudice against them which become manifest from time to time, are ultimately traceable as but distorted expressions of the unrest which the European social organism is suffering under its abnormal political and economic conditions. What there is left of this spirit on American soil is but a reflex of that of Europe, but there, as here, the record made by the Jewish people in politics and in war, in commerce and in industry, in science, art and literature, has placed beyond question their position as patriots, soldiers and citizens.
_New York, May_ 31st, 1892. _Hon. Simon Wolf, Washington, D. C_.,
DEAR SIR:
Not knowing whether you have seen or will see the inclosed item, I send it to you. It shows at least that there are no less than 300 Jewish officers serving in the French army, probably the highest number in any of the great European armies, which speaks well for France and her republican government.
Hoping that you are well, I am,
Truly yours, FRANZ SIGEL.
THE JEWISH PEOPLE BEFORE THE WORLD.
As already noted by the author in the introduction to this work, it was in December, 1891, that another of the numberless public vilifications of the Jewish people which have appeared from time to time had demanded a no less public refutation of its falsities. It has furthermore been noted that this refutation was dictated not by anything specially remarkable in the nature of the slander itself, nor of its source, inasmuch as the former was commonplace and the latter obscure, but that the reply had been called forth wholly by reason of the extraordinary condition of the public mind with regard to the subject at that
## particular juncture. It was the time and the occasion that gave the
slander prominence, rather than any peculiarity of its own.
It has been so for a long time past. From the time, nearly 1900 years ago, when Philo of Alexandria appeared before Caligula in defence of his people, down along the centuries to the date of Menasseh ben Israel's appeal to Cromwell in 1656, there were repeated occasions for such defenses and appeals, and there have been many since. These contingencies have repeatedly arisen in the course of the slow process of popular enlightenment which makes up the history of Man, and as that process is yet far from accomplishment it is not at all unlikely that they may be repeated in the future.
It is, however, more than passingly remarkable that in the closing decade of the 19th Century, when "the thoughts of men have widened with the process of the suns," an occasion of this nature should have arisen. That such exigencies occur but rarely in the midst of our Western civilization, and that rare as they are, their occurrence is always traceable to foreign impulses, only renders more apparent the liberalizing influences of our free American institutions, while on the other hand further emphasizing the lessons taught us by the spectacle of Monarchic Europe. There the remnants of the mediæval system, political, ecclesiastic and social, that remained as historic _debris_ after the cataclysm of the French Revolution, still clog the advance of true enlightenment. In Germany and in Austria a considerable portion of the populace is still affected by a taint of monkish fanaticism, and in Russia only a comparatively few individuals appear to be free from it. Schools are numerous in Austria and universities flourish in Germany, but the prejudices which form the obverse side of folly find still some teachers in the schools and preachers in the pulpit.
"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers,"
and the dictates of reason, the teachings of political and economic science, the lessons of history, will have to be yet more than once repeated before that umbra of the Dark Ages, the so-called "anti-Semitism" of Slavic and Teutonic Europe, and its penumbra in America, will have been lost in historic space.
These lessons have been learned and these teachings taught by the foremost minds of every epoch and latterly of every generation. From the time of Reuchlin's defense of the Talmud and Jewish literature generally against the fanatics of his day, a defense which caused a religious and political agitation that became the prelude to the Reformation, down to our present time, there have not been wanting Christian men of learning and of understanding who strove successfully in the defense of Jewish polity against the prejudices of ignorance. The great Renaissance of German letters in the latter half of the 18th century afforded numerous instances of men of this character, among whom need but be cited Lessing, Herder, Schiller, and Goethe. These writers and thinkers carried on their polemics in the domain of idealism, in poetry and philosophy, and their thoughts were soon re-echoed in the out-givings of the succeeding generation of scientists, students and statesmen. We will not attempt here to adduce all the great array of leading minds who have been impelled to express themselves on this theme, but will limit our citations to a few of the most authoritative thinkers and a quotation of the most positive utterances on the subject.
In marked contrast with the accusation of the passing school of anti-Semitic writers against Judaism as materialistic in its tendencies, there may be cited an expression by the great German and cosmopolitan philosopher, ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. In a letter to a Jewish friend regarding the natural idealism expressed in Hebrew literature, he refers him to the following passage in his _Cosmos_ (_Vol. III, p. 44_), and closes his letter as below.
"It is a characteristic sign of the natural poetry of the Hebrews, that, as a reflex of Monotheism, it always comprises the whole of the universe in its unity, both life on earth and the bright realms on high. It seldom dwells upon single phenomena, but rejoices in the contemplation of great masses. Nature is not described as self-existent, or glorified by a beauty of her own; to the Hebrew singer she always appears in connection with an over-ruling spiritual power. Nature to him is ever a thing created and ordained, the living utterance of God's Omnipresence in the works of the world of matter. Therefore, the lyrical poetry of the Hebrews, by reason of its subject, is grand and grave in its solemnity."
"Stand fast by your brethren who have accomplished so remarkable a course of martyrdom through centuries and now stand on the threshold of their liberation; devote all the energies of your intellect to the spiritual labor wherewith your millennial history is instinct; success cannot, will not fail you and the rich results that you, my young friend, will obtain from the mines of science, will calm and comfort you in many a sad experience in the dull and cloudy present, that is but the precursor of the bright dawn of the day of liberty."
* * * * *
Another world-famous scientist, ALPHONSE L. P. PYRAME DE CANDOLLE, in his _Histoire des sciences et des savants depuis deux siécles_, Geneva, 1873, makes the following very remarkable observations:
"If Europe had been peopled by Jews only we might have witnessed a curious spectacle. There would no longer be any wars; hence the moral sensibility would be violated much less and millions of people would not be torn away from useful occupations. Public debts and taxes would decrease. The cultivation of science, of literature, of fine arts, especially music, for which the Jews have a great predilection, would be furthered to the highest extent. Industry and commerce would flourish. Few crimes of personal violence would be committed, and those against property would but seldom be accompanied by violence. The wealth of the community as a whole and of individuals would largely increase by the effect of intelligent and regular labor, combined with economy. This wealth would have a beneficent effect. The clergy would not come in collision with the State. Perhaps there would be less corruption among the officials and greater firmness."
The above passage is approvingly quoted by another great leader in the world of science, Professor Carl Vogt, in an article published in _Westerman's Monatshefte_, wherein the writer, treating of the habits and qualities acquired by European peoples through hereditary transmission, speaks of the Jewish people as having attained the highest civilization notwithstanding their having lived for ages under oppression.
* * * * *
On the occasion of the centennial anniversary, in 1891, of the political enfranchisement of the French Jews, the celebrated leader of the French Liberal Catholics, PERE HYACINTHE, addressed to the Grand Rabbi of Paris the following expressive communication:
"MONSIEUR LE GRAND RABBIN:--You will have seen from the papers that our Gallican Catholic church intends to commemorate the centenary of the emancipation of the Jews by the Constituent Assembly. The 27th of September, 1791, is a date of even greater glory to France than it is to the Jews. It was a day that witnessed the reparation of a long and cruel injustice; it inaugurated for the whole world an era of liberty and brotherhood from which no evil disposed person has since been able to make us swerve. We are too enlightened and too liberal-minded to become anti-Semites. Besides, we are Christians, and as such we must not forget that it is from Israel's bosom that we have sprung. Israel, the grand old olive tree from which we have been grafted. For the French Jews the interregnum which commenced with Sedecias ended with Napoleon. Napoleon it was, who boasted of being the King of the Jews, and the Jews accordingly treated him as their political Messiah. Than him they could not have had a greater.
"But Napoleon's empire, like the kingdom of David, is no more, and the French Republic now has the keeping of these two illustrious necropoles, that at Jerusalem wherein reposes the race of David, that at Paris wherein rests the hero who was in himself his own sole dynasty.
"But none the less, France has remained, as Bonaparte remarked, the new tribe of Judah, where Frenchmen and Jews constitute one people.
"Republicans by virtue of the Mosaic legislation, I would almost say socialistic, in the best sense of the term, before they became monarchists by Samuel's dispensation, the traditions of the Jews comprise all the essentials for the service of France.
"'Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah and bring him unto his people; let his hands be sufficient for him, and be Thou a help to him from his enemies.'
"These are my wishes, Monsieur le Grand Rabbin and may the God of the Jews, who is also the God of the Christians, cause them to be fulfilled speedily.
"Accept, monsieur, the assurance of my fraternal friendship.
HYACINTHE LOYSON, Priest."
* * * * *
As focussing effectively the most salient aspects of this general subject, we will here cite a thoughtful statement from a strictly orthodox Roman Catholic source, the French clerical journal, _Le Monde_:
"The immortality of the soul has been repudiated by the Academie des Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres. The Jews had to serve as the occasion. The Old Testament, however, was vindicated. But in how many feeble minds was not an uncertainty left? How many will take the trouble to read over the Sacred Books, when the reading of the daily papers absorbs all their time? Voltaire knew well enough that to sustain his iconoclastic views he had to discredit the Jewish people, to falsify their history, and to take up again the pagan theory of presenting them as the most degraded of people.
"Such, indeed, was the opinion of the Greeks and Romans in regard to the Jews. The Greeks, given over to all conceivable turpitude and tyranny, to an anarchy without bounds and without end, incapable of even simulating a defence against Rome, despised the Jewish people, and the Romans entertained the same feelings. They despised them for the same reason that the economists, the capitalists, the modern free-thinkers, despise the Catholics. The Jews did not worship idols; they alone did not prostrate themselves before nature; they condemned, despised that pantheism, that idol-worship, which sanctified the vices and the passions and which the Greeks and Romans embraced with such ardor. The dignity and regularity of their habits formed a striking contrast to pagan dissipation. They opposed in their individuality, the beauty of their rigorous law to the impure teachings of paganism. They never presented a disgraceful spectacle in the time of their prosperity; they never participated in the bloody games of the ring; they held human sacrifices in horror.
"The Jews did not profess the principle of equity, of which the Greeks and Romans boasted so much--themselves absolute partisans of Slavery. They simply upheld the institution of family hierarchy, the paternal authority. Their habits and institutions, inspired by the parental sentiment--were they not full of kindliness and foresight? Could they overlook the feeble and the poor? Amongst them brothers could not know contention and strife, because they were equals in reality. Without the parent, fraternity would disappear.
"In order to subsist it is necessary that children should always have before them the image, the memory, the principle of the paternity from which they emanated, which formed the bonds of their friendship. Their unity proceeds from thence, a unity, sweet, lively, inculcated in infancy, formed by the heart before the mind could grasp it. The lawgiver had no occasion, therefore, to enjoin fraternity, but needed only to submit it to that law of nature which organizes the paternal authority. The Jews were ignorant of those social ideas that desolated the ancient cities and that spring up again in modern times. The poor had no demands to make upon the rich. The Jews never forget, and had they done so, the law reminded them that the earth belongs to the Lord and that in God they are all brothers. The constitutional wars between the poor and the rich in Rome and Athens were caused by extortion. This question of extortion fills Roman history with its pale shadow; it is at the bottom of all the troubles, dissensions, periodical massacres and revolts. It has again taken possession of society with the reform of the Nineteenth Century. Only in 1789 France passed from under the yoke of extortion. The Jewish fraternity condemned extortion as a principle of tyranny.
"This fraternity, so powerful a principle, led the Jews to love their fellow-beings, to see in them colleagues and brothers; they received the stranger willingly, extended to him their hospitality, even a share in the benefits of their law--something that was foreign to all other nations. With these other nations the stranger was regarded simply as an enemy; "enemy" and "stranger" were expressed by one and the same word. Pantheism, denying the principle of unity, as indicated in the Divine origin, left men in a continual state of war. And war never ceased; the cities fought with each other, until the strongest had subdued the others, and in their turn were conquered and absorbed by a greater. This is the invariable history of Greece and Rome. The dogma of Divine creation exhibited to the Jews all men as brethren. They did not treat the stranger therefore as a barbarian. They, the Israelites, alone of all the nations of antiquity, did not carry on aggressive wars; once established upon their soil, they had no other desire than to live in peace by living out their laws. This is the object of all their institutions. They do not make war upon the stranger, because they had no hate against him.
"Their God, greater than the gods of the Olympus, neither flattered nor served their passions. He was a jealous God, who exacted the submission of the heart. He chastised his rebellious children. And this people purified by persecution and misfortune, returned to the laws of their fathers, to the observance of their precepts. No city in ancient, no people in modern times could have passed through like vicissitudes and recovered again. It is not through progress that they endured and were capable of resistance, but by holding fast to the past; by rallying around the law, which they had never abandoned and which they never modified, hard as it was. It often became irksome, it never bargained with its conscience. What else existed, before the laws of Moses, than that paganism which legalized all vices? The Jews defended their law with their lives; they fought for it against the Greek kings of Syria; they preferred to be buried under the ruins of Jerusalem to making a compact with Roman paganism. The Greeks and Romans never had the idea that one can die for one's religion.
"By their habits in the government of the State the Jews were separated completely from Greece and Rome. They never brooked the insults of the ancient or modern mobocracy, because they respected the principle of the family, the foundation of their political, judicial, administrative and military organization. They alone in antiquity repudiated slavery. They practiced a national brotherhood which the Christian people are hardly capable of comprehending; it is so sublime, and almost beyond human nature. The institution of the jubilee, of the seventh year, the seventh day, was the perfection of social order; but even with Christianity these institutions could not maintain themselves. Dispersed, reduced to direst need and to the humiliation of exile, the Jews have never abandoned these first principles. Tacitus remarked the close ties of brotherhood that united them in his time. _Inter ipsos obstinata fides_. Since then and up to this time is it not the same sentiment? Are there many dissensions amongst them? This moral greatness of the Jewish people made them the target of pagan enmity. The policy of Rome was to be enforced upon all nations. The Jews share with the Christians the honor of having been singled out as the victims of utter extermination.
"The Jewish nation has survived all its victors; it alone, says Jean-Jacques Rousseau, withstood the power of time, fortune and defeat. Greece and Rome were enveloped in a system of superstition which weighed heavily upon the actions of public and private life. The Jews lived beyond the pale of that ignominy. The causes of this intellectual and moral superiority became the subject of jealous depreciation generally."
* * * * *
The essential spirit of the Jewish polity has seldom, if ever, been more effectively portrayed than by REV. DR. HENRY M. FIELD, in his scholarly work, _On the Desert_, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1883. It deals with the system of law instituted by Moses, which became ingrained in the Jewish people through long centuries of victorious contention against barbarism in all its historic forms, and which remains to-day the guiding principle of Jewish life in all the relations of man to man.
We quote from Dr. Field's work as follows:
THEOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY.
"Perhaps it does not often occur to readers of the Old Testament that there is much likeness between the Hebrew Commonwealth and the American Republic. There are more differences than resemblances, at least the differences are more marked. Governments change with time and place, with the age and the country, with manners and customs; yet at the bottom there is one radical principle that divides a republic from a monarchy or an aristocracy; it is the natural equality of men--that "all men are born free and equal"--which is as fully recognized in the laws of Moses as in the Declaration of Independence. Indeed the principle is carried further in the Hebrew Commonwealth than in ours; for not only was there equality before the laws, but the laws aimed to produce equality of condition in one point, and that a vital one--the tenure of land--of which even the poorest could not be deprived, so that in this respect the Hebrew Commonwealth approached more nearly to a pure democracy.
"Of course the political rights of the people did not extend to the choice of a ruler, nor did it to the making of the laws. As there was no king but God, it was the theory of the State that the laws emanated directly from the Almighty and his commands could not be submitted to a vote. No clamorous populace debated with the Deity. The Israelites had only to hear and to obey. In this sense the government was not a popular, but an absolute one.
"But how could absolutism be consistent with equality? There is no contradiction between the two, and indeed, in some respects, no form of government is so favorable to equality as a theocracy. Encroachments upon popular liberty and the oppression of the people do not come from the head of the State so often as from an aristocratic class which is arrogant and tyrannical. But in a theocracy the very exaltation of the Sovereign places all subjects on the same level. God alone is great and in His presence there is no place for human pride. Divine Majesty overawes human littleness, and instead of a favored few being lifted up above their fellows, there is a general feeling of lowliness and humility, in the sight of God, in which lies the very spirit and essence of equality.
"As the Hebrew law recognized no natural distinctions among the people, neither did it create any artificial distinctions. There was no hereditary class which had special rights; there was no nobility exempted from burdens laid on the poor, and from punishments inflicted on the peasantry. Whatever political power was permitted to the Hebrews belonged to the people as a whole. No man was raised above another; and if in the making of the laws the people had no voice, yet in the administration of them they had full power, for they elected their own rulers.
"Moses found soon after he left Egypt that he could not administer justice in person to a whole nation, so he directed the tribes to choose out of their number their wisest men, whom he would make judges to decide every common cause, reserving to himself only the more important questions. Here was a system of popular elections, which is one of the first elements of a republican or democratic state.
"In the administration of justice a Theocracy is an ideal government, for it is Divinity enthroned on earth as in Heaven, and no other form of government enforces justice in a manner so absolute and peremptory. In the eyes of the Hebrew lawgiver the civil tribunal was as sacred as the Holy of Holies. The office of the judge was as truly authorized, and his duty as solemnly enjoined, as that of the priest. The judgment is God's, said Moses, and he who gave a false judgment disregarded the authority of Him whose nature is justice and truth. The judgment seat was a holy place, which no private malice might profane. Evidence was received with religious care. Oaths were administered to give solemnity to the testimony. Then the Judge, standing in the place of God, was to pronounce equitably, whatever might be the rank of the contending
## parties. 'Ye shall not respect persons in judgment, but ye shall
hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God's.' He recognized no distinctions, all were alike to him. The judge was to know no difference. He was not to be biased even by sympathy for the poor. 'Neither shall thou countenance a poor man in his cause. Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty; but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor.' Magistrates were not allowed to accept a gift; 'for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.'
"The humanity of the Hebrew code is further seen in its mitigation of slavery. This was a legal institution of Egypt, out of which they had just come. They themselves had been slaves. Their ancestors, the patriarchs, had held slaves. Abraham had over three hundred servants born in his house. The relation of master and slave they still recognized, but by how many limitations was this state of bondage alleviated! No man could be subjected to slavery by violence. Man-stealing was punished with death. The more common causes of servitude was theft or debt. A robber might be sold to expiate his crime, or a man overwhelmed with debt might sell himself to pay it; that is, he might bind himself to service for a term of years: still he could hold property, and the moment he acquired the means might purchase back his freedom, or he might be redeemed by his nearest kinsman. If his master treat him with cruelty; if he beat him so as to cause injury the servant recovered his freedom as indemnity. At the longest his servitude came to an end in six years. He then recovered his freedom as a natural gift; 'If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.' A Hebrew slave was therefore merely a laborer hired for six years. Nor did the law permit the servant to go forth in naked poverty, and with the abject feeling of a slave still clinging to him. He was to be loaded with presents by his late master--sheep, oil, fruits, and wine--to enable him to begin housekeeping. Thus for a Hebrew there was no such thing as hopeless bondage. The people were not to feel the degradation of being slaves. God claimed them as his own, and as such they were not to be made bondmen. Every fiftieth year was a jubilee, a year of universal emancipation. Then 'liberty was proclaimed throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof.' This was the time of the restitution of all things. Though a man had sold himself as a slave, his right in the land was not alienated. It now returned to him free of encumbrance. At the year of jubilee all debts were extinguished. His native plot of ground, on which he played in childhood, was restored to him in his old age. Again he cultivated the paternal acres. He was not only a free man but a holder of property. Says Michaelis: 'The condition of slaves among the Hebrews was not merely tolerable, but often extremely comfortable.'
"That the sympathies of the law were with the oppressed appears from the singular injunction that a foreign slave who fled to a Hebrew for protection should not be given up: 'Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee.' No Fugitive Slave Law remanded the terror-stricken fugitive to an angry and infuriated master and to a condition more hopeless than before.
Such was the democracy of Theocracy--a union in which one sprang out of the other. Men were equal because God was their Ruler--a Ruler so high that before him there was neither great nor small, but all stood on the same level. But the Hebrew Law did not stop with equality; it inculcated fraternity. A man was not only a man, he was a brother. That law contains some of the most beautiful provisions ever recorded in any legislation, not only for the cold administration of justice, but for the exercise of humanity. The spirit of the Hebrew law was broader than race, or country, or kindred. What liberality, for example, in its treatment of foreigners. Against race hatred Moses set up this command, 'Thou shalt not oppress a stranger,' which he enforced upon the Israelites by the touching remembrance of their own bitter experience, 'for ye know the heart of a stranger seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.' But not only were foreigners to be tolerated; they were to receive the fullest protection. 'Ye shall have one manner of law as well for the stranger as for one of your own country.'
"In several requirements we discern a pity for the brute creation. Long before modern refinement of feeling organized societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, Moses recognized dumb beasts as having a claim to be defended from injury. Birds' nests were protected from wanton destruction.
"But perhaps the most beautiful provision of the law was for the poor.
"'When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvests. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt have them for the poor and the stranger.' If the reaper dropped a sheaf in the field, he might not return to take it. Whatever olives hung on the bough, or clusters on the vine, after the first gathering, were the property of the stranger, the fatherless and the widow. Under the shelter of this law came many a Ruth, gleaning the handfuls of golden corn to carry home to her mother, who was thus saved from utter destitution. By these means the law kept the poor from sinking to the extreme point of misery. At the same time, by throwing in their path these wayside gifts, it saved them from theft or vagabondage. As a proof of its successful operation, it is a curious fact that, in the five books of Moses, such a class as beggars is not once mentioned. The tradition of caring for those of their own kindred, remains to this day and it is an honorable boast that among the swarms of beggars that throng the streets of the Old World or the New, one almost never finds a Jew.
"The law took also under its care all whom death had deprived of their natural protectors; 'Ye shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child.' They were sacred by misfortune. God would punish cruelty to them. 'If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry unto me, I will surely hear their cry; and your wives shall be widows and your children fatherless.'
"Thus the Hebrew law took the poor and the weak under its special protection; death, sorrow, widowhood, orphanage, all threw a shield of protection over the desolate and the unhappy. By this spirit of humanity infused into the relations of life, all the members of a community--the rich and poor, the strong and the weak--were united in fellowship and fraternity. One sacred tie bound them still closer; not only were they of the same race and nation, but they had the same religious inheritance; all were fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God."
* * * * *
As a supplement to Dr. Field's effective presentation of his subject we add here, an extract from the _Christian Union_, on "Moses and his Laws," by HARRIET BEECHER STOWE:
"The strongest impulse in the character of Moses appears to have been that of protective justice, more particularly with regard to the helpless and down-trodden classes. The laws of Moses, if carefully examined, are a perfect phenomenon; an exception to the laws of either ancient or modern nations in the care they exercised over women, widows, orphans, paupers, foreigners, servants and dumb animals. No so-called Christian nation but could advantageously take a lesson in legislation from the laws of Moses. There is a plaintive, pathetic spirit of compassion in the very language in which the laws in favor of the helpless and suffering are expressed, that it seems must have been learned only of superhuman tenderness. Not the gentlest words of Jesus are more compassionate in their spirit than many of these laws of Moses. Delivered in the name of Jehovah, they certainly are so unlike the wisdom of that barbarous age as to justify of them to Him who is Love."
* * * * *
Another woman of commanding authority, GEORGE ELLIOT, speaks on this topic as follows:
"Unquestionably the Jews, having been more than any other race exposed to the adverse moral influences of alienism, must, both in individuals and in groups, have suffered some corresponding moral degradation; but in fact they have escaped with less abjectness, and less of hard hostility toward the nations whose hands have been against them, than could have happened in the case of a people who had neither their adhesion to a separate religion founded on historic memories, nor their characteristic family affectionateness. Tortured, flogged, spit upon, the _corpus vile_ on which rage or wantonness vented themselves with impunity, their name flung at them as an opprobrium by superstition, hatred, and contempt, they have remained proud of their origin. Does any one call this an evil pride? The pride which identifies us with a great historic body is a humanizing, elevating habit of mind, inspiring sacrifices of individual comfort, gain, or other selfish ambition, for the sake of that ideal whole; and no man swayed by such a sentiment can become completely abject. That a Jew of Smyrna, where a whip is carried by passengers ready to flog off the too officious specimens of his race, can still be proud to say, 'I am a Jew,' is surely a fact to awaken admiration in a mind capable of understanding what we may call the ideal forces in human history.
"And again, a varied, impartial observation of the Jews in different countries tends to the impression that they have a predominant kindness, which must have been deeply ingrained in the constitution of their race to have overlasted the ages of persecution and oppression. The concentration of their joys in domestic life has kept up in them the capacity of tenderness; the pity for the fatherless and the widow, the care for the women and the little ones, blent intimately with their religion, is a well of mercy, that cannot long or widely be pent up by exclusiveness, and the kindness of the Jew overflows the line of division between him and the Gentile.
"On the whole, one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of this scattered people, made for ages 'a scorn and a hissing,' is that, after being subjected to this process, which might have been expected to be in every sense deteriorating and vitiating, they have come out of it (in any estimate which allows for numerical proportion) rivaling the nations of all European countries, in healthiness and beauty of physique, in practical ability, in scientific and artistic aptitude, and in some forms of ethical value. A significant indication of their natural rank is seen in the fact, that at this moment the leader of the Liberal party in Germany is a Jew, the leader of the Republican party in France is a Jew, and the head of the conservative ministry in England is a Jew."
* * * * *
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULEY (afterwards Lord Macauley) delivered a celebrated oration in the British House of Commons on April 17, 1833, in support of the bill for the removal of the disabilities of the Jews. After a destructive criticism of the arguments and reasons which were then being advanced by the opponents of liberalism, arguments which have since then been so completely outlived as to be no longer, in any Anglo-Saxon community, deemed worthy of consideration, the great statesman concluded his masterly presentation in a lucid statement and eloquent peroration, as follows:
"Whatever the sect be which it is proposed to tolerate, the peculiarities of that sect will, for the time, be pronounced by intolerant men to be the most odious and dangerous that can be conceived. As to the Jews, that they are unsocial as respects religion is true; and so much the better; for surely, as Christians, we cannot wish that they should bestir themselves to pervert us from our own faith.
"But that the Jews would be unsocial members of the civil community, if the civil community did its duty by them, has never been proved. My right honorable friend who made the motion which we are discussing has produced a great body of evidence to show that they have been grossly misrepresented; and that evidence has not been refuted by my honorable friend, the member for the University of Oxford.
"But what if it were true that the Jews are unsocial? What if it were true that they do not regard England as their country? Would not the treatment which they have undergone explain and excuse their antipathy to the society in which they live? Has not similar antipathy often been felt by persecuted Christians to the society which persecuted them?
"While the bloody code of Elizabeth was enforced against the English Roman Catholics, what was the patriotism of Roman Catholics? Oliver Cromwell said that in his time they were Espaniolized. At a later period it might have been said that they were Gallicised. It was the same with the Calvinists. What more deadly enemies had France in the day of Louis XIV, than the persecuted Huguenots?
"But would any rational man infer from these facts that either the Roman Catholic as such, or the Calvinist as such, is incapable of loving the land of his birth? If England were now invaded by Roman Catholics, how many English Roman Catholics would go over to the invader? If France were now attacked by a Protestant enemy, how many French Protestants would lend him help? Why not try what effect would be produced on the Jews by that tolerant policy which has made the English Roman Catholic a good Englishman and the French Calvinist a good Frenchman?
"Another charge has been brought against the Jews, not by my honorable friend, the member for the University of Oxford--he has too much learning and too much good feeling to make such a charge--but by the honorable member for Oldham, who has, I am sorry to see, quitted his place.
"The honorable member for Oldham tells us that the Jews are naturally a mean race, a money-getting race; that they are averse to all honorable callings; that they neither sow nor reap; that they have neither flocks nor herds; that usury is the only pursuit for which they are fit; that they are destitute of all elevated and amiable sentiments.
"Such, sir, has in every age been the reasoning of bigots. They never fail to plead in justification of persecution the vices which persecution has engendered. England has been, legally, a home to the Jews less than half a century, and we revile them because they do not feel for England more than a half patriotism.
"We treat them as slaves, and wonder that they do not regard us as brethren. We drive them to mean occupations, and then reproach them for not embracing honorable professions. We long forbade them to possess land, and we complain that they chiefly occupy themselves in trade. We shut them out from all the paths of ambition, and then we despise them for taking refuge in avarice.
"During many ages we have, in all our dealings with them, abused our immense superiority of force, and then we are disgusted because they have recourse to that cunning which is the natural and universal defense of the weak against the violence of the strong. But were they always a mere money-changing, money-getting, money-hoarding race? Nobody knows better than my honorable friend, the member for the University of Oxford, that there is nothing in their national character which unfits them for the highest duties of citizens.
"He knows that, in the infancy of civilization, when our island was as savage as New Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown to Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterward the site of Rome, this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their splendid temple, their fleets of merchant ships, their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians and their poets.
"What nation ever contended more manfully against overwhelming odds for its independence and religion? What nation ever, in its last agonies, gave such signal proofs of what may be accomplished by a brave despair? And if, in the course of many centuries, the depressed descendants of warriors and sages have degenerated from the qualities of their fathers, if, while excluded from the blessings of law and bowed down under the yoke of slavery, they have contracted some of the vices of outlaws and slaves, shall we consider this as a matter of reproach to them?
"Shall we not rather consider it as a matter of shame and remorse to ourselves? Let us do justice to them. Let us open to them the door of the House of Commons. Let us open to them every career in which ability and energy can be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presume to say that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism among the descendants of the Maccabees.
"Sir, in supporting the motion of my honorable friend, I am, I firmly believe, supporting the honor and the interest of the Christian religion. I should think that I insulted that religion if I said that it cannot stand unaided by intolerant laws. Without such laws it was established, and without such laws it may be maintained.
"It triumphed over the superstitions of the most refined and of the most savage nations, over the graceful mythology of Greece and the bloody idolatry of the northern forests. It prevailed over the power and policy of the Roman Empire. It tamed the barbarians by whom that empire was overthrown. But all these victories were gained, not by the help of intolerance, but in spite of the opposition of intolerance.
"The whole history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally. May she long continue to bless our country with her benignant influence, strong in her sublime philosophy, strong in her spotless morality, strong in those internal and external evidences to which the most powerful and comprehensive of human intellects have yielded assent, the last solace of those who have outlived every earthly hope, the last restraint of those who are raised above every earthly fear!
"But let us not, mistaking her character and her interests, fight the battle of truth with the weapons of error, and endeavor to support by oppression that religion which first taught the human race the great lesson of universal charity."
* * * * *
Here is an utterance on this subject by OTTO VON BISMARCK. This man, whose iron hand puddled the smelt of the furnace wherein, with fire and blood, the German people were fused into political unity, was--or rather, is, for he is yet living, and will long remain a power--this man is no friend of the Jews. His spirit crystallized, and his nature drew its inspiration out of the time when "_Polen, Juden und Franzosen_" were a trinity of bugbears for the worshippers of royal divinity in Europe. Bismarck never fully recovered from that nightmare of his youth and early manhood, but he towered above his fellows, and he had the faculty of perceiving the truth and a habit of telling it which, notwithstanding his diplomatic training, he was wont to indulge. In a notable debate in the Prussian Landtag during the session of 1871, he expressed himself as follows:
"In my position as President of the Ministry I must repudiate any obligation to fill the places in the civil service with Roman Catholics according to their proportionate number in the population of the country.... The existence of a distinctively religious body in a political assembly is in itself a monstrous phenomenon.... This tends to make religion the subject of parliamentary debates.... I adhere to the principle that every religion should be allowed perfect freedom, without considering it, for that reason, necessary that it should be represented in the executive departments in the same ratio as in the population. Every religious body would have as much right as the Catholics to claim this; the Lutherans as well as the Jews, and _I have found that it is the latter particularly who are most distinguished by their special intelligence and capacity for administrative functions_."
* * * * *
As an estimate of Jewish citizenship by a man whose life experience has afforded him a rare insight into social and political conditions on both sides of the Atlantic, we quote the following expression by CARL SCHURZ, on the occasion of the dedication of the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, in New York City:
"Honor to the men and women who have accomplished this and who are bound to accomplish still more. They do honor to the community which calls them its own; for any community, whatever its pretensions, will be honored by citizens who take so high a view of their duties to humanity.
"And who are these citizens? They are Jews. This is not the only monument the Jews of New York have planted to their benevolence and public spirit. There are others--some even far exceeding this in costliness and grandeur. But none--none of their own and none instituted by any other class of citizens excels it, nay, perhaps none equals it in beauty of sentiment and devotion. And for whom is this done? Hear the noble words of the President of the Society as found in last year's report: 'As Israelites we are compelled, both by circumstances and inclination, to provide for the needy of our own faith; but this must not induce us to exclude any human being because of his religious belief from the benefit of an institution charged with the improvement of bodily ailment.' Thus it is done for the brotherhood of men. This is the true spirit, worthy of him whose name this edifice bears. It is the spirit, too, which more than any other, has created the brightest, the most stainless glories of our great American Republic--the spirit which, without any governmental action, out of the spontaneous initiative of the patriotic citizen, through private munificence, through individual solicitude for the welfare of all, has covered this land all over with educational institutions and enterprises of benevolence. In our school days we read of the Roman matron Cornelia, who, when other noble ladies exhibited to her their stores of pearls and precious stones, called in her children, and pointing to them, said: 'These are my jewels.' So when the Old World shows to us the magnificence of its baronial halls and royal castles, the American Republic may point to her colleges and hospitals and asylums founded by the patriotic generosity of simple citizens, and say, 'These are my palaces.'
"And to entitle the American people to this proud distinction, the Jews have done as much as any other class of citizens--nay, I may repeat in their presence what I have frequently said in the presence of others--the Jews have, in proportion to their numbers, done far more. I repeat this with all the greater willingness, as I have recently had occasion to observe the motive springs, the character and the aims of the so-called "anti-Semitic" movement, a movement whose dark spirit of fanaticism and persecution insults the humane enlightenment of the 19th century; whose appeals are addressed to the stupidest prejudice and the blindest passion, whose injustice affronts every sense of fairness and decency and whose cowardice--for cowardice is an essential element in the attempt to suppress the competing energies of a mere handful of people--whose cowardice I say, should provoke the contempt of every self-respecting man.
"In the face of this movement, which for years has stirred some European countries, and thrown its shadows even across the ocean, upon our shores, it is most grateful to the human heart to hear the President of the Montefiore Home say, that while this roof is to shelter the neediest of Israel, no human being because of his religious belief shall be excluded from its protection. He might take the clamorous anti-Semitic by the hand, show him the hospitals, orphans homes, charity schools, founded and sustained by Jewish money, Jewish labor, Jewish public spirit, benevolence and devotion and say to him: 'If you have any sick, any aged, any children who cannot find help elsewhere, here we shall have room for them, and they are welcome.' What has the anti-Semite to answer? No, no, that movement cannot survive. It must perish in shame. It will be consigned to an ignominious grave by the generous impulses of human nature and the civilization of this age. And what will remain will be the beneficent influence and the sweet memory of such good actions as yours, and the brotherhood of mankind."
* * * * *
On the same occasion as that noted above, the opening of the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, HON. ABRAM S. HEWITT, Mayor of New York City, spoke as follows:
"No other people, so far as I have observed, no sect or denomination or party have done so much as the Jews, to relieve distress, give education and elevate the standard of morality in our midst, and I make that statement after a good deal of observation and attention, particularly that part of it concerning the subject of education.
"I have never found the Jews lacking in public spirit. It is said of them that they have the art of getting wealth. If but a part of what is said of them be true, they understand well the use of wealth when once acquired. They are found among the first admirers of art, they love music and have since the daughters of Judah hung their harps on the willows by the waters of Babylon.
"This charity is unique, and it is a link in the chain of Jewish institutions. So long as there are calls by suffering humanity, the Jews will year by year add new links to their beautiful chain until it embraces every need of society regardless of race and religion.
"I have read at the door as I entered, that the Israelites erected this building to the chronic sick in honor of Moses Montefiore, a Jew, who for nearly a hundred years set an example to other people and creeds of a broad charity that affects all people and all lands.
"This institution was one long wanted in New York for a class for whom there is no hope save such offered by the poor-house or Blackwell's Island. They were here given instead a home in which love reigned and religion presided, religion which opened the portals of the other world where all must go, rich and poor, Jew and Christian, where reigns the Heavenly Father whose chosen people have proven steadfast amid all oppression and persecution, and who has so long preserved them, but who nevertheless knows no difference between His children."
* * * * *
From a deeply thoughtful address before the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Philadelphia, by JUDGE F. CARROLL BREWSTER, on the Valley of Baca as referred to in Psalm lxxxiv, we quote the following as the expression of a Nestor among jurists:
"Perhaps, then, the very dreariness of this barren place was intended as a prophecy of the woes which God's chosen people should encounter on their march through the history of many ages. And the water to be found in the midst of this desolation might prefigure the refreshing deliverance which the centuries were to bring. Of bitterness and of persecution, of suffering beyond man's power to describe, of its depth, of all that is sad and sorrowful, the history of the Jewish nation bears tearful testimony. The student has two marvels, as he turns these weary pages of the very monotony of cruelty. He wonders how the ferocity of man could ever enact this horrible tragedy, and then he wonders how the race survived.
"It would be a vain and painful task to recite here the thousandth part of what history tells us, and it is certain that history does not, in this case as in many others, falsify the facts. These narratives were all written by the actors who took a horrid pride in recounting their own infamy. The man who has but a moderate installment of feeling in his breast must cry out with indignation as he reads of these outrages. To the jurist they are especially repugnant, for they tell not only of the slaughter of human beings, but of the murder of justice."
* * * * *
The following is from the pen of GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, the life-long editor of "Harper's Weekly" and "Harper's Magazine." As a prominent actor in the stirring events of his generation he has left a marked impress on our national life, but great as was his influence in the councils of the nation he was yet best known to the large mass of the American people as the genial, persuasive writer of the "Easy Chair" in the magazine which he so ably edited. The extract which we print is from that department of Harper's Magazine, where it appeared in July, 1877, vol. 55, p. 300.
WHAT WE OWE TO THE JEWS.
"One beautiful June evening in Paris the 'Easy Chair' strolled with a friend into a café on the Boulevard. They had been to hear 'Robert le Diable' at the French Opera, and gaily humming and gossiping they sat upon the broad walk that was still thronged on the still summer night. Presently a dark-haired man came quietly along and seated himself at a table near by. He was alone, and seemed not to care for recognition. He was simply dressed and was entirely unnoticeable except for the strong Jewish lines of his intellectual face. The 'Easy Chair's' companion whispered, 'That is the man to whom we owe the delight of this evening; that is Meyerbeer.' After a little while he added with feeling, 'How much we owe to the Jews and how mean Christendom is!'
"It was remarkable how much of the conspicuous work and influence on that evening was due to the genius of a people whose name is so constantly used as a word of reproach. A few months before, Mendelssohn had been buried in Leipsic, and in Berlin the 'Easy Chair' had heard the memorial concert of his music at the Sing-Akademie. Rossini was still living, and Verdi was writing operas, but Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer were the recognized masters of music. The evening before, the 'Easy Chair' had seen the Jewess Rachel in 'Phedre'--the one woman who contests the laurel with Mrs. Siddons, and who was then the great living actress. Beyond the channel, Disraeli, the child of Spanish Jews, was just about to kiss hands as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to become the political leader of the British Tories. In the vast city in which they were sitting, the 'Easy Chair' knew that the Jewish Heine was living, breathing his weird and melancholy song, while in Paris and London and Frankfort and Vienna the great masters of the mainspring of industrial activity, the capitalists, who held peace and war in their hands, and by whose favor kings ruled, were Jews. The philosophy, the arts, the industry, the politics of Christendom were full of the Jewish genius, the gayety of nations, the delight of scholars, the scepters of princes, the movements of civilization, hung in great degree upon it. It is as true to-day as in that long summer night, and the words of the 'Easy Chair's' friend are still as shamefully true. 'How mean Christendom is!'
"Recently in New York an estimable and accomplished gentleman was rejected as a member of the Bar Association 'for no other reason that can be conceived,' indignantly said one of the leading members, 'except that he was a Jew.' Doubtless a few votes would procure the rejection. But the Association is not a social club, and presumptively a man who is an honorable member of the Bar is a fit member of the Association. The few hostile votes, however, represent the prejudice. It is very old and very universal. To the audience of to-day there is nothing in Shakespeare more vital and intelligible than the fervent appeal of 'Shylock' to the common humanity of the world around him. The Jew is still separate, and the prejudice which has pursued him for generations is but slightly relaxed. The lines of demarcation are fine. They are often almost invisible. But they are deep, and apparently absolute. It is one of the most common and most tenacious of the objections to 'Daniel Deronda' that it deals with Jews and Jewish life and character. The fact is sometimes almost resented as an offence to the mass of readers. Even in 'Ivanhoe,' although torrents of Christian tears have flowed over the closing pages, where the noble and beautiful 'Rebecca' asks to see the face of the fair 'Rowena,' yet such is the fell and weird outlaw of the Jew from general sympathy, that the catastrophe seems to be an inevitable fate. There is no doubt that this prejudice is as cruel in its effects as it is unreasonable in its origin....
"The legend of the 'Wandering Jew' has a pathos beyond the usual interpretation. The story is told that the Jew, who refused to comfort Christ as he toiled under the weight of the cross, was condemned to tarry until he came, and so wanders around the world until the second coming. But it is the symbol also of the restlessness of the race, roaming through Christendom, homeless and rejected. It is the curse, says many a Christian heart, of the people that crucified the Redeemer. This is the common theory of the origin of the traditional antipathy to the Jews, and, undoubtedly, this is with many persons a vague justification of the feeling with which a Jew is regarded. But should it be nothing to such persons that when, as they believe, the Creator would incarnate himself, He became a Jew? Or, again, do they reflect that if it was in the eternal decrees that the sins of men were to be atoned and condoned by the innocent sacrifice, those who accomplished the sacrifice were but the agents of the Divine will? Are all such ingenious speculations other than devices to explain and justify a mere prejudice of race, such as some African tribes cherish against people of white skins? Those who find in such prejudice a profound significance will continue to plead the feeling as its own sufficient reason. But honorable men will be careful how they carelessly use the name of a race to which the religion, the literature, the art, the civilized progress of humanity, are so greatly indebted, as a term of utter derision and scorn."
* * * * *
Mr. Curtis in his reference to Shakespeare's "Shylock" truly says that "there is nothing in Shakespeare more vital and intelligible than the fervent appeal of Shylock to the common humanity around him." Much has been said and written concerning this remarkable creation of the dramatist's genius, and often and again it has been remarked that Shakespeare's Jew was not the real Jew, not even the Jew of his own imagination, but the Jew as mirrored in the distorted consciousness of mediæval Europe. The great pathologist of human feeling only then failed in his diagnosis when he sought to realize the Jew, the real Jew and his attributes were beyond his ken.
One of the grandest and most cherished of our poets, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, long the editor of the New York _Evening Post_, in a trenchant criticism of the character of Shylock on the occasion of a presentation of the drama by Edwin Booth, wrote as follows:[118]
"In terming Shylock 'the Jew whom Shakespeare drew,' there is a perfect logic, for Shylock is, of all Shakespeare's characters, the only one untrue to nature. He is not a Jew, but a fiend presented in the form of one; and whereas he is made a ruling type, he is but an exception, if even that, and the exception is not to be met with either in the Ghettos of Venice or of Rome. Shakespeare holds up the love of money that marks the race, although he does not show that this passion was but the effect of that persecution which, by crowding the Jew out of every honorable pursuit, and thus cutting off his nature from every sympathy with the world around, sharpened and edged the keen corners of his brain for the only pursuit left to him.
"It is true that money-changers once spat on in the Ghetto are now hugged in the palace. But we fear that it is not so much that the prejudice against the Jews has ceased, but that the love of money among the Christians has increased. Shakespeare was not true in the picture he has drawn of the Jew's cravings for revenge, and in the contempt with which he is treated by his daughter. Revenge is not a characteristic of the Jew. He is subject to sudden fits of passion, but that intellect which always stands sentinel over the Hebrew soon subdues the gust. However strong in Shylock's time might have been the hatred of the Jew towards the Christian, the lust of lucre was more strong, and Shakespeare might have ransacked every Ghetto in Christendom without finding a Jew, or a Christian either, who would have preferred a pound of flesh to a pound sterling; and Jews also shrink from physical contests. Their disposition is to triumph by intellect rather than violence. It was this trait more than any other that rendered them, in the Middle Ages, so repulsive to the masses, who were all of the Morrissey and muscular Christianity school. The contempt of a daughter for her parent is equally uncharacteristic of the Jew. The Jews are universally admired for the affections which adorn their domestic life. The more they have been pushed from the society of the family of man the greater has been the intensity with which they have clung to the love of their own family.
"No one can ever have visited the houses of the Jews without having been struck by the glowing affection with which the daughter greets the father as he returns from the day's campaign and the slights and sneers his gaberdine and yellow cap provoke, and without observing how those small, restless eyes that sparkle and gleam, shine out in a softened, loving lustre as they fall upon the face of Rebecca, or Jessica, or Sarah, and how he stands no longer with crooked back, but erect and commanding, as he blesses his household gods with an exultation as vehement as the prejudices which during the day have galled and fretted his nature. To do justice to the grandeurs of the Jewish race, and to brand with infamy its infirmities, it is not enough to produce a repulsive delineation of the latter. It would only be just to give expression to the former, and to exhibit that superiority of intellect which has survived all persecution, and which, soaring above the prejudices of the hour, has filled us with reluctant admiration on finding how many of the great events which mark the progress of the age or minister to its improvements, or elevate its tastes, may be traced to the wonderful workings of the soul of the Hebrew, and the supremacy of that spiritual nature which gave to mankind its noblest religion, its noblest laws, and some of its noblest poesy and music."
* * * * *
Treating the same subject the great German critic, ROBERT BENEDIX, writes as follows:[119]
"Let us look at this Shylock closer. Antonio calls him an usurer; the proof he fails in. Shylock takes high interest; so did all the merchants of Venice. Shylock deals in money; to-day we call him a banker. Why does he deal in money? Because it is the only trade permitted. He does not carry on an industry, has no agricultural pursuits, no official station--only trade. If the Jews, under centuries of restriction, ostracised from social life, did cling to money and its uses, whose fault was it? No one can say anything dishonorable of Shylock. He is penurious; in no law-book of the world is that denominated as a crime. What is against this man? Simply nothing more than that he is a Jew. But for the poet, who, enthroned on Olympian heights, there should exist only _the man, not the Jew_. Shylock is revengeful. Well, who has instigated it? Only they who have despised him. After persecuting and deriding him, they crown their infamy by asking him to turn Christian. That is the very depth of baseness. What is left to the poor Jew, whom you have trodden under foot, when you rob him of his faith? It is the bond that binds him to his fathers, to his home. It has been his solace in persecutions a thousand times repeated. To this faith Israel clings with devoted love, and from this faith shall Shylock turn to become a Christian? No wonder he turns with abhorrence from those who torture him so cruelly. Christians they may be. Men they are not. And is there no feeling for a father? To exalt a daughter who absconds and robs him whom she should honor? Is that Jewish or Christian? The grand speech, 'Has not a Jew eyes,' etc., is the exclamation of a martyr people who for centuries had been the victims of debauched, bigoted priests.
"It is impossible to acquit Shakespeare of the prejudice of his age. He has morally sinned; artistically erred. Contrast Lessing; and he wrote in an age of equal intolerance. His 'Nathan the Wise' is an embodiment of morality and sublime virtues; his figures are apostles of true humanity. Nathan is an evangelist of true worth; and Lessing, taking for his hero a Jew, made thereby the amende honorable in the name of humanity."
* * * * *
As a veritable anti-climax to these utterances of poet and critic, we may here consider the views of the representative proletary of America, who deals with the Shylock theme from an entirely different standpoint. This dissertation is by Mr. TERRENCE V. POWDERLY, long the leader of the organization of wage-earners known as the Knights of Labor, and as such will command the attention of the reader. Under the caption of "_The Real Shylock_," he writes in the _Journal of the Knights of Labor_ as follows:
"Flings at the Jews are flying about promiscuously on every hand, and it seems to me that this practice is neither just nor manly. Turn the pages of history backward to the dawn of Christianity and notice how the Jew has been persecuted by those who professed to be actuated by Christian charity. Notice how he has been driven from country and home, how he has been driven ahead of the advanced guard of Christianity, and then pause for a moment to ask if the Christian is not in some small measure to blame for the money-lending characteristics of the Jew of this day and generation. Driven from all other branches of trade, with a price on his head, and his home at the mercy of others, how could the Jew protect himself? It is well enough to single out Rothschild and to point to him as a fit representative of an usury-taking class, but when he is pointed to as 'Rothschild the Jew,' the bounds of propriety are overstepped and common justice is violated.
"What right has a Christian to drive a man from every walk in life but that of money-lending and then insult his race and religion because of that fact, in sneeringly calling him a Jew. It is proper to call a money-lender a 'Shylock,' for that is a term that is applicable to men of all races and religions if they practice usury, but to single the Jew out as the only one who should wear that appellation is an outrage. I know Christians, and the reader knows them, who on every Sunday morning will walk slowly down the middle aisle in the Christian church, and with sanctimonious mien bend the knee before the altar of God with no more of Christianity in their hearts than may be found in the stone steps leading up to the church door. If a living representative of 'Shylock' is to be singled out, one whose talon-like fingers itch for usury and stretch out toward your pocket for the principal as well, let us be honest enough to admit that we can throw a stone into any of our temples of Christianity and hit such a sinner. Do not lay it all to the Jew. I admit that he knows how to deal in money, but, who gave him points in the game of usury? Look over the United States to-day. Contrast the acts of pretended Christians with the principles of Christ, and then dare to lay the blame of all the wrong that usury has wrought, to the door of the Jew. Look at our American Congress and tell us if those who obey the voice of greed in that body are all Jews.... Are all who have cornered lands, railroads and homes Jews? Let the reader whose home is mortgaged inquire who it is holds the mortgage, and if he happens to be a Christian, as in nine cases out of ten he will be, ask him to be lenient with you, and you will learn that he wants his 'pound of flesh,' and will be anxious to go old Shylock one better, by sucking the blood along with it."
* * * * *
_The Jewish Question and the Mission of the Jews_, published by Harper and Brothers, New York, 1894, contributes a valuable addition to historical literature. The work ably elucidates its comprehensive subject matter and deserves the careful perusal of every student of whatever creed. A few characteristic extracts are collated in the following:--
"If we turn to Europe, in which we are chiefly interested, we find that the Jews were settled there as early as Roman times, and lived on terms of perfect equality with all their neighbors, until religious intolerance set itself to repress them or directed and intensified the jealousy which their success elicited. When the west of Europe was raised out of its barbarism by Charlemagne, this great leader of modern civilization also took account of the valuable civilizing influence of the Jews, especially as regarded commerce and learning. He granted them privileges, and even made use of them for diplomatic services; and as he transplanted learned men from Italy into France and Germany in order that their wisdom might be diffused among those people, so he also desired to engraft the learning of the Jews in these districts. He encouraged them to found Talmudic Schools and transplanted from Lucca the learned family Kalonymos to Narbonne about the year 787, gave them a large tract of land, where the chief of the family and his successors were called princes, while the part of the town where they lived was called 'The Court of the King of the Jew.' The position which the Jew, Isaac, held in the embassy of Charlemange to Haroun al Rashid is a matter of history."
* * * * *
"As to the pluck and courage of the Jews it certainly did not die out with the Maccabees and the Zealots. I will not mention the spiritual courage it required for the whole race to survive at all during the persecutions which might have been avoided by the simple act of conversion, or of the thousands that burned at the stake singing. I should say, even numerically, more than the whole Christian martyrology has to show. The numbers who heroically during the Spanish Inquisition, and at other times and places, preferred burning at the stake to baptism, the perfidy which often met their heroic resistance, would fill volumes. In the history of the Spanish Jews more than in that of any other of their numerous communities do we meet with heroism, courage and chivalry. They fought, in the Spanish battles as the bravest knights. Alfonso X of Castile, rewarded them en masse for their war-like assistance against Seville and gave them, when the enemies' land was divided, a village which was called "Aldea de los Judeos." They fought desperately for Dom Pedro, even after the Black Prince had forsaken him, defended Burgos to the last man, so that even their opponent, Dom Enrico, recognized publicly their valor."
* * * * *
"Even in Germany during the Black Death and the butchery of Jews, and in Poland, the spirit of the Maccabees and the Zealots had not forsaken them. It very often met with the basest treachery on the part of their enemies and allies. One instance is a striking, if not a typical one. During the onslaught of the Cossacks into Poland in the Thirty Years' War the Jews were brave defenders of the Polish territory. When a horde of Hadamaks attacked the town of Tulczyn, six thousand Christians and about two thousand Jews retreated to the fortress. Nobles and Jews pledged themselves by oath to defend the fortress to the last man. The Cossacks resorted to a stratagem, and assured the Nobles that they were only fighting against their real enemies, the Jews. If they were handed over to them they would withdraw. The nobles asked the Jews to give up their arms; and when they complied, they opened the gates to the Cossacks. When the Cossacks had plundered the Jews, they proposed to them the alternative of death or baptism. Not one of them accepted the latter, and they were put to the sword. But the nobles suffered the same fate, as the Cossacks held that there was no cause to hold faith by the faithless."
* * * * *
"The late James Russell Lowell was wont to say that a large proportion of the great families of the English aristocracy had some admixture of Jewish blood, while some of the great names were in a direct line to be traced back to Jewish ancestors. So, for instance, he believed, and he must have had good grounds for his belief, that the families of the Cecils and the Russells were originally Jewish. Of course such conversational statements must not be taken literally. Many years ago I met a Russian scholar, deeply read in literature and science--the pure Russian, without any associations with Jews--who told me he was engaged upon a work which set itself the task of tracing the origin of most of the great men in letters and science that were then living in Germany, and that he was coming to the conclusion that, not only were a great many of them actually Jews, but that a large proportion of the best known among the Christian dignitaries had also some admixture of Jewish blood."
* * * * *
Our symposium could not be more effectively and fitly rounded out than by a quotation of the Preface to M. Anatole Leroy Beaulieu's celebrated work, "_Israel chez les nations_," and of the Preface written by the author for the English translation by Mrs. Theodore Hellman, which has just been announced as soon to be published by Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Son's, New York. M. Leroy Beaulieu, whose mastery of the philosophy of history has commanded universal recognition, makes clear his standpoint in the preface to the original work, and in the preface to the English translation he evinces his thorough insight, not only into his general subject, but furthermore into its American phases especially.
We copy these extracts from the columns of the _American Hebrew_, New York, September 13, 1895, and from its editorial reference to the subject we gladly quote the concluding paragraph, as follows:
"The publication of M. Leroy Beaulieu's work in its English dress will be timely for two reasons: Its Jewish readers will find it an eloquent appeal for renewed devotion to the noble cause of Israel's mission; its Christian readers, recognizing the important part Judaism has played in the production of our present-day civilization, will recognize how baseless is the prejudice that reigns against the Jew. May the book find many readers."
FOOTNOTES:
[118] See note, next page.
[119] These citations are gleaned from the notable lecture by Hon. Simon Wolf, on "The Influence of the Jews on the Progress of the World," delivered before the Schiller Bund in Washington, April 1st, 1888.
ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS.
THE PREFACES TO M. LEROY-BEAULIEU'S "_Israel chez les nations_." [_Copyrighted, 1895, by_ G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.]
I. PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL WORK.
The author of this book is a Christian and a Frenchman. As a Christian, he is one of those who believe that a spirit of intolerance is repugnant to Christianity, and nothing appears to him less consistent with the Gospel than race-hatred. Be it a war of races or a war of classes, popular jealousy can never screen itself behind the robe of Christ. Be it Aryan or Semitic, a nation should never purchase its salvation at the cost of another's rights.
As a Frenchman, the author is one of those who are convinced that France ought to remain true to her traditions of justice and liberty. They are the only glory and the only wealth which the fortunes of war cannot wrest from her. The more severe the trials that she has undergone, the more menacing the dangers that await her, the more essential is it to her honor that she should remain herself and not belie, in the eyes of the nations, those great ideas which she was the first to proclaim. To abjure them would be not only an act of apostasy, but a forfeiture of her place in history. A France that should stoop, more than a century after 1789, to abridge religious and civil liberty and to establish among her inhabitants distinctions based upon name or birth, would no longer be the France that the world has thus far known.
The inheritance of the Revolution, which we have come to regard with so much reverence, may possibly include rash postulates and exaggerated inferences that tend to intoxicate, almost to madness, a people infatuated with its title of sovereign; but surely neither religious liberty nor civil equality is likely to produce such effects; neither the one nor the other can have any tendency to turn the people's heads; and, after having been the first to preach these principles to Europe, France will not disavow them now, when, thanks to our propaganda or our example, they have conquered almost all the countries of both hemispheres. On others be the shame of such a recantation!
Anti-Semitism is consistent with neither the principles nor the genius of our nation. It came to us from the outside, from countries which have neither our spirit nor our traditions. It came to us from across the Rhine, from old Germany, always ready for religious quarrels, and always imbued with the spirit of caste; from new Germany, all inflated with race-pride and scornful of whatever is not Teutonic.
Anti-Semitism may be traced also to Russia, to that huge and shapeless Russia, which, with its steppes and forests, has remained isolated from the great currents of modern life; to holy, Orthodox Russia, half Oriental, half Asiatic, which endeavors to find its national unity in its religious unity, and which regards the Catholic and the Lutheran with little more favor than the Israelite; to that autocratic Russia, which differs from us in all its institutions, as well as in all its conditions, be they economic, political, religious or social. Whatever sympathy we may feel with the Slavonic mind or the Russian spirit, the Russians, who so often emulated us, would be greatly surprised to see us copying them; as well might one propose to the Czar to model the government of his moujiks and cossacks on that of the French Republic.
Men of my age, who have grown up under the Second Empire and in the worship of liberty--it was fashionable then among the young--have witnessed many distressing sights. How often was the lie given to our youthful faith in right and justice! How many truths which we thought established forever were again called into question by the selfish passions or the ignorant claims of new generations! How many of the conquests won by reason and liberty were we unable to maintain against the encroachments of power or the delusions of political sophistry! Popular rights trodden under foot in the name of the principle of nationality, everywhere heralded as a principle of emancipation; European states transformed, for half a century, into entrenched camps and separated once more from each other by custom-house barriers and ramparts of prejudice almost as high as the Wall of China; freedom of thought and religious toleration cynically overridden or hypercritically evaded by those very political parties that professed to be their champions; laws passed to the detriment of special persons; decrees of exile or confiscation promulgated in the name of liberty, within so-called free countries and by self-styled liberals; appeals to secular power, demands for legal restriction, for paternalism, addressed to the government by all manner of clashing interests and passions. And all this, not only in Eastern Russia, buried neck-deep in the Middle Ages or rather in the ancien régime, but in the West, in France, in Germany, among nations said to be the most advanced of ancient Europe. Oh, how old she is, this ancient Europe, and how difficult it is for her to slough her skin and regain her youth! What an effort it is for her to strip off her old prejudices and practices and clothe herself in the spirit of a new age!
And this new age, the age that we have so ardently invoked, what will it bring us and how will it fulfil its boasted promises? To judge by the methods and the teachings extolled by those who proclaim themselves its representatives, this new age is in great danger of reviving the worst practices of the past. Men who boast of being the pioneers of the future openly praise deeds of absolutism, and smile sanctimoniously at legal brutalities borrowed from the _ancien régime_ by the jurists of the Revolution. Visions of the future and mediæval prejudices; Utopias conceived by dreamers deluded with misty ideals and belated memories of a superannuated past; unceasing race-competition and ever-recurring class jealousies, all these have become confused and entangled in the minds of the learned as well as in those of the masses. And something of all this is contained in anti-Semitism; something of the old and of the new, of the far-off Middle Ages and of visionary socialism, of reactionary instincts and of revolutionary passions; and it is because of this that anti-Semitism finds an echo in such different quarters, from the drawing-rooms of society to the grog-shop of the working-man.
Let us confess it once again: we have presumed too much on reason, and relied too confidently on civilization. This brilliant civilization, which inspires our idlers with such ludicrous pride, is often shallow and unsound, even in the most advanced countries of the continent. In our proudest capitals it is barely thicker than a light veneer, underneath whose surface, if we scratch it ever so little, we shall find all the ignorance and savagery of the ages that we deem barbarous. Thus, in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, the close of our century suffers the disgrace of seeing measures of proscription and confiscation advocated by people who are really good-natured and ordinarily harmless.
It must not be inferred from what has been said that the complaints of the anti-Semites are wholly imaginary. By no means. Whether they attack our private or our public morals and customs, many of their complaints are but too well founded. Abroad, as well as at home, and most especially, perhaps, in our republic France, they are right, these noisy anti-Semites, in loudly denouncing certain governmental methods, certain practices which seem about to take root in the life of modern nations. Anti-Semitism may have been, in its time, a protest, on the part of public conscience, against culpable concessions of men in office, against the venality of politicians, and the domination, at once mysterious and contemptuous, of stock-jobbing interlopers. Despite its excesses and outrages, anti-Semitism is within its rightful province when it assails the worship of money, the scandalous barter of political influences, and the shameless exploitation of the people by the men whom they have elected; or, again, when it unmasks the hypocritical intolerance of inconsistent free-thinkers, who have erected irreligion and corruption into a method of government.
Modern society is ailing indeed, more ailing that the most honest anti-Semite imagines. The error of anti-Semitism lies in its misapprehension of the origin and the seat of the evil. It sees, or is willing to see, but one of the symptoms, and it calls this symptom the cause of the disease. Anti-Semitism is essentially "simple-minded," in the literal sense of the word. It fails to grasp the complexity of social phenomena. But this failure, which should prove its ruin, is largely the cause of its success with the masses, who in their simplicity are always carried away by that which they deem simple.
Even if the Jews had all the vices and all the power which the hatred of their enemies sees fit to ascribe to them, it were none the less childish to discover in a handful of Semites the source of the evils that afflict modern society.
It is not true that, in order to restore it to health, we need but to eliminate the Semite, as the surgeon's knife eradicates a cyst or a malignant excrescence. The extent and gravity of the evil are of a different nature. The evil is in ourselves, in our blood, in the very marrow of our bones. To cure us, it will not be enough to remove a foreign body from our flesh. Though every Jew be banished from French soil, though Israel be swept from the face of Europe, France would be not one whit more healthy, nor Europe in any better state. The first condition of a cure is a knowledge of the nature of one's malady. Now, anti-Semitism deceives us; it blinds us to our condition by trying to make us believe that the cause of the evil is external, instead of internal. There is no more dangerous error. We are afflicted with an internal trouble, due to our constitution and our entire mode of living; and the anti-Semites insist upon telling us, over and over again, that it is but a superficial ailment, brought on by chance, and foreign to our race and blood. Even when they boast of exposing our secret wounds, they misconstrue their nature; consequently, instead of furnishing a cure for them, they are in great danger of inflaming them still more.
Such will be, I doubt not, the feeling of every reader who is sufficiently thoughtful and independent to base his opinions upon reflection, and not upon the antipathies of the mob. Anti-Semitism, even when most justified in its complaints, is mistaken as to the source of our evils. It would be easy for me to prove this conclusively, could I, in this volume, have treated of finance, capital, and the ascendancy of the stock-exchange. Unfortunately, I have been obliged, for the present, to omit a part of my subject--that which in these days of subserviency to material interests so completely engrosses the public mind--the money question. I had intended at first to devote one or two chapters to it. But this money-question has assumed so prominent a place in our democratic society; it so easily takes the lead everywhere, it is so complex, and so liable to give rise to confusion, that it seemed to me worthy of separate treatment. Therefore this volume will be followed by another, in which I shall attempt to define the role played by money among the nations of to-day. On that occasion I shall take up again some of the views set forth in my book on _Papacy, Socialism, and Democracy_. There may, perhaps, seem to be no connection between these two subjects. That is a mistake, for anti-Semitism, too, is a social question. And as for myself, in studying the influence of the Jew and of modern Israel, as well as in examining the teachings of the Pope on socialism and democracy, I have always the same object in view: religious liberty and social peace. _Caritas et Pax_, such is ever my motto; and, if I mistake not, it is a Christian motto, not unbecoming a Frenchman.
II. PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH VERSION.
Our age will constitute a critical, a supreme epoch in the long history of Israel. To-day the prophecies of the seers are at last approaching fulfilment, and Israel is really being scattered to the ends of the earth. We are witnessing a new _diaspora_, the great and final dispersal.
The tree of Israel, the ancient vine of Judah, transplanted to the Sarmatian plains, has again been rudely shaken by the blast of persecution; its branches have fallen and its seeds have blown afar, over the hills and across the deserts and oceans.
As in earlier times, the wrath of their persecutors is forcing Jews and Judaism into countries where the Sabbath-lamp has never yet been lighted. The spectacle witnessed during the Renaissance and at the end of the fifteenth century, in consequence of the edicts of Isabella of Castile--the exodus of a people driven forth, without means of existence, from the land of its ancestors because it clung to the faith of its fathers--this spectacle disgraces the closing years of our nineteenth century, in consequence of the ukases of a Russian czar.
What will be the verdict of history as to the effects upon Judaism of the harsh policy of Alexander III? Possibly in years to come, when the tears of her exiles and their present sufferings shall be forgotten, the historians of Israel may affirm that the Russian autocrat contributed, more than any other man, to the expansion and renovation of Judaism.
The Jews who are driven from Slavic soil by the law or by their own poverty, are forced to begin a new life under kindlier skies and in freer lands. They are torn from the old Jewries where, closely herded together, they had barely air enough to breathe; and this painful expatriation may well prove of equal benefit to their souls and their bodies.
The majority of these exiles have gone to America, and especially to the United States. To their brethren already established between the Atlantic and the Pacific this sudden influx of a whole people, in the main poor and ignorant, who demand from them shelter and support, must indeed prove a very heavy burden. The Jews of the United States have been confronted here with an enormous task, to which, however, they have shown themselves equal. Fortunately, the most trying years seem to be over. The accession of the young emperor, Nicholas II, to the throne of Russia gives rise to the hope of some mitigation of those antiquated laws which, under Alexander III, had furnished official intolerance with the means of hypocritical persecution. The stream of emigration, whose volume is already lessening, will probably slacken. It will not wholly cease, for free America will long continue to attract the victims of persecution.
I, for one, do not believe that the United States ought to view this Jewish immigration with any disquietude; I cannot see what there is to fear from it. Among all the races and nations that have furnished the United States with colonists and have thus helped to advance its marvelous growth, I can find none more intelligent or more industrious; nor can I find any that is more capable of assimilating American civilization and of introducing into it a useful competition.
I am told that one of the charges brought against the Jews of America is that they frequently manifest leanings toward socialism; or rather toward anarchism. This may be the case with many Russian and Roumanian Jews--we have some in Paris who show such tendencies--but the fact is due less to the racial character of the Jews than to the conditions under which they have long been forced to live in Europe, and to which they are still subjected in Russia and Roumania. If Lassalle and Karl Marx were the prophets of German socialism, one of the causes of their revolt against the old social order lay in the sort of life which that order imposed upon the sons of Israel, even in Germany. This is still more evident in the case of the Jews who have been infected in Russia by the germs of nihilism and anarchy. The Jew of the old secluded Jewry is--as I have shown in this book--essentially conservative. If, in the past twenty or twenty-five years, a certain number of young Jews and Jewesses have joined the ranks of the nihilists, if some of them have been concerned in the conspiracies against the person or the authority of Alexander II and of Alexander III, this is due to the social conditions imposed on the Jews by the Russian laws. This I think I have conclusively proved, both in my present volume and in my larger work: "The Empire of the Tsars."
Only the most systematic vexations and humiliations could have aroused the children of Abraham to this spirit of revolt, to these political conspiracies, so opposed to Jewish ideas and traditions. A further proof of this, which ought to appeal to the most furious anti-Semites, is that in Russia conspiracy can lead to nothing, as yet, but transportation or the gallows.
Moreover, I have often noticed that all the Israelites implicated in political trials were what I call "de-Judaized" Jews--that is to say, Jews who have renounced the beliefs and practices of Judaism. It was Christian contagion that gave the Jews their revolutionary ideas. Some of the Jewish emigrants from Russia and other parts of Europe have been obviously degraded and corrupted by centuries of oppression. Many years--perhaps one or two generations--will be needed to raise their moral plane, to imbue them with a sense of honor, and dignity. It is a great mistake to believe that this moral uplifting can be facilitated by detaching them from their religion. On the contrary, the least praise-worthy Jews that I have met have generally been "de-Judaized" Jews, those who had ceased to observe the Mosaic law. The Jew--such, at least, is my opinion--stands in even greater need of religious support than the Christian; and, as a rule, he can find that support only in the faith of his fathers. There are indeed, Israelites who become converts to Christianity. But, in order to be morally efficacious, such conversion should be genuine and disinterested. Its object should be to find favor, not in the eyes of society or of man, but of God. Now, it is well known that such true conversions are rare, and this accounts for the fact that the baptized Jews are often the least commendable.
I must confess that, in many cases, the Christian missionaries are to blame. They are too often satisfied with purely external, nominal conversions, and, for the winning of souls, they too often employ means that are neither holy nor honest. I have been told that there are missionaries--mainly of the Protestant faith--in London, New York, and the East, who angle for Jewish souls with the coarse bait of worldly benefits, taking unfair advantage of the poverty, abandonment, and loneliness of immigrants driven out of their country by want or persecution, to lead them to the Christian font. These conversions by seduction, if I may venture so to call them, are not a whit less odious than conversions by force. Such proselytizing is unworthy of the Christian ministry and is a disgrace to the churches that encourage it. It can result only in making bad Christians and in educating bad citizens.
I need say little, in addressing my English-speaking readers, of the fear entertained by some persons, that the Jewish newcomers are likely to monopolize the national wealth. Although these apprehensions are quite common among the simple souls of the old world, I do not imagine that they have crossed the Channel or the Atlantic. Englishmen and Americans have too much faith in themselves to share such visionary fears. However great may be the commercial talents of the Jews, the Anglo-Saxons feel themselves by no means inferior to them; and when it comes to "making money," the Yankee does not fear the competition of the Semite.
Nor do I believe that, in extending hospitality to the sons of Israel, the United States, or Australia, or even old England herself, has reason to apprehend what German anti-Semites call the "judaizing" of modern society.
This expression is often used in Europe to indicate the growing ascendancy of material interests and the encroachment of the mercantile spirit. I do not think that the Jew can be held responsible for this tendency, and I shall attempt to show this in my forthcoming work: "Le Règne de l'Argent." What the anti-Semites call the "judaizing" of society might, as I have taken the liberty of asserting, be more correctly called the "Americanizing" of morals. I trust that this remark will not bring down the resentment of my American readers. That would be unfair, for I am, in many respects, a sincere admirer of their great Republic. If I have ventured to speak of the "Americanizing" of modern society, it is simply because the typical characteristics of democratic industrial society were first revealed in the United States, and have there been developed on a larger scale than in any other country. This form of social organization, new to history, is gradually becoming dominant in all parts of the old world, as well as the new. If it has its advantages, it has also its faults, which we are all in duty bound to correct. The ascendancy of material interests, the greed for money, the frantic race for wealth, are the most deplorable characteristics of our modern industrial and democratic society. These are not social characteristics; they are peculiar neither to the Yankee nor to the Jew, although they sometimes seem to be most pronounced in the Jew and the Yankee. They are the result of our social conditions, and it is not by proscribing any
## particular race or any faith, but only by appealing to moral forces
and by bringing all such forces to their highest development that our modern democracies can escape from the practical materialism that threatens to engulf them.
_Paris_, April, 1893.
RUSSIA'S CRIME AGAINST THE JEWS AND CIVILIZATION.
The closing citation in the symposium of general opinion which we have presented under our preceding rubric, the preface to the English translation of Leroy Beaulieu's work on "Israel among the Nations," may serve almost without further comment as an effective introduction to our present subject. It deals directly with the great wrong committed by the government of Russia against Israel and Humanity, and it deals with it from the vantage ground of an impartial authority.
The proscriptive policy adopted by Russia against the Jewish people, a policy whose animus appears to be a mixture of political and religious fanaticism, has erected the provinces along the Western frontier of the Empire, on the German and Austrian borders, into a "Pale of Jewish Settlement" and thus created a Ghetto-country, into which the Jews of the interior provinces have been driven, to live as best they may. Even in these confines they are forbidden to apply themselves to agriculture and forced into various towns and cities, there to huddle and if need be to starve.
It has been held that this seemingly inexplicable policy has been deliberately directed to the end and with the purpose of crowding a mass of helpless and impoverished population on the Western borders of the Empire, to be utilized as an abattis against a foreign foe or as a cushion against foreign invasion, but it seems incredible that Russian fanaticism, shortsighted and ruthless as it is, should reach such a degree of turpitude and folly. It would seem, on the contrary, to be persisted in notwithstanding the manifest political and military dangers which the unreasonable procedure harbors and which, since its inception in 1879-80 has not ceased to bring about widespread economic and social disorganization, not to speak of the political disturbance of the Empire. The "russification" of the Empire, the retaining of "Russia for the Russians" (as though the Jews who are conscripted in disproportionate numbers into the army, who fought valiantly for their native land in the Crimea and on the Balkans, were not to be regarded as Russians), is the ostensible purpose of the proscription. With this purpose the ruling power of Russia continues to drive out its Jewish subjects; the historic tragedy wrought out by Spanish bigotry and fatuousness 400 years ago is being re-enacted by Russia at the present day, and the political and economic lessons taught by that example, not to mention the admonitions of humanity and the protests of an outraged civilization remain unheeded. The end of this wicked folly is apparently still afar, and seems likely to be brought nearer in point of time only by a political explosion. It were difficult to arrive at a conclusion as to which prospect is the worst.
The facts concerning the persecution of the Russian Jews have constantly been belied by the Russian authorities, in conformity with the historic methods of Russian diplomacy, but have for some years past been placed beyond question through the efforts of our own government. In view of the positive contradictions between the Russian official statements and the constantly reported and seemingly well-established facts, it was deemed expedient by the administration of President Harrison, in 1891, to send an official American Commission to investigate the condition of affairs in Russia, and the report of this Commission, referred to below by Ambassador White, gave official confirmation to the previously published details of the relentless and heartrending cruelties practiced by the Russian officials in the name of the Czar. Into these details we will not here enter. The Commissioners' Report has been widely published and has become historic.[120]
A statement of the general subject has, however, been formulated in another official report, made subsequently to that noted above, by our Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Hon. Andrew D. White, in a despatch to the Secretary of State, the late Walter Q. Gresham. In this document Mr. White summarizes the conditions relating to the persecution of the Russian Jews in a manner so concise and lucid, and in a spirit so entirely dispassionate, that it may properly be cited here as a statement whose authority is entirely beyond question.[121]
FOOTNOTES:
[120] This Commission was appointed, under direction of the President, by Secretary of the Treasury Charles Foster, by virtue of authority of the act of Congress (Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill) of March 3, 1891, and its Report was transmitted by the Secretary to Congress, February 25, 1892. The Commission consisted of Hon. John B. Weber, Commissioner of Immigration at the port of New York, Chairman, and the following named special immigrant inspectors: Judson N. Cross, of Minnesota; Walter Kempster, M. D., of Wisconsin; Joseph Powderly, of Pennsylvania, and Herman J. Schultheis, of Washington, D. C. The investigations with which the Commission was charged were made in the various countries of Europe by the Commissioners in severalty, those relating to Russia and the persecution of its Jewish subjects being made by the Chairman, Col. Weber, with the assistance of Dr. Kempster.
Col. Weber's report on the condition of affairs in Russia affords the most detailed and exhaustive statement of the subject that has been given to the world. It followed closely upon the publication in the New York _Times_, (Sept.-Dec., 1891,) of the masterly review of Russian affairs generally, by Harold Frederic, in a series of articles entitled "An Indictment of Russia," and these two publications finally disposed of the glossing with which Russian diplomacy had attempted to hide the facts.
[121] This subject had on frequent occasions previously received the attention of our State Department. In a despatch under date of July 29, 1881, Secretary of State Jas. G. Blaine directs our minister at St. Petersburg, Mr. John W. Foster, to demand of the Russian Government the due rights of American Jewish citizens travelling or temporarily sojourning in Russia, in compliance with treaty obligations. From this document we quote the following salient paragraphs:
"From a careful examination of the causes of grievances heretofore reported by your legation, it appears that the action of the Russian authorities toward American citizens, alleged to be Israelites, and visiting Russia, has been of two kinds:
"First. Absolute prohibition of residence in St. Petersburg and in other cities of the Empire, on the ground that the Russian law permits no native Jews to reside there, and that the treaty between Russia and the United States gives to our citizens in Russian jurisdiction no other rights or privileges than those accorded to native Russians. The case of Henry Pinkos may be taken as a type of this class.
"Second. Permission of residence and commerce, conditionally on belonging to the first guild of Russian merchants and taking out a license. The case of Rosenstrauss is in point.
"The apparent contradiction between these two classes of actions becomes more and more evident as the question is traced backward. The Department has rarely had presented to it any subject of inquiry in which a connected understanding of the facts has proved more difficult. For every allegation, on the one hand, that native laws, in force at the time the treaty of 1832 was signed, prohibited or limited the sojourn of foreign Jews in the cities of Russia, I find, on the other hand, specific invitation to alien Hebrews of good repute to domicile themselves in Russia, to pursue their business calling under appropriate license, to establish factories there, and to purchase or lease real estate. Moreover, going back beyond 1832, the date of our treaty, I observe that the imperial ukases concerning the admission of foreigners into Russia are silent on all questions of faith; proper passports, duly viséd being the essential requisite. And, further back still, in the time of Empress Catharine, I discover explicit tolerance of all foreign religions laid down as a fundamental policy of the empire.
"It would be, in the judgment of this government, absolutely inadmissible that a domestic law restraining native Hebrews from residence in certain parts of the empire might operate to hinder an American citizen, whether alleged or known to profess the Hebrew faith, from disposing of his property or taking possession thereof for himself (subject only to the laws of alien inheritance) or being heard in person by the courts which, under Russian law, may be called upon to decide matters to which he is necessarily a party. The case would clearly be one in which the obligation of a treaty is supreme, and where the local law must yield. These questions of the conflict of local law and international treaty stipulations are among the most common which have engaged the attention of publicists, and it is their concurrent judgment that where a treaty creates a privilege for aliens in express terms, it cannot be limited by the operation of domestic law without a serious breach of the good faith which governs the intercourse of nations. So long as such a conventional engagement in favor of the citizens of another state exists, the law governing natives in like cases is manifestly inapplicable.
"I need hardly enlarge upon the point that the Government of the United States concludes its treaties with foreign states for the equal protection of all classes of American citizens. It can make absolutely no discrimination between them, whatever be their origin or creed. So that they abide by the laws, at home or abroad, it must give them due protection and expect like protection for them. Any unfriendly or discriminatory act against them on the part of a foreign power with which we are at peace would call for our earnest remonstrance whether a treaty existed or not. The friendliness of our relations with foreign nations is emphasized by the treaties we have concluded with them. We have been moved to enter into such international compacts by considerations of mutual benefit and reciprocity, by the same considerations, in short, which have animated the Russian Government from the time of the noble and tolerant declarations of the Empress Catharine in 1784 to those of the ukase of 1860. We have looked to the spirit rather than to the letter of these engagements, and believed that they should be interpreted in the broadest way; it is, therefore, a source of unfeigned regret to us when a government, to which we are allied by so many historical ties as to that of Russia, shows a disposition in its dealing with us to take advantage of technicalities, to appeal to the rigid letter and not the reciprocal motive of its international engagements, in justification of the expulsion from its territories of peaceable American citizens resorting thither under the good faith of treaties and accused of no wrong-doing or of no violation of the commercial code of the land, but of simple adherence to the faith of their fathers."
OFFICIAL DISPATCH OF AMBASSADOR WHITE TO SECRETARY OF STATE GRESHAM.
LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, ST. PETERSBURG, JULY 6, 1893.
(Received July 27.)
SIR:--Your telegram, presumably of May 17, was received on the morning of May 18, and answered at once.
Since telegraphing you I have made additional inquiries with reference to your question, and am persuaded that there has been no new edict banishing Israelites from Poland, as was stated in some of the papers of Western Europe; but for some time past the old edicts and regulations against them have been enforced in various parts of the Empire with more and more severity.
Soon after my arrival at this post it was rumored that there was to be some mitigation in the treatment of them, but the hopes based on this rumor have grown less and less, and it is now clear that the tendency is all in the direction not only of excluding Israelites more rigorously than ever from parts of the Empire where they were formerly allowed on sufferance, but to make life more and more difficult for them in those parts of the Empire where they have been allowed to live for many generations.
As you are doubtless aware, there are about 5,000,000 Israelites in Russia, forming, it is claimed, more than half of the entire Jewish race, and these are packed together in the cities and villages of what was formerly Poland and adjacent governments, in a belt extending along the western borders from northwest to southeast, but which for some years past has been drawn back from the frontier about forty miles, under the necessity, as it is claimed, imposed by the tendency of the Israelites in that region to conduct smuggling operations. In other parts of the Empire they have only been allowed to reside as a matter of exceptional favor. This alleged favor, under the more kindly reign of Alexander II, was largely developed and matured into a sort of _quasi_ right in the case of certain classes, such as Israelites who have been admitted to the learned professions, or have taken a university degree, or have received the rights of merchants of the first or second guild, paying the heavy fees required in such cases. Certain skilled artisans have also been allowed to reside in certain towns outside the Jewish pale, but their privileges are very uncertain, liable to revocation at any time, and have in recent years been greatly diminished. Besides this, certain Israelites are allowed by special permits to reside as clerks in sundry establishments, but under the most uncertain tenure. This tenure can be understood by a case which occurred here about a month since.
At that time died an eminent Israelite of St. Petersburg, a Mr. ---- ----, who had distinguished himself by rescuing certain great companies from ruin by his integrity and skill in various large operations, and by the fact that, while he made large and constant gains for those interested in these companies and operations, he laid up for himself only a moderate competence. He had in his employ a large number of Jewish clerks, and it is now regarded here as a matter of fact that at the expiration of their passes, say in a few months, all of them must leave St. Petersburg.
The treatment of the Israelites, whether good or evil is not based entirely upon any one ukase or statute; there are said to be in the vast jungle of the laws of this Empire more than one thousand decrees and statutes relating to them, beside innumerable circulars, open or secret, regulations, restrictions, extensions, and temporary arrangements, general, special, and local, forming such a tangled growth that probably no human being can say what the law as a whole is--least of all can a Jew in any province have any certain knowledge of his rights.
From time to time, and especially during the reign of Alexander II, who showed himself more kind to them than any other sovereign had ever been, many of them were allowed to leave this overcrowded territory, and, at least, were not hindered from coming into territory and towns which, strictly speaking, they were not considered as entitled to enter; but for some time past this residence on sufferance has been rendered more and more difficult. Details of the treatment to which they have been subjected may be found in the report made by Mr. J. B. Weber and his associate commissioners entitled, "Report of the Commissioners of Immigration upon the Causes which incite Immigration to the United States," Government Printing Office. I must confess that when I first read this report its statements seemed to me exaggerated, or at least, over-colored, but it is with very great regret that I say that this is no longer my opinion. Not only is great severity exercised as regards the main body of Israelites here, but it is from time to time brought to bear with especial force on those returning to Russia from abroad. The case was recently brought to my notice of a Jewish woman who, having gone abroad, was stopped on her return at a frontier station, and, at last accounts, had been there three days, hoping that some members of her family in Russia might be able to do something to enable her to rejoin them.
Israelites of the humbler classes find it more and more difficult to re-enter Russia, and this fact will explain the case of Mrs. Minnie Levin, referred to in Mr. Wharton's dispatch No: 60 as being refused a visa at the Russian Consulate-General in New York, and it will also throw light on various cases we have had in which the legation has been able to secure mitigation of the application of the rules.
On this latter point we have been successful in obtaining such mitigation in cases of many Israelites who have been subjected to annoyance by over-zealous local authorities.
It may appear strange that any nation should wish to expel a people who, in other parts of the world, have amassed so much wealth. The fact is that but a very small fraction of them in Russia are wealthy; but few even in comfortable circumstances. The vast majority of them are in poverty, and a very considerable part in misery--just on the border of starvation.
Nearly forty years ago, when, as an attaché of this legation, I was for seven days and nights on the outside of a post coach between St. Petersburgh and Warsaw--there being then no railway to the frontier--I had an ample opportunity to see something of these Israelites and of the region in which they live. They exist for the most part in squalor, obliged to resort to almost anything that offers, in order to keep body and soul together. Even the best of them were then treated with contempt by the lowest of the pure Russians. I myself saw two Israelites, evidently of the wealthier class and richly clad, who had ventured into the enclosure in front of the posthouse to look at the coach in which I was, lashed with a coach whip and driven out of the enclosure with blows by one of the postilions--evidently a serf.
A very few millionaire Israelites are to be found among the merchants of the first guild in some of the larger cities, but there is no such proportion of wealthy men among them as in the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany. In the smaller towns, in some of which they form the majority of the residents, their poverty is so abject that they drag each other down, making frequently a ruinous competition with each other in such branches of business as they are allowed to pursue. This is now even more the case than ever before, since recent regulations have swept the Israelites living in many rural districts into the towns.
A case was a few days since mentioned to me in which a small town of 8000 or 10,000 inhabitants had recently received into its population nearly 6000 Israelites from the surrounding country.
The restrictions are by no means confined to residence; they extend into every field of activity. Even in the parts of the Empire where the Israelites are most free they are not allowed to hold property in land, or to take a mortgage on land, or to farm land, and of late they have even been, to a large extent, prevented from living on farms, and have been thrown back into the cities and villages.
As to other occupations, Jewish manufacturers have at times, even under the present reign, been crippled by laws or regulations forbidding them to employ Christian workmen, but these are understood to be not now in force. They are relics of the old legislation which, in the interest of the servant's soul, forbade a Jew to employ a Christian servant under pain of death, and which, in a mitigated form, remained on the statute book until 1865, when it was abolished by Alexander II.
There are also many restrictions upon the professions considered more honorable. A few Israelites are allowed to become engineers, and they are allowed to hold 5 per cent of the positions of army surgeons, but no more; and this in spite of the fact that from the Middle Ages until how their race has been recognized as having a peculiar aptitude for medicine and surgery. As a rule, also, they are debarred from discharging any public functions of importance, and even as to lesser functions, a Jew can not be elected mayor of a village or even member of its council.
Not more than one man in ten of those summoned to do jury duty can be a Jew, and even in the cities within the pale, where the Jews form the great majority of the population, they can not hold more than one-third of the places on a municipal council.
Perhaps the most painful of the restrictions upon them is in regard to the education of their children. The world over, as is well known, Israelites will make sacrifices to educate their sons and daughters, such as are not made, save in exceptional cases, by any other people. They are, as is universally recognized, a very gifted race, but no matter how gifted a young Israelite may be, his chances of receiving an education are small.
In regions where they are most numerous, only 10 per cent of the scholars in high schools and universities are allowed to be Jews, but in many cases the number allowed them is but 5 per cent, and in St. Petersburgh and Moscow only 3 per cent. Out of the seventy-five young Israelites who applied for admission to the University of Dorpat in 1887 only seven were allowed to enter. A few days since the case was brought to my notice of a well-to-do Israelite who wished to educate his son, whom he considered especially gifted, but who could not obtain permission to educate him in St. Petersburg, and was obliged to be satisfied with the permission to enter him at one of the small provincial universities remote from the capital.
To account for this particular restriction it is urged that if freely allowed to receive an advanced education they would swarm in the high schools, universities, and learned professions; and, as a proof of this, the fact is mentioned that some time since, in the absence of restrictions, at Odessa from 50 to 70 per cent of the scholars in sundry Russian colleges were Jews.
As to religious restrictions, the general policy pursued seems to an unprejudiced observer from any other country so illogical as to be incomprehensible. On the one hand great powers are given to the Jewish rabbis and religious authorities. They are allowed in the districts where the Israelites mainly live to form a sort of state within the state, with power to impose taxes upon their co-religionists and to give their regulations virtually the force of law. On the other hand, efforts of zealous orthodox Christians to proselyte Israelites, which must provoke much bitterness, are allowed and even favored. The proselytes, once brought within the orthodox Russian fold, no matter by what means, any resumption of the old religion by them is treated as a crime.
Recent cases have occurred where Jews who have been thus converted and who have afterwards attended the synagogue have been brought before the courts.
So, too, in regard to religious instruction it would seem to an unprejudiced observer, wishing well both to Russia and to the Israelites, that the first thing to do would be to substitute instruction in science, general literature, and in technical branches for that which is so strongly complained of by Russians generally--the instruction in the Talmud and Jewish theology. But this is just what is not done, and indeed, as above stated not allowed.
The whole system at present in vogue is calculated to make Talmudic and theological schools--which are so constantly complained of as the nurseries and hotbeds of anti-Russian and anti-Christian fanaticism--the only schools accessible to the great majority of gifted young Israelites.
As to the recent interferences of which accounts have been published in the English newspapers and especially as to a statement that a very large number of Jewish children were, early during the present year, taken from their parents in one of the southern governments of Russia and put into monastic schools under the charge of orthodox priests, this statement having been brought to my notice especially by letters addressed to me as the representative of the United States, I communicated with our consuls in the regions referred to and also obtained information from other trustworthy sources, and the conclusion at which I arrived was that the statement was untrue; it probably had its origin in the fact that much anxiety has recently been shown by certain high officials, and especially ecclesiastics, to promote education in which orthodox religious instruction holds a very important part.
In justification of all these restrictions various claims are made. First of all it is claimed that the Jews lend money to peasants and others at enormous rates of interest. But it is pointed out, in answer to this, that sundry bankers and individuals in parts of Russia where no Jews are permitted have made loans at a much higher rate than Jews have ever ventured to do; while it is allowed that 100 per cent a year has not unfrequently been taken by the Israelites, there seems to be no doubt of the fact that from 300 to 800 per cent, and even more sometimes, has been taken by Christians.
This statement seems incredible, but it is unimpeachable. In a general way it is supported by the recent report of a Russian official to Mr. Sagonof; and a leading journal of St. Petersburg, published under strict censorship, has recently given cases with names and dates where a rate higher than the highest above named was paid by Russian peasants to Christian money lenders.
Those inclined to lenity towards the Jews point to the fact that none of them would dare take any such rates of interest as Christians may freely demand; that to do so would raise against the Israelites in their neighborhood storms which they could not resist, and it is argued that, as their desire for gain is restricted in this way, their presence in any part of Russia tends to diminish the rate of interest rather than to increase it. On the other hand it is claimed that they will not work at agriculture and, indeed, that they will do no sort of manual labor which they can avoid.
As to the first of these charges, the fact is dwelt upon, which has so impressed Mr. Mackenzie Wallace and other travelers, that the Jewish agricultural colonies founded by Alexander I, in 1810, and by Nicholas I, in 1840, have not done well.
But in answer it may be stated as a simple matter of history that, having been originally an agricultural people they have been made what they are by ages of persecutions which have driven them into the occupations to which they are now so generally devoted; that in Russia they have for generations been incapacitated for agricultural work by such restrictions as those above referred to; that even if they are allowed here and there to till the land, they are not allowed, in the part of the Empire which they most inhabit, to buy it or even to farm it, and that thus the greatest incentive to labor is taken away.
As to other branches of manual labor, simply as a matter of fact, there are very large bodies of Jewish artisans in Poland, numbering in the aggregate about one-half the entire adult male Israelite population. Almost every branch of manual labor is represented among them, and well represented. As stone masons they have an especially high reputation, and it is generally conceded that in sobriety, capacity, and attention to work they fully equal their Christian rivals.
Complaint is also made that they, as far as possible, avoid military service. This is doubtless true, but the reasons for it are evident. For the Jewish soldier there is no chance of promotion, and when he retires after service, he is, as a rule, subject to the same restrictions as others of his race. In spite of this fact the number of them in the conscription of 1886 was over 40,000.
I find everywhere in discussing this subject, a complaint that the Israelites, wherever they are allowed to exist, get the better of the Russian peasant. The difficulty is that the life of the Israelite is marked by sobriety, self-denial and foresight; and, whatever may be the kindly qualities ascribed to the Russian peasant, these qualities are rarely, if ever, mentioned among them.
It is also urged against the Israelites in Russia that they are not patriotic, but in view of the policy pursued regarding them the wonder is that any human being should expect them to be patriotic.
There is also frequent complaint against Jewish fanaticism, and recently collections of extracts from the Talmud have been published here as in western Europe, and even in the United States, to show that Israelites are educated in bitter and undying hate of Christians, and taught not only to despise but to despoil them; and it is insisted that the vast majority of the Israelites in Russia have, by ages of this kind of instruction and by the simple laws of heredity, been made beasts of prey with claws and teeth especially sharp, and that the peasant must be protected from them.
Lately this charge has been strongly reiterated, a book having appeared here in which the original Hebrew of the worst Talmudic passages, with translations of them, are placed in parallel columns. It seems to be forgotten that the Israelites would be more than human if such passages did not occur in their sacred writings. While some of these passages antedate the establishment of Christianity, most of them have been the result of fervor under oppression and of the appeal to the vengeance of Jehovah in times of persecution; and it would be but just to set against them the more kindly passages, especially the broadly and beautifully humane teachings which are so frequent in the same writings.
An eminently practical course would be to consider the development of Judaism in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries where undeniably those darker features of of the Talmud have been more and more blotted out from Jewish teaching, and the unfortunate side of Talmudic influence more and more weakened.
But this charge of Talmudic fanaticism is constantly made, and Russians, to show that there is no hatred of Israelites, as such, point to the fact that the Karaites, who are non-Talmudic, have always been treated with especial kindness.
To this the answer would seem to be that the Karaites are free from fanaticism because they have been so long kindly treated, and that this same freedom and kindness which has made them unobjectionable to Russian patriotism would, in time, probably render the great mass of Israelites equally so.
There is no need of argument, either in the light of history or of common sense, to prove that these millions of Israelites in Russia are not to be rendered less fanatical by the treatment to which they are subjected.
To prove that the more bitter utterances in the Talmud complained of do not necessarily lead Israelites to hate Christians, and indeed to show that the teachings which the Israelites receive in countries where they have more freedom lead to a broad philanthropy of the highest type, I have been accustomed, in discussing the subject with Russians, to point to such examples of the truest love for human kind as those shown by Judah Touro in the United States, Sir Moses Montefiore in England, Nathan de Rothschild in Austria, James de Rothschild and Baron Hirsch in France, and multitudes of other cases, citing especially the fact of the extensive charities carried on by Israelites in all countries, and the significant circumstance that the first considerable contribution from the United States to the Russian famine fund came from a Jewish synagogue in California, with the request that in the use of it no discrimination should be made between Jews and Christians. Cases like these would seem to do away effectually with the idea, that Jewish teachings necessarily inculcate hostility to people of other religious beliefs.
There is also a charge closely connected wtth the foregoing which undoubtedly has much to do with the present severe reaction. It is constantly repeated that, in spite of the fact that the late Emperor Alexander II had shown himself more kindly toward the Israelites than had any of his predecessors--relaxing the old rules as to residence, occupation, education, and the like, and was sure, had he lived, to go much farther in the same direction, probably as far as breaking down a mass of the existing barriers, and throwing open vast regions never before accessible to them--the proportion of Israelites implicated in the various movements against him, especially in the Nihilistic movement, and in the final plot which led to his assassination, was far beyond the numerical proportion of their race in Russia to the entire population. This feeling was certainly at the bottom of the cruel persecutions of the Israelites by the peasants just after the death of the late Emperor, and has no less certainly much to do with the prejudices of various personages of high influence as well as of the vast mass of the people which still exist.
The remarkable reaction now dominant in Russia is undoubtedly in great measure, if not entirely, the result of the assassination of Alexander II; it is a mere truism to say that this event was the most unfortunate in its effects on well-ordered progress that has occurred in this Empire; but, so far as the Israelites are concerned, the facts at the bottom of this charge against them can be accounted for, without imputing anything to the race at large, by the mass of bitterness stored up during ages of oppression, not only in Russia, but elsewhere. The matter complained of must certainly be considered as exceptional, for it cannot hide the greater fact that the Jews have always shown themselves especially grateful to such rulers as have mitigated their condition or even shown a kindly regard for them.
I was myself, as minister at Berlin, cognizant of innumerable evidences of gratitude and love shown by the entire Jewish population toward the Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick III, who, when Jew-baiting was in fashion, and patronized by many persons in high positions, set himself quietly but firmly against it. And this reminiscence leads me to another in regard to the oft-repeated charge that the Israelite is incapable of patriotism, is a mere beast of prey, and makes common cause with those of his race engaged in sucking out the substance of the nation where he happens to be. It was my good fortune to know personally several Israelites at Berlin, who as members of the Imperial Parliament showed their patriotism by casting away all hopes of political advancement and resisting certain financial claims in which some of their co-religionists, as well as some leading and very influential Christians, were deeply engaged. There is nothing nobler in recent parliamentary history than the career of such Israelites as Lasker and Bamberger during that period, and at this moment no sane man in Germany hesitates to ascribe to the Israelite Simson all the higher qualities required in his great office, that of chief justice in the highest court of the German Empire.
The same broad and humane characteristics have been shown among the vast majority of Israelites eminent in science, philosophy, literature and the arts. Long before the Israelite Spinoza wrought his own ideal life into the history of philosophy, this was noted, and it has continued to be noted in Russia. During my former residence here there were two eminent representatives of the proscribed race in the highest scientific circles, and they were especially patriotic and broad in their sympathies; and to-day the greatest of Russian sculptors, Antokolski, an Israelite, has thrown into his work not only more genius, but also more of profound patriotic Russian feeling, than has any other sculptor of this period. He has revived more evidently than has any other sculptor the devotion of Russians to their greatest men in times past, and whenever the project of erecting at St. Petersburg a worthy monument to the late Emperor shall be carried out, there is no competent judge who will not acknowledge that he is the man in all Russia to embody in marble or bronze the gratitude of the nation. This is no mere personal opinion of my own, for when recently a critic based an article against Antokolski's works, evidently upon grounds of race antipathy, a brilliant young author, of one of the oldest and most thoroughly Russian families in the Empire, Prince Sergius Wolkonsky, wrote a most cogent refutation of the attack. It is also charged that in Russia, and, indeed, throughout Europe, an undue proportion of Jews have been prominent in movements generally known as "socialistic," and such men as Ferdinand Lasalle and Karl Marx are referred to.
When this statement has been made in my hearing I have met it by the counter statement of a fact that seems to me to result from the freedom allowed in the United States, namely, the fact that at a meeting of the American Social Science Association in 1891, in which a discussion took place involving the very basis of the existing social system, and in which the leading representatives of both sides in the United States were most fully represented, the argument which was generally agreed to be the most effective against the revolutionary and anti-social forces was made by a young Israelite, Prof. Seligman, of Columbia University, in the city of New York. Here, again, results are mistaken for causes; the attitude complained of in the Israelites is clearly the result of the oppression of their race.
But there is one charge which it is perhaps my duty to say that I have never heard made against Israelites even by Russians most opposed to them--the charge that they are to be found in undue or even in any considerable proportion among inebriates or criminals. The simplest reason for this exception in their favor is found in the official statistics which show that in the Governments where they are most numerous diseases and crimes resulting from the consumption of alcoholic drinks are least numerous, and that where the number of Israelites is greatest the consumption of spirits is least. It is also well known, as a matter of general observation, that the Russian Israelites are, as a rule, sober, and that crimes among them are comparatively infrequent.
Yet, if in any country we might expect alcoholism to be greatly developed among them it would be in this Empire, where their misery is so great and the temptation to drown it in intoxicating beverages so constant; and if we might expect crime to be developed largely among them it would be in this Empire, where, crowded together as they are, the struggle for existence is so bitter. Their survival under it can only be accounted for by their superior thrift and sobriety.
It would be a mistake to suppose that religious hatred or even deeply religious feeling is a main factor in this question. The average Russian believes that all outside the orthodox Greek Church are lost; but he does not hate them on that account, and though there has been of late years, during the present reaction, an increase of pressure upon various Christian organizations outside the established church, this has been undeniably from political rather than religious reasons; it has been part of the "Russifying process," which is at present the temporary fashion. The rule in Russia has always been toleration, though limited by an arrangement which seems to a stranger very peculiar. In St. Petersburg, for example, there are churches for nearly all the recognized forms of Christian belief, as well as synagogues for Hebrews, and at least one Mohammedan mosque; but the only proselytism allowed is that between themselves and from them to the established church; in other words, the Greek church may proselyte from any of them, and, within certain limits, each one may proselyte from its orthodox neighbors, but none of them can make converts from the Greek Church.
This regulation seems rather, the result, on the whole, of organized indifference than of zeal, its main purpose being undoubtedly to keep down any troublesome religious fervor. The great body of the Russian peasantry, when left to themselves, seem to be remarkably free from any spirit of fanatical hostility toward religious systems differing from their own, and even from the desire to make proselytes. Mr. Mackenzie Wallace, in his admirable book, after showing that the orthodox Russian and the Mahommedan Tartar live in various communities in perfect peace with each other, details a conversation with a Russian peasant, in which the latter told him that just as God gave the Tartar a darker skin, so he gave him a different religion; and this feeling of indifference, when the peasants are not excited by zealots on one side or the other, seems to prevail toward the Roman Catholics in Poland and the Protestants in the Baltic provinces and Finland. While some priests have undoubtedly done much to create a more zealous feeling, it was especially noted during the fierce persecution of the Jews early in the present reign that in several cases the orthodox village priests not only gave shelter to Israelites seeking to escape harm, but exerted themselves to put an end to the persecutions. So, too, during the past few days the papers have contained a statement that a priest very widely known and highly esteemed, to whom miraculous powers are quite generally attributed, Father John, of Cronstadt, has sent some of the charity money, of which he is almoner, to certain Jewish orphanages under the control of Israelites.
The whole present condition of things is rather the outcome of a great complicated mass of causes, involving racial antipathies, remembrances of financial servitude, vague inherited prejudices, with myths and legends like those of the Middle Ages.
But, whatever may be the origin of the feeling toward the Israelites the practical fact remains that the present policy regarding them is driving them out of the country in great masses. The German papers speak of large numbers as seeking the United States and the Argentine Republic--but especially the former--through the northern ports of that Empire, and, as I write, the Russian papers state that eight steamers loaded with them are just about leaving Libau for America.
It is, of course, said in regard to these emigrants that they have not been ordered out of the country, that they can stay in Russia if they like, and that Russia has simply exercised her right to manage her own internal affairs in her own way; but it is none the less true that the increasing severity in the enforcement of the regulations regarding the Israelites is the main, if not the only, cause of this exodus. In order that this question may be understood in its relations to the present condition of political opinion in the Empire, there is need to make some additional statement.
There has never been a time, probably, when such a feeling of isolation from the rest of the world, and aversion to foreign influence of every sort, have prevailed in Russia as at present; it is shared by the great majority from the highest to the lowest, and it is echoed in the press. Russia has been, during the last ten years, in a great reactionary period, which now seems to be culminating in the attempted "Russification" of the Empire, involving such measures as increasing pressure upon Poland, increasing interference with the Baltic provinces and the German colonies, in the talk of constitutional changes in Finland, in the substitution of Russian for German names of various western towns, in the steadily increasing provisions for strengthening the orthodox Russian Church against all other religious organizations, in the outcry made by various papers in favor of such proposals as that for transferring the university at Dorpat into the Muscovite regions of the interior, for changing the name of St. Petersburg, and for every sort of Russifying process which the most imaginative can devise.
In this present reaction, connected as it is with bitter disappointment over the defeat of Russian aspirations in the Berlin treaty and since, reforms which were formerly universally considered honorable and desirable for Russia are now regarded with aversion; the controlling feeling is for "Russification."
Peter the Great is now very largely regarded by Russians as having taken a wrong road, and, while monuments are erected to Alexander II, his services as emancipator of the serfs are rarely alluded to, and the day formerly observed in remembrance of the emancipation has ceased to be publicly noticed. This reaction shows itself in general literature, in paintings, in sculpture, in architecture, in everything. Any discussion regarding a change in the present condition of things is met by the reply that strangers do not understand Russian questions, and that these questions are complicated historically, politically, economically and socially to such a degree that none but those having personal experience can understand them. If the matter is still further pressed and the good effects of a different policy in the United States, Great Britain, and elsewhere are referred to, it is answered that in those countries a totally different state of things exists, and that no arguments can be made from them to Russia. Any continuance of the discussion is generally met by the statement that Russian questions are largely misrepresented by the press of western Europe; that there is a systematic propaganda against Russia in England, Germany, Austria, and Italy; that England does or allows worse things in her Irish evictions and in her opium traffic, and the United States in lynch law proceedings and treatment of the Chinese, than any done or allowed in Russia; that, in short, Russia is competent to take charge of her own internal policy, and that other powers will do well to mind their own business. This feeling is closely akin to that which was shown sometimes in the United States before the civil war toward foreign comments upon our own "peculiar institution," when representations by such philanthropists as the Duchess of Sutherland, George Thompson, M. P., and others were indignantly repelled.
This condition of opinion and the actions resulting from it are so extreme that it naturally occurs to one who has observed Russian history that a reaction cannot be long deferred.
The progress of Russia thus far has been mainly by a series of reactions. These have sometimes come with surprising suddenness. In view of that which took place when the transition was made from the policy of restriction followed by the Emperor Nicholas to the broadly liberal policy adopted by Alexander II, of which, being connected with this legation at that time, I was a witness, a reaction at present seems by no means impossible or even improbable. It is by no means necessary that a change of reign should take place. A transition might be occasioned as others have been, by the rise of some strong personality bringing to bear upon the dominant opinion the undoubted fact that the present system of repression toward the Israelite is from every point of view a failure, and that it is doing incalculable harm to Russia.
This dispatch ought not, perhaps, to close without an apology for its length; the subject is one of great importance, and it has seemed to me a duty to furnish the Department, in answer to the Secretary's question, with a full report regarding the present stage in the evolution of the matter concerned as my opportunities have enabled me to make.
I am, etc., ANDREW D. WHITE.
* * * * *
NOTE:--The attitude of our Government with regard to the general question here involved has repeatedly been manifested through our State Department. On the occasion of the Mohammedan outrages against the Jews in 1840, and under date of August 19th of that year, Secretary of State John Forsyth addressed to our Minister to Turkey, David Porter, a dispatch as follows:
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 practised 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 scenes of these barbarities are in the Mohammedan dominions, and as such inhuman practises are not of 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 an especial manner to direct your philanthropic efforts against the employment of torture in order to compel the confession of imputed guilt. The President is of opinion that from no one can such generous endeavors proceed with so much 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, J. FORSYTH.
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In 1870, when the persecution of the Roumanian Jews, which had been started in 1868, was growing from bad to worse, our government, at the instance of the Order of B'nai B'rith, (as noted on page 428), established a diplomatic agency at Bucharest. On this occasion President Grant furnished Consul-General Peixotto with a special authorization, as follows:
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., December 8th, 1870.
The bearer of this letter, Mr. Benjamin F. Peixotto, who has accepted the important, though unremunerative, position of United States Consul to Roumania, is commended to the good offices of all representatives of this Government abroad.
Mr. Peixotto has undertaken the duties of his present office more as a missionary work for the benefit of the people he represents than for any benefit to accrue to himself--a work in which all citizens will wish him the greatest success. The United States, knowing no distinction of her own citizens on account of religion or nativity, naturally believes in a civilization, the world over, which will secure the same universal views.
U. S. GRANT.
* * * * *
President Grant's interest in the subject was furthermore evinced when, in 1871, at the earnest request of Hon. Simon Wolf, he called a special Cabinet meeting to consider the reported expulsion of the Jews of Russian Bessarabia. This meeting resulted in the sending of a cable dispatch to Minister Andrew G. Curtin at St. Petersburg, protesting against the ukase of banishment. The protest was heeded by the Czar and the ukase was rescinded.
As a further indication of the position taken by our Government in regard to the matter, we quote the following dispatch from Secretary of State Hamilton Fish to Consul General Peixotto:
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, D. C., April 10, 1872.
SIR:--Among the large number of Israelites in this country there are probably few whose sympathies have not been intensely excited by the recent intelligence of the grievous persecutions of their co-religionists in Roumania. This feeling has naturally been augmented by the contrast presented by the position of members of that persuasion here, who are equals with all others before the law, which sternly forbids any oppression on account of religion. Indeed, it may be said that the people of this country universally abhor persecution anywhere for that cause, and deprecate the trials of which, according to your dispatches, the Israelites of Roumania have been victims.
This Government heartily sympathizes with the popular instinct upon the subject, and while it has no disposition or intention to give offence by interfering in the internal affairs of Roumania, it is deemed to be due to humanity to remonstrate against any license or impunity which may have attended the outrages in that country.
You are consequently authorized to address a note to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Principality in which you will embody the views herein expressed, and you will also do anything which you can do discreetly, with a reasonable prospect of success, toward preventing a recurrence or continuance of the persecutions adverted to.
I am, Sir, etc., etc., HAMILTON FISH.
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As a plain and unmistakable summary of the attitude of the American people with regard to the brutalities deliberately perpetrated by Russia, we close these citations with that of the Resolution of Congress, introduced by Representative Amos J. Cummings of New York, December 19th, 1890, and adopted unanimously by the House.
Resolved, etc.: "That the members of the House of Representatives of the United States have heard with profound sorrow and feelings akin to horror the reports of the persecutions of the Jews in Russia, reflecting the barbarism of past ages, disgracing humanity and impeding the progress of civilization; that our sorrow is intensified by the fact that such occurrences should happen in a country which has been, and is now, the firm friend of the United States, and in a nation that clothed itself with glory, not long since, by the emancipation of its serfs and by its defence of helpless Christians from the oppression of the Turks; that a copy of this resolution be forwarded to the Secretary of State with a request that he send it to the American Minister at St. Petersburg and that said Minister be directed to present the same to His Imperial Majesty Alexander III, Czar of all the Russias."
THE RUSSIAN JEWISH REFUGEES IN AMERICA.
CONSIDERED IN CONNECTION WITH THE GENERAL SUBJECT OF IMMIGRATION IN ITS HISTORICAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS.
(Note.--In the preparation of the following article the editor has utilized the contents of a paper read by him before the Board of Presidents of the National Societies of Philadelphia, as a member of that body, December 12th, 1891).
A review of the subject of American Jewish citizenship necessarily involves a consideration of the recent accretions to the Jewish population in this country through the immigration of those of the expatriated Russian Jews who have found and are yet finding their way to our shores. The influx and settlement here of this practically new element of the population has attracted a large measure of public attention, notwithstanding the fact that it comprises an average of not over 8 per cent. of the total immigration. This has been due not only to the extraordinary causes of the influx, but also to the fact that the settlement of a large number of the newcomers in the seabord cities has caused some disturbances in the labor market at those points.
The influence of this movement on the future development of American Judaism is beyond our immediate purview, and its present bearing on the Jewish community need be considered but incidentally. In view, however, of the repeated changes in our immigration laws since 1882, when the immigration of the Russian Jews began to reach its present marked proportions by reason of their expulsion from their homes, and of the agitation for such further legislation as will result in a practically complete disbarment of these and other unfortunate victims of European oppression, we may here properly proceed to a brief consideration of the social, political and economic aspects of the question, both as regards the Russian Jewish immigrants and immigration in general.
The earliest immigration movement of which a record has come down to our day is that which carried the Hebrew Abram from "Ur of the Chaldees" westward to the plains of Canaan. It carried with it the latent energy whose force has been the most potent in the world's affairs; which has become the moving spirit of the Caucasian race, and which afforded the vehicle of development for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The far-reaching consequences of that first of recorded immigrations need not be dwelt upon; it forms the prologue to the history of civilization, a history whose epilogue is yet to be enacted, and whose processes are not only still a living reality in the present, but are proceeding towards an infinitely greater compass in the future.
The migration of Abraham is to be regarded, not only from the historic standpoint, but in the most abstract scientific sense, as a force, resulting as all forces must, from some cause of equal or greater potentiality, and moving, as all forces do, along the lines of least resistance. The movement proceeded, as we know, from the East, away from, if not out of, the cradle of the Caucasian race; from where expansion was hemmed and development was hampered, towards the West and South where the possibilities of both were greater and the requisite conditions more favorable. This was forty centuries ago; from that time to the present the movement has still been westward and southward, and by virtue of the same natural law that operated in the early dawn of history, its course is manifestly destined to trend in the same direction for some time longer.
In the meantime, throughout all the course of the historic past, migration after migration has successively marked the greatest epochs in the annals of mankind. The migration of Abraham was followed by many others, none indeed of more far-reaching significance, but all or nearly all of greater magnitude, and not a few of them of vast importance as factors in the history of man. Some centuries after Abraham's time the migration of the Canaanite Cadmus westward to the Isles of Greece, or perhaps the migration of the Pelasgic tribes westward from Asia Minor, opened the first chapter in the history of Europe. Still later, through the great migrations at the close of the Roman period, and in the early Middle Ages, the barbarians of Europe became imbued with the leaven of Jewish ideals in the form of Christianity, and further still in the course of time the migrations of the hunted Jews from Germany to Poland, and from Spain to Holland and to England, influenced permanently the current of the world's affairs. Subsequently, the migration of the Pilgrim Fathers to North America left an indelible impress in our modern civilization, and finally the migrations of yesterday and to-day, trending still westward to the Pacific, and the offshoots of the current to Australia, to New Zealand and to South America, have opened in the history of mankind a chapter which the Twentieth Century will not complete.
It is remarkable that of all these notable migrations, that of Abraham may be considered as not only first in point of time, but also as altogether normal in its character. In all the later historic movements of this kind, the element of force is more or less definitely manifest, but Abraham's migration was a peaceful one, and when he took up the sword at all, it was only to benefit the people among whom he dwelt. We find him earnestly pleading the cause of his adopted countrymen, notwithstanding their great wickedness; he bought and paid for even his last resting place rather than accept it as a gift, and in general he figures on the historic horizon as in all respects not only a typical but a model immigrant.
Had the great migrations of later times been as peaceful as that of Abraham, the annals of humanity would have been less troubled than we find them. But the subsequent movements of population were migrations of masses of people, forced from their native soil by extraneous pressure or lured away by the incitements of conquest, or by both agencies combined, and such movements must in their very nature, be violent and sanguinary.
The earliest peoples required for their sustenance far more space than do equal numbers in a more civilized state. They had no developed means of subsistence; the most primitive inhabitants relied solely on the products of unaided nature, and these they found mainly in the chase. As this became more difficult, or its produce scarcer, they betook themselves to herding, a culture in itself, the first step in civilization, and the first expedient to support an increasing population. In this respect the inhabitants of the Eastern plains were far in advance of their Western contemporaries; the Asiatic herdsman was more favorably situated than the huntsman in the forests of primeval Europe, and hence we find both culture and population first evolved in the East and flowing thence by natural sequence towards the West. Culture, the outgrowth of population, was first planted in the East; there it rooted and there it blossomed, and there humanity gathered its first fruits, but its ripened products have fructified upon its Western grafts. Westward indeed the star of Empire has made its way, and here on our Western Continent, under the ægis of our great Republic, under the influence of American liberty and freedom, it seems destined to reach its ascendant.
In the upbuilding of this Republic the descendants of the first great emigrant have taken, as we have recorded in the preceding pages, an ample share, and among these descendants the compatriots of the present victims of Russian barbarity were by no means wanting. The emigration of the Slavic Jews to America had been going on in a normal manner, and therefore to a limited extent, for a long time before the present exodus, and in fact, so to speak, from the beginning. After each of the successive uprisings of Poland against the barbarous tyranny of its Russian oppressors, from the time of Pulaski, who after leading his countrymen vainly against the Russian hordes in 1768, came to America to die in the struggle for liberty here; from the time of Kosciuszko, who came here to fight successfully for the independence of our country and then returned to fight vainly for the independence of his own, there have been Polish emigrants to America and among them were many Jews. Haym Solomon, who afforded one of the noblest examples of devotion to American liberty that is recorded in our annals, was as we have seen[122] a Polish Jew and an intimate of the two patriots named above, and on Pulaski's staff was a Jewish officer[123] and others of his Jewish countrymen were doubtless serving in his command.
Down to the bloody outbreak of Russian fanaticism in 1879-1880, followed by the officially decreed expulsions of the succeeding years the influx of the Slavic Jews, was, as we have noted, a normal tide, like that which brought to these shores millions of immigrants from every European country. Normally, without being forced, and of their own volition they had come, as had the Sephardic Jews from England and Holland during our Colonial period and in the early decades of our independence, and as the German Jews came with the stream of German immigration after the beginning of steam navigation and the Revolution of 1848. The English Sephardim ceased to emigrate after their enfranchisement in 1850; the German Jews have ceased to emigrate since their enfranchisement in 1871, and the Polish and Russian Jews would come in fewer numbers if they were not driven from their homes, and would scarcely come at all if but the boon of unhampered domicile, not to mention political liberty, were accorded to them there.
* * * * *
The calamitous condition of general suffering into which the Russian Jews were plunged by the proscriptive policy of their government, appears to have passed its acute stage. While the expulsion of the Jews from the interior of the Empire and their settlement, permanent or temporary, in the "Pale" of the Western Russian provinces, including Poland, was in the height of its progress a few years ago, the number of those who were eventually forced to emigrate was very large, aggregating, it is estimated, nearly two hundred thousand in a single year. The newcomers in the Pale, nearly all of them utterly impoverished through pillage by the low element of the populace and by the extortion of the officials, disorganized the economic condition of the older settlers in the district and caused a most excessive competition for the means of livelihood. The emigration of some of the surplus population and the gradual reorganization of the remainder, has tended to render the general condition less acute, and while a considerable emigration from the Pale must, in the nature of things, be looked for until the existent conditions are fully ameliorated, the great exodus that marked the years 1891-2 is not likely to be repeated unless further measures of oppression and repression are adopted by the Russian government.
Meanwhile the world looks on while the Jews of Western Europe and America are laboring to help those of their Russian brethren who, unable to gain a foothold in the Pale, are forced out from their wretched surroundings. The world looks on while the philanthropist Maurice de Hirsch, emulating the spirit of Montefiore, is devoting his wealth to the succor of his co-religionists and striving to found an asylum for them on the plains of Argentina. It looks on while the Alliance Israélite Universelle, from its headquarters in Paris, is establishing and maintaining primary schools for the Jews throughout the Orient, and agricultural schools for the Russian refugees in Palestine; while this educational work is being seconded by both the American and European branches of the Order of B'nai B'rith, and while Edmond de Rothschild is fostering agricultural colonies near Jaffa and Jerusalem and aiding Russian Jews to gain a foothold in the land of their forefathers.
In our own country agricultural colonies of Russian Jews have been founded, educational institutions built up, distribution of the refugees effected, through the efforts of Jewish communal organizations or by means of the funds devoted for the purpose by Baron de Hirsch, or by both in unison. The de Hirsch Trust dispenses in this manner the income of $2,500,000 donated for this purpose by the great-hearted and open-handed philanthropist, supplementing to this large extent the charitable efforts of the American Jews in their work of succor. That work is carried on by independent local organizations both in Europe and America, ramifying from the Vistula westward to the Golden Gate; centering in Königsberg, Memel, Lemberg and Brody, in Berlin and Vienna, Hamburg and Bremen, in Paris, London and Liverpool, in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore, in Chicago, San Francisco and Portland, and at other intervening points. These organizations are apart from the great movement organized by Baron de Hirsch and chartered in England under the title of "The Jewish Colonization Association." That institution, which the Baron has endowed with the sum of $10,000,000, has its headquarters in St. Petersburg and affiliated centers throughout the Jewish Pale, and is devoted exclusively to furthering the Jewish emigration to the Argentine Republic. The Russian Jewish emigrants to other lands proceed wholly by dint of their own means or those of their relatives already in the haven of rest, and these wayfarers are frequently impoverished and always in need of protection and counsel. Onerous as has been the burden which the wickedness of Russian folly has imposed on the Jewish people at large, they have thus far coped with a reasonable degree of success against the almost overwhelming difficulties of the situation.[124]
During the progress of this movement a hue and cry has repeatedly been raised all along the roads which the Russian refugees have taken in escaping from their oppressors and in seeking an asylum and resting place. Here in our country, where many of our State governments have made organized efforts to induce immigration into their borders, where numerous towns and hamlets in the interior are organizing "booms" to increase their population, here, where the single State of Texas, with less than two and a half millions of population, extends over an area greater than Germany and England together; where a state like Montana, larger than England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland combined, has a population of but 132,000, only half as many as the single English town of Leeds, here there have not been wanting those who have constantly urged in Congress and in the press, that European immigration should be not only regulated, but largely restricted and even entirely debarred. All this because in the metropolitan centres and at times at other points, a surplus of wage workers in one or two industries was causing friction and disturbance.
* * * * *
This agitation, by reason of its obvious causes, may well claim our attention in connection with our present subject.
The effort towards better material conditions which has formed the main impulse of all emigration movements, has, as we learn from history, been always fraught with suffering and misery for the populations first effected, and frequently for several of the succeeding generations, but, in the end, improvement has resulted to the greater number at least. Even when the natural surroundings of a migrated population are not more favorable than those of their previous experience, the mere change of environment has generally furthered an improvement of their social arrangements. The change of their location may disappoint an immigrant people in their hopes of material betterment, but they never fail to take advantage of their new beginnings to eliminate from their new organization such conditions as their previous experience had proved objectionable. Migrations, whether peaceful or otherwise, and for that matter sudden changes of material conditions generally, inevitably consume a large part of the existing powers of those effected, but where those powers are not totally exhausted and destroyed, where enough energy remains to form a nucleus of recuperative force, and especially where the new material surroundings are more favorable than those which were left behind, there a marked improvement of all the conditions of life, physical and intellectual, material and social, becomes developed. It would be superfluous to cite the proofs of this proposition; the history of civilization is a record of its examples, and its latest annals are but statements of this fact.
Palpable as is this fact, and nowhere is it more so than on this Western Continent, and especially in our own country, there are yet many who regard an immigrant with the narrow prejudice of mediæval ignorance, and to whom a stranger is still, as to the barbarians of old, an enemy. Over and over again in the course of the great new departure which the establishment and growth of these United States has made in the world's history, over and over again in the course of our development, has the debarment of immigrants been proposed and advocated. At times the opposition to the new comers has been born of Old World animosities, at other times of religious prejudice, and latterly we hear most frequently of restrictions proposed on political and economic grounds.
That political reasons may justify a restriction, or even dictate the entire debarment of certain defined classes of immigrants, is to be admitted. Thus the exclusion of Chinese immigrants may be defended on the grounds of a broad public policy, with reasons which cannot logically be adduced with regard to any branch of the Caucasian race. The most cogent of these reasons, and the one that has afforded the only rational basis for the policy adopted, is not the economic element of the subject, not that the Chinese live cheaply and work cheaply, but that their assimilation with the rest of the population is practically impossible. To what extent the theoretical possibility of their being merged in the general population could be realized, to what extent its realization would be desirable or the contrary, to what extent a mixture of the Caucasian and Mongolian races would enhance or deteriorate their respective qualities, physical and psychical, we need not here stop to inquire. Suffice it to re-state the fact that political, or perhaps ultimately ethnological reasons may here be considered as prompting a course which could not reasonably be adopted on any other ground. But in the case of immigrants of the Caucasian race, such opposition as has been made from time to time, though frequently insisted upon as a political necessity, can only, in the absence of any broad ethnological basis, be argued on economic grounds.
* * * * *
The discussions engendered by propositions to restrict immigration have recurred at various periods of our history and have been factors in our politics from the beginning of our institutions. There was indeed already in the old Colonial times an anti-immigration or Nativist Party, almost before there were any natives to make it up. In fact, the subject has cropped out whenever some slight occasion offered, and
## particularly whenever politicians on the in- or the outside needed
a new string to harp upon. Some of us are old enough to remember something of the native American agitation which began as far back as 1835, and which took shape in the so-called "American" party, afterwards generally known as the "Know-Nothings," about 1844. In that year the Know-Nothing Party carried the city of New York on a mayoralty election by a large majority, and for a time the movement spread widely throughout the country. It developed strong religious prejudices, and was marked by the memorable anti-Catholic riots in Philadelphia. The odium which those disgraceful outrages brought on the "American" party was attempted to be overcome by making it a secret organization, and in the political confusion resulting from the breaking up of the old Whig party, the former grew to such proportions that in 1855 it carried no less than nine state elections. That the movement then had no vital force, but was only a political stalking-horse for partisan purposes, became manifest in the Presidential election of 1856, when the Know Nothing candidates carried only the State of Maryland, and that only by aid of the remnant of the Whig party and the bludgeons of the "Plug-Uglies." The outcome of the whole movement, politically considered, was the complete extinction of the party organization which had fostered, and the permanent discredit of the party leaders who had promoted it.
But the lessons of the past, the arguments and considerations which have repeatedly led to the rejection of a prescriptive policy, have now to be gone over again in this later generation, and the reason for this is plain enough. The economic aspect of the question is more permanent than the political, and the economic argument more plausible than the other. The objectionable features inseparable from a considerable influx of newcomers into a community, large or small, are palpable and on the surface, while the inestimable value of these newcomers, by virtue of the added material and social forces with which they endow the community, becomes perceptible only upon a closer investigation of the subject. It thus happens that when an unusually large number of new arrivals disturbs for a time some existing economic condition, the community is startled by those immediately affected with an outcry against the intruding force, and it is then only on investigation that it becomes apparent that while indeed a comparatively few individuals suffer, and even they but temporarily, the new element is of far-reaching benefit to the community at large.
A quite parallel instance, as far as it goes, is the effect of the introduction of machinery in substitution of hand labor. The history of inventions is burdened with the details of opposition which gathered at every step of the process through which Man has brought to his service the forces of Nature. So too, the practical aid of immigration in subduing the domain of Nature on this Western Continent has often been decried as inimical to the interests of those native to the soil, notwithstanding that even a cursory analysis of the question proves clearly the fact that the immigrant not only does not travail against the native's interest, but on the contrary, aids and enhances that interest beyond all computation. Just as the throng of new inventions temporarily disarranges existent conditions of commerce and of industry, with the immediate result of causing economic distress to some groups of individuals, so the tide of immigration temporarily affects existent conditions in the centers of population, but the eventual benefit of the new force is as certain to be felt in the latter case as in the former.
Let us for a moment consider the character and extent of the impulses which the influx of the newcomers imparts to the social organism. The nature of these impulses is two-fold; the increase of numbers adds power to the community, and the diversity of interests which is an inevitable concomitant of increased population, brings wealth, culture, and all the higher gains of human effort.
To elucidate these propositions we cannot do better than here quote the carefully considered statements of the foremost of American publicists, Henry C. Carey, himself an American of Americans, and the great expounder of the protective system of political economy. As Chairman of the Committee on Industrial Interests and Labor, in its report to the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania in 1873, referring to the Immigration question, he writes as follows:
"Closing their eyes to the important facts which have been thus presented, very many of our working men look with jealous eyes at every measure tending toward bringing those of other countries to take a place side by side with them, believing, as they do, that the more the supply of labor the lower must certainly become the price. Nevertheless, could they but be persuaded to study carefully the facts of even the last twenty years they could not fail to become impressed with the fact, that growth of wages has always kept even pace with growth of immigration; the reward of labor on the contrary declining as immigration has been arrested or destroyed. At no previous period had the demand for labor, or its reward, grown so rapidly as in the early years of the great California one, say from 1850 to 1854, when immigration grew to 400,000. At none, has labor been more in excess of the demand than in the years that followed the great crisis of 1857, when immigration declined to figures scarcely greater than had been attained 20 years before; and when, as in 1860-61, not one out of five of the skilled workmen of the country was steadily employed. Here, in Philadelphia, when it was desired to build a street railroad they advertised for two hundred and fifty hands at but sixty cents a day, and had more than five thousand offered, a majority of whom were skilled artisans who were wholly out of work. In the neighborhood of one great establishment, a rolling mill, the number of unemployed men was so great that the county authorities, to save its skilled workmen from open pauperism, determined to build a turnpike, employing experienced hands at breaking stone, for fifty cents a day, rather than supporting them as paupers. At no period of our history has the reward of labor grown so rapidly as in the last ten years, when the exodus of European working men has so rapidly increased that the states of Central and Western Europe now find themselves forced to consideration of the measures required for retaining their countrymen at home; and when the highest German authorities admit that the pecuniary loss resulting from training and educating men for export to this country has now already more than counterbalanced the French indemnity of $1,200,000,000. To all appearance the immigration of the present year will closely approach to half a million; and yet it is at this moment, in face of so wonderful an addition to our stock of working men and women, that we have a determined agitation for bringing about a reduction of time and increase of wages. In the years prior to the rebellion, when immigration so largely declined, the agitation was for employment at almost any price. Why is this? Why is it that, contrary to the rule elsewhere observed, demand for labor goes ahead of supply when this latter is great, and falls behind it when the supply is small? To this the answer is, that the power to compel nature to labor in man's service increases almost geometrically as numbers increase arithmetically; as employment becomes diversified; and as men are more enabled to combine their efforts for attainment of that object."
* * * * *
"As a consequence of the great increase in the power of combination that has thus been brought about, we find the manufacturing product of the country to have grown in the period 1860 to 1872, from 1800 to 5000 millions, the mere increase having been almost twice the total amount to which the country had attained in the centuries that had preceded the war of the rebellion. Adding to the figures the foreign manufactures consumed, we obtain for the first--a period when immigration was rapidly declining--a total consumption of about $65 per head; whereas in the period which since has passed, and in which immigration has so greatly grown, it has risen to more than $130 per head. So far, therefore, is the working man from having occasion to dread the competition of the immigrant, that he needs, night and morning, to pray for maintenance of that policy which is now making demand on Europe for so much of its half fed and half clothed population, thereby compelling both landed and manufacturing capitalists to the adoption of measures tending so to improve the condition of them who are left behind as to induce them to forego the idea of abandoning their native land. Never in the world's history has there been furnished such conclusive evidence of the fact, that measures tending to benefit the working man anywhere tend toward raising his condition everywhere; and that, therefore, there is a perfect harmony in the real and permanent interests of mankind at large."
* * * * *
As still more directly bearing on this subject, I quote from the same report as follows:
"Less than a dozen years since, our working men looked jealously upon the negro, believing that any measure tending toward his emancipation would certainly be followed by such an influx of cheap labor as must seriously affect themselves. Directly the reverse, the negro migrates to Texas and there becomes a customer for manufactured products of a class greatly higher than that of those which his master had been accustomed to purchase for his slave."
Carey here reaches the very pith of the question. Every newcomer becomes a customer for those already on the ground, for all that he needs for his maintenance, just as the new born babe furnishes a new customer for the dry goods store, the milk man, not to mention the doctor and sometimes the lawyer. The baby, it is true, does not, as the phrase goes, "enter into competition" for a living, while the immigrant does, but in this respect the latter is the more valuable acquisition, for unless the immigrant is supported by charity, he has to produce at least as much as he consumes, and thus the community is an inevitable gainer by his presence. Inasmuch as a very large proportion of the immigrants produce more than they consume, in other words, save something of their earnings, it is manifest that the community gains doubly by their presence. It gains through the increase by the immigrant of the general social force, in his contribution to the total of the community's traffic and exchange, and also gains through the newcomer's addition to the general capital stock.
But, it is urged on the other hand, this may all be true of some kinds of immigrants, and not be true of others who are low in the scale of moral worth and of physical and intellectual capacity, and it is these whose coming should be restricted. Be it so; we may safely admit this proposition, and proceed thence to the sole remaining problem of drawing the line.
Where shall this line be drawn? The native American agitation proceeded on the very ground we have postulated, and grew to the proportions of carrying a majority in no less than nine states. It grew to these proportions as the result of an agitation that arose from the influx of impoverished Irishmen after the famine of 1847, and of their followers from Scotland and England in the succeeding decade. Has the agitation been justified by time? Have the prophecies of the Know Nothings that our people could not possibly assimilate the great mass of foreigners who were then thronging hither, whose proportion to the native population was even greater than it is now, who were alien to our institutions and our laws, in habits and in religion at variance with the great majority of the citizens, been fulfilled? Of course not; the facts have but developed what the common sense of the people soon perceived to be true. These immigrants have all been assimilated. Those of them that survive, and their children assuredly, have become thoroughly Americanized and effectually welded into the commonalty of our republic.
How was it with the Germans who came hither in such swarms under the allurements of the great gold finds in the West, and the growth of steam navigation on the ocean after 1850? They too have been assimilated, notwithstanding that through their variance in language they were even more differentiated from the native inhabitants than the immigrants from the British Isles. How about the Scandinavians and the Holland Dutch, the French and Italians? Has the grafting of these scions on the rooted stem degenerated the stock? We have ample evidence to the contrary, sufficiently palpable to need no citation in detail.
Where then shall we draw the line? We have seen that the immigrant, though he arrives penniless as tens of thousands of them have done and do, does certainly not impoverish the community. We have seen, on the contrary, that though he arrives penniless, he enhances the wealth of the community by bringing with him the germ of all commodities, Labor. Where then shall we draw the line? Shall we exclude the poor Roman Catholic Pole, who is driven from his home by the vindictive policy of his barbarous conquerer? Does he not bring energy and labor? Shall we exclude the Russian Jew, who is driven from his native soil by the stupid villany of the same Tartar barbarism? Is his thrift and industry likely to impoverish our community? The pious fools who, four hundred years ago, drove three hundred thousand of such people from the Iberian Peninsula had a bigger majority than the Know Nothings of later date who wanted to do as much for the Roman Catholics fifty years ago, and they had their way. They diminished the population according to their wish, but they wrought the ruin of the then richest nation of Europe, a ruin from which it has even to this day not yet arisen.
No; let the immigrants come, as they have come. Let us but guard ourselves against the preventable evils which are likely to attend their coming, by the careful enforcement of the laws that are enacted to that end. Let us draw the line so as to exclude the habitual paupers, the habitual criminals, the incurably insane; the rest will take care of themselves and add to our well being and our wealth by filling up the waste stretches of the great expanse behind us; they will but follow in the way trodden by the immigrants who landed two hundred and seventy years ago at Plymouth Rock, and will work out their salvation as did their predecessors by making the desert to blossom as the rose.
NOTE:--Various movements for the relief of the Russian refugees have been organized independently from 1882 on by the Jewish communities throughout the country and especially in the seabord cities. The renewed severity of the Russian persecutions in 1890 called forth a general movement for the relief of the sufferers which was focused at a convention held in Philadelphia, February 16, 1891, and which resulted in the formation of the "Jewish Alliance of America."[125] This organization was composed in the main of Russian Jews already settled in this country, but the increasing demand on the Jewish people by the extraordinarily large influx of the refugees during 1891 necessitated a more general organization of the measures for their relief. To that end the Trustees of the Baron de Hirsch Fund issued a call[126] for a general convention of representatives of the Jewish organizations throughout the country, which accordingly met in New York City on September 23, 1891. This convention[127] resolved itself into "The American Committee for Ameliorating the Condition of Russian Refugees," and elected an Executive Committee[128] to carry out its plans. With this organization the Jewish Alliance of America was merged in February, 1892, but with the diminution of the influx in the course of that year the united organization devolved its functions on a "Central Committee" composed of members of the American Committee, the Baron de Hirsch Trust and the United Hebrew Charities of New York.
* * * * *
The several organized movements above noted elicited earnest expressions of sympathy from many leading men in our community. A number of these are so pointed and relevant to our present subject matter as to dictate their citation in this connection.
On the occasion of the movement for the formation of the Jewish Alliance, CARDINAL GIBBONS wrote as follows, under date of Baltimore, Dec. 15th, 1890.
"Every friend of humanity must deplore the systematic persecution of the Jews in Russia.
"For my part, I cannot well conceive how Christians can entertain other than kind sentiments towards the Hebrew race, when I consider how much we are indebted to them. We have from them the inspired volume of the Old Testament, which has been a consolation in all ages to devout souls. Christ, our Lord, the Founder of our religion, His blessed mother, as well as the Apostles, were all Jews according to the flesh. These facts attach me strongly to the Jewish race."
* * * * *
The call for the convention which resulted in the organization of the American Committee for Ameliorating the Condition of Russian Refugees, elicited the following letter from Judge DILLON to Mr. Seligman:
Dear Sir: Coming to this place (Saratoga) on the train from New York, I saw in the _Evening Post_ a statement that prominent Hebrews in all parts of the United States have been invited by the Trustees of the Baron de Hirsch fund to meet in this city on Wednesday, September 23rd in the building of the Hebrew Educational Alliance at East Broadway and Jefferson streets, for the purpose of co-operating in the formation of an American Relief Committee to make the best possible disposition of the exiled Russian Jews coming to this country.
The persecution of your people with mediæval cruelty, whereby they are exiled without cause, suddenly and _en masse_, with all the multiplied and nameless hardships and sufferings which must necessarily attend such an exodus, from a country in which they had lived for generations and had the right to peacefully remain, has awakened among all right-thinking persons sympathy for the victims and indignation against their oppressors. This is not a matter that appeals alone to the people of your race. It appeals to every man with a heart of flesh in his bosom. There remains no longer any place for prejudice or selfishness. Reports are made that some Jewish refugees have already been sent back from this country for fear that they may become a public charge. This must not be. Without shame we cannot remain idle and cold spectators and see this done under our very eyes. Ever since the establishment of our nation, it has been its just boast that it was the asylum of the toiling and oppressed people of all other countries, who in good faith sought our shores with a view of permanent residence and citizenship. I am not criticising necessary or provident defensive modification of this policy, but the former considerations have a rightful application to your fugitive people, who in their necessity come from preference to this land of freedom to find and make themselves homes.
I would as soon shut my door against a benighted wanderer seeking refuge from the merciless blizzard as to shut our national ports against those of your people, who, stricken like wild beasts, are driven here in the stress of the raging storm which threatens their destruction. Let us receive them with welcome and hospitality. Let us show to the nations of the world that there is one spot on God's earth where these unfortunate exiles may rest their tired feet, set up again their household goods, reconstruct their ruined homes and worship in peace the God of their fathers.
I notice in the article referred to that it is proposed "to appeal to the Jews of the United States to unite in a co-operative plan to find homes and employment for Russian immigrants." I beg to suggest that this concerns not your people alone. It quite as deeply concerns the good name of the American people to see that no refugee shall be returned for poverty, or for any cause, save for crime, or shall be allowed to suffer until he can find work.
I do not rest these sentiments upon the unfeigned respect I feel for the immemorial traditions and glorious history of your people, who in theology, ethics, philosophy, arts, literature, jurisprudence and legislation have either led the thought of the world or kept abreast with it. I prefer to rest them upon the broader, higher and truer ground, that these exiles are men, with all the inprescriptable rights that belong to men because they are men, irrespective of religion, race or nationality, rights which governments do not create or confer, so they cannot rightfully deny or destroy. I enclose my check for the cause (would it were more), and in doing so, I could not refrain, before resting my head upon my pillow, to thus state the reasons why I did it.
With great respect, I am as ever, Very truly yours, JOHN F. DILLON.
TO JESSE SELIGMAN, Esq.
* * * * *
On the same occasion as that noted above, HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW expressed himself as follows:
"We behold to-day in Russia with horror the amazing spectacle in the nineteenth century of the whole power of the government brought to bear upon three millions of Hebrews to treat them as aliens and enemies. They have been for three hundred years the subjects and the citizens of the Russian Empire, and yet the whole power of the state, of its army, of its civil force, is brought to bear to deprive them of the opportunities of employment and to refuse them, except within certain limits, the right to live in the country where their ancestors have lived for ten to twenty generations. It is because monarchical institutions, autocratic institutions, class institutions do not possess the power of assimilation and of homogeneity.
"In the past fifty years, fifteen millions of people have come to this country from abroad. They belonged to every race, they spoke every language but our own. They worshipped in every form, under every symbol and in every creed. But American liberty solved the problem. These people did not know about our institutions, or understand them. They had been taught to believe that liberty was license, and yet the solvent power of American liberty made them citizens and gave to the immigrants of a few years ago, the same rights before the law and in making the law that is possessed by the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers. These fifteen millions of people, under the operation of this glorious principle, have become bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. They have aided in the development of the country; they have assisted in increasing its wealth, its power and its glory, and have marched with equal step and equal love under the old flag for the preservation of the glorious Republic which had made them free."
* * * * *
Following is an extract from a letter written to Hon. Simon Wolf by Father Sylvester Malone, of St. Peter and Paul Church, Brooklyn:
I have listened to St. Patrick's Day discussions in time past in which your co-religionists were likened to the Irish. Both suffered because of their holding with such tenacity to what was their belief. This was true in the case of the Hebrew in his own native land and in every other land whither tyranny forced him to emigrate. The Irish have been the victims of cruel persecution in their own native land. Here, however, they are free, and are always successful when they do not by some fault of their own mar their best hopes of success. The Jewish people too have had great success in America, but the later emigration, directly from Russia, has not been acceptable to many of our citizens. They have run the gauntlet, as my countrymen had to do some fifty years ago. They must learn wisdom and patience."
* * * * *
As an instructive conclusion to our present subject we add the following extract from the New York _Sun_ of September 1st, 1894. It needs no further comment:
"In the Jews, Judaism is deeply ingrained. As many as 10,000 or 12,000 of the Jewish tailors of this city were on a strike for higher wages all last week; and day after day they loitered in the streets, or congregated in their hall, or sat down any where to talk in their jargon. But upon the forenoon of Saturday last the strikers, who had been highly excited the day before, were not to be found at their usual places of rendezvous. Nearly all of them had gone to their synagogues. They were engaged in Divine worship. They were at prayer. They were listening to the voice of the rabbi. They were following a custom established by Moses, and kept up through all the ages ever since his time. In the hundreds of garrets, rear halls, and rickety old edifices which are used as synagogues in what is called the "ghetto," on the east side of New York, the Jews on strike celebrated the everlasting name of "JAHVEH" last Saturday forenoon, the holy Sabbath.
"This is Judaism in New York and the world over.
"Lots of workingmen, who are called Christians, go on a strike from time to time, but who is there that ever heard of any body of strikers other than Jews, giving heed to the ceremonies of their religion during the heat of a strike? We are told that nearly all of these Jewish strikers are orthodox, and all wore their hats in the synagogues. Many of them, we are assured, are familiar with the Torah and the Talmud, and can quote Ben Ezra and Maimonides....
"Judaism is in the bones of the Jews, and of all Jews, from the equator to the poles.
"Was there ever any crowd of Presbyterian strikers, or of Baptist, Methodist, or Unitarian strikers, or of Roman Catholic strikers, who made it their business to go to church in a body, for the purpose of engaging in worship and prayer, during a strike? Let us ask Rev. Dr. John Hall, or Bishop Simpson, or that learned and mirthful priest, Father Flattery, not to speak of the eminent Dominican, Father O'Neil, or our three Universalist preachers.
"The Jews of New York, like the Jews of all the rest of the world, believe in Judaism, and are rooted and grounded in it.
"Oh, that we could say that the people who call themselves Christians believe in Christianity and practise it, either at work or when on strike!"
FOOTNOTES:
[122] Page 15.
[123] See page 51.
[124] See note, p. 559.
[125] The officers of this organization were as follows:
_President_: Simon Muhr, Philadelphia.
_Vice Presidents_: Hon. Ferdinand Levy, New York; Rev. Dr. H. W. Schneeberger, Baltimore; Dr. Chas. D. Spivak, Philadelphia.
_Secretary_: Bernard Harris, Philadelphia.
_Treasurer_: Hon. Simon Wolf, Washington, D. C.
_Board of Directors--Philadelphia_: Louis E. Levy, Chas. Hoffman, Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen; _Baltimore_: Jacob J. H. Mitnick, Joseph Eisner, S. L. Auerbach; _New York_: Daniel P. Hays, Dr. Henry M. Leipziger; _Chicago_: Dr. A. P. Kadison, A. Bernstein; _Boston_: David Blaustein; _Pittsburg, Pa._: Wm. Hoffman; _Albany, N. Y._: Louis Aronowitch; _Troy, N. Y._: H. Kuschevsky; _Omaha, Neb._: B. Kohn.
[126] The call was signed by the officers of the Baron de Hirsch Fund as follows:
_President_: Myer S. Isaacs.
_Vice President_: Jacob H. Schiff.
_Treasurer_: Jesse Seligman.
_Honorary Secretary_: Julius Goldman.
_Trustees_: Oscar S. Straus, Henry Rice, and James H. Hoffman, of New York; Mayer Sulzberger, and Wm. B. Hackenburg, of Philadelphia.
_General Agent_: Adolphus S. Solomons, Washington, D. C.
[127] The convention was organized with the following named officers:
_President_: Lewis Seasongood, Cincinnati; _Vice Presidents_: Lazarus Silverman, Chicago, Joseph Fox, New York; _Secretaries_: Adolphus S. Solomon, Washington, and Bernard Harris, Philadelphia.
[128] The Executive Committee thus elected, in addition to the general officers, was composed of representatives of various organizations in different sections of the country, as follows:
_New York_: Henry Rice, Julius Bien, Jacob H. Schiff, Morris Tuska, Ferdinand Levy, Isaac Hamburger, M. Warley Platzek; _Philadelphia_: Simon Muhr, Louis E. Levy; _Baltimore_: Aaron Friedenwald; _Boston_: Jacob Hecht; _Cincinnati_: Julius Freiburg; _Chicago_: Adolph Loeb, Julius Rosenthal; _Peoria, Ill._: Samuel Woolner; _Washington, D. C._: Simon Wolf; _Milwaukee_: Bernard Gross; _St. Louis, Mo._: Marcus Bernheimer; _Portland, Or._: David Solis-Cohen; _Detroit, Mich._: Martin Butzel; _Minneapolis, Minn._: Emanuel Cohen; _Atlanta, Ga._: Aaron Haas; _Galveston, Tex._: Leo. N. Levi; _Memphis, Tenn._: Elias Loewenstein; _Ex-Officio_, Myer S. Isaacs, _New York_.
The Committee organized by electing as Chairman, M. Warley Platzek, of New York, and as Vice Chairman, Julius Freiburg, of Cincinnati, the Secretaries of the General Committee acting in the same capacity on the Executive Committee.
CONCLUSION.
The project of the present volume had contemplated a lesser number of pages than it now includes, but it has been restricted to its present bounds only by eliminating much that was germane to its subject. The grand fabric of Jewish charity, whose broad expanse extends throughout the land, compassing every element of society, responsive to every call of humanity, expressive of every trait of civilization and conducive to every avenue of culture, has been adverted to but incidentally. In the field of philanthropic effort the Jewish citizens of the American Union may unhesitatingly claim to have built for themselves monuments more numerous and larger by far than their proportionate share; in this field the historic spirit of Judaism continues even increasingly to manifest itself. In this field and in this alone the Jewish spirit has been materialistic. Its forces have been directed not to saving souls by a change of creed, but by bettering the conditions of human existence. The great ideals of Judaism, the universal fatherhood of God, the universal brotherhood of men, and the direct responsibility of every human being to the Maker of all, have steadfastly been upheld, but its forces have not been exerted in striving to make good the seeming shortcomings of the Divine nature, but in striving to make good the essential shortcomings of our human nature, by alleviating the distresses arising from the constitution of society and by lessening the sufferings that are inevitably incident to the conditions of life. To this end the American Jewish citizens have organized a widely diversified system of relief for the sick and the needy, and while so doing have not restricted their efforts within denominational bounds, but have opened their doors and stretched out their hands to all humanity. Not alone, however, in dealing with conditions that are inseparable from the social system, but furthermore in dealing with such as are removable, in educating and lifting up those of the community who are in need of fostering care, in furthering the spread of intelligence and in raising the standard of citizenship, the Jewish people have been unceasingly active, and especially so in free America, where, as the foregoing pages have recorded, they have stood from the very beginning "shoulder to shoulder" with their fellow citizens of every creed, in every movement that has made for freedom and for liberty, for culture and for charity. And well they might. To no others of the Old World denizens was the New World more completely new; for no other people has the promise of the Columbian epoch been more completely fulfilled than for the Jews.
And, therefore, more especially while the closing years of the nineteenth century have seen its brilliant promise darkened by a broad shadow of the Middle Ages; while the ghastly tragedy that marked in Spain the opening year of American discovery is being rehearsed in Russia with all the effects of modern aggrandizement, we may not better close this book than with the grand apostrophe of the Columbian year that has been left us by the Jewish poetess, Emma Lazarus:
Thou, two-faced year, mother of Change and Fate, Didst weep when Spain cast forth with flaming sword The children of the prophets of the Lord. Prince, priest and people spurned by zealot hate, Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state, The West refused them and the East abhorred, No anchorage the known world could afford, Close locked was every port, barred every gate. Then smiling, thou unveil'dst, O two-faced year, A virgin world where doors of sunset part, Saying, 'Ho, all who weary, enter here! Here falls each ancient barrier that the art Of race or creed or rank devised, to rear Grim-bulwarked hatred between heart and heart.'
INDEX.
Aboab, Ishac, de Fonseca, 446, 450, 451, 452, 453, 454
Abraham, Lewis, two papers by, 53-66
Accoignes, Moise, 447
Adams, Charles Francis, 91-96
Adams, Hannah, referred to, 462 (note 51)
Adams, Professor Herbert B., paper by, 14-26
Adams, John, 61
Adams, John Quincy, 64
Addenda to Lists of Soldiers, 423
Adler, Dr. Cyrus, referred to, 475 (note 78)
Adler, Rabbi Liebman, 425
Aguilar, Moses Raphael de, 446, 453, 454
Ainsworth, Colonel F. C., referred to, 11
Alabama, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 117-122
Alexander I, of Russia, 533
Alexander II, of Russia, 528, 530, 535, 539, 540
Alexander III, of Russia, 519, 543
Alliance, Jewish, of America, 559, 560
American Committee for Ameliorating the Condition of Russian Refugees, 559, 560
American Party, 552, 553
Antokolski, Russian sculptor, 536
Appel, Alexander M., Sergeant Major, 187
Appleton, William, 63
Arias, Isaac, 465
Arkansas, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 123-124
Argentina, Emigration to, 538, 550
Baltimore Jewish Patriots, 38-40
Bamberger, Dr. Ludwig, 536
Barrios, Don Miguel Levi de, 449, 455, 456
Beaulieu, M. Anatole Leroy, quoted, 515-522
Beecher, Henry Ward, quoted, 439
Belmonte, Benvenida, 464
Benedix, Robert, quoted, 510-511
Benjamin, Judah P., 102
Berndt, Dr. J. D., 440-441
Bismarck, Otto von, quoted, 503
Blaine, James G., letter to John W. Foster, on rights of American Israelites in Russia, 525-527
Bliss, Cornelius N., quoted, 439
Bloom, Nathan, 429
Blumenberg, Leopold, Brevet Brigadier-General, 199-200
Brackenridge, H. M., quoted, 67 (note)
Brewster, Hon. F. Carroll, quoted, 506
Brito, Abraham de, 465
Bromet, H. L., 460
Brothers-in arms, 109-111 Cohen (6), North Carolina, 109 Jonas (5), Mississippi and Illinois, 109 Moses (5), South Carolina, 109 Moses (4), Georgia, 110 Cohen (3), Arkansas, 110 Goldsmith (3), Georgia and South Carolina, 110 Levy (3), Virginia, 110 Moses (3), Alabama, 110 Wenk (5), New York, 111 Feder (3), New York, 111 Levy (4), New York, 111 Emanuel (3), Pennsylvania, 111 Koch (3), Ohio, 111
Bryant, William Cullen, quoted, 509-510
Bunker Hill Monument, 63-64
Bush, Isidor, 429
Bush, Mathias, 13
California, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 125-126
Carey, Henry C., quoted, 554-556
Carmoly, Dr. E., referred to, 456 (note 34), quoted, 460 (note 47)
Carvalho, Isaac, 467
Carvalho, Sebastian, 447
Castanho, Isaac, 450
Catharine II, of Russia, 526, 527
Chase, Miss Kate, 89
Chase, Hon. Salmon P., 89, 97
Chittenden, L. E., 87, 90, article by, 91-97
Civil Life, Jewish Patriotism in, 425-441
Clinton, Sir Henry, 16
Coen, Abraham, 449, 451
Coen, Jacob, 449
Cohen, Abraham, Captain, 244-245
Cohen, Benjamin, 44
Cohen, Dr. Marx E., 374
Cohen, Brothers (six), 374
Cohn, Abraham, Adjutant, 106 (medal of honor); 224-226
Colonies, Jewish Agricultural; in America, 549; in Argentina, 550; in Palestine, 549; in Russia, 533
Colonization, the Jewish, Association, 550
Commission to investigate condition of affairs in Russia, 524-525
Connecticut, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 127
Confederate Army, Jewish Staff Officers in the, 114-115
Confederate Navy, Jewish Officers in the, 116
Continental Armies, Jewish Soldiers in the, 44-52
Cooper, General, 103
Cordoso, Daniel, 482
Coronel, David Senior, 450
Costa, Isaac de, referred to, 449, 451 (note 20), 452 (note 21), 453 (note 25), 458 (note 42), 460 (note 46), 461 (note 50)
Cullum, General George W., referred to, 35
Cummings, Representative Amos J., introduces a resolution about the Jews in Russia, 543
Curtis, George William, quoted, 506-508
Daly, Hon. Charles P., referred to, 33, 41, 444 (note), 446 (note)
D'Angers, David, 62
Daniels, A. C., referred to, 430 (note)
Davidson, Solomon, 125
Davis, Jefferson, 93
Davis, Ex-Judge Noah, quoted, 436-437
De Candolle, Alphonse L. P. Pyrame, quoted, 490-491
Depew, Hon. Chauncey M., quoted on Russian Jews, 562-563
Dexter, Franklin, 64
Dillon, Hon. John F., letter on Russian Jews, 561-562
District of Columbia, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 128
Dyer, Isidor, 440
Ebron, David, Letter to Philip II, 473-176
Einhorn, Dr. David, 425
Einstein, Max, Colonel, 349-350
Eliot, George, quoted, 499-500
Etting, Solomon, 44, 67
Europe, Jews in the Armies of, 485-487
Everett, Edward, 64
Field, Rev. Dr. Henry M., quoted, 494-498
Fish, Hamilton, Secretary of State, letter by him to Consul General Peixotto, of Roumania, 542-543
Florida, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 128
Forsyth, John, Secretary of State, letter by him to David Porter, Minister to Turkey, on outrages on the Jews, 541
Frank, Mayer, Captain, 141
Frankel, Dr. Zachariah, referred to, 447 (note 9), 449 (note 13), 451 (note 20), 456 (note 36), 462 (note 51)
Franklin, Benjamin, 30, 65
Franks, David, 13
Franks, David S., 15, 27-32
Franks, Rebecca, 27
Frederic, Harold, referred to, 525
Frederick III, of Germany, 535
Friedenwald, Dr. Herbert, referred to, 25, 27, 30
Friedheim, Herman, 191
Friedman, Max, Colonel, 351
Fuerst, Dr. Julius, 456 (note 34)
Gans, Isaac (medal of honor), 107
Garfield, President James Abram, 429
Georgia, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 129-135
Gibbons, Cardinal, about the Russian Jews, 560
Goldsmid, Sir Francis H., referred to, 483
Goldsmith, M., 103, 104
Gordon, General J. B., referred to, 11
Gradis Family, enterprise and influence of, in the West Indies and during the Canadian Wars, 476-482
Grant, General U.S., referred to, 6, 429, 430; official paper by, 542
Graetz, Professor Dr. H., quoted, 447, 451, 452, 477 (notes 79 and 80), 480 (notes 81 and 82)
Gratz, Barnard, 13
Gratz, Michael, 13
Greenebaum, Henry, 425
Greenebaum, Michael, 425-426
Greenhut, Joseph B., Captain, sketch of and address by, 143-149
Gregoire, Abbé, 482
Gross, Charles, Ph.D., referred to, 442 (note)
Grunwalt, Abraham (medal of honor), 107
Hackenburg, William B., referred to, 6
Hahn, Dr. A., referred to, 449 (note 13), 450, 452, 453 (note 25), 461 (note 50), 466 (note 59)
Hancock, John, 63
Harby, Isaac, 67
Harper, E. B., quoted, 438
Hart, Abraham, Captain and Brigade Adjutant-General, 354-355
Hart, Isaac, 33-34
Hart, Jacob, 38
Heilprin, Michael, 425
Heller, Henry (medal of honor), 106
Hendricks, Herman, 35
Herrera, Abraham Cohen, 450
Hewitt, Hon. Abram S., quoted, 438, 505-506
Hirsch, Baron Maurice de, 535, 549
Hirsch, Baron de, Trust, in the United States, 559
Historical Society, American Jewish, referred to 430 (note)
Hollander, Dr. J. H., annotations by, 14-26
Horwitz, Dr. James, 425
Howe, General William, 41, 46
Humboldt, Alexander Von, quoted, 490
Hyacinthe, Père, quoted, 492-493
Hyneman, Elias Leon, Sergeant, sketch of, 356-357
Illinois, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 136-171
Immigration, Historical and Economic Aspects of, 544-564; from British Isles, 557; Chinese, 551-552; German, 548, 557; Polish, 547; Report of Commissioners on, 524, 529; Sephardic-Jewish, 548; Slavic-Jewish, 519, 548
Indiana, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 172-186
Iowa, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 187
Isaacs, Rev. Samuel M., 425
Jacobs, Benjamin, 26
Jacobs, Joseph, 13
Jamaica, Civil and Military Status of the Jews in, 482-484
Jamaica, List of Jews appointed to Civil and Military office since the Act of 1831 in, 483-484
James, Thomas L., ex-Postmaster General, quoted, 435-436
Jastrow, Professor Morris, Jr., referred to, 27
Jay, John, 30
Jefferson, Thomas, 59-60; statute of, 62-63, 65
Joachimsen, Philip J., Brevet-Brigadier-General, 262-263
Josephsen, Manuel, 58
Jost, Dr. I. M., referred to, 453
Judah, Samuel, 34
Kansas, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 188
Karpeles, Leopold, Color-Sergeant, 106 (medal of honor), 204-206
Kayserling, Dr. M., referred to, 442, 446 (note), 449 (note 14), 450 (note 17), 451 (note 20), 453 (note 24), 454 (note 26), 455 (notes 28 and 32), 457 (note 42), 459 (note 44), 461 (note 49), 462 (note 52), 463 (notes 53 and 54), 464 (note 55), 465 (note 56), 466 (note 58), 467 (note 60), 468 (note 61), 473 (note 75), 474 (note 77)
Kentucky, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 188-189
Knefler, Frederick, Brigadier-General, 179
Know-Nothing Party, 552, 553, 557
Koenen, H. J., referred to, 443 (note), 444 (note), 462, 453 (note 24), 454 (notes 26 and 27), 455 (notes 28 and 31), 456, 457 (notes 37, 38, 39, 40, and 41), 458 (note 43), 460 (note 46), 462 (note 52), 463 (note 53), 464 (notes 55 and 56), 465 (note 58), 467 (note 60), 468 (note 61), 469 (note 64), 470 (notes 65 and 67), 471 (notes 68 and 69), 483 (note 84)
Kohler, Max J., referred to, 11; article by, 27-43, 430 (note)
Kohn, Abraham, 427-428
Kohut, Dr. Adolph, quoted, 486 (note)
Kohut, George A., referred to, 11, 442; article by, 443-484
Kosciuszko, General, 16, 547
Kossuth, Louis, 485, 486
Labatt, David Cohen, Captain, 195
La Fatte, Gabriel de, 469
Lafayette, General de, 38, 39
Laguna, Daniel Israel Lopez, referred to, 464 (note 55)
Lasalle, Ferdinand, 536
Lasker, Eduard, 536
Latin-American Settlements, Jews in, 442
Lawrence Amos, 63, 64
Lazarus, Emma, her poem, "1492" cited, 566
Leeser, Rev. Isaac, article quoted, 40, 485-486 (note)
_Le Monde_, quoted, 492-494
Levi, Leo N., 100
Levis, Chevalier de, 32-33
Levy, Benjamin, 13-26
Levy, Benjamin, 270-271
Levy, Benjamin B. (medal of honor), 106
Levy, Eugene H., referred to, 11
Levy, Hayman, 34
Levy, Hyman, Jr., 13
Levy, Samson, 13
Levy, Uriah Phillips, Commander, 62, 63, 81, 84
Levy, father and three sons, sketches, 275-276
Lichtenstein, L., referred to, 11
Lincoln, President Abraham, 87, 107, 427, 429
Lopez, Aaron, 33
Louisiana, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 190-199
Loyalty, Sketches of Jewish, etc., 443-484
Luria, Albert (Moses), Lieutenant, 303
Lyon, General, referred to, 7
Lyon, Samuel, 26
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, quoted, 500-502
Mack, Henry, 429
Madison, President James, 17, 18 (note), 25, 60
Maine, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 199
Malone, Rev. Sylvester, letter on Russian Jews, 563
Marlon, General, 26
Markens, Isaac, referred to, 11, 39, 430 (note)
Marquand, Henry G., quoted, 438
Marx, Karl, 536
Maryland, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 199-200
Massachusetts, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 201-209
Maurice of Nassau, Count, 445, 448, 449 (note 15), 451
Mayer, Daniel, Captain, letter to, 395
Mayer, Leopold, 425
Mayer, William, General, 284
McDougall, General, 16
McKinley, Governor William, quoted, 427-428
Medals of Honor, Jews who received, 106-108
Menken, Nathan D., Captain, 364
Mercado, Dr. Abraham de, 450
Mexican War, Jewish Soldiers in the, 72-75
Michelbacher, Rev. M., 102, 103
Michigan, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 209-214
Mississippi, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 214-220
Missouri, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 220-223
Mohammedan Outrages on the Jews, 541
Montefiore, Sir Moses, 534, 549
Morais, the Rev. Dr. Sabato, 425
Morais, Henry S., referred to, 11, 20 (note 6), 430 (note)
Mordecai, Alfred, Major, 78-79
Mordecai, Alfred, Jr., Colonel, 79
Mordecai, Moses, 13
Morris, Robert, 17, 22, 30, 38
Morton, Governor Marcus, 64
Morwitz, Dr. Edward, 425
Moses, Isaac, 26
Moses, Isaac, Adjutant-General, 279
Moses, Israel, Lieutenant-Colonel, 74, 281
Moses, Jacob, 34
Moses, Five Brothers, 378
Mucate, Jahacob, 450
Muhr, Simon, 441
Myers, Rev. E. M., referred to, 453, 469 (note 63)
Myers, Isaac, 44
Myers, Jacob, 34
Myers, Nathan, 35
Naar, Moses, 468, 469
Napoleon III, 88
Nassy, David, 454, 463, 465, 466, 468
Nassy, Isaac, 469
Nassy, Samuel, 454-459
Nations, Israel Among the, 515-522
Navy, Jews in the United States, 81-86
Negro Revolts, Suppression of, by the Jews of Surinam (1690-1772), 462-473
Netscher, Pieter Marinus, 444 (note 2), 445 (note 4), 446 (note 5), 447, 448
Nevada, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 224
New Hampshire, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 224-226
New Jersey, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 226-236
Newman, Leopold, Lieutenant-Colonel and Brigadier-General, 285
New Mexico, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 236
New York, Jewish Patriots, 34-35, 38
New York, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 236-301
Nicholas I, of Russia, 533, 540
Nicholas II, of Russia, 519
Noah, Manuel Mordecai, 26, 35
Noah, Mordecai M., 14, 59, 60
Noah, Samuel, 35-38
Non-Importation Resolutions, Signers of, 13
North Carolina, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 301-305
Obranski, David (medal of honor), 106
Official dispatch of Ambassador White to Secretary of State, Gresham, 527-540
Ohio, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 305-344
Osterman, Rosanna, 440
Pale, the Russian-Jewish, 523, 528, 548, 550
Palmer, John W., referred to, 39
Patriots aided by Hyam Solomon, 17
Peixotto, Hon. Benjamin Franklin, 428, 542
Pennsylvania, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 344-372
People, The Jewish, before the World, 488-522
Pereira, Manuel, 465
Peter the Great, 539
Phillips, Miss Ellen, 440
Phillips, Henry M., 440
Phillips, Jonas, 34
Pinto, Isaac, 452
Polack, Cushman, 41
Porter, General Horace, 437
Powderly, Terrence V., quoted, 511-512
Preble, Rear Admiral George Henry, quoted, 426-427
Pulaski, General, 15, 547
Question, The Jewish, quotation, 512-514
Rabbi, Jacob, 448
Randolph, Edmund, 18 (note)
Reese, Michael, 440
Regular Army, Jews in the United States, 76-80
Religious Liberty, Statue, 65-66
Rhode Island, a List of Jewish Soldiers from, 372
Rosecrans, General, referred to, 7
Rothschild, Baron Edmond de, 549
Rothschild, Baron James de, 534
Rothschild, Baron Nathan de, 534
Roumania's Oppression of the Jews, 542
Rudelson, S. J., referred to, 472
Russia, Instances of foreign Jews who were maltreated in, or expelled from, 525, 526, 529, 530, 531
Russia's Crime Against the Jews and Civilization, 523-543
Russian Jewish Refugees in America, 544-564
Sachs, Max, Lieutenant, 184
Salomon, Edward S., Brigadier-General, a Sketch, etc., 164-170, 425
Salomon, Haym, 13, 14-26, 39, 43, 87, 439, 547
Salomon, Haym M., 15, 20 (note), 21 (note), 23, 24, 25, 39
Sarfati, Joshua, 453
Schurz, Hon. Carl, quoted, 165, 430-435, 439, 503-505
Scott, General Winfield, 36
Seddon, Mr., 103
Seixas, David G., 71
Seixas, Isaac, 34
Seixas, Moses, 56
Seligman, Jesse, tributes to, 430-439
Seligman, Joseph, 430
Seligman, Professor, 537
Sheftall, Levi, 54
Sheftall, Mordecai, 40-43
Sheftall, Sheftall, 41
Sherman, General, William T., referred to, 6
Sigel, General Franz, 487
Snowberger, Albert Leopold, a sketch, etc., 369
Sola, Rev. Meldola de, 27
Soldiers named in Introduction, 2-5
Solomons, Hon. Adolphus S., 429
South Carolina Jewish Patriots, 40
South Carolina, a List of Jewish Soldiers from, 372-381
Sparks, Jared, 15, 54
Spiegel, Marcus M., Colonel, 340
Stahel, General J., letters by, 99, 486
Stanton, Hon. Edwin M., 167
Statistical, 424
Steinschneider, Dr. M., referred to, 456 (note 34)
Story, Joseph, 64
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, quoted, 499
Straus, Hon. Oscar S., referred to, 450 (note 16)
Sumner, Hon. Charles, 62
Sumner, Professor, 22 (note)
_Sun_, New York, about the Jews, 563-564
Surinam, defense of the Jews in, against the French, in 1689 and 1712, 459
Swift, General Joseph G., 36
Texas, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 384-388
Touro, Judah, 63, 64, 71, 439-440, 534
Ullman, Captain, 371
Unclassified List of Soldiers in Civil War, 410-422
Union Army, Jewish Staff Officers in the, 112-113
United Hebrew Charities, of New York, 560
Vale, Fernando, 447
Valentine, Jacob, Captain, 380-381
Vermont, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 388
Virginia, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 389-394
Vogt, Professor Carl, quoted, 491
Wallace, Mackenzie, 533, 538
War of 1812, Jewish Soldiers in the, 67-72
Washington, President George, 16, 23, 26, 46, 63 Correspondence between him and Hebrew Citizens, 61-65
Washington Territory, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 394
Watson, Robert G., referred to, 444-445, 446 (note)
Waul, General T. N., letter by, 100-101
Weber, J. B., Chairman of Commission on Immigration, 524, 525, 529
Webster, Daniel, 64
Wertheimer, Edwin, Captain, 299
West Virgina, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 395
Wheaton, Henry, letter by, 17 (note)
White, Andrew D., official dispatch to Secretary of State, Gresham, 527-540
Wisconsin, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 396-409
Wolf, Simon, 8, 11, 20 (note), 22 (note), 66 (note), 89, 90, 99, 428-429; letters to, 486, 487, 542
Wolkonsky, Prince Sergius, 536
Wood, William P., a letter by, 200
Worthington, Colonel W. G., 67 (note)
Wyoming Territory, List of Jewish Soldiers from, 394
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Edited by LOUIS EDWARD LEVY
This timely work on a timely topic, called forth by recent magazine discussions regarding the position of Jewish citizens as patriots and as soldiers, contains an alphabetical register and numerous detailed notices of American citizens of the Jewish faith who have been enrolled in the armies of the country from the earliest period of American history to the present time, including those in the Confederate armies during the War for the Union.
In elucidation of this subject there are included in this volume, besides a prefatory introduction by the author, a number of historical papers on the part taken by American Jews in the upbuilding of this Republic, and a special contribution on the same subject in relation to the South American Countries, the West Indies and Canada. The book furthermore contains a carefully collated series of articles, discussions and letters bearing upon the question at issue, from eminent Christian writers and publicists of Europe and America, and a brief but comprehensive review of the subject of the Russian Jewish immigrants.
The various matters are successively prefaced with introductory references by the editor, and the book affords a thorough and complete refutation of the falsities and misstatements regarding Jewish citizenship which have been put forth from time to time through ignorance, bigotry or selfish interest.
This work has been undertaken by the author in response to suggestions arising out of recently published contentions on this subject, and THE NET PROFITS OF ITS SALE ARE DEVOTED WHOLLY AND EXCLUSIVELY TO THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE HEBREW ORPHAN'S HOME, ESTABLISHED IN ATLANTA, GA., under the auspices of the Order of B'nai B'rith, of which Mr. Wolf is President.
_The work contains 592 pages large octavo, bound in cloth, blue back and gray sides, and is offered at the low price of $2.00 per copy._
_For sale by all booksellers._
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Obras de Raimundo Cabrera
CUBA Y SUS JUECES
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Ilustrada con 91 Grabados en linea, de retratos y edificios, y con 16 grandes retratos foto-autoglyficos. 344 paginas. $1.80
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Obra de Rafael Montoro
DIPUTADO A CORTES, 1878-1893
Discursos Politicos y Parlamentarios, Informes y Disertaciones. Grande 8vo. 634 paginas, con retrato, lujosamente impresa. $2.50
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious errors of punctuation and diacritics repaired.
The lists of names have not been changed even when they are not in lexicographic order.
Hyphen removed: fellow[-]men (pp. 63, 467), land[-]owner (p. 468), law[-]giver (p. 493), re[-]organized (p. 242), re[-]inforced (P. 37), Sabbath[-]day (p. 460), Sharp[-]shooters (p. 215).
Hyphen added: co[-]religionists (pp. 445, 446, 454, 536).
Both "battlefield" and "battle-field" appear and have not been changed.
P. 7: abusing the privilige -> abusing the privilege.
P. 13: a succint statement -> a succinct statement.
P. 20fn: nothwithstanding -> notwithstanding.
P. 32: bids fair to be perpetuatad -> bids fair to be perpetuated.
P. 38: April 18, 1871 -> April 18, 1781.
P. 42: Commitee on Claims -> Committee on Claims.
Pp. 45 (twice), 130, 227, 245, 337: In unit designations, 3rd -> 3d.
P. 46: Subsistance and Support -> Subsistence and Support.
Pp. 48, 388: aid-de-camp -> aide-de-camp.
P. 58: throught the events -> throughout the events.
P. 61: generosity ond good breeding -> generosity and good breeding.
P. 63: Levy famliy -> Levy family.
P. 79: 1st Lieutant George J. Newgarden -> 1st Lieutenant George J. Newgarden.
P. 91: cabable of great speed -> capable of great speed.
P. 92: Confaderate ports -> Confederate ports.
P. 95: especicially as communication -> especially as communication.
P. 95: the registed were required -> the registered were required.
P. 101: atttribute suited to the soldier -> attribute suited to the soldier.
P. 104: businesss of war -> business of war.
P. 107 (twice): New Hamshire -> New Hampshire.
P. 107: he was addresesd -> he was addressed.
P. 107: Shiloh, Tennesee > Shiloh, Tennessee.
P. 108: apppointed escort -> appointed escort.
P. 115: assigneds to duty -> assigned to duty.
P. 120: 1st Artilery -> 1st Artillery.
P. 122: 2nd Infantyy -> 2nd Infantry.
P. 142: Goldsmith, Geroge -> Goldsmith, George.
P. 143: Goldsmith, Beujamin -> Goldsmith, Benjamin.
P. 147: Cemtery Hill -> Cemetery Hill.
P. 156: Leopold, Wiliam 8th Cavalry -> Leopold, William 8th Cavalry.
P. 164: Major Saloman ultimately became Colonel -> Major Salomon ultimately became Colonel.
P. 166: Respecfully forwarded -> Respectfully forwarded.
P. 166: Lieutenant Colonel Solomon has won the good opinion -> Lieutenant Colonel Salomon has won the good opinion.
P. 168: thirteeenth day of March -> thirteenth day of March.
P. 177: 86nd Infantry -> 82nd Infantry.
P. 185: Lilled at Richmond, Kentucky -> Killed at Richmond, Kentucky.
P. 246: Davis, Benjamim -> Davis, Benjamin.
P. 299: Weil, Josfph -> Weil, Joseph.
P. 322: Klein, Franx 82nd Infantry -> Klein, Frank 82nd Infantry.
P. 337: Schwarz, Adodph -> Schwarz, Adolph.
P. 367: Rowland, Adolphus Major 5th Cavarlry -> Rowland, Adolphus Major 5th Cavalry.
P. 373: Murfreesboro, Tennnessee -> Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
P. 374: close of the the war -> close of the war.
P. 386: Gains' farm -> Gaines' farm.
P. 386: 2nd C2valry -> 2nd Cavalry.
P. 424: North Corolina -> North Carolina.
P. 428: Ottowa -> Ottawa.
P. 428: Mr. Pexiotto was selected as Consul -> Mr. Peixotto was selected as Consul.
P. 429: Cincinnatti -> Cincinnati.
P. 429: Fort Sumtner -> Fort Sumter.
P. 430fn: Eminent Isralites -> Eminent Israelites.
P. 432: He never fargot -> He never forgot.
P. 432: obstrusive flashing -> obtrusive flashing.
P. 436: happy reminisences -> happy reminiscences.
P. 448: chronicle the the timely intervention -> chronicle the timely intervention.
P. 458: took care to harrass them -> took care to harass them.
P. 459: brave resistence -> brave resistance.
P. 465: afer his above detailed victory -> after his above detailed victory.
P. 468: parly in command of -> partly in command of.
P. 469: Nassy himsely -> Nassy himself.
P. 473: if his abilities -> of his abilities.
P. 473fn: soon in the orginal -> soon in the original.
P. 479: the goverment defrayed -> the government defrayed.
P. 486fn: liberty and eqality -> liberty and equality.
P. 488: public villifications -> public vilifications.
P. 490: energies of yonr intellect -> energies of your intellect.
P. 491: political enfanchisement -> political enfranchisement.
P. 491: Irael's bosom -> Israel's bosom.
P. 491: Republicans by virture -> Republicans by virtue.
P. 492: family hiearchy -> family hierarchy.
P. 494: Jean-Jaques Rousseau -> Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
P. 495: trom the head of the State -> from the head of the State.
P. 496: administration of jusiice -> administration of justice.
P. 498: If thou afflct -> If thou afflict.
P. 499: persecution aud oppression -> persecution and oppression.
P. 504: class of citizens excells -> class of citizens excels.
P. 505: anti-Semic -> anti-Semitic.
P. 509: ihe glowing affection -> the glowing affection.
P. 511: morality and and sublime virtues -> morality and sublime virtues.
P. 512: voicc of greed -> voice of greed.
P. 512: Narbornne -> Narbonne.
Pp. 527, 531: St. Petersburgh -> St. Petersburg.
P. 532: instructon in the Talmud -> instruction in the Talmud.
P. 535: wtth the foregoing -> with the foregoing.
P. 538: control of Israelities -> control of Israelites.
P. 539: Great Britian -> Great Britain.
P. 540: representatations by such philanthropists -> representations by such philanthropists.
P. 541: respeatedly been manifested -> repeatedly been manifested.
P. 541: expicit and minute instructions -> explicit and minute instructions.
P. 542: forbids any oppresion -> forbids any oppression.
P. 547: Asiastic herdsman -> Asiatic herdsman.
P. 547: decendants of the first -> descendants of the first.
P. 547: preceeding pages -> preceding pages.
P. 551: It would be superflous -> It would be superfluous.
P. 552: make it np -> make it up.
P. 554: Let us for a momemt -> Let us for a moment.
P. 554: pursuaded to study -> persuaded to study.
P. 555: steadly employed -> steadily employed.
P. 557: been fullfilled -> been fulfilled.
P. 560: revelant to our present subject -> relevant to our present subject.
P. 561: Baron de Hirsh -> Baron de Hirsch.
P. 568: refered to -> referred to.
P. 571: Brevet-Brigidier-General -> Brevet-Brigadier-General.
P. 572: Loyalty, Sketches ef -> Loyalty, Sketches of.
P. 575: named in Introdnction -> named in Introduction.
P. 576: Texas .. 382-283 -> Texas ... 384-388.
Endpaper for "The Dinner Horn": seperate -> separate.
Endpaper for "Around the World": accurracy -> accuracy.
Endpaper for "Obra de Rafael Montoro": lujosamenta -> lujosamente.
* * * * *
Footnotes [30]-[104] contain extensive quotes in Dutch from H. J. Koenen. _Geschiedenis der Joden in Nederland_. The text reflects the scan, except for the following corrections that were made on the advice of native speakers of the language. Nevertheless, additional errors may remain, either because of errors made by the author in copying from the source, or because of decisions not to change what may be archaic spelling and grammar.
[30] dat het den Joden voortan -> dat het den Joden voortaan.
[33] on qui récemment y avaient été attirés -> ou qui récemment y avaient été attirés.
[39] eigenschappe -> eigenschappen.
[39] ongelookige -> ongelukkige.
[39] de Hollanders onstaan -> de Hollanders ontstaan.
[42] Frankfort o. M. -> Frankfort a. M.
[69] menigvaldige feestdagen -> menigvuldige feestdagen.
[72] hij goedvond de nieuw wereld -> hij goedvond de nieuwe wereld.
[78] p. 294-495 -> p. 294-295.
[78] dat ire opkomende welvaart -> dat die opkomende welvaart.
[78] en trachte de rivier Commawine -> en trachtte de rivier Commawine.
[81] om up hunne -> om op hunne.
[82] dan eenmaal net goed gevolgdan -> dan eenmaal met goed gevolg.
[82] een belankrijken post -> een belangrijken post.
[85] fierlijke -> sierlijke.
[87] standen de Negers -> stonden de Negers.
[87] vermoorden hunnen meester -> en vermoorden hunnen meester.
[87] zeven-een-veer-tig -> zeven-en-veertig.
[87] (three times) Jeder -> Iedere.
[87] elk gewapende Neger -> elke gewapende Neger.
[89, 93] Kuenen -> Koenen.
[89] onvermoeide Israelit -> onvermoeide Israeliet.
[89] viertien krijgssgevangenen -> veertien krijgsgevangenen.
[89] een hij, door gebrek aan de noodige -> en hij, door gebrek aan de noodige.
[89] neemt op zich om terug de keeren -> neemt op zich om terug te keeren.
[89] ven deen Raad af te wachten -> van den Raad af te wachten.
[90] en nieuw gevaar -> een nieuw gevaar.
[93] de blanken zich nog stande -> de blanken zich nog staande.
[93] groote dapperheid aan een dag -> groote dapperheid aan den dag.
[93] deze wreede barmhartigkeid -> deze wreede barmhartigheid.
[102] dinhuldig -> inhuldig.
[103] Gezongen door den Erwaarden -> Gezongen door den Eerwaarden.