Preface.

Introduction.

Part I. The Spanish and Portuguese Period.

Chapter I. The Participation of Jews in the Discovery of the New World.

Chapter II. Early Jewish Martyrs under Spanish Rule in the New World.

Chapter III. Victims of the Inquisition in Mexico and in Peru.

Chapter IV. Marranos in the Portuguese Colonies.

Part II. The Dutch and English Colonial Period.

Chapter V. The Short-lived Dominion of the Dutch Over Brazil.

Chapter VI. Recife: The First Jewish Community in the New World.

Chapter VII. The Jews in Surinam or Dutch Guiana.

Chapter VIII. The Dutch and English West Indies.

Chapter IX. New Amsterdam and New York.

Chapter X. New England and the Other English Colonies.

Part III. The Revolution and the Period of Expansion.

Chapter XI. The Religious Aspect of the War of Independence.

Chapter XII. The Participation of Jews in the War of the Revolution.

Chapter XIII. The Decline of Newport; Washington and the Jews.

Chapter XIV. Other Communities in the First Periods of Independence.

Chapter XV. The Question of Religious Liberty in Virginia and in North Carolina.

Chapter XVI. The War of 1812 and the Removal of Jewish Disabilities in Maryland.

Chapter XVII. Mordecai Manuel Noah and His Territorialist-zionistic Plans.

Part IV. The Second or German Period of Immigration.

Chapter XVIII. The First Communities in the Mississippi Valley.

Chapter XIX. New Settlements in the Middle West and on the Pacific Coast.

Chapter XX. The Jews in the Early History of Texas. The Mexican War.

Chapter XXI. The Religious Reform Movement.

Chapter XXII. Conservative Judaism and Its Stand Against Reform.

Chapter XXIII. Intervention in Damascus. The Struggle Against Swiss Discrimination.

Part V. The Civil War and the Formative Period.

Chapter XXIV. The Discussion About Slavery. Lincoln and the Jews.

Chapter XXV. Participation of Jews in the Civil War. Judah P. Benjamin.

Chapter XXVI. Distinguished Services of Jews on Both Sides of the Struggle.

Chapter XXVII. The Formative Period After the Civil War.

Chapter XXVIII. New Synagogues and Temples. Immigration from Russia Prior to 1880.

Part VI. The Third or Russian Period of Immigration.

Chapter XXIX. The Influx After the Anti-jewish Riots in Russia in 1881.

Chapter XXX. Communal and Religious Activities among the New Comers.

Chapter XXXI. New Communal and Intellectual Activities.

Chapter XXXII. The Labor Movement and New Literary Activities.

Chapter XXXIII. Relations with Russia. The Passport Question.

Chapter XXXIV. Legislation About Immigration. Sunday Laws and Their Enforcement.

Chapter XXXV. End of the Century. The Spanish-American War. The Dreyfus Affair. Zionism.

Part VII. The Twentieth Century. Present Conditions.

Chapter XXXVI. Synagogues and Institutions. The Encyclopedia. Roumania and the Roumanian Note.

Chapter XXXVII. Help for the Victims of the Russian Massacres in 1903 and 1905. Other Proofs of Sympathy.

Chapter XXXVIII. The American-Jewish Committee. Educational Institutions and Federations.

Chapter XXXIX. The Jews in the Dominion of Canada.

Chapter XL. Jews in South America, Mexico and Cuba.

Chapter XLI. Men of Eminence in the Arts, Sciences and the Professions.

Chapter XLII. Literature: Hebrew and English. Periodicals.

Chapter XLIII. Yiddish Literature, Drama and the Press.

Chapter XLIV. Present Conditions. The Number and the Dispersion of Jews in America. Conclusion.

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There were less than ten thousand Jews in the New World three centuries after its discovery, and about two-thirds of them lived in the West Indies and in Surinam or Dutch Guiana in South America. While the communities in those far-away places are now larger in membership than they were at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, their comparative importance is much diminished. The two or three thousand Jews who lived in North America or in the United States one hundred years ago have, on the other hand, increased to nearly as many millions, the bulk of them having come in the last three or four decades. On this account neither our conditions nor our problems can be thoroughly understood without the consideration of the actual present. The plan of other works of this kind, to devote only a short concluding chapter to the present time, or to leave it altogether for the future historian, could therefore not be followed in this work. The story would be less than half told, if attention were not paid to contemporary history.

The chief aim of the work—the first of its kind in this complete form—being to reach the ordinary reader who is interested in Jewish matters in a general way, original investigations and learned disquisitions were avoided, and it was not deemed advisable to overburden the book with too many notes or to provide a bibliographical apparatus. The plan and scope of the work are self evident; it was inevitable that a disproportionately large part should be devoted to the United States. The continuity of Jewish history is made possible only by the preservation of our identity as a religious community; local history really begins with the formation of a congregation. Each of the successive strata of immigration was originally represented by its own synagogues, and when the struggle to gain a foothold or to remove disabilities was over, communal activity was the only one which could properly be described as Jewish. Economic growth could have been entirely neglected, despite the present day tendency to consider every possible problem from the standpoint of economics. But the material well-being of the Jews of the earlier periods was an important factor in the preparation for the reception and easy absorption of the larger masses which came later, and this gives wealth a meaning which, in the hands of people who are less responsible for one another than Jews, it does not possess. The Marrano of the Seventeenth or the Eighteenth Century who brought here riches far in excess of what he found among the inhabitants in the places where he settled, would probably not have been admitted if he came as a poor immigrant, and his merit as a pioneer of trade and industry interests us because he assisted to make this country a place where hosts of men can come and find work to do. Without this only a small number could enjoy the liberty and equality which an enlightened republic vouchsafes to every newcomer without distinction of race or creed.

Still these absorbingly interesting early periods had to be passed over briefly, despite the wealth of available material, to keep within the bounds of a single volume, and to be able to carry out the plan of including in the narrative a comprehensive view of the near past and the present. While no excuse is necessary for making the latter part of the work longer than the earlier, though in most works the inequality is the other way, the author regrets the scarcity of available sources for the history of the Jewish immigration from Slavic countries other than Russia. There were times when German Jewish historians were reproached with neglecting the Jews of Russia. In those times there was a scarcity of necessary “Vorarbeiten” or preparation of material for the history of the Jews of that Empire. To-day, as far as the history of the Jewish immigrant in America is concerned, the scarcity is still greater as far as it concerns the Jews who came from Austria and Roumania.

The principal sources which were utilized in the preparation of this work are: The Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society (20 vols., 1893–1911), which are referred to as “Publications”; The Jewish Encyclopedia (Funk and Wagnalls, 12 vols., 1901–6); The Settlement of the Jews in North America, by Judge Charles P. Daly, edited by Max J. Kohler (New York, 1893), often referred to as “Daly”; The Hebrews in America, by Isaac Markens (New York, 1888); The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen, by the Hon. Simon Wolf, edited by Louis Edward Levy (Philadelphia, 1895). Other works, like Dr. Kayserling’s Christopher Columbus, Mr. Pierce Butler’s Judah P. Benjamin (of the American Crisis Biographies, Philadelphia, 1906) and the Rev. Henry S. Morais’ Jews of Philadelphia, were also drawn upon for much valuable material which they made accessible. All of these works were used to a larger extent than is indicated by the references or foot-notes, and my indebtedness to them is herewith gratefully acknowledged.

Where biographical dates are given after the name of a person born in a foreign country, the date of arrival in the New World is often fully as important as that of birth or death. This date is indicated in the text by an a., which stands for arrived, as b. stands for born and d. for died.

In conclusion I gladly record my obligation to Mr. Abraham S. Freidus of the New York Public Library for aid in the gathering of material; to Mr. Isaiah Gamble for re-reading of the proofs; to Mr. Samuel Vaisberg for seeing the work through the press, and to my sister, Bertha Wiernik, for assistance in the preparation of the index.

P. W., New York, July, 1912.

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The Jew of Barcelona who has navigated the whole known world—Judah Cresques, “the Map Jew,” as director of the Academy of Navigation which was founded by Prince Henry the Navigator—One Jewish astronomer advises the King of Portugal to reject the plans of Columbus—Zacuto as one of the first influential men in Spain to encourage the discoverer of the New World—Abravanel, Senior and the Marranos Santangel and Sanchez who assisted Columbus—The voyage of discovery begun a day after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain—Luis de Torres and other Jews who went with Columbus—America discovered on “Hosannah Rabbah”—The Indians as the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel—Money taken from the Jews to defray the expenditure of the second voyage of Columbus—Vasco da Gama and the Jew Gaspar—Scrolls of the Thorah from Portugal sold in Cochin—Alphonse d’Albuquerque’s interpreter who returned to Judaism.

In the days when Church and State were one and indissoluble, and when all large national enterprises, such as wars or the search for new dominions by means of discovery, were undertaken avowedly in the name and for the glory of the Catholic religion, it could not have been expected that governments will make an effort to protect international trade as long as it was in Jewish hands. We must therefore go as far back as to the first half of the 14th century to find a record of Jews who went to sea on their own account in an independent way. According to the great authority on the subject of this chapter (Dr. M. Kayserling, “Christopher Columbus and the participation of the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese Discoveries,” English translation by the late Prof. Charles Gross of Harvard University) Jaime III., the last king of Mallorca, testified in 1334 that Juceff Faquin, a Jew of Barcelona, “has navigated the whole then known world.” About a century later we find again a Jew prominently identified with navigation; but in this instance he is a scientific teacher, in the employ of an energetic prince who considered navigation as a national project of the greatest moment. Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (1394–1460), who helped his father to capture Ceuta, in North Africa, and there “obtained information from Jewish travellers concerning the south coast of Guinea and the interior of Africa”, established a naval academy or school of navigation at the Villa do Iffante or Sagres, a seaport town which he caused to be built. He appointed as its director Mestre Jaime of Mallorca whose real name was Jafuda (Judah) Cresques, the son of Abraham Cresques of Palma, the capital of Mallorca. Jafuda was known as “the Map Jew,” and a map which he prepared for King Juan I. of Aragon and was presented by the latter to the King of France, is preserved in the National Library of Paris.2 He became the teacher of the Portuguese in the art of navigation as well as in the manufacture of nautical instruments and maps. In this work he had no superior in his day.

While this Jewish scholar helped the Portuguese to many notable achievements in their daring voyages, another one, at a later period, was almost the direct cause of their being overtaken by the Spaniards in the race for new discoveries. For it was Joseph Vecinho, physician to King João, of Portugal, considered by the high court functionaries to be the greatest authority in nautical matters, who influenced the King to reject the plan submitted by Christopher Columbus (1446?–1506), and thereby caused the latter to leave Portugal for Spain in 1484.

Columbus came to Spain when Ferdinand and Isabella, with the aid of the newly introduced Inquisition, were despoiling the wealthy Marranos, who were burned at the stake in large numbers. The last war with the Moors had already begun.

Another and more famous Jewish scholar was to make amends for whatever suffering was caused to the great discoverer by Vecincho’s fatal advice. Abraham Ben Samuel Zacuto, who was born in Salamanca, Spain, about the middle of the 15th century and died an exile in Turkey after 1510, was famous as an astronomer and mathematician, and in his capacity as one of the leading professors in the university of his native city was formerly the teacher of the above named Vecinho. He was more discerning than his pupil, and when he learned to know Columbus, soon after the latter’s arrival in Spain, he encouraged him personally and also gave him his almanacs and astronomical tables, which were a great help in the voyage of discovery. Zacuto was among the first influential men in Spain to favor the plans of Columbus, and his favorable report caused Ferdinand and Isabella to take him into their service in 1487. The explorer was then ordered to proceed to Malaga, which was captured several weeks before, and there made the acquaintance of the two most prominent Jews of Spain in that time—the chief farmer of taxes, Abraham Senior, and Don Isaac Abravanel. These two men were provisioning the Spanish armies which operated against the Moors, and were in high favor at Court. Abravanel was one of the first to render financial assistance to Columbus.

Louis de Santangel and other Marranos interposed in favor of Columbus when he was about to go to France in January, 1492, because Ferdinand refused to make him Viceroy and Life-Governor of all the lands which he might discover. Santangel’s pleadings with Isabella were especially effective, and when the question of funds remained the only obstacle to be overcome, he who was saved from the stake by the King’s grace at the time when several other members of the Santangel family perished, advanced a loan of seventeen thousand florins—nearly five million maravedis—to finance the entire project. Account books in which the transfer of money from Santangel to Columbus, through the Bishop of Avila, who afterwards became the Archbishop of Granada, were recorded, are still preserved in the Archive de India of Seville, Spain.

“After the Spanish monarchs had expelled all the Jews from all their Kingdoms and lands in April, in the same month they commissioned me to undertake the voyage to India”—writes Christopher Columbus. This refers to the Decree of Expulsion, but the coincidence of the actual happening was still more remarkable. The expulsion took place on the second day of August, 1492, which occurred on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Ab, the day on which, according to the Jewish tradition, is the anniversary of the destruction of both the first Holy Temple of Jerusalem in the year 586 B. C. and also of the second Temple at the hands of the Romans in the year 70 C. E. The day, known as “Tishah be’Ab,” was observed as a day of mourning and lamentation among the Jews of the Diaspora in all countries and is still so observed by the Orthodox everywhere to this day. Columbus sailed on his momentous voyage on the day after—the third of August. The boats which were carrying away throngs of the expatriated and despairing Jews from the country which they loved so well and in which their ancestors dwelt for more than eight centuries, sighted that little fleet of three sailing craft which was destined to open up a new world for the oppressed of many races, where at a later age millions of Jews were to find a free home under the protection of laws which were unthought of in those times.

Neither all the names nor even the number of men who accompanied Columbus on his first voyage are known to posterity. Some authorities place the number at 120, others as low as 90. But among the names which came down to us are those of several Jews, the best known among them being Louis de Torres, who was baptized shortly before he joined Columbus. Torres knew Hebrew, Chaldaic and some Arabic, and was taken along to be employed as an interpreter between the travellers and the natives of the parts of India which Columbus expected to reach by crossing the Ocean. Others of Jewish stock whose names were preserved are: Alfonso de Calle, Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, the physician Maestro Bernal and the surgeon Marco.

Land was sighted October 12, 1492, on “Hosannah Rabbah” (the seventh day of the Jewish Feast of the Booths), and Louis de Torres, who was sent ashore with one companion to parley with the inhabitants, was thus the first white man to step on the ground of the New World. As the place proved to be not the Kingdom of the Great Khan which Columbus had set out to reach, but an island of the West Indies, with a strange hitherto unknown race of copper-colored men, it is needless to say that the linguistic attainments of the Jewish interpreter availed him very little. After he managed to make himself somewhat understood, he was favorably impressed with the new country and finally settled for the remainder of his life in Cuba. He was the first discoverer of tobacco, which was through him introduced into the Old World. It is also believed that in describing in a Hebrew letter to a Marrano in Spain the odd gallinaceous bird which he first saw in his new abode, he gave it the name “Tukki” (the word in Kings I, 10 v. 22, which is commonly translated peacock) and that this was later corrupted into “turkey,” by which name it is known to the English-speaking world.

It may also be remarked, in passing, that the belief identifying the red race which was surnamed Indian with the lost ten tribes of Israel, began to be entertained by many people, especially scholars and divines, soon after the discovery of America. It attained the dignity of a theory in the middle of the 17th century when Thorowgood published his work: “The Jews in America; or, Probabilities that the Americans are of that Race.” (London, 1650.) This view was supported among our own scholars by no less an authority than Manasseh Ben Israel, who wrote on the same subject in his “Esperança de Israel” which was published in Amsterdam in the same year.

Columbus wrote the first reports of his wonderful discovery to Louis de Santangel and to Gabriel Sanchez. The letter to the first is dated February 15, 1493, and was written on the return voyage, near the Azores or the Canaries.

It was decreed by a royal order of November 23, 1492, that the authorities were to confiscate for the State Treasury all property which had belonged to the Jews, including that which Christians had taken from them or had appropriated unlawfully or by violence. This gave Ferdinand sufficient means to provide for the second voyage of Columbus (March 23, 1493). The King and the Queen signed a large number of injunctions to royal officers in Soria, Zamora, Burgos and many other cities, directing them to secure immediate possession of all the precious metals, gold and silver utensils, jewels, gems and other objects of value that had been taken from the Jews who were expelled from Spain or had migrated to Portugal, and everything that these Jews had entrusted for safe keeping to Marrano, relatives or friends, and all Jewish possession which Christians had found or had unlawfully appropriated. The royal officers were later ordered to convert this property into ready money and to give the proceeds to the treasurer, Francisco Pinelo, in Seville, to meet the expenditure of Columbus’ second expedition.

One of the specific instances of these confiscations which deserves to be mentioned, is the order to Bernardino de Lerma to transfer to Pinelo all the gold, silver and various other things which Rabbi Ephraim (who is sometimes referred to in contemporary documents as Rabi Frayn, also as Rubifrayn, and who was perhaps the father of the great Rabbi Joseph Caro, author of the Shulhan Aruk, etc.), the richest Jew in Burgos, had before emigrating left with Isabel Osoria, the wife of Louis Nunez Coronel of Zamora. Not merely the clothing, ornaments and valuables which had been taken from the Jews were converted into money, but also the debts which they had been unable to recover were declared by order of the Crown to be forfeited to the state treasury, and stringent measures were adopted to collect them. A moderate estimate places the sum thus obtained at six million maravedis, to which ought to be added the two millions contributed by the Inquisition of Seville as a part of the enormous sums which it wrested from Jews and Moors. According to another order, issued in the above-named date, it was from this Jewish money that Columbus was paid the ten thousand maravedis which the Spanish monarchs had promised as a reward to him who should first sight land.3

In the days of suffering and disgrace which came to Columbus after his discoveries, Santangel and Sanchez remained faithful to him and often interceded in his behalf with Ferdinand and Isabella. They both died in 1505, about one year before the great discoverer whose success they made possible. Their immediate descendants occupied high positions in the royal service.

* * * * *

Columbus was not the only renowned discoverer of that time who was directly and indirectly assisted by Jews. The great and cruel Vasco da Gama, who did for Portugal almost as much as Columbus did for Spain, could hardly have carried out his important undertakings without the help of at least two Jews. One of them was the above-mentioned Abraham Zacuto, who, like many of his unfortunate brethren, went from Spain to Portugal after the calamity of 1492. He was highly favored by King João and by his successor, Dom Manuel, and the latter consulted him on the advisability of sending out under Vasco da Gama’s command the flotilla of four boats which was to reach India by the way of Cape of Good Hope. Zacuto pointed out the dangers which would have to be encountered, but gave it as his opinion that the plan was feasible and predicted that it would result in the subjection of a large part of India to the Portuguese crown. Zacuto’s works and the instruments which he invented and made available materially facilitated the execution of the enterprises of Vasco da Gama and other explorers. As in the case of Columbus and Spain, da Gama sailed in the year of the expulsion of the Jews from the country which fitted out his expedition (1497). When he returned Zacuto was an exile in Tunis, though he probably could have remained in Portugal, just as Abravanel could have remained in Spain.

It was during his return voyage to Europe, while staying at the little island of Anchevide, sixty miles from Goa (off the Indian coast of Malabar) that Vasco da Gama met the second Jew who became very useful to him and to Portugal. A tall European with a long white beard approached his ship in a boat with a small crew. He had been sent by his master, Sabayo, the Moorish ruler of Goa, to negotiate with the foreign navigator. He was a Jew who, according to some chronicles, came from Posen, according to others from Granada, whose parents had emigrated to Turkey and Palestine. From Alexandria, which some give as his birthplace, he proceeded across the Red Sea to Mecca and thence to India. Here he was a long time in captivity, and later was made admiral (capitao mór) by Sabayo.

The Portuguese were overjoyed “to hear so far from home a language closely related to their native speech.” But he was soon suspected of being a spy and was forced by torture to join the expedition and—as a matter of course—to embrace Christianity. The admiral acted as his godfather and his name came down to us as Gaspar da Gama or Gaspar de las Indias. He was brought to Portugal, where he was favored by King Manuel and “rendered inestimable service to Vasco da Gama and several later commanders.” He accompanied Pedro Alvarez Cobral on the expedition in 1500 which led to the independent discovery of Brazil, which became a Portuguese possession. On the return voyage Gaspar met Amerigo Vespucci, who received much information from him and mentions him as a linguist and traveller who is trustworthy and knows much about the interior of India.

On another expedition in which he accompanied his godfather in 1502, Gaspar found his wife in Cochin. She had remained true to him and to Judaism since he was carried away by the Portuguese, but probably both of them considered it unsafe for her to join him. He again journeyed to Cochin in 1505 in the retinue of the first Viceroy of India, which also included the son of Dr. Martin Pinheiro, the Judge of the Supreme Court of Lisbon. The young Pinheiro carried along a chest filled with “Torah” scrolls which were taken from the recently destroyed synagogues of Portugal. Gaspar’s wife negotiated the sale in Cochin, “where there were many Jews and synagogues,” obtaining four thousand parados for thirteen scrolls. The viceroy later confiscated the proceeds for the state treasury and sent an account of the whole affair to Lisbon.

Another Portuguese commander and governor of India, Alphonse d’Albuquerque, obtained much information and valuable assistance from his interpreter, a Jew from Castille whom he induced to embrace Christianity and to assume the name Francisco d’Albuquerque. His companion Cufo or Hucefe underwent the same change of religion and visited Lisbon, but soon found himself in danger and escaped to Cairo, where he again openly professed Judaism.

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Children torn from their parents were the first Jewish immigrants—Jewish history in the New World begins, as Jewish history in Spain ends, with the Inquisition—Emperor Charles V., Philip II. and Philip III.—Lutherans persecuted together with Jews and Mohamedans—Codification of the laws of the Inquisition, and its special edicts for the New World.

We have seen in the preceding chapter that the Jews were expelled forever from Spain and Portugal at the time when these two nations, with considerable assistance from professing and converted Jews, discovered the New World and took possession of it. Nothing could therefore have been farther from the thoughts and the hopes of the Jews of those dark days than the idea that America was to be, in a far-away future, the first Christian country to grant its Jewish inhabitants full citizenship and absolute equality before the law. For nearly a century and a half no professing Jew dared to tread upon American soil, and even the secret Jews or Marranos were as much in danger in the newly-planted colonies as in the mother countries under whose rule they remained for a long time.

The first Jewish immigrants in the New World were children who were torn away from the arms of their parents at the time of the expulsions, and even they were persecuted as soon as they grew up. The Marranos who sought a refuge in America in these early days were soon followed by the same agencies of persecution which made life a burden to them in their old home. We meet in America for more than a century after its discovery almost the same conditions as in Spain and Portugal after the Jews were exiled. Where the history of the Jews in Spain ends—says Dr. Kayserling—the history of the Jews in America begins. The Inquisition is the last chapter in the record of the confessors of Judaism on the Pyrenean peninsula and its first chapter in the western hemisphere. The Nuevos Christianos concealed their faith, or were able to conceal it, as little in the New World as in the mother country. With astonishing tenacity, nay, with admirable obstinacy, they clung to the religion of their fathers; it was not a rare occurrence that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the martyred Jews sanctified the Sabbath in a most conscientious manner, by refraining from work as far as possible and by wearing their best clothing. They also celebrated the Jewish Festivals, observed the Day of Atonement by fasting, and married according to the Jewish customs. They clung to their faith and suffered for it even as late as the eighteenth century, which means that the Jewish religion was handed down secretly and preserved in the seventh and eighth generation after the exile. Many went to the stake or died in the prisons of the Inquisition in the New World; many others were transported in groups to Spain and Portugal and gave up their lives as martyrs in Seville, Toledo, Evora or Lisbon. Their religious heroism will be apparent in all its magnitude when the immense documentary material which is heaped up in the archives of Spain and Portugal, and other places on this side of the ocean, will have been sifted and worked up. (“Publications,” II, p. 73.)

Intolerance reigned supreme in America almost immediately after its colonization, and the secret Jews who settled there were not permitted to enjoy peace or prosperity. Juan Sanchez of Saragossa, whose father was burnt at the stake, was the first to obtain permission of the Spanish government to trade with the newly-discovered lands. In 1502 Isabella permitted him to take five caravels loaded with wheat, barley, horses and other wares to Española (Little Spain, the large West Indian Island containing Haiti and Santo Domingo), without paying duty. In 1504 he was again permitted to export merchandise to that country. Other secret Jews went to the new places and settled there, some even obtaining positions in the public service. As early as 1511 we hear already of measures taken by Isabella’s daughter, Queen Juana of Castille, against “the sons and grandsons of the burned” who held public office. The Inquisition was introduced there by a decree of that year, and one of its first victims was Diego Caballera of Barrameda, whose parents, according to two witnesses, had been prosecuted and condemned by the same tribunal in Spain.

The Inquisitor-General of Spain, Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, on May 7, 1516, appointed Fray Juan Quevedo, Bishop of Cuba, his delegate for the Kingdom of Terra Firma, as the mainland of Spanish America was then called, and authorized him to select personally such officials as he needed to hunt down and exterminate the Marranos. Emperor Charles V. (1500–1558), with the permission of his former teacher, Cardinal Hadrian (1459–1523), the Dutch Grand-Inquisitor of Aragon who later became Pope (Hadrian or Adrian VI. 1522–23), issued an edict on May 25, 1520, whereby he ordained Alfonso Manso, Bishop of Porto Rico, and Pedro de Cordova, Vice Provincial of the Dominicans, as Inquisitors for the Indies and the islands of the ocean.

At first the secret Jews were not the only victims of the persecutions and not even the most numerous among them. “There were many heathenish natives who were forcibly converted by the mighty clerical arm of the Spanish conqueror, but who nevertheless remained at heart loyal to their hereditary belief and practised their idolatrous customs with as much zeal as the fear of discovery and consequent punishment would allow.” Fiendish atrocities were committed in the name of religion against those Indian Marranos, and the fearful persecutions depopulated the country to such an extent that the tyrants themselves perceived that they must desist.

The Inquisition in Spain itself had, however, fallen more or less into desuetude during the reign of the above-mentioned Emperor Charles V., who was the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, and had inherited their Spanish and American possessions. It was revived and invigorated under the more bigoted rule of his son, King Philip II. (1527–1598), who ascended the Spanish throne in 1556, after his father’s abdication. Under the new reign the laws of the Inquisition were codified and promulgated at Madrid on September 2, 1561. A printed copy of the new code was sent to America in 1569. Another document, dated February 5, 1569, issued by Cardinal Diego de Spinosa, General Apostolic Inquisitor against Heresy, Immorality and Apostasy, addressed “to the Reverend Inquisitors Apostolic ... in his Majesty’s Dominions and Seignories of the Provinces of Piru (Peru), New Spain and the new Kingdom of Granada and the other provinces and Bishoprics of the Indies of the Ocean” consists of forty sections prescribing the rules of procedure. (See Elkan Nathan Adler, The Inquisition in Peru, Publications XII, pp. 5–37.)

A later document containing the general edicts to be read on the third Sunday of Lent and the fourth Sunday of Anathema in every third year in the Cathedral of Lima and all the towns of the districts, was printed in Peru itself shortly after 1641, and records the names of the places which were included in the jurisdiction of those issuing it. It reads: “We, the Inquisitors against Heresy, Immorality and Apostasy in this city and Archbishopric of Los Reyes (Lima) with the Archbishopric of Los Charcas and Bishoprics of Quito, Cuzco, Rio de la Plata, Paraguay, Tucuman, Santiago and Concepcion of the Dominions of Chile, la Paz (Bolivia), Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Guamanga, Areguipa, and Truxillo, and in all the Dominions, Estates and Seignories of the Provinces of Peru, and its Viceroyalty Government and district of the Royal Audiencias thereto appertaining.” In this document we find the name of a new Christian sect which is to be punished for heresy together with the unbelievers who were known to the Inquisition of the earlier period. Lutherans are now enumerated among heretics after the Jews and the Mohamedans. Among the books and engravings which are considered as heretical and indecent are mentioned the books of Martin Luther and other heretics, the Alcoran or other Mohamedan books, “Biblias en romance” (Bibles in the vernacular) and others prohibited by the censorships and catalogues of the Holy Office, etc. Then follow lengthy descriptions of how to detect Jews, Mohamedans and Lutherans; and in the case of the first even the drinking of Kosher wine and the making of a “berakah” or pronouncing a blessing before tasting it are not omitted from the practices which characterized the secret Jew whom the Inquisition was to discover and punish.

But it seems that the Marranos came to America in large numbers despite all the severity of Philip II. His son Philip III. (1578–1621), who succeeded him in 1598, endeavored to prevent their emigrating to the New World and issued in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the following edict:

“We command and decree that no one recently converted to our holy faith, be he Jew or Moor, or the offspring of these, should settle in our Indies without our distinct permission. Furthermore we forbid most emphatically the immigration into New Spain of any one [who is at the expiration of some prescribed penance] newly reconciled with the Church; of the child or grandchild of any person who has ever worn the ‘san benito’ publicly; of the child or grandchild of any person who was either burnt as a heretic or otherwise punished for the crime of heresy, through either male or female descent. Should any one [falling under this category] presume to violate this law, his goods will be confiscated for the benefit of the royal treasury, and upon him the full measure of our grace or disgrace shall fall, so that under any circumstances and for all time he shall be banished from our Indies. Whosoever does not possess personal effects, however, should atone for his transgression by the public infliction of one hundred lashes.”

This characteristic specimen of anti-immigration legislation of three centuries ago, including what would in the colloquialism of to-day be called a “grandfather clause,” was the cause of much suffering; but it is not possible to state with any degree of certainty how far it was effective. It is probable that the number of Marranos in the “Indies” which belonged to the King of Spain went on increasing until about the middle of the seventeenth century, when certain territories were for the first time opened for them in the New World where they could practise Judaism openly.

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Impossibility of obtaining even approximately correct figures about the Inquisition—A few typical cases—The Carabajal family—Relaxation for several decades—The notable case of Francisco Maldonado de Silva.

The Inquisition, or, as it styled itself, the Holy Office, was an institution of tremendous power and influence which during its existence of more than three centuries deeply impressed the character of the Spanish and Portuguese peoples. A great number of books were written about it, but the material to be dealt with is so vast that none of the works purporting to be histories of the Inquisition really deserve that name. It has been mentioned already in the preceding chapter that an immense mass of documentary material which is heaped up in various archives awaits to be sifted and worked up. An idea of the actual quantity of this material can be obtained from the statement made by Mr. E. N. Adler, in the monogram on the Inquisition in Peru quoted above, that thirty-three million documents, relating to the Inquisition, are preserved in 80,000 “legajos” or bundles in the castille of Simancas, a small town, seven miles from Valladolid, in Spain.

It is therefore next to impossible to attempt to give a general review of the work of that awful tribunal in the old world or the new; it is even unsafe to quote figures as to the total number of trials, Autos da Fé or of victims, because most of the authorities contradict one another or disagree in vital points. Many facts which are given at one time as reasonably certain, are soon disproved by the discovery of more authentic records, which necessitates a constant changing of the time, the place and the identity of persons spoken of in such descriptions. It is therefore considered best to mention here only a few typical cases of victims about whose identity and Jewish extraction there can be no doubt. From these the reader may form his own opinion as to what was constantly happening in the various places since the Inquisition’s firm establishment in the New World in the second half of the sixteenth century, until its final disappearance at the end of the eighteenth and in some instances as late as the beginning of the nineteenth centuries.

Several members of the Carabajal (Carvalho?) family suffered martyrdom in Mexico at the end of the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth. Francisca Nunez de Carabajal, born in Portugal about 1540, was among the members of the family seized by the Inquisition in 1590. She was tortured until she implicated her husband and her children, and the entire family was forced to confess and abjure Judaism at a public Auto da Fé which was celebrated on Saturday, February 24, 1590. Later, after more than five years’ imprisonment, they were convicted of relapsing into Judaism, and Francisca, her son Luis and her four daughters were burned at the stake in Mexico City, December 8, 1596. She was the sister of Don Luis de Carabajal y Cueva (born in Portugal, 1539), who was appointed Governor of New Leon, Mexico, in 1579 and is said to have died in 1595. He arrived in Mexico in 1580, where, in consideration of his appointment as governor of a somewhat ill-defined district, he undertook to colonize a certain territory at his own expense, being allowed the privilege of reimbursing himself out of the revenue. There were many Spanish Jews among his colonists, and within a decade after their settlement more than a score were denounced and more or less severely punished for Judaizing. He is the subject of a work, half romantic and half historical, by Mr. C. K. Landis, entitled Carabalja the Jew, a Legend of Monterey (Vineland, 1894).

Another heroic martyr of Mexico was Don Tomas de Sobremonte, a Judaizer, who died at the stake April 11, 1649, without uttering a groan, mocking “the Pope and his hirelings” and taunting his tormentors with his last breath.

The Inquisition in Lima, Peru, is known to have solemnized thirty-four Autos da Fé at that place between 1573 (November 15) and 1806 (July 17) and at ten or eleven of them there were Jewish victims, their numbers ranging from one or two to as high as fifty-six (January 23, 1639). From the earliest day of its establishment it looked with suspicion upon the Portuguese who settled there. In this case as in many others, Portuguese was only another name for Marranos, and they were treated with great severity. There is a record of one David Ebron, who in 1597 sent a memorial to Philip II. relating to his discoveries and services in South America, but it is not known how far his claims were recognized. About 1604 or 1605 a number of those who were accused in Peru of Judaizing sent memorials to the King of Spain in which they pleaded that life under such conditions had become unbearable. Relief was obtained in the form of an Apostolic Brief from Pope Clement VIII., commanding the Inquisitors to release, without delay, all Judaizing Portuguese in Peru. When this order arrived in Lima, only two prisoners were still detained in the dungeons of the Tribunal, Gonzalo de Luna and Juan Vicente. The others had either become reconciled or had suffered death at the stake.

The liberal decree, which arrived too late for most of the complainants who were to benefit by it, still seems to have had the effect of securing the Marranos against molestation for several decades. But as soon as they had increased in wealth and influence the establishment of a new Tribunal was ordered in the Province of Tucuman, it having been ascertained that quite a colony of Jews were domiciled in the Rio de la Plata. In consequence of this order, dated May 18, 1636, the Portuguese were again hounded and many of them lost life and fortune. The Inquisition succeeded in ferreting out the fact that in Chili alone, at that time, there were no less than twenty-eight (secret) Jews, most of them enjoying the rights of citizenship and living securely and at peace with their neighbors. It has now been practically ascertained that a considerable number of Jews or Marranos lived in Peru, Chili, Argentine, Cartagena and La Plata towards the end of the sixteenth century, that their number and wealth increased in the first half of the seventeenth, when the new era of persecutions was ushered in by attacks and denunciations.

A notable instance, typical of the times, was the case of Francisco Maldonado de Silva. His sister Doña Isabel Maldonado, forty years old, on the 8th day of July, 1626, testified before the Commissioner of the City of Santiago de Chile that her brother had, to her horror and indignation, confessed to being a Jew, imploring her not to betray him and using all endeavors to convert her too. He was arrested in Concepcion, Chili, April 29, 1627, and was transported to Lima in July of the same year, where he was imprisoned in a cell of the convent of San Domingo. He is described in the records of the Tribunal as a bachelor, thirty-three years old, an American by birth, having been born of new-Christian parents in the city of San Miguel, Province of Tucuman, Peru. His father, the Licentiate Diego Nunez de Silva, and his brother, Diego de Silva, were both reconciled by the Inquisition at an auto held in Lima March 13, 1605. He confessed that he was brought up as a Catholic and that up to his eighteenth year he rigidly observed the tenets of the Christian faith. According to a circumstantial description of his case (Publications, XI, pp. 163 ff.), he remained in prison for nearly twelve years, during which time he had many hearings and disputed with many priests who undertook to convert him. He also wrote much in defence of his views and at one time made a nearly successful effort to escape. In the last years of his confinement he fasted very much, thereby becoming so feeble that he could not turn in his bed, “being nothing but skin and bones.” He was, with ten others, burnt at the stake in Lima, on January 23, 1639, at a splendid and gruesome Auto da Fé, for which the preparations were costly and elaborate, involving fifty days of uninterrupted labor, holidays included.

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Less persecution in Portugal itself and also in its colonies—Marranos buy right to emigrate—They dare to profess Judaism in Brazil, and the Inquisition is introduced in Goa—Alleged help given to Holland in its struggle against Spain.

While the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal, which took place five years after the great expulsion from Spain, was in many respects more cruel and accompanied by greater atrocities, notable among which were the forced conversions and the robbing of children from their Jewish parents to be brought up as Christians, the conditions in the Portuguese colonies, including Brazil, were somewhat more favorable for the reception of Jewish refugees than in the Spanish possessions of the New World. This happened because the conditions in Portugal itself were much more favorable to the Jews prior to the era of expulsions, and the sudden severity against the Jews in 1497, which was almost unexpected, was due to the influence of the Spanish rulers. It was Queen Isabella of Spain who prevailed on King Manuel of Portugal (reigned 1495–1521), her future son-in-law, to exile the Jews of his dominion, vowing she would never set foot on Portuguese soil until the country was clear of them.

In the preceding centuries the Jews, though they were recognized and treated as a separate nation in Portugal even more than in Spain, their condition when judged by the standards of the dark ages was much more favorable and well nigh secure. There are no records of systematic persecutions in Portugal before the exile from Spain. The influence of the Church grew much more slowly in the former country, and its kings followed the old Spanish policy of protecting the Jews and Moors against the encroachments of the clergy long after it was abandoned by Spain. Marranos and other Jews who escaped from the Inquisition to Portugal before the Spanish expulsion were—because the King did not want or did not dare to harbor them—permitted to go to the Orient but not to Africa, because in the latter place they could become dangerous to him as allies of the Moors. So it came to pass that while in the more extensive Spanish domains across the Atlantic we hear only of individual crypto-Jewish settlers and more of their misfortunes and the Autos da Fé of which they were the victims, than of their successes, we learn of considerable settlements of Marranos in Brazil early in the sixteenth century.

But even the better conditions in the Portuguese territories must not be taken in the sense which such a term would imply to-day or even a hundred years ago. The Portuguese policy was cruel and vaccillating, only a little less so than that of its larger and more consistent neighbor. King Manuel forbade the neo-Christians, in 1499, to leave Portugal, the prohibition was removed in 1507 and again put into effect in 1521. His successor John III. (reigned 1521–57) was even less favorably disposed towards the secret Jews who remained in his Kingdom, and in 1531 the Inquisition was introduced there by the authorization of Pope Clement VII. The Marranos bought from John’s successor King Sebastian (reigned 1557–78) the right of free departure for the sum of 250,000 ducats. But there were other involuntary departures in the periods when the emigration of those suspected converts was prohibited. For a considerable time in the 16th century Portugal sent annually two shiploads of Jews and criminals to Brazil, and also deported persons who had been condemned by the Inquisition. The banishment of large numbers to Brazil in 1548 is especially mentioned.

Jews or Marranos were soon settled in all the Portuguese colonies, and they carried on an extensive trade with various countries. “As early as 1548 (according to some, 1531) Portuguese Jews, it is asserted, transplanted the sugar-cane from Madeira to Brazil.” Some of them began to feel so secure that they dared to profess Judaism openly. The result was the introduction of the Inquisition into Goa, the metropolis of the Portuguese dominions in India, with jurisdiction over all the possessions of that country in Asia and Africa, as far as the Cape of Good Hope. It was therefore but natural for the hunted and despairing new-Christians to sympathize with the Dutch who were at that time (beginning at 1567) fighting for their freedom, and to help them later against Portugal itself in the New World and in the Far East. The charge that the Marranos of the Indies sent considerable supplies to the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Hamburg and Aleppo, who in turn forwarded them to Holland and Zeeland, is probably not true. But the act would have certainly been justified in times when the Marranos were legally burned alive when convicted of adhesion to the religion of their forefathers. The charge also proves that the Jews and Marranos of various and distant countries were then believed to be in communication, and to render assistance to one another or to their friends when the occasion required it. We may recognize in such charges the false accusations which were circulated about Jews from times immemorial to our present day; but it nevertheless tends to prove that the Jews retained some recognizable importance as international traders even in times when their fortunes were at the lowest ebb.

Except for the brief period in the 17th century (which is dealt with more extensively in a subsequent chapter), in which Brazil came under the domination of the Dutch, it remained almost entirely free of Jews until the present time. The time was approaching when liberal and enterprising nations, pursuing a more enlightened and more profitable policy, were beginning to grant the Jewish refugee not only shelter and security, but also the religious liberty and broad human tolerance which were almost unknown in the Catholic countries in the Middle Ages. The dawn of a new era began for the Jews in Europe with the ascendency, first of Holland and then of England, and the Children of Israel were soon to share openly in the invaluable benefits which the discovery of the New World brought to mankind in general.

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The friendship between the Dutch and the Jews—Restrictions and privileges in Holland—Dutch-Jewish distributors of Indian spices—Preparations to introduce the Inquisition in Brazil—Jews help the Dutch to conquer it—Southey’s description of Recife—Vieyra’s description.

The United Provinces of Netherland, or, as it is commonly called, Holland, became a safe place for Jews as soon as the Union of Utrecht (1579) made its independence reasonably secure. When the liberator of these provinces, William of Orange (“The Silent,” 1533–84), was installed as Stadtholder in 1581 he declared that “he should not suffer any man to be called to account, molested or injured for his faith or conscience.” This implied, and actually resulted in, better treatment of the Jews, which led to their enjoying a larger degree of prosperity and security in Holland in the following century than anywhere else. The friendship between the Jews and the Dutch which commenced at that period has never, unto this day, been marred by systematic persecution or any retrogressive step. It proved mutually beneficial in various parts of the world, and has cost Spain and Portugal much more than is ordinarily known even to students of History.4

But while the treatment was immeasurably better, the vicious principle of separation remained. The Jews in Holland were as much a nation apart, in theory at least, as in Spain and Portugal before the expulsion. They did not enjoy the full rights of citizenship (until they received it, somewhat against their will, during the French invasion at the end of the eighteenth century) and were not even free from other restrictions. They were not permitted to serve in the train bands or militia of the cities, but paid a compensation for their exemption therefrom. The prohibition of intermarriage with Christians could hardly be considered a hardship for Jews of the seventeenth century; but the fact that they were not allowed any mechanical pursuit or to engage in retail trade has a much deeper significance. It explains, at least partly, why the Dutch succeeded where the Portuguese failed, notably in that Indian trade, whose interruption by the Turkish conquest of Constantinople was the cause of searching new water routes to the East and of the discovery of the New World.

Having exiled their best international traders and kept those remaining as Marranos in constant terror, the Portuguese could not derive the full benefit from that lucrative trade in spices which was to be the reward of their great discoveries. When the sixty years’ captivity—as the domination of Spain over Portugal, from 1580 to 1640, is called—brought, among other disasters, the capture of the Portuguese Indian possessions by the Dutch, the superiority of the latter’s methods were soon apparent. They succeeded with more ease “since, with true commercial spirit, they not only imported merchandise from the East to Holland, but also distributed it through Dutch merchants to every country in Europe; whereas the Portuguese in the days of their commercial monopoly were satisfied with bringing over the commodities to Lisbon and letting foreign nations come to fetch them.” It is not difficult to surmise who were those Dutch merchants who distributed the spices to every country in Europe, when we think of that class of wealthy Marrano immigrants in Holland who were not permitted to follow mechanical pursuits or to engage in retail trade. Holland’s tendency was clearly apparent. The Jews, mostly Portuguese, were permitted to use their wealth, their abilities and their foreign connections to carry on and extend that trade which languished in the hands of those who banished them. The Jews were exceedingly grateful for the opportunity which Holland afforded them to be useful to themselves and to her, and the very effective results of the friendship between the Jews and the Dutch were soon apparent in the ensuing struggle between the latter and the Portuguese over the possession of Brazil.

The Dutch commenced the realization of their ambitious scheme for the conquest of Brazil in the second decade of the seventeenth century, at a time when the large number of Marranos who lived there were terrorized by rumors of the introduction of the inquisition. These rumors became current as early as 1610, when it was reported that the physicians of Bahia, who were mainly new-Christians, prescribed pork to their patients in order to lessen the suspicion that they were still adhering to Judaism. In connection with some of the earliest Brazilian intrigues in favor of the Dutch, mention is made of one Francisco Ribiero, a Portuguese captain, who is described as having many Jewish relatives in Holland. About 1618 the Inquisition in Oporto, Portugal, had arrested all merchants of Jewish extraction. Many of the victims were engaged in Brazilian trade, and the Inquisitor-General applied to the government to assist the Holy Office to recover such parts of their effects as might be in the hands of their agents in Brazil. Accordingly, Don Luis de Sousa was charged to send home a list of all the new-Christians in Brazil “with the most precise information that can be obtained of their property and place of abode.” It seems highly probable that it was the Dutch war alone which prevented the introduction of the dreaded Tribunal in Brazil.

The Dutch West India Company, which was formed in 1622 in furtherance of the project of conquering Brazil, had Jews of Amsterdam among its large stockholders, and several of them in its Board of Directors. One of the arguments in favor of its organization was “that the Portuguese themselves—some from their hatred of Castille, others because of their intermarriage with new-Christians and their consequent fear of the Inquisition—would either willingly join or feebly oppose an invasion, and all that was needful was to treat them well and give them liberty of conscience.”

When the Dutch fleet was sent to Bahia all the necessary information was obtained from Jews. The city was taken in 1624 and Willeken, the Dutch commander, at once issued a proclamation offering liberty, free possession of their property and free enjoyment of religion to all who would submit. This brought over about two hundred Jews, who exerted themselves to induce others to follow their example. Bahia was re-captured by the Portuguese in 1625, and though the treaty for its deliverance provided for the safety of the other inhabitants, the new-Christians were abandoned and five of them were put to death. Many others, however, seemed to have remained there for several years.

Another foothold was gained by the Dutch when the city of Recife or Pernambuco, which had a large Crypto-Jewish population, was captured in 1631. Most of the Jews and new-Christians from Bahia and other Brazilian towns soon removed to that city. The conquerors appealed to Holland for colonists and craftsmen of all kinds, and many Portuguese Jews came over in response to that call. Robert Southey, the historian of Brazil, asserts that the Jews there made excellent subjects of Holland. “Some of the Portuguese Brazilians gladly threw off the mask which they had so long been compelled to wear, and joined their brethren in the Synagogue. The open joy with which they celebrated their ceremonies attracted too much notice. It excited the horror of the Catholics; and even the Dutch themselves, less liberal than their own laws, pretended that the toleration of Holland did not extend to Brazil.” The result was an edict by which the Jews were ordered to perform their rites more privately.

When in 1645 Vieyra was inciting the Portuguese to re-conquer Brazil, he pointed particularly to Recife, calling attention to the fact that “that city is chiefly inhabited by Jews, most of whom were originally fugitives from Portugal. They have their open Synagogues there, to the scandal of Christianity. For the honor of the faith, therefore, the Portuguese ought to risk their lives and property in putting down such an abomination.” The Portuguese, who had shortly before thrown off the Spanish yoke and regained their independence at home, responded to that call and redoubled their effort to reconquer their gigantic South American colony. But although the history of that first really Jewish settlement in the New World was brief, extending over less than two decades, it was so brilliant in itself and had such far-reaching consequences in the settlement of Jews in other parts of America that another chapter must be devoted to its description.

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The “Kahal Kodesh” of Recife or Pernambuco in Brazil—Manasseh ben Israel’s expectation to make it his home—Large immigration from Amsterdam—Isaac Aboab da Fonseca and his colleagues—First rabbis and Jewish authors of the New World—The siege and the surrender—The return, and the nucleus of other communities in various parts of America.

The rebuke to the joyful demonstrations of the Jews in Recife did not prevent the establishment there of the first real Jewish community in the New World. The Dutch Stadtholder of Brazil, John Maurice, of Nassau, was a just and honorable official who encouraged the development of the community and its steady increase by immigration. The Jews of Recife, who were soon numbered by thousands, called themselves “Kahal Kodesh” (The Holy Congregation) and had a governing body consisting of David Senior Coronel, Abraham de Mercado, Jacob Mucate and Isaac Casthunho. One of the earliest settlers there was Ephraim Sueiro, a step-brother (or brother-in-law) of the famous Rabbi of Amsterdam, Manasseh Ben Israel (1604–57). Don Francisco Fernandez de Mora, who had a grandchild in Amsterdam, held important offices; while another member of the community, Gaspar Diaz Ferrena, was considered one of the wealthiest men in the country. Dr. Kayserling, in his paper on “The Earliest Rabbis and Jewish writers in America” (“Publications” III, p. 13 ff.) quotes from the correspondence between the old Vossius and Hugo Grotius, in which they speak of the intention of their mutual friend, the above-named Rabbi Manasseh, to emigrate to Brazil in order to improve his material condition, which was unsatisfactory in Amsterdam, notwithstanding the high communal position which he held there. He dedicated the second part of his “Conciliador” to the prominent men of the congregation of Recife, probably in anticipation of the expected journey, which, however, was never made.

But though the man who was later to induce Oliver Cromwell to admit Jews into England did not come, other reputable Hebrew scholars soon arrived to lend lustre to the new congregation. In 1642 about six hundred Spanish-Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam embarked for Brazil, accompanied by two men of learning, Isaac Aboab da Fonseca (1605–93) and Moses Raphael de Aguilar (d. 1679). Aboab became the Chacham or Rabbi—the first in America. Aguilar, who was also a grammarian, became the reader or cantor. A congregation was also organized at Tamarica, which had its own Chacham, Jacob Lagarto, the first Talmudical author in the Western Hemisphere. A certain Jacob de Aguilar is also mentioned as a Brazilian rabbi of that time. Considerable numbers of Jews also resided at other places in Brazil, particularly at Itamarica, Rio de Janeiro and Parahiba. But Recife was the great center, and its fame soon spread even into the Old World. Nieuhoff, the historian, writes that the Jews there had built stately homes, that they had a vast traffic and purchased sugar mills. Several years later they raised large sums to assist the Dutch in defending the coast.

The last and most important immigrants were barely settled when the sanguinary struggle between the Portuguese and the Dutch for the possession of the colony began in 1645. A conspiracy into which native Portuguese entered for the purpose of assassinating the Dutch authorities at a banquet in the capital was discovered and exposed by a Jew, and a possible sudden termination of Dutch rule was averted. Open war broke out in 1646 and Recife had to endure a long and costly siege. Jews vied with Dutch in suffering and in bravery, and there is a record of the fact that Marranos in Portugal used their influence to call the attention of the government of the Netherlands to the gravity of the situation in South America. But the resources of the West India Company were exhausted by the possession of Brazil, and as the home government would not or could not give it proper support, the heroism and the self-sacrifice of both Dutch and Jews served only to prolong the struggle. It probably also served to cement the friendship between the defenders, who were later to dwell together for longer periods in other parts of America.

Aboab commemorated the thrilling experience of this war in the introductory chapter of his Hebrew version of Abraham Cohen Herrera’s Porta Coeli (Sha’ar ha-Shomayim). He also wrote a poetical account of the siege in a work entitled “Zeker Rab: Prayers, Confessions and Supplications which were composed for the purpose of appealing to God in the trouble and the distress of the congregation when the troops of Portugal overwhelmed them during their sojourn in Brazil in 5406 (1646).” The Rabbi ordered fasts and prayers, while wealthy members of the community, like Abraham Coen, contributed material support. “Many of the Jewish immigrants were killed by the enemy, many died of starvation; the remainder were exposed to death from various causes. Those who were accustomed to delicacies were glad to be able to satisfy their hunger with dry bread; soon they could not obtain even this. They were in want of everything, and were preserved alive as if by a miracle.”

Among the instances of individual heroism which deserve to be recorded is that of one of the Pintos, who is said to have manned the fort Dos Affrogades single-handed, until, overwhelmed by superior force, he was compelled to surrender.

On the 23d of January, 1654, Recife, together with the neighboring cities of Mauritsstad, Parahiba, Itamarica, Seara and other Hollandish possessions, was ceded to the Portuguese conquerors, with the condition that a general amnesty should be granted. The Jews, as loyal supporters of the Dutch, were promised every consideration; nevertheless the new Portuguese Governor ordered them to quit Brazil at once. Sixteen vessels were placed at their disposal to carry them and their property wherever they chose to go, and they were also furnished with passports and safeguards.

Aboab, Aguilar, the Nassys, Perreires, the Mezas, Abraham de Castro and Joshua Zarfati, both surnamed el Brasil, and many others returned to Amsterdam. Jacob de Velosino, (b. in Pernambuco, 1639, d. in Holland, 1712), the first Hebrew author born on American soil, settled at The Hague. Others went to Surinam, Cayenne and Curaçao, and it is generally assumed that the first Jewish settlers who in that year arrived in New Amsterdam (the future New York) came directly—or at least indirectly—from Pernambuco. The community of Recife formed thus, by its dissolution, the nucleus of several of the oldest and most important Jewish communities in the New World.

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Jews in Brazil after the expulsion of the Dutch—The community of Paramaribo, Surinam, was founded when Recife was still flourishing—First contact with the English, whom the Jews preferred—David Nassi and the colony of Cayenne—Privileges granted by Lord Willoughby—“de Jooden Savane”—Trouble with slaves and bush negroes—Plantations with Hebrew names—German Jews—Legal status and banishments—Jewish theaters—Literature and history.

The history of the Jews in Brazil practically ends with the termination of the Dutch rule, and there is a gap which extends until the new settlements at the beginning of the twentieth century. There was the usual aftermath of Marranos and persecutions which was almost a repetition of the happenings under Portuguese dominion prior to the short, liberal era under Holland’s sway. Some new-Christians continued to reside in Brazil after the capitulation of 1654. Their number was largely increased towards the end of the seventeenth century, when Portugal again banished to Brazil the Marranos who had become reconciled. These transportations continued from 1682 to 1707; and the Jews again became to be known as a distinct class. They were closely watched, however, and many were sent back to Lisbon from time to time, to be tried by the Inquisition. Many Jews from Rio were burned at an Auto da Fé at Lisbon in 1723. Several of these martyrs were men of great repute, the most prominent being the famous Portuguese poet and dramatist, Antonio José da Silva, a native of Rio de Janeiro, who was burned as a Jew at Lisbon in 1739. In 1734 Jews appear to have been influential in controlling the price of diamonds in Brazil.

The transportations to Lisbon of those accused of Judaizing had become so common at the middle of the eighteenth century, that “a wide ruin was produced and many sugar mills at the Rio stopped in consequence.” The influential Marquis de Pombal, with all his power, did not venture to proclaim toleration for the Jews; but he succeeded in having laws enacted making it penal for any person to reproach another for his Jewish origin, and removing all disabilities of Jewish blood, even from the descendants of those who had suffered under the Inquisition. He prohibited public Autos da Fé, and required all lists of families of Jewish extraction to be delivered up. These statutes deprived the Inquisition of its most important means of accusation; and as a result the Marranos were ultimately absorbed in the Catholic population of Brazil.

The Jewish community which was founded in Surinam or Dutch Guiana, near Brazil, in the days when the community of Recife was still in a flourishing condition, and which soon rose to prominence after the dispersion of the latter, has enjoyed an almost uninterrupted existence until the present day. According to the latest researches, the oldest indication in the archives of the Dutch-Portuguese Jews shows that the Jews had already settled in Surinam in the year 1639.5 As far as can be traced, the first Jewish marriage was celebrated there between Haham Isaac Mehatob and Judith Mehatob in 1643. The text of the “Ketubah,” which has been preserved, proves that Surinam, or rather the city of Paramaribo, had already in that year a sufficient number of Jews to require the services of a Haham or Rabbi.

Though the Dutch had claims on it, Guiana was at that time practically British territory, and it was there that the Jew came first in contact with the Englishman in the New World, many years before they began to dwell together in North America. And while it was recognized that of all European nations the Dutch were then the most friendly to the Jews, many of the latter who had experience with both nationalities in that part of the world soon learned to prefer the English. Lord Willoughby, who arrived for the second time in Surinam in 1652, brought with him several Jewish families, and the community was thus increasing even before the influx of refugees from Brazil two years later.

On September 12, 1659, the Jews were permitted, under the patronage of David Nassi, to found a colony on the island of Cayenne (French Guiana). According to the tenor of the eighteen articles contained in the letters patent of that date, all the land over which they exercised the rights of possession within four years from that date, would become their property; and they would be allowed to administer justice according to the Jewish usages and customs. The colony was further increased by the arrival, in 1660, of one hundred and fifty-two Jews from Leghorn, Italy. But the four years’ limit was barely passed when the French took Cayenne in 1664, and all the Jews left the island for Surinam under the leadership of the above-mentioned David Nassi. The French of the time of “the Grand Monarch” Louis XIV would not suffer Jews to be settled in their colonies; a century and a quarter had to pass before France, shaken to its very foundations by the great revolution which began in 1789, was the first of modern European nations to grant its Jews the absolute equality which is implied in full citizenship.

Even while the Portuguese Jews were still in Cayenne, they were given by Lord Willoughby, in 1662, the same privileges in Surinam as the English colonists. A year after their return, on August 17, 1665, was issued the famous grant of privileges by the Governor, Council and Assembly of Surinam, of which the preamble reads as follows:

“Whereas, it is good and sound policy to encourage as much as possible whatever may tend to the increase of a new colony, and to invite persons of whatsoever country and religion to come and reside here and to traffic with us; and whereas, we found that the Hebrew nation, now already resident here, have, with their persons and property, proved themselves useful and beneficial to this colony; and being desirous further to encourage them to continue their residence and trade here, we have with the authority of the Governor, his Council and Assembly passed the following act:”

The provisions of the act (the full text of which is reproduced in “Publications”, vol. III, pp. 145–46; vol. IX, pp. 144–45, and vol. XVI, pp. 179–80) is extremely favorable to the Jews. The British Government of Surinam therein ratified all former privileges of the Jews, guaranteed them full enjoyment and free exercise of their religious rites and usages, and made void any summons served upon them on their Sabbaths and holidays. They were not to be called for any public duties on those days, except in urgent cases. Civil suits of less value than ten thousand pounds of sugar were to be decided by their Elders, and the magistrates were obliged to enforce their judgments. They were also permitted to bequeath their property according to their own laws of inheritance. They were given ten acres of land for the erection of a Synagogue and such buildings as the congregation might need; and in order to induce Jews to settle there, it was decided that all who came for that purpose should be considered as British-born subjects, in return for obeying all the decrees of the King of England which did not infringe on their privileges.

For Portuguese Jews of the seventeenth century, i. e., for extremely conservative Jews whose relatives were at that very time tortured and burned at the stake for adherence to their religion, these privileges were probably much more acceptable than an outright admission to full citizenship could have been. There was no desire or striving for assimilation on either side in those times. No especially organized movement was necessary to emphasize the fact, which was then self-evident, of the existence of a separate Hebrew nation. Nobody thought otherwise before the philosophers of the eighteenth century instilled in the minds of the civilized nations the idea of the modern assimilationist. The frank selfishness of the preamble was, therefore, a better guarantee of good faith and more convincing than phrases about humanity and inherent rights could possibly be in those illiberal times. The English were thus less sentimental and more business-like in their dealings with the Jews than the Dutch, and were probably on that account more trusted. When Surinam became a Dutch province, July 13, 1667, the Jews were allowed all rights of citizenship. Still a number of them left with the English and went to Jamaica. Another declaration by the home government of Holland, made two years later, to the Jews of Surinam, that they would be allowed free exercise of their religion, tends to prove that there must have been cases, or at least fears, of restraint in that respect. Even if the “Documents relating to the attempted departure of the Jews from Surinam in 1675” (edited by Dr. J. H. Hollander, in “Publications” VI, pp. 9–29) in which the anxiety of many Jews to leave Surinam for British territory is described, should be considered as somewhat exaggerated, it could not have been entirely an invention. The Jews’ preference for the British rule was therewith clearly established, and so was their acknowledged usefulness in the newly founded colonies.

The Jews of Surinam were then chiefly engaged in agriculture, the wealthy among them being large planters and slave holders. The chief men of the congregation were David Nassi, Isaac Perreira, Isaac Aries, Henriques de Caseras, Raphael Aboab, Samuel Nassi, Isaac R. de Pardo, Aaron de Silva, Alaus de Fonseca, Isaac Mera, Daniel Mesia, Jacob Nunez, Israel Calabi Cid, Isaac da Costa, Isaac Drago, Bento da Costa. The first Synagogue was built in 1672, on an elevated spot in Thorarica belonging to the Jews, da Costa and Solis. There are still some tombstones with illegible Hebrew inscriptions. We hear about that time of Rabbi Isaac Neto who was called from England as minister of the congregation of Paramaribo (1674 or 1680), and later we find recorded the name of another rabbi, David Pardo, who also came from London and died in 1713 (or 1717). The last named wrote, while still in Europe, “Sefer Shulhan Tahor” (Amsterdam, 1686), extracts from the “Shulhan Aruk,” and is considered the most distinguished rabbi of Surinam.

In 1682 the above-named Samuel Nassi, who has been described as capitein and as the richest planter in Surinam, gave to the Jews an island on the river Surinam, about seventy miles from the sea, where most of them settled and which was henceforth known as “de Jooden Savane” (Savannah of the Jews, the name originally meaning: a treeless region) and was the principal seat of the Jewish community of Surinam. It was there that the Congregation Berakah-we-Shalom (Blessing and Peace) built its splendid Synagogue in 1685. One hundred years later the centennial of the dedication of that Synagogue was appropriately celebrated on Wednesday, Heshwan 8, 5546 (October 12, 1785), of which a record was printed in Amsterdam the following year, partly in Hebrew and partly in Dutch. (See Roest, Catalog ... der Rosenthalschen Bibliothek I, p. 738.)

When a French squadron attacked Surinam in 1689, the Jews under the leadership of Samuel Nassi did good service in beating them off. Similar valuable service was rendered in 1712, this time under Capitein Isaac Pinto, against another French attack under Cassard. The unfriendliness of the French was demonstrated again in that year, when they took the Jewish Savannah and desecrated the Synagogue by slaughtering a pig on the “Teibah” or Ammud. The Jews, on the other hand, did not always get the protection to which they were entitled. When the slaves on the plantation of M. Machado revolted and killed their master in 1690, Governor Van Scherpenhuitzen refused to assist the Jews. At a later period (in 1718), when there was continual trouble with bush negroes, who destroyed the plantation of David Nassi, they were chastised by Jews under the leadership of Capitein Jacob d’Avilar. David Nassi (1672–1743) himself served under him with distinction, and his praises were sung by the Judeo-Spanish poetess Benvenide Belmonte. We also find traces of legal restrictions in such instances as the decree of 1703, by which all Jewish marriages contracted in Surinam up to that year are confirmed, but henceforth they must be made in conformity with the Dutch marriage law of 1580. Sunday-closing laws were also brought into force against them, but they were later repealed.

A list of the names of about sixty-five plantations belonging to Jews at that period and the names of the owners has been preserved. (“Publications,” IX, p. 129 ff.) Some of the plantations bear Hebrew names like Carmel, Hebron, Succoth and Beer-Sheba. The number of Jews in Surinam was then (about 1694) 570, consisting of ninety-two Dutch or Portuguese families, about fifty unmarried persons and ten or twelve German families. They possessed about nine thousand slaves.

Difficulties between the earlier settlers and the Germans, who arrived later, soon arose, and in 1734 the latter requested permission to form a separate community, which was granted. They were, however, prohibited to own any possession on the Jewish Savannah, nor were they allowed to have their own jurisdiction. The act of the separation of the “Hoogduytsche” (High-German) Jews, who founded the congregation Neweh Shalom, is dated January 5, 1735. It is signed by A. Henry de Scheusses (Governor) and Samuel Uz. Davilar, Ishac Carrilho, Abraham Pinto Junior, Jehoshuah C. Nassi, for the Portuguese; Solomon Joseph Levie, I. Meyer Wolff, Gerrit Jacobs, Jakob Arons Polak for the German Jews. The Portuguese thereupon built a new Synagogue, “Zedek we-Shalom,” which was dedicated in 1737. But the Germans also stuck to the Portuguese Minhag or prayer-book, and we have it on the authority of Rabbi Roos of Paramaribo (1905) that there never existed a Synagogue with the Minhag Ashkenaz in Surinam.

Bloody conflicts with negroes continued for about forty years longer, and many valiant deeds of Jewish military leaders and their followers embellish the records of that period. David Nassi was killed in battle at the age of 71 (in 1743), after being successful in more than thirty skirmishes, and was succeeded as capitein by Isaac Carvalho. In 1749 another Jewish capitein, Naär, won a victory against the Auka negroes; while in 1750 young Isaac Nassi and three hundred of his men were killed by an overwhelming force of bush negroes. At last, in 1774, forts were erected and a military line drawn from the Savannah of the Jews along the river Commoimber to the sea; and we hear no more of negro wars.

The legal status of the Jews was undergoing some changes, as is almost unavoidable so long as there is not the same law for Jew and Gentile alike. Some measures could be considered as improvements, like the law of 1749, which granted the Jews of Surinam their own judiciary in matters affecting less than 600 gulden. On the other hand we hear of an unsuccessful attempt in 1768 to institute a Ghetto in Paramaribo, and in 1775 Jews were forbidden to visit a certain amateur theatre of that town. At that time the two communities also began to make use of the right which was bestowed on them by the English Charter of Privilege (and later confirmed by the Dutch authorities), of “banishing troublesome people and persons of bad demeanour.” The “Deputies of the Jewish Nation” had only to declare to the Governor the reasons why they wished to have these persons banished, and they were expelled. The above named Rabbi J. S. Roos has noted five cases of such banishments:

Solomon Montel was banished in 1761 on the request of the Portuguese deputies, because he refused to restitute rents or usury “which is contrary to the Mosaic law.” In 1772 Noah Isaaks was banished on the request of the German deputies, and in the following year Abraham Isaac Moses Michael Fernandes Henriques, alias Escarabajos, was, on the request of the Portuguese deputies, made to quit the place. Elias Levin was banished in 1781 by the Germans and Abraham de Mesquita, the last of those exiled, belonged to the Portuguese part of the community.

The German Jews kept on increasing in numbers, and in 1780 their Synagogue in Paramaribo was enlarged and two burial grounds were procured. In 1784 the Jewish theatre of that city, probably the first in modern history, was enlarged and embellished. The Savannah, of which only ruins remain now, was on its decline, and had only about forty houses in 1792; while the community in Paramaribo was growing and two Jewish play houses are mentioned in that year. The Portuguese were still the majority, numbering 834, but the Germans were gaining fast, and from the ten families at the end of the seventeenth century they rose now to the number of 477. There were also about 100 Jewish mulattoes in Paramaribo in that time.

The Jews of Surinam in that period also commenced to display considerable literary activity. J. C. Nassi and others wrote the Essai historique sur la Colonie de Surinam avec l’histoire de la nation juive y etablie (Paramaribo, 1788), which is one of the principal sources of the history of the Jews of Surinam. A highly interesting correspondence between representative Jews of that community and Christian Wilhelm v. Dohm (1751–1820) relating to the latter’s work favoring the Jews, is printed at the end of that Essay. (Reproduced in “Publications,” XIII, pp. 133–35). Various other works of historical, religious and poetical nature were written and published there in the following half century.

The history of the community of Paramaribo in the nineteenth century is uneventful. In 1836, when the German congregation, which now numbered 719 souls, already exceeded the Portuguese portion, which had declined to 684, a new “Hoogduitsche of Nederlandsche” Synagogue was erected. In 1838 Rabbi B. C. Carrilon became the spiritual head of the Dutch-Portuguese congregation. Twenty years later M. J. Lewenstein (1829–64) was inaugurated as the Chief Rabbi of the congregation of Paramaribo and held the position for six years, until his death. In 1900 the city contained about 1,500 Jews, who occupied an honorable position and controlled the principal property of the colony. Even modern Antisemitism has not failed to invade this distant Jewish settlement, the oldest in the New World.

At present (1911) there are about 4,000 Jews in Surinam, mostly in Paramaribo, which has now about 50,000 inhabitants. The two communities, both strongly orthodox, are still in existence, and each has its rabbi. The most prominent Jewish citizen in the colony is Mr. David Da Costa, a former President of the Provincial Parliament, who was lately appointed by the Dutch Government to be the presiding judge of the Supreme Court of the colony. Mr. da Costa was for many years Parnass or President of the Portuguese congregation. Another member of the Jewish community, M. Benjamin, is at the head of the educational system of the province. Several families trace their descent from the original settlers who came there in 1639, and all of them, now fully enfranchised for several generations, have no other mother-tongue than the Dutch. Their staunch orthodoxy has saved them from being absorbed in the non-Jewish population, as happened with most of the early settlers in the British colonies in North America.

Table of Contents

The community of Curaçao—Encouragement to settle is followed by restrictions—Plans of Jewish colonization—Trade communication with New Amsterdam—Stuyvesant’s slur—The first congregation—Departures to North America and to Venezuela—Barbadoes—Taxation and legal status—Decay after the hurricane of 1831—Jamaica under Spain and under England—Hebrew taught in the Parish of St. Andrews in 1693—Harsh measures and excessive taxation—Naturalizations.

Another early settlement on Dutch territory which is still in a flourishing condition is on the island of Curaçao, Dutch West Indies. It is probable that Jews from Holland were among the first settlers in the island under the Dutch Government, which captured it from Spain in 1634; but there is no definite record until 1650, when twelve Jewish families—De Meza, Aboab, Perreire, De Leon, La Parra, Touro, Cardoze, Jesurum, Marchena, Chaviz, Oliveira and Henriques Coutinho—were granted permission by Prince Maurice of Orange to settle there. Mathias Bock, Governor of the island, was directed to grant them land and supply them with slaves, horses, cattle and agricultural implements, in order to further the cultivation and develop the natural resources of the island. The land assigned to them was situated at the northern outskirts of the present district of Willemsted, which is still known as the “Jodenwyk” (Jewish quarter). But despite the favorable conditions under which they settled there, severe restrictions were put on their movements, and they were even prohibited in 1653 from purchasing additional negro slaves which they needed for their farms. By a special grant of privilege, dated February 22, 1652, Joseph Nunez de Fonseca (known also as David Nassi), who undertook to emigrate and take with him a large number of people under a Jewish patron named Jan de Illan, two leagues of land along the coast were to be given him for every fifty families, and four leagues for every hundred families which he should bring over. The colonists were exempted from taxes for ten years, and could select the land on which they desired to settle. They were also accorded religious liberty, though they were restrained from compelling Christians to work for them on Sunday, “nor were any others to labor on that day.” The project was, however, not carried out on any extensive scale.

It was only after the re-conquest of Brazil by the Portuguese in 1654, and the consequent expulsion and dispersion of the Jews from the territory which was now again forbidden to them, that their effective settlement in Curaçao began. The Brazilian Jews who came there in that period brought with them considerable wealth, and they laid the foundation of that prominence in the commerce of the island which they have since retained.

Shortly afterwards (1657) regular communications for the purposes of trade were established between New Amsterdam and Curaçao, and it was principally in the hands of Jews. An original bill of lading (in Spanish) and an invoice of goods shipped from Curaçao to New Netherland in 1658 and addressed to Joshua Mordecai En-Riquez, includes Venetian pearls and pendants, thimbles, scissors, knives, bells, etc. An illicit trade was also carried on with Isaac de Fonseca of Barbadoes, which tended to undermine the trade monopoly enjoyed by the Dutch West Indies Company. But Fonseca’s threat to abandon Curaçao and turn his trade towards Jamaica, kept the authorities from interfering.

Peter Stuyvesant (1592–1672), the Governor of New Netherlands, complained to the directors of the West India Company in the following year, that the Jews in Curaçao were allowed to hold negro slaves and were granted other privileges not enjoyed by the colonies of New Netherlands; and he demanded for his own people, if not more, at least the same privileges as were enjoyed by “the usurious and covetous Jews.”

The Congregation Mickweh Israel was founded in 1656 under the direction of the Spanish and Portuguese community of Amsterdam, and regular daily services were held in a small wooden building which was rented for the purpose. The Rev. Abraham Haim Lopez de Fonseca, who, according to one of the oldest tombstones on the Jewish burial ground in Curaçao, died Ab. 22, 5432 (1672), was the earliest hazzan or rabbi whose name has come down to us. The first regularly appointed Hakam was Joshua Pardo, who arrived from Amsterdam in 1674 and remained until 1683, when he left for Jamaica. A new Synagogue was erected in 1692 and consecrated on the eve of Passover of that year, the services being read by the Hazzan David Raphael Lopez da Fonseca (d. 1707). The building, which was enlarged in 1731, still stands.

In the last decade of the seventeenth century a considerable number of Jews left the island for the continent of America, many of them, including the Touro family, going to Newport. A number of Italian settlers who originally came from the Jewish colony of Cayenne, which was dispersed in 1664, went to Tucacas, Venezuela, where they established a congregation called “Santa Irmandade.”

The prosperity of those who remained in Curaçao went on increasing in the eighteenth century. A benevolent society was established in 1715; five years later they responded liberally to an appeal for aid from the Congregation Shearith Israel of New York, and in 1756 met with an equal generosity a similar appeal from the Jews of Newport. By 1750 their numbers had increased to about two thousand. They were prosperous merchants and traders, and held positions of prominence in the commercial and political affairs of the island. By the end of the century they owned a considerable part of the property in the district of Willemsted; and as many as fifty-three vessels are said to have left in one day for Holland, laden with goods which for the most part belonged to Jewish merchants.

A new congregation, which called itself “Neweh Shalom” and occupied a tract across the harbor from Willemsted, was organized about 1740, and its Synagogue in the “Otrabanda” was consecrated on Ellul 12, 5505 (1745). It was established chiefly in order to save those who lived there from crossing the water on the Sabbath to attend divine services, and for a time it was regarded as merely a branch of the older congregation and as under its direction. This led to a series of disputes which culminated, in 1749, in an open breach. It was settled by the intervention of Prince William Charles of Orange-Nassau, in a decree dated April 30, 1750, in which the original jurisdiction of the older congregation, subject to the regulations of the Portuguese community of Amsterdam, was sustained. The arrangement lasted for the following one hundred and twenty years, when the younger congregation became independent (1870).

The increase in numbers and material well-being continued during the nineteenth century, but the community was not without internal dissensions. It was due to one of these controversies between the Parnassim and the ministers that a society called the “Porvenir” was founded in 1862. In the following year it developed into a Reform Congregation under the name “Emanuel,” whose new Synagogue, in the quarter “Scharlo,” was dedicated in 1866. About three years before a moderate change in the direction of reform was introduced into the liturgy of the oldest congregation.

The congregations of Curaçao now have more than one thousand members, nearly four-fifths of it belonging to Mickweh Israel. The Jews are among the leading citizens of the island, in business, as well as in the professions; they occupy executive and judicial positions, and are well represented among the officers of the militia. Almost all of them, like in Holland itself, are true to their religion, and there are probably less apostasies and intermarriages than in any other free community in which the emancipation of the Jews has been fully carried out in theory as well as in practice.

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The Jewish settlements in the British West Indies also enjoyed long periods of increase and prosperity; but they declined when the English colonies of the North American continent, and later, the United States, offered a wider field of activities and better opportunities under conditions which were so similar to those prevailing in the older places as to make the change of residence a matter of very little inconvenience. The oldest settlement under the English flag in the West Indies was probably on the island of Barbadoes, where, it is believed, Jews came first in 1628. On April 27, 1655, Oliver Cromwell issued passes to Abraham de Mercado, M. D., Hebrew, and his son, Raphael, to go to Barbadoes to exercise his profession. In 1656 the Jews were granted, upon petition, the enjoyment of the privileges of the laws and statutes of the Commonwealth of England and of the Island relating to foreigners and strangers.

In April, 1661, Benjamin de Caseres, Henry de Caseres and Jacob Fraso petitioned the King of England to permit them to live and trade in Barbadoes and Surinam. Their petition was supported by the King of Denmark, which tends to prove that they must have been men of considerable importance. In the report made by the Commissioners of Foreign Plantations, to whom it was referred, it is stated that the whole question of the advisability of allowing Jews to reside in and trade with his majesty’s colonies “hath been long and often debated.” The merchants of England were opposed to the admission of Jews, because of their ability to control trade wherever they entered, and because they would divert it from England to foreign countries. The planters, on the contrary, favored their admission and accused the merchants of aiming to appropriate the whole trade to themselves. The commissioners refrained from deciding the general question, but advised that these three highly recommended Jews, who had behaved themselves well and with general satisfaction in Barbadoes, should be granted a special license to reside there or in any other plantations.

The Jewish community was soon increased to a considerable extent, partly by the arrival of former members of the dissolved colony of Cayenne (1664). It is recorded in the minutes of the vestry of St. Michael’s Parish (July 9, 1666) “that the Jews inhabiting this Parish do pay the quantity of 35,000 pounds Muscovado sugar, to be levied by themselves and paid to Senior Lewis Dias and Senior Jeronimo Roderigos, who are hereby ordered to pay it to the present church wardens.” The order is repeated in October, 1666, and again in 1667; and in that year another order making the levy for the year 20,000 pounds was issued. In 1669 the order in January was for 14,000 pounds, and in March for 16,000. In 1670 it was again for 16,000, but the Jews sent in a petition declaring the amount to be excessive. This had the effect of reducing the amount of the tax to 7,000 pounds in 1671 and to “half of what was levied last year” in 1672. For the following five years it was mostly 7,000 pounds a year, “levied for their trade.” In 1680 it is 8,500 pounds, apportioned among forty-five Jews, some being made to contribute only twelve pounds, several others as high as 792 each, with David Raphael de Mercado heading the list with 1,075 pounds. (See list of names in “Publications,” XIX, pp. 174–75.)

Antonio Rodrigo Rigio, Abraham Levi Regio, Lewis Dias, Isaac Jerajo Coutinho, Abraham Pereira, David Baruch Louzada and other Hebrews who were made free denizens by His Majesty’s letters patent, petitioned in 1669 about the refusal to accept the testimony of Jews in the courts of the colony. The governor, in forwarding the petition, says, that “they had not been exposed to any other injuries in their trade or otherwise.” But the privilege granted was only for cases “relating to trade and dealing.” Special taxes continued to be imposed at various times until 1761, when all additional burdens were lifted, and afterward the Jews were rated and paid taxes on the same scale as other inhabitants. All political disabilities were removed by act of the local government in 1802, and by act of Parliament in 1820.

The number of Jews in Barbadoes was never as large as that of Surinam. In 1681 the total Jewish population of the island was 260. They went on increasing slowly, the great majority living in Bridgetown (where the first Synagogue was erected, probably prior to 1679) and a small number in Speightstown. In 1792, at the beginning of the period of the greatest prosperity of the community, the congregation of Bridgetown had 147 members, and 17 pensioners were supported. The name of the congregation was “Kehol Kodesh Nidhe Israel,” and its ministers were all selected by the vestry of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in London.

The decline of the Jewish community of Barbadoes dates from the great hurricane in 1831 which devastated the island, and also destroyed the Synagogue. Though a new edifice was erected and dedicated in 1833, and even a religious school was established several years later, the members kept on leaving the island for the United States, most of them going to Philadelphia. In 1848 there were only 71 Jews left. In 1873, those remaining petitioned for relief from taxation of property held by the congregation. The census of 1882 showed 21 Jews, and the number was still smaller at the end of the nineteenth century.

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When England conquered the largest of its West Indian possessions, the island of Jamaica, in 1655, a considerable number of Jews, known as “Portugals,” were living there. They dared not profess Judaism openly, or organize themselves into a congregation; but they were less in danger on account of their faith than in any other Spanish colony. The proprietary rights of the island was vested in the family of Columbus until about 1576, when it passed to the female Braganza line, and these exclusive rights exempted the island from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and prevented it from being included in the bishopric of Cuba. The British were careful to distinguish between the Portuguese Jews and the Spaniards, with the result that the Jews at once began to establish and develop the commercial prosperity of the colony. Sir Thomas Lynch, governor of Jamaica, writing in March, 1672, to the Council for Trade and Transportation, mentions, as points in favor of the Jews that “they have great stocks, no people, and aversions to the French and Spaniards.”

Several years before that time Jacob Joshua Bueno Enriques, a resident of Jamaica for two years, petitioned the King for permission to work a copper mine, and that he and his brothers, Josef and Moise, “may use their own laws and hold Synagogues.” In 1668 Solomon Gabay Faro and David Gomez Henriques were recommended by the King to the governor to remain and trade in Jamaica as long as they behaved well and fairly. There were considerable increases by arrivals from Brazil, later from the withdrawal of the British from Surinam, by direct immigration from England and even from Germany. But there must have been also considerable emigration of Jews, for at the end of the seventeenth century the number of Jews in Jamaica is figured at eighty. While the inclusion of Hebrew in the curriculum of the free school which was established in the Parish of St. Andrews in 1693—the earliest known instance of the teaching of Hebrew in an English settlement in the New World—may be taken as a concession to the Jewish inhabitants, there was no lack of harsh and galling measures. In 1703 the Jews were prohibited, under penalty of five hundred pounds, from holding Christian servants. In 1711 they were prohibited, along with mulattoes, Indians and negroes, from being employed as clerks in any of the judicial or other offices.

The struggle of the Jews of Jamaica against heavy taxation forms an interesting chapter in their history at the beginning of the eighteenth century. (See “Publications” II, p. 165 ff.) In 1700 a memorial was presented to Sir William Beeston, Governor-in-Chief of the Island of Jamaica, against the excessive special taxation of four assemblies, and against “being forced to bear arms on our Sabbath and holy days ... without any necessity or urgent occasion (which is quite contrary to our religion, unless in case of necessity, when an enemy is in sight or apprehension of being near us).” The reply by the governor and council begins with the admission of the truth of the statement about taxation; but a counter-claim is advanced that “their first introduction into this island was on the condition that they should settle and plant, which they do not, there being but one considerable and two or three small settlements of the Jews in all the island. But their employment is generally keeping of shops and merchandise, by the first of which they have engrossed that employment, and by their parsimonious living (which I do not charge as a fault in them) they have thereby means of underselling the English; that they cannot, many in them, follow that employment, nor can they in reason put their children to the Jews to be trained up in that profession, by which the English nation think they suffer much, both in their own advantages and what may be made to their children hereafter.”

The governor then proceeds to explain that the Jews themselves requested that “they might on any occasion be taxed by the lump,” and that because of their controlling of trade, especially of the retail trade, the Assembly have thought it but just that they should pay something in proportion more than the English. He continues: “As for their bearing of arms, it must be owned that when any public occasion has happened or an enemy appeared they have been ready and behaved themselves very well; but for their being called into arms on private times and that have happened upon their Sabbath or festivals, they have been generally excused by their officers, unless by their obstinacy or ill-language they have provoked them to the contrary.”

Traces of retrogression are also discernible in a document which was presented in 1721 to the Jamaica House of Representatives, entitled: “A petition of Jacob Henriques, Moses Mendes Quixano and David Gabai on behalf of themselves and the rest of the Jews now resident in this island ... praying that the House will take into consideration the great disparity there is between the numbers, trade and substance of the Jews now resident in this island in this and former times, and to mitigate the assessment of tax to be laid upon them.” But it seems that there was an improvement and an increase of the community about the middle of that century; for not less than 151 of the 189 Jews in the British-American Colonies whose names have been handed down as naturalized between 1740 (under the act of Parliament of that year) and 1755 resided in Jamaica.

Among the leading Jewish families which contributed most signally to the development of Jamaica’s trade are: de Silva, Soarez, Cardozo, Belisario, Belinfante, Nuñez, Fonseca, Gutterect, de Cordova, Bernal, Gomez, Vaz and Bravo.

Kingston was from the time of its foundation (1693) the principal seat of the Jewish community; an earlier Synagogue which is mentioned in 1684 and 1687 was probably situated in Port Royal. There were also settlements in Spanish Town, Montego Bay, Falmouth and Lacovia.

Here also, like in most other Dutch and English colonies, the local authorities were less liberal than the home governments, especially in matters of taxation. The assistance of the crown was necessary to abolish all special taxation, and also to check such attempts as were made during the reign of William III. to expel the Jews from the island. There is a record (see “Publications” XIX, p. 179–80) of a Mr. Montefiore who made an application to be admitted as an attorney in Jamaica in 1787, and produced a certificate of his admission in the Court of King’s Bench, in London, in 1784; but the above-mentioned anti-Jewish law of 1711 was cited to disqualify him from acting as attorney in Jamaica. It is believed that the man who met with this refusal was Joshua Montefiore (1762–1843), an uncle of Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885).

The community was in a flourishing condition in 1831, when all civil disabilities were finally removed, and the Jews immediately began to take a leading part in the affairs of the colony. In 1838 Sir Francis H. Goldsmid (1808–78) was able to compile a long list of Jews who were chosen to civil and military offices in Jamaica since the act of 1831, which was used by him as an argument in favor of removing the Jewish disabilities at home.

Alexander Bravo was the first Jew to be chosen as a member of the Jamaica Assembly, being elected for the district of Kingston in 1835. He later became a member of the council and afterward receiver-general. In 1849 eight of the forty-seven members of the colonial assembly were Jews, and Dr. C. M. Morales was elected Speaker in that year. Phinchas Abraham (d. 1887) was one of the last survivors of the body of merchants who contributed to the prosperity of the West Indies (see Jew. Encyclopedia s. v.).

The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Kingston, situated on Princess street until the time of its destruction by the great fire of 1882, was consecrated in 1750. It was replaced by a new edifice on East street in 1884. The English and German Synagogue was consecrated in 1789, a third (German) was merged with the first in 1850. The Synagogue of the “Amalgamated Congregation of Israelites,” which was consecrated in 1888, was destroyed by the earthquake of January, 1907. The United Congregation now worships at the East street Synagogue, which was enlarged for the purpose. The English-German Congregation consecrated a new Synagogue in 1894. There is also a Hebrew Benevolent Society and a Gemilut Hasodim Association which is more than a century old.

Among the rabbis of Jamaica were: Joshua Pardo who came there from Curaçao in 1683; his contemporary, the Spanish poet, Daniel Israel Lopez Laguna; Hakam de Cordoza (d. in Spanish Town, 1798); Rev. Abraham Pereire Mendes (b. Kingston, 1825; d. New York, 1893); Rev. George Jacobs; Rev. J. M. Corcos, and the present rabbi of the English-German Synagogue on Orange street, Rev. M. H. Solomon. The two Synagogues in Kingston are the only ones in the colony, which has about two thousand Jews, or nearly ten per cent., of the white population of Jamaica.

Table of Contents

Poverty of the first Jewish immigrants to New Amsterdam—Stuyvesant’s opposition overruled by the Dutch West India Company—Privileges and restrictions—Contributions to build the wall from which Wall street takes its name—The first cemetery—Exemption from military duty—Little change at the beginning of the English rule—The first synagogue after a liberal decree by the Duke of York—Marranos brought back in boats which carried grain to Portugal—Hebrew learning—Question about the Jews as voters and as witnesses—Peter Kalm’s description of the Jews of New York about 1745—Hyman Levy, the employer of the original Astor.

The wealth which made the Spanish and Portuguese Jew welcome, or at least insured him sufferance, in the other Dutch and English colonies of the New World, was absent in the case of those who first settled in what is now New York. In September, 1654, the year in which the Dutch lost control of Brazil and the great Jewish community of Recife was scattered, there arrived in the port of New Amsterdam (as New York was called by its Dutch founders) the barque St. Catarina, of which Jacques de la Motthe was master, from Cape St. Anthony (Cuba?), carrying twenty-seven Jews, men, women and children. These passengers, the first Jews to arrive in what is now the United States, were so poor that their goods had to be sold by the master of the vessel by public auction for the payment of their passage. The amount realized by the sale being insufficient, he applied to the Court of Burgomaster and the Schoepens that one or two of them, as principals, be held as security for the payment of the balance in accordance with the contract made with him by which each person signing it had bound himself for the payment of the whole amount, and under which he had taken two of them, David Israel and Moses Ambrosius, as principal debtors.

The court accordingly ordered that they should be placed under civil arrest, in the custody of the provost marshal, until they should have made satisfaction; that the captain should be answerable for their support while in custody, as security for which a certain proportion of the proceeds of the sale was directed to be left in the hands of the secretary of the colony. But as no further proceedings appear upon the records, the matter was doubtless arranged and was probably nothing more than a dispute or misunderstanding between them and the captain as to whether they were bound to make good the deficiency, which was probably enhanced by the forced sale of their effects by auction.6 It is more likely that their embarrassment was only temporary and was due to their being robbed shortly before or after they left their last stopping place or residence, which was probably Jamaica. (See Leon Hühner, Whence came the First Jewish Settlers of New York? “Publications,” IX, p. 75 ff.) It is mentioned that some of them were awaiting remittances, which must have come in time to enable the refugees to hold their own until the question of permitting them to remain in the colony was settled in their favor through correspondence with Holland.

Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of the colony, a man of strong will and strong prejudices, was hostile to the new arrivals, and he soon wrote to the Directors of the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam requesting that “none of the Jewish nation be permitted to infest New Netherland.” He received a reply that such a course “would be unreasonable and unfair, especially because of the considerable loss sustained by the Jews in the taking of Brazil, and also because of the large amount of capital which they have invested in the shares of this company. After many consultations we have decided and resolved upon a certain petition made by said Portuguese Jews, that they shall have permission to sail to and trade in New Netherland and to live and remain there, provided that the poor among them shall not become a burden to the company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation.” This is the end of the reply, dated, April 26, 1655, which began with the ominous sentence: “We would have liked to agree to your wishes and request, that the new territories should not be further invaded by people of the Jewish race, for we forsee from such immigration the same difficulties which you fear.” But the influence of the Jews in Amsterdam overcame the predilections and the fears of the company, and a special act was issued July 15, 1655, expressly giving Jews in New Netherlands the privileges contained in the above letter to the governor.

Before the favorable decision could arrive from Holland, the position of the Jews was precarious. On the 1st of March, 1655, Abraham de la Simon was brought before the Court of Burgomaster and the Schoepens upon the complaint of the Schout or Sheriff for keeping open his store on Sunday during the sermon, and selling at retail. The Sheriff on that occasion informed the court that the Governor and Council had resolved that the Jews who had come in the preceding autumn, as well as those that had recently arrived from Holland, must prepare to depart forthwith. The Court, which was also a council for the municipal government of the city, was asked by the Sheriff whether it had any objection to make; whereupon, says the record, it was decided that the Governor’s resolution should take its course.

There is reason to believe that some Jews left on account of that resolution before the orders from Holland arrived. They presumably went to Rhode Island. Those who remained were still objects of the Governor’s aversion, and even the more friendly Company was not too liberal. A letter from the directors to Stuyvesant, dated, March 13, 1556, contains the following: “The permission given to the Jews to go to New Netherlands and enjoy the same privileges as they have here (in Amsterdam), has been granted only as far as civil and political rights are concerned, without giving the said Jews a claim to the privilege of exercising their religion in a synagogue or a gathering.”

But it must be said to the credit of the directors that they insisted on what they granted to the Jews, and in another letter, dated, June 14, 1556, they write to the self-willed governor: “We have seen and heard with displeasure, that against our orders of the 15th of February, 1655, issued at the request of the Jewish or Portuguese nation, you have forbidden them to trade to Fort Orange (Albany) and the South River (Delaware), also the purchase of real estate, which is granted to them without difficulty here in this country, and we wish it had not been done, and you have obeyed your orders which you must always execute punctually and with more respect. Jews or Portuguese people, however, shall not be employed in any public service (to which they are neither admitted in this city) nor allowed to have open retail shops; but they may quietly and peacefully carry on their business as beforesaid and exercise in all quietness their religion within their houses, for which end they must without doubt endeavor to build their houses close together in a convenient place on one or the other side of New Amsterdam—at their choice—as they do here.”

These instructions came as the result of a petition sent to the directors by Abraham d’Lucena, Salvatore d’Andrade and Jacob Cohen, for themselves and in the name of others of the Jewish nation, asking for a confirmation of the privileges, which was thus granted. These three and two other Jews, Joseph da Costa and David Frera, were in the preceding year, 1655, assessed each 1,000 florins to defray the cost of erecting the outer fence or city wall, from which Wall street takes its name. It was the same amount as was imposed upon the wealthiest of the citizens, and the five adduced it as a reason for their being entitled to the rights to trade and to hold real property.

Abraham d’Lucena, who appears to have been the most prominent of the early Jewish immigrants, and several others, applied in July, 1655, for a burying ground; but the request was refused with the reply “that there was no need for it yet.” There was need for it, however, about a year later, and on July 14, 1656, a lot was granted to them outside of the city for a place of interment. This is the old cemetery on Oliver street and New Bowery, which was augmented by further purchases in the following century.

The city was at that time exposed to attacks from Spanish cruisers and pirates, and to assaults from hostile Indians. The encroachments of the English on Long Island and Westchester was a subject of constant anxiety, England never having conceded the rights of the Dutch to settle New Netherlands. This caused all the male inhabitants capable of bearing arms to enroll in the Burgher Guard, and a watch was kept up night and day with the steadiness and vigilance of a beleaguered town. A few months after the arrival of the Jewish immigrants the question arose whether the adult males among them should be incorporated in the Burgher Guard; the officers of the guard submitting the question to the Governor and Council. It was duly deliberated upon and an ordinance was passed (August 28, 1655), which, after reciting “the unwillingness of the mass of the citizens to be fellow-soldiers of the aforesaid nation” or watch in the same guard-house, and the fact that the Jews in Holland did not serve in the train bands of the cities, but paid a compensation for their exemption therefrom, declared that they should be exempt from that military service, and for such exemption each male person between the ages of sixteen and sixty shall pay a monthly contribution of sixty-five stivers.

Jacob Barsimson and Asser Levy (d. 1682) petitioned to be allowed to stand guard like other burghers, or to be relieved from the tax, which was refused by the Governor and Council with the remark that “they might go elsewhere if they liked.” But after the last order from Amsterdam favorable to the claims of the Jews was received, Asser Levy applied to be admitted to the right of citizenship, and exhibited his certificate to the court to show that he had been a burgher in Amsterdam. His request, as well as the one made for the same purpose by Salvatore d’Andrade and others, was not complied with. The matter was brought before the Governor and Council, and as the directions from Holland were controlling, an order was made April 21, 1657, that the Burgomaster should admit them to that privilege. Here the struggle virtually ended, and they were no longer troubled during the Dutch rule.

When the British captured the city in 1664 and renamed it New York, the condition of the Jews remained practically unchanged. There is a record of at least one Jew who removed from Newport to New York in that period, and had difficulties with the local authorities because they enforced against him the regulation which did not permit a Jew to engage in retail trade. The Charter of Liberties and Privileges which was adopted in 1683 by the colonial legislature declared that “no one should be molested, punished, disquieted or called in question for his religious opinion, who professed faith in God by Jesus Christ,” which meant that the Jews and unbelievers were excluded from the privileges of religious freedom. A petition by the Jews to Governor Dongan, in 1686, for liberty to exercise their religion, i. e., to have public worship, was consequently decided in the negative. But James, Duke of York (afterwards King James II., 1633–1701), to whom New York was granted by his brother, had previously sent out instructions, which arrived about that time, “to permit all persons of what religion soever, quietly to inhabit within the government, and to give no disturbance or disquiet whatsoever for or by reason of their differing in matters of religion.”

The exact date when the Jews took advantage of that liberal decree is not known, but it is presumed that the religious services, which had been heretofore conducted semi-privately, were soon performed in a house devoted to that purpose. It is certain that there was a Jewish Synagogue in New York in 1695, probably as early as 1691, while the restrictions as to trade were removed a few years before. The Synagogue, the first on the North American continent, was situated on the south side of the present Beaver street, between Broadway and Broad street. When it became too small for the community which was increasing in wealth and in numbers, a new edifice was erected in 1728 on Mill street (about the present site of South William street), where the congregation, which now assumed the name of “Shearith Israel” (Remnant of Israel), continued to worship for more than a century.

A profitable commerce was carried on between New York and the West Indies at the beginning of the eighteenth century in which numerous Jewish merchants participated. There was also carried on, though for a short period, a considerable business of exporting wheat to Portugal, on account of the scarcity in Europe about the close of the French war. Abraham d’Lucena and Louis Moses Gomez, who engaged in that traffic to Portugal, not only became two of the most affluent of the Jewish residents of New York, but they also incidentally caused an increase of the number of their co-religionists in the community. It is presumed that the vessels which carried grain to the Iberian peninsula brought Jewish or Marrano passengers on the return voyage. Most of the new Jewish names which began to appear here about that time are of undoubted Spanish and Portuguese origin. But there were also in the city Jews from other countries. When the Rev. John Sharpe proposed the erection of a school-library and chapel in New York, in 1712–13, he points out among the advantages which the city afforded for that purpose that: “It is possible also to learn Hebrew here as well as in Europe, there being a Synagogue of Jews, and many ingenious men of that nation from Poland, Hungary, Germany, etc.”

The above-mentioned Louis Moses Gomez (b. Madrid, 1654; d. New York, 1740) who arrived in America about 1700, was until the time of his death one of the principal merchants of New York. He had five sons, and his descendants have intermarried with most of the old-time American-Jewish families.

While the community was increasing in number and wealth, something occurred which sharply reminded the Jews that the time of complete emancipation had not yet come. In 1737 the election of Col. Frederick Phillips as representative of the General Assembly for the County of Westchester was contested by Captain Cornelius Van Horne. Colonel Phillips called several Jews to give evidence on his behalf, when an objection was made to their competency as witnesses. After arguments on both sides were heard, they were informed by the speaker that it was the opinion of the House that “none of the Jewish profession could be admitted as evidence.” It seems that Jews had voted at the election, for after again hearing arguments from the counsel of both parties, the House resolved that, as it did not appear that persons of the Jewish religion had a right to vote for members of Parliament in Great Britain, it was the unanimous opinion of the House that they could not be admitted to vote for Representatives in the colony. This decision has been described by a later historian as remarkable, and in explanation of it he says: “That Catholics and Jews had long been peculiarly obnoxious to the colonists,” that “the first settlers being Dutch and mostly of the Reformed Protestant religion, and the migration from England, since the colony belonged to the Crown, being principally Episcopal, both united in their aversion to the Catholics and the Jews.” (Quoted by Daly, The Settlement of the Jews in North America, p. 46.)7

The general condition of the Jews of New York was, nevertheless, highly favorable, as is attested by Peter Kalm (1715–79), the Swedish botanist and traveler, who spent a considerable time in the colony in the following decade. He says: “There are many Jews settled in New York who possess great privileges. They have a Synagogue and houses, great country-seats of their own property, and are allowed to keep shops in the town. They have likewise several ships which they freight and send out with their goods; in fine, the Jews enjoy all the privileges in common to the other inhabitants of this town and province.”

The increase of the community between that time and the American Revolution was very slow in comparison with the fast growth of the general population of the city, which was less than 5,000 in 1700, about 9,000 in 1750, and nearly 23,000 in 1776. The natural increase and the additions which the Jewish community received by immigration, chiefly from England, was barely sufficient to counteract the loss of others who went to Newport, Charleston and Philadelphia. But, though small, it continued to be a highly respectable and influential body, having among its members some of the principal merchants of the city. Of this number was Hayman Levy (d. 1790) who carried on an extensive business chiefly with the Indians, and by winning their respect and confidence became the largest fur trader in the colonies. Upon his books are entries of moneys paid to John Jacob Astor (1763–1848), the founder of the Astor family, for beating furs at the rate of one dollar a day. Miss Zeporah Levy (d. 1833), a daughter of Hayman, was married in 1779 to Benjamin Hendricks, a native of New York, the founder of a well-known and long-maintained Jewish commercial house.

Table of Contents

The Old Testament spirit in New England—Roger Williams—The first Jew in Massachusetts—Judah Monis, instructor in Hebrew at Harvard—Newport—Jews from Holland bring there the first degrees of Masonry—The cemetery immortalized by Longfellow—Jacob Rodrigues Rivera introduces the manufacture of sperm oil—Aaron Lopez, the greatest merchant in America—Immigration from Portugal—Rabbi Isaac Touro—Visiting rabbis—First Jews in Connecticut—Philadelphia—Congregation Mickweh Israel—Easton’s wealthy Jews—Maryland—Dr. Jacob Lumbrozo—General Oglethorpe and the first Jews of Georgia—Joseph Ottolenghi—The Carolinas—Charleston.

Although “the Puritans of England and America appropriated the language of our judges and prophets” and the spirit of the Old Testament was the most potent force in the foundation and the conduct of the early Commonwealths of New England, still it was not a typical or recognized leader of those who deemed themselves members of a new Hebrew theocratic democracy, but rather an outcast from their ranks, who first granted full religious liberty to the Jews and bade them welcome. This man was Roger Williams (1600?–1684), the former clergyman of the Church of England, who later (1631) became a Puritan pastor in Salem, Mass., and was expelled for denying the right of the magistrates to punish Sabbath-breaking, and was four years later “banished from the jurisdiction of the Puritans of America, and driven into the wilderness to endure the severity of our northern winter and the bitter pangs of hunger.”8

There was at least one Jew in Massachusetts before the arrival of the first Jews in New Amsterdam, and he is mentioned only as being assisted—or forced—to quit the colony. The reference to him is dated May 3, 1649, when it is stated that the court allows Solomon Franco, the Jew, six shillings per week out of the treasury for ten weeks for subsistence till he can get his passage into Holland (see Kohut, The Jews of New England in “Publications,” XI, p. 78). Several other Jews are mentioned as having lived there in the latter part of the seventeenth and in the first three-quarters of the eighteenth centuries. But owing to the intolerance and religious zeal of the Puritans, they either moved to other parts or embraced Christianity. When a Jew named Joseph Frazon (or Frazier) died in Boston, in 1704, his body was sent to Newport for burial.

The most distinguished among the early converts was Judah Monis (born in Algiers about 1680; died in Northborough, Mass. in 1764). He was baptized in the College Hall at Cambridge, Mass., on March 22, 1722, and was afterward active in the cause of his new faith, although he observed throughout his life the Jewish Sabbath. He was an instructor in Hebrew at Harvard University, from 1722 till 1759, when on the death of his wife he resigned and removed to Northborough. Besides some insignificant missionary pamphlets, he was the author of the first Hebrew grammar printed in America (Boston, 1735).

It was in the smallest of the original colonies, which is now likewise the smallest State in the Union, Rhode Island, founded by the pioneer of religious liberty in the New World, that the Jews established their oldest congregation on the North American continent. Providence was founded in 1636, Portsmouth and Newport about two years later, and the last named place, which soon became one of the most important cities in the colonies, excelling even New York as a commercial center and port of entry until after the Revolution, began to attract Jews soon after their arrival in these parts of the country. The earliest authentic mention of Jews in Newport is in 1658, when fifteen Jewish families are said to have arrived from Holland, bringing with them the first degrees of Masonry which they proceeded to confer on Abraham Moses in the house of Mordecai Campanall.9 But there is reason to believe that Jews from New Amsterdam and Curaçao settled there a year or two before. A congregation seems to have been organized in 1658 under the name “Jeshuat Israel.” The cemetery, immortalized by Longfellow and Emma Lazarus, was acquired by Campanall and Moses Packeckoe, in 1677, but it is possible that there existed an earlier Jewish cemetery.

Still even in Rhode Island it was only tolerance; the recognition of equal rights was yet to come with the Declaration of Independence. In reply to a petition of the Jews, the General Assembly of Rhode Island, in 1684, affirmed the right of the Jews to settle in the colony, declaring that “they may expect as good protection here as any stranger being not of our nation residing among us in His Majesty’s colony ought to have, being obedient to His Majesty’s laws.”

More Jewish settlers arrived from the West Indies in 1694; but the great impulse to the commercial activity which raised Newport to the zenith of its prosperity was given by a number of Portuguese Jews who settled there about the middle of the eighteenth century. Most prominent among those were Jacob Rodrigues Rivera (died at an advanced age in 1789), who arrived in 1745, and Aaron Lopez, who came in 1750. The former introduced into America the manufacture of sperm oil, having brought the art with him from Portugal, and it soon became one of the leading industries; Newport, whose inhabitants were engaged in whale fishing, had seventeen manufactories of oil and candles and enjoyed a practical monopoly of this trade down to the Revolution.

Aaron Lopez (died May 28, 1782), who was Rivera’s son-in-law, became the great merchant prince of New England. (Ezra Stiles says of him, that for honor and extent of commerce he was probably surpassed by no merchant in America.) The advantages of this important seaport were quickly comprehended by this sagacious merchant, and to him in a larger degree than to any one else was due the rapid commercial development that followed. He was the means of inducing more than forty Jewish families to settle there, the heads of many of which were men of wealth, mercantile sagacity, high intelligence and enterprise. In fourteen years after Lopez settled there, Newport had 150 vessels engaged in trade with the West Indies alone, besides an extensive trade which was carried on as far as Africa and the Falkland Islands. The Jews were even then, nearly three hundred years after the expulsion, transferring to the liberal English colonies the wealth and the still more valuable business ability and commercial connections which they could not freely or safely employ as Marranos in Portugal. The emigration of secret Jews from that country increased after the great earthquake at Lisbon (1755), and a considerable portion went to Rhode Island. One of the vessels from that unhappy city, bound for Virginia, was driven into Narragansett Bay, and its Jewish passengers remained at Newport.

Isaac Touro (died Dec. 8, 1783) came from Jamaica to Newport, in 1760, to become the minister of its prosperous congregation, and occupied the position until the outbreak of the Revolution, when he returned to end his days in Jamaica. Until the time of his arrival worship was held in private houses, but in 1762 the congregation, which numbered between sixty and seventy members, decided to erect a Synagogue. The building, which is still standing, was completed and dedicated in 1763. There is evidence that the Jewish population of Newport, even before the Revolution, contained considerable German and Polish elements. According to one historian, the city numbered before the outbreak of hostilities 1,175 Jews—which was probably a majority of the Jews in all the colonies—while more than 300 worshipers attended the Synagogue.

Many Jewish rabbis from all parts of the world were attracted to Newport in those times. The above-named Ezra Stiles (1727–95), the famous president of Yale University, who was a preacher in Newport at that time, mentions several of them in his diary. He met one from Palestine in 1759, two from Poland, 1771 and 1772, respectively, a Rabbi Bosquila from Smyrna, a Rabbi Cohen from Jerusalem and Rabbi Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal (b. Hebron, Palestine, 1733; d. Barbadoes, 1777), who preached at Newport in Spanish in 1773, and became an intimate friend of the Christian theological scholar.

The arrival of a Jewish family from the West Indies to New Haven, Conn., in 1772, is noted by Stiles, who was a native of that place, in his diary as follows: “They are the first real Jews at that place with exception of the two brothers Pinto, who renounced Judaism and all religion.” This is substantially accurate in regard to New Haven, although one David, the Jew, is mentioned in the Hartford town records as early as 1659 (or 1650), and the residence of several Jews is implied in the entry which was made in the same records under date of September 2, 1661: “The same day ye Jews which at present live at John Marsh, his house, have liberty to sojourn in ye town for seven months.” They are mentioned at a subsequent period, too, which proves that they were permitted to remain longer than the allotted seven months. But all trace of them is lost afterwards, and almost two centuries had passed until the first Synagogue was erected in Hartford.

* * * * *

The Jews of New Amsterdam who had difficulties with Peter Stuyvesant in 1655 about their right to trade on the South River, which was subsequently re-named the Delaware (see above, chapter 9) were probably the first to set foot in what later became the colony and still later the State of Pennsylvania. This was twenty years before William Penn (1644–1718) became part proprietor of West Jersey, and more than a quarter of a century before he came over to America (1682) and founded the city of Philadelphia in the colony of Pennsylvania, which he received as a grant from the King of England in the preceding year.

The first Jewish resident of Philadelphia was Jonas Aaron, who was living there in 1703. A number of other Jews settled there in the first half of the eighteenth century and some of them, including David Franks (1720–93), Joseph Marks and Sampson Levy, became prominent in the life of the city. Isaac Miranda came there earlier (1710) and held several State offices, but he was a convert to Christianity, and his preferment cannot be considered a Jewish success. A German traveler mentions the Jews among the religious sects of Philadelphia in 1734. In 1738 Nathan Levy (1704–53) applied for a plot of ground to be used as a place of burial, and obtained it Sept. 25, 1740. This was the first Jewish cemetery in the city, and was henceforth known as the “Jews’ burying ground,” situated in Spruce street, near Ninth street. It later became the property of the Congregation Mickweh Israel, which had its beginnings about 1745 and is believed to have worshipped in a small house in Sterling alley. The question of building a Synagogue was raised in 1761, as a result of the influx of Jews from Spain and the West Indies, but nothing was then accomplished in that direction. In 1773, when Barnard Gratz (born in Germany, 1738; died in Baltimore, 1801) was parnas and Solomon Marache, treasurer, a subscription was started “in order to support our holy worship and establish it on a more solid foundation,” but no Synagogue was built until about ten years later. Barnard Gratz and his brother, Michael (b. 1740), with whom he came to America about 1755, were among the eight Jewish merchants of Philadelphia who signed the Non-Importation Resolution in 1765. The others were Benjamin Levy, David Franks, Sampson Levy, Hyman Levy, Jr.; Mathias Bush and Moses Mordecai.

Jews were to be found in Lancaster, Pa., as early as 1730, before the town and county were organized, and the name of Joseph Simon was preserved as the best known of the first arrivals. Myer Hart (d. about 1795) and his wife, Rachel, and their son, Michael (b. 1738), were one of the eleven original families that are classed as the founders of Easton, Pa., about 1750. Myer Hart heads the list of those furnishing material for the erection of a schoolhouse in Easton in 1755. He is first described as a shopkeeper and later as an innkeeper, and he was naturalized April 3, 1764. In 1780 his estate was valued at £2,095, and that of his son, Michael, at £2,261, these two being the heaviest taxed individuals in the county. At that period there were two other Jewish merchants residing at Easton, Barnard Levi and Joseph Nathan.

There is a tradition that Schafferstown, Pa., had a Synagogue and a Jewish cemetery in 1732, but the facts have not been verified, and there is a suspicion that the supposed Jews were German pietists who assumed Biblical names.

To the south of Pennsylvania the older colony of Maryland, which was established in 1634, “adopted religious freedom as the basis of the State;” but this boon was reserved for Christians only, although there is no record that the statutory death penalty for those who denied the trinity was ever carried out in practice. The physician, Jacob Lumbrozo (d. May, 1666), who hailed from Lisbon, Portugal, and came to Maryland about January, 1656, and later became an extensive land owner, was committed for blasphemy in 1658, but this did not prevent him from enjoying a lucrative practice and engaging in various mercantile pursuits in subsequent years. He was even granted letters of denization on Sept. 10, 1663, which vested him with all the privileges of a native or naturalized subject. But his case seems to have been exceptional, probably owing to his medical skill and his wealth. But in general, colonial Maryland was no place for Jews, and even after it became a part of the United States it was one of the last to remove the civil disabilities of its Jewish citizens.

Another Marrano physician from Lisbon, Dr. Samuel (Ribiero) Nuñez, who escaped from the clutches of the Inquisition and arrived, in 1733, in the newly founded colony of Georgia, found a more congenial place of refuge. Georgia was in respect to the Jews the reverse of New Netherlands; the trustees of the colony in England were opposed to permitting Jews to settle there, but General James Edward Oglethorpe (1696–1785), the Governor, was very friendly disposed towards them. Nuñez was one of forty Jewish immigrants who unexpectedly arrived at Savannah in the second vessel which reached the colony from England (July 11, 1733). The Governor, one of the noblest figures of colonial times, bade them welcome, and considered them a good acquisition to the new colony. The first settlers were of Spanish and Portuguese extraction,10 but Jews who apparently came from Germany took up their residence there less than a year afterwards. Both bands of settlers received equally liberal treatment, and they soon organized a congregation (1734). The first male white child born in the colony was a Jew, Isaac Minis. Abraham de Lyon, of Portugal, introduced the culture of grapes into Georgia in 1737, while others of the early settlers engaged in the cultivation and manufacture of silk, the knowledge of which they likewise brought with them from Portugal. A dispute with the trustees of the colony respecting the introduction of slaves caused an extensive emigration to South Carolina in 1741, and resulted in the dissolution of the congregation. But in 1751 a number of Jews returned to Georgia, and in the same year the trustees sent over Joseph Ottolenghi (d. after June, 1774) to superintend the somewhat extensive silk industry of the colony. Ottolenghi soon attained prominence in the political life of the colony and was elected a member of the General Assembly, where he served from 1761 to 1765. Several other Jews rendered distinguished services to Georgia, but they belong to the period of the Revolution, which will be treated separately in the following part. A new congregation was started in 1774.

“Jews, heathens and dissenters” were granted full liberty of conscience in the liberal charter which the celebrated English philosopher, John Locke (1632–1704) drew up for the governance of the Carolinas (1669), and the spirit of tolerance was always retained there. Still few Jews were attracted there at the beginning, and about thirty years later we know of only one Jew, Solomon Valentine, as living in Charleston. A few others followed him, and in 1703 a protest was raised against “Jew strangers” voting for members of the Assembly. About the middle of the eighteenth century the number of Jews in Charleston suddenly increased through the above-mentioned exodus from Georgia, and the first Synagogue of the Congregation Bet Elohim was established in 1750. Its first minister was Isaac da Costa, and among its earliest members were Joseph and Michael Tobias, Moses Cohen, Abraham da Costa, Moses Pimenta, David de Olivera, Mordecai Sheftal, Michael Lazarus and Abraham Nuñez Cardozo. The first Synagogue was a small building on Union street; its present edifice is situated at Hassell street. A Hebrew Benevolent Society, which still survives, was also organized at an early date. A German-Jewish congregation was also in existence in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Several prominent Jews of London purchased large tracts of land in South Carolina, near Fort Ninety-six, which became known as the “Jews’ Land.” Moses Lindo who arrived from London in 1756, became engaged in indigo manufacture, which he made one of the principal industries in the colony. Another London Jew, Francis Salvador (d. 1776), was the most prominent Jew in South Carolina at the time of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Spirit of the Old Testament in the Revolutionary War—Sermons in favor of the original Jewish form of Government—The New Nation as “God’s American Israel”—The Quebec Act—The intolerance of sects as the cause of separation of Church and State—A Memorial sent by German Jews to the Continental Congress—Fear expressed in North Carolina that the Pope might be elected President of the United States—None of the liberties won were lost by post-revolutionary reaction, as happened elsewhere.

The spirit of the old Testament which was prevalent among the early settlers of New England was perhaps still more manifest there at the time of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War of Independence. The ever-increasing antagonism which was aroused by the attempt of the Parliament of England to regulate and to tax the colonies, found expression in Biblical terms to an extent which can hardly be appreciated in the present time. The people in America had to fight over again the same battles for constitutional liberties which the English had fought before them, and George III., so far as his claims over the colonies were concerned, relied as much upon the kingly prerogative, the doctrine of “Divine Right,” as ever did James I. All of these pretensions, all the questions of right and liberty had to be re-argued. To refute this false theory of kingly power it was not only expedient but necessary to revert to the earliest times, to the most sacred record, the Old Testament, for illustration and for argument, chiefly because the doctrine of Divine Right of a King by the Grace of God and its corollaries, “unlimited submission and non-resistance,” were deduced, or rather distorted, from the New Testament, having been brought into the field of politics with the object of enslaving the masses through their religious creed. “It is, at least, an historical fact—says the historian Lecky—that in the great majority of instances the early Protestant defenders of civil liberty derived their political principles chiefly from the Old Testament, and the defenders of despotism from the New. The rebellions that were so frequent in Jewish history formed the favorite topic of the one, the unreserved submission inculcated by St. Paul, the other.”11

While there were many free thinkers or Deists among the intellectual leaders of the Revolution, the masses of the colonists were intensely religious, and an argument from Scripture carried more weight with them than any other. Education was limited at that period in the colonies; there were not many newspapers, they were rarely issued more than once a week, and the number of subscribers was but few. The pulpit had their place, and the pastors in their sermons dealt with politics not less than with religion. Sermons were for the people the principal sources of general instruction. These pastors, in the way of history, knew above all that of the Jewish people, and they were the first to bring before their audiences the ideals of the old Hebrew commonwealth. Rev. Jonathan Mayhew (1720–66), whose discourse, in 1750, against unlimited submission was characterized as “the morning gun of the Revolution,” declared in a later oration on the “Repeal of the Stamp Act” which he delivered in Boston on May 23, 1766: “God gave Israel a king in His anger because they had not sense and virtue enough to like a free commonwealth, and to have Himself for their King—where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty—and if any miserable people on the continent or isles of Europe be driven in their extremity to seek a safe retreat from slavery in some far distant clime—O let them find one in America.” Rev. Samuel Langdon (1723–97), President of Harvard College, delivered an election sermon before the “Honorable Congress of Massachusetts Bay” on the 31st of May, 1775, taking as his text the passage in Isaiah 1. 26, “And I will restore thy judges as at first,” in which he said: “The Jewish government, according to the original constitution, which was divinely established, if considered only in a civil view, was a perfect republic. And let them who cry up the divine right of Kings consider, that the form of government which had a proper claim to a divine establishment was so far from including the idea of a King, that it was a high crime for Israel to ask to be in this respect like other nations, and when they were thus gratified, it was rather as a just punishment for their folly.... The civil polity of Israel is doubtless an excellent general model, allowing for some peculiarities: at least some principal laws and orders of it may be copied in more modern establishments.” Almost everybody at that time knew by heart the admonitions of Samuel to the children of Israel, describing the manner in which a King would rule over them.

Sermons drawing a parallel between George III. and Pharaoh, inferring that the same providence of God which had rescued the Israelites from Egyptian bondage would free the colonies, were common in that period; and they probably had more effect with the masses than the great orations of the statesmen or the philosophical essays of the publicists which came down to us in the literature of the Revolution. The success of the War of Independence was also accepted in that sense. The election sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College, on May 8, 1783, at Hartford, before Governor Trumbull and the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, may be cited as an instance. Dr. Stiles took for his text Deut. XXVI, 19: “And to make you high above all nations which he has made, in praise, and in name, and in honor, etc.” This sermon takes up one hundred and twenty closely printed pages, and assumes the proportions of a treatise on government from the Hebrew Theocracy down to the then present, showing by illustration and history that the culmination of popular government had been reached in America, transplanted by divine hands in fulfilment of Biblical prophecy from the days of Moses to the land of Washington; and discussing from an historical point of view “the reasons rendering it probable that the United States will, by the ordering of heaven, eventually become this people.” He referred to the new nation as “God’s American Israel” and to Washington as the American Joshua who was raised up by God to lead the armies of the chosen people to liberty and independence.12

The committee which was appointed on the same day the Declaration of Independence was adopted, consisting of Dr. Franklin, Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson, to prepare a device for a seal for the United States, at first proposed that of Pharaoh sitting in an open chariot, a crown on his head and a sword in his hand, passing through the dividing waters of the Red Sea in pursuit of the Israelites: with rays from a pillar of fire beaming on Moses, who is represented as standing on the shore extending his hand over the sea, causing it to overwhelm Pharaoh.13

Great religious animosity was also aroused by the “Quebec Act,” which was passed by the British Parliament in 1774, for the purpose of preventing Canada from joining the other colonies. It guaranteed to the Catholic Church the possession of its vast amount of property, and full freedom of worship. The object which it was intended to effect by the passage of this act was purely one of State policy, and as far as Canada herself was concerned it was a wise and diplomatic step. But with the exception perhaps of the Boston Port Bill, it was the most effectual in alienating the colonies. It was construed as an effort on the part of Parliament to create an Established Church, and not that alone, but the establishment of that Church which was most hateful to and dreaded by the great majority of the people in the colonies.

It was not due to lack of religious sentiment that the ultimate bond between the colonies was a strictly secular one, and that Church and State were forever separated in the Constitution of the United States. It was rather due to the great and insurmountable differences in the religious beliefs among the various parties to the confederation; it may be said that it was strong sectarianism which forced upon them a non-sectarian government. The religious complexion of no two of the American colonies was precisely alike. The various sects at the time of the Revolution were grouped as follows: The Puritans in Massachusetts, the Baptists in Rhode Island, the Congregationalists in Connecticut, the Dutch and Swedish Protestants in New Jersey, the Church of England in New York, the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians in North Carolina, the Catholics in Maryland, the Cavaliers in Virginia, the Huguenots and Episcopalians in South Carolina, and the Methodists in Georgia. Owing to these diversities, to the consciousness of danger from ecclesiastical ambition, the intolerance of sects as exemplified among themselves as well as in foreign lands, it was wisely foreseen that the only basis upon which it was possible to form a Federal union was to exclude from the National Government all power over religion.

The separation of Church and State was therefore a practical necessity, based on causes which were deeply rooted in the life of the people. It was almost a forced step on the way of development, not an enthusiastic outburst in favor of an abstract principle. This is why the ground which was then gained was never lost again, why there was no reaction and no reversion to the former order of a religious establishment as happened in France after the great revolution which began in 1789. The moderate, self-restrained liberalism of the colonists held its own after the struggle was over and kept on progressing slowly. The violent radicalism of the older country went so far that many steps had to be retraced, and the fight of separating Church and State had to be fought out all over again in our own time, more than a century after all religion was abolished during the reign of terror.

A letter sent by an unnamed German Jew on behalf of himself and his brethren to the President of the Continental Congress, in which the wretched condition of the Jews in Germany at that time is depicted, and their desire to become subjects of the thirteen provinces is expressed, appeared in the Deutsches Museum of June, 1783, and four years later a separate edition of it was published under the title, Schreiben eines deutschen Juden an den Nord Amerikanischen Präsidenten.14 As there is no record of its reception or discussion in America, it probably attracted very little attention. The same is also true of the letter which Jonas Phillips (b. in Rhenish Prussia, 1736; d. in New York, Jan. 28, 1803), of Philadelphia, sent to the Federal Convention in relation to the removal of the test oath in Pennsylvania which discriminated against Jews and those who did not subscribe to Christian doctrines (Sept. 7, 1787). When the fundamental law of the land was adopted there were no exciting debates about the question of religious liberty. The clause abolishing religious tests in the Federal Constitution passed almost unanimously; the State of North Carolina alone voted against it, and as there were hardly any Jews there at that time, the fear of the Roman Catholics was the only cause for the illiberal stand taken by its representatives. The extent of that fear can be understood from the fact that when the State Convention of North Carolina to adopt the Federal Constitution convened in Hillsborough, in July, 1788, pamphlets were circulated “pointing out in all seriousness the danger of the Pope being elected President should the Constitution be adopted.” (See Hühner, Religious Liberty in North Carolina, “Publications,” XVI, p. 42). The time for religious liberty as well as for independence in national affairs had come and was accepted as a matter of course, and it is the exceptional glory of the American Revolution that all the liberties won were retained and the young nation was enabled to continue on the way of progress unhindered by post-revolutionary reaction, and to devote its energies to the solution of the problems which the Revolution left unsolved, and to new problems which arose after that period.

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