The arrival in Baltimore from Richmond, Va., in the year 1808, of the Cohen family, consisting of the widow and six sons of Jacob J. Cohen, a soldier of the Revolution (a native of Rhenish Prussia, who came to America in 1773 and died in 1808), and other arrivals in that period, helped to increase the material importance and the communal influence of the Jews of Baltimore. After Solomon Etting and several members of the Cohen family served with distinction in the defense of Baltimore and in subsequent military engagements, the injustice of the Jewish disabilities became more manifest. The sympathy of a group of men active in public life was enlisted, and these conducted the legislative struggle for full emancipation of the Jews in the General Assembly from 1816 to 1826. The most prominent figure in this group, which included Thomas Brackenridge, E. S. Thomas, General Winder, Colonel W. G. D. Worthington and John V. L. MacMahon, was Thomas Kennedy of Washington county.
The “Jew Bill” became a clearly defined issue in Maryland politics, and here we see again the American peculiarity mentioned above ([page 118]), that those who knew the Jew best were his most ardent defenders. Several representatives from country districts, where Jews were known by name only, failed of re-election because they had voted for the repeal of Jewish disabilities: while, on the other hand, a disposition favorable to Jewish emancipation became at an early date a sine qua non of election from Baltimore. The successful effort of Jacob Henry to retain his seat in the Legislature of North Carolina, which has been described in the previous chapter, was effectively used by the friends of the Jews in Maryland. Speaking on the Jew Bill in 1818, Mr. Brackenridge alluded to the incident as follows: “In the State of North Carolina there is a memorable instance on record of an attempt to expel Mr. Henry, a Jew, from the legislative body of which he had been elected a member. The speech delivered on that occasion I hold in my hand. It is published in a collection called “The American Orator,” a book given to your children at school and containing those republican truths you wish to see earliest implanted in their minds. Mr. Henry prevailed, and it is a part of our education as Americans to love and cherish the sentiments uttered by him on that occasion.” Six years later Col. Worthington, in the course of a speech on the same subject, also recalled Henry’s triumph in glowing terms. Some of the addresses delivered on that subject were considered of sufficient importance to be republished separately after the question was settled; one collection of them entitled “Speeches on the Jew Bill in the House of Delegates in Maryland” was published in Philadelphia in 1829.
Finally, in 1822, a bill to the desired effect passed both houses of the General Assembly; but the Constitution of Maryland required that any act amendatory thereto must be passed at one session and published and confirmed at the succeeding session of the Legislature. Accordingly, recourse was necessary to the session of 1823–24, in which a confirmatory bill was introduced accompanied by a petition from the Jews of Maryland. The bill was confirmed by the Senate, but defeated in the House of Delegates after a stirring debate, and all formal legislation hitherto enacted was rendered nugatory. But the time was ripe for this act of justice, and on the last day of the following session of the Legislature (Feb. 26, 1825) an act “for the relief of the Jews of Maryland,” which had already received the sanction of the Senate, was passed by the House of Delegates by a vote of twenty-six to twenty-five. The bill provided that “every citizen of this State professing the Jewish religion” who shall be appointed to any office of profit or trust shall, in addition to the required oaths, make and subscribe a declaration of his belief in a future state of rewards and punishments, instead of the declaration now required by the government of the State. In the following year a brief confirmatory act was passed and the battle for Jewish emancipation was won. Theoretically there still remained a discrimination, which was not eliminated until many years afterwards; but practically there was no formal disability. Solomon Etting and Jacob I. Cohen, both of whom had been throughout the moving spirits of the legislative struggle, were promptly elected in Baltimore (Oct., 1826) as members of the City Council, and the former ultimately became president of that body. A number of Jews later occupied and still occupy important political positions in Maryland commensurate with their individual ability and with the prominence of Jews in the business and professional life of the State.
CHAPTER XVII.
MORDECAI MANUEL NOAH AND HIS TERRITORIALIST-ZIONISTIC PLANS.
Noah’s family; his youth and his early successes as journalist and as dramatist—His appointment as Consul in Tunis and his recall—His insistence that the United States is not a Christian nation—Editor and playwright, High-Sheriff and Surveyor of the Port of New York—His invitation to the Jews of the world to settle in the City of Refuge which he was to found on Grand Island—Impressive ceremonies in Buffalo which were the beginning and the end of “Ararat”—His “Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews”—Short career on the bench—Jewish activities.
While the last vestiges of discrimination against the Jews were being removed in Maryland, a grandiose plan for solving the Jewish problem through colonization in America was conceived by one of the most prominent Jews of New York. This man was Mordecai Manuel Noah (b. in Philadelphia, July 19, 1785; d. in New York March 22, 1851). He was of Portuguese descent, a son of Manuel Mordecai Noah of South Carolina, who served in the Revolutionary army, and a cousin of Henry M. Phillips (b. in Philadelphia, 1811; d. there 1884), who was a member from the fourth district of Pennsylvania in the Thirty-fifth Congress (elected as a Democrat in 1856), and besides occupying various positions of honor and trust, also served as Grand Master of Free Masons of his native State. Noah was left an orphan at the age of four, and was brought up by his maternal grandfather, Jonas Phillips (b. in Germany, 1736; d. in Philadelphia, 1803). Noah was apprenticed to a carver and gilder, but his studious habits and abilities attracted the attention of some prominent men, and it is said that the financier, Robert Morris, procured the cancellation of his indentures and obtained for him an appointment as clerk in the office of the Auditor of the United States Treasury.
Upon the removal of the national capital to Washington, young Noah resigned his clerkship and accepted employment as a reporter at the sessions of the Pennsylvania Legislature at Harrisburg, where he acquired his first experience in journalism. Several years later he removed to Charleston, S. C., where he became in 1809 the editor of “The City Gazette” and became an ardent advocate of war with England. This was against the prevailing spirit of the wealthy seaport town, and it involved him in many quarrels and in several duels, in one of which he killed his opponent. It was also in this city that his first play, “Paul and Alexis,” or “The Orphans of the Rhine,” was performed for the first time. It was afterwards taken to England, where it was somewhat altered, and with its name changed to “The Wandering Boys” was brought out in 1820 at the Park Theatre in New York with great success.
After declining an appointment as Consul to Riga, Russia, in 1812, Noah was appointed by President Madison a year later as American Consul to Tunis, with a special mission to Algiers. He sailed from Charleston in a vessel bound for France, which was captured by the British fleet off the French coast. He was brought to England as a prisoner of war, but being regarded as a person of importance he was allowed to remain at liberty upon his parole, and to utilize the time in travelling through the country. After some months he was released and proceeded by the way of Spain to his post of duty. He was soon engaged in the work for which he was specially commissioned—to ransom the American prisoners then held in slavery by the Algerians. He was to endeavor to release the captured sailors in such wise as to lead the Algerians to believe that the relatives and friends of the captives, and not the American government, was interested in their ransom. Noah effected this in a creditable manner under the circumstances; but he was compelled to expend a sum exceeding the amount allowed him by his government. Noah’s political opponents at home made use of this apparent irregularity to effect his recall. Mr. Monroe, then Secretary of State, wrote to him that it was not known at the time of his appointment that his religion would be any obstacle to the exercise of his consular functions, but that recent information, on which entire reliance could be placed, proved that it would have a very unfavorable effect; that the President therefore had deemed it expedient to revoke his commission, and that upon the receipt of this letter he should consider himself as no longer in the service of the United States.[26] Noah finally extricated himself from all his difficulties, and later was thoroughly vindicated, his actions approved and his advances remitted.