The Jews of Philadelphia held, on August 27, a meeting for the same purpose in the vestry of the Mickweh Israel Synagogue, at which were present, besides the prominent Jews of the city, several representative Christian clergymen—Dr. Ducachet, Rector of St. Stephens, Dr. Ramsay, a Presbyterian minister, and the Rev. Mr. Kennedy—all of whom spoke. Isaac Leeser was the principal orator, and he argued that as both Christianity and Islam are derived from Judaism, if the last advocated ritual murder, the daughter-religions would equally be guilty of the same practice. He contrasted the position of the Eastern Jews with that of their brethren in this happy land, and declared that while the Jews everywhere felt themselves true citizens of the lands in which they dwelt, they still retained full sympathy with their co-religionists throughout the world, especially when charges were brought against them which affected the honor and good fame of their religion. A series of resolutions were adopted and sent to Washington, whence Mr. Forsyth replied in similar terms to those he had used in his letter to the Jews of New York, and likewise enclosed a copy of his letter to Consul Gliddon at Alexandria. Another meeting was held in Richmond, Va., where a resolution was adopted thanking the President “for the prompt and handsome manner in which he has acted in reference to the persecution practiced upon our brethren in Damascus.”
The Jews of the United States were also in open sympathy with the liberal movements in Central Europe, especially in Germany, which culminated in the revolutions of the year 1848. While there was no active co-operation or direct assistance in those times of slow communication, those who wrote from America described the conditions prevailing here as well-nigh ideal from the liberal point of view. A poem by Sigmund Herzl, entitled “Auf! Nach Amerika!” which appeared in the “Central Organ,” published in Vienna in 1848 by Isidor Bush (b. in Prague, Bohemia, 1822; a. in New York, 1849; d. in St. Louis, Mo., 1898), in which America is described as a place where true brotherly love reigns supreme, where ignorance and base prejudice are entirely unknown, may be taken as an example of the expression of that sentiment. When the great Jewish champion of the liberal movement in Germany, Gabriel Riesser (b. in Hamburg, Germany, 1806; d. there 1863), visited America in 1856, he was greeted by many former German revolutionary soldiers—both Jewish and Christian—and in New York they gave a public dinner in his honor. German Jews in Philadelphia formed a Riesser Club, which existed for a number of years. (See Albert M. Friedenberg in “Publications,” XVII, pp. 204–5.)
The first diplomatic difficulties which the Government of the United States experienced on account of discrimination against its Jewish citizens occurred about this time, and—strangely enough—it was not with Russia, but with the Swiss Confederation. A general convention between the two republics was drawn and signed at Berne, November 25, 1850, by Mr. A. Dudley Mann, American Minister to Switzerland, on the part of the United States, and by Messrs. Druey and Frey-Hérosée on the part of the Swiss Confederation. This treaty and a copy of the instructions under which Mr. Mann acted, together with his dispatch of November 30, 1850, explanatory of the Articles of Convention, were transmitted to the United States Senate on February 13, 1851, by President Millard Fillmore (1800–74). Neither the treaty nor the papers accompanying it were ever made public, the ban of secrecy imposed by the Senate having never been removed. But President Fillmore himself, in the message transmitting the treaty, objected to it in the form in which it was presented. He said: “There is a decisive objection arising from the last clause in the First Article. That clause is in these words: On account of the tenor of the Federal Constitution of Switzerland, Christians alone are entitled to the enjoyment of the privileges guaranteed by the present Article in the Swiss Cantons. But said cantons are not prohibited from extending the same privileges to citizens of the United States of other religious persuasions.
“It is quite certain [continues the President] that neither by law, nor by treaty, nor by any other official proceeding is it competent for the Government of the United States to establish any distinction between its citizens founded on differences in religious beliefs. Any benefit or privilege conferred by law or treaty on one must be common to all, and we are not at liberty, on a question of such vital interest and plain constitutional duty, to consider whether the particular case is one in which substantial inconvenience or injustice might ensue. It is enough that an inequality would be sanctioned, hostile to the institutions of the United States and inconsistent with the Constitution and the laws. Nor can the Government of the United States rely on the individual Cantons of Switzerland for extending the same privileges to other citizens of the United States as this article extends to Christians. It is indispensable not only that every privilege granted to any of the citizens of the United States should be granted to all, but also that the grant of such privileges should stand upon the same stipulation and assurance by the whole Swiss Confederation, as those of other articles of the convention.”[36]
The two most prominent men in American public life at that time, Senator Henry Clay (1777–1852) and Secretary of State Daniel Webster (1782–1852), strongly disapproved the discrimination which the proposed treaty provided. The former wrote: “I disapprove entirely the restrictions limiting certain provisions of the treaty, under the operation of which a respectable portion of our fellow-citizens would be excluded from their benefits. This is not the country nor the age in which unjust prejudices should receive any countenance.” Webster wrote about the same time to a Jew who addressed him on the subject (presumably J. M. Cordozo): “The objections against certain specialties of the Swiss Convention concerning the Israelites which you urge in your letter to me have not escaped the attention of the Department, and I hasten to inform you that they will be laid before the Senate with the convention.” (The letter is dated February 11, 1851.)
In the meantime, although it was asserted on behalf of Switzerland that the discriminations which it insisted upon were only “a precautionary measure ... a safeguard against the immense itinerant (Jewish) population of Alsace,” the two Cantons of Basle vigorously executed a decree of banishment against the Jews which was promulgated November 17, 1851. The law was suspended for a few months because of a note sent by Emperor Napoleon III. to the Council of the Federation, in which he said “That France will expel all Swiss citizens established in France in case the two Cantons should insist on carrying out this law against the Jews.” But while the negotiations were pending, the two Cantons carried out the law of expulsion, and no further steps were taken by France. About this time there was set on foot in this country a movement to procure religious toleration abroad for American citizens generally. It appears to have been aimed at the persecution of American Protestants in Catholic countries, and the movement to secure redress in this direction culminated in a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives, December 13, 1852, by John A. Wilcox, of Mississippi, which declared “that the representatives of this Government at foreign courts be instructed to urge such amendments of all existing treaties between the United States and the other powers of the world as will secure the same liberty of religious worship to all American citizens residing under foreign flags which is guaranteed to all citizens of every nation of the whole world who reside under the flag of our Union.”
Objection was made to this resolution as an encroachment upon the powers of the Executive, and action was delayed for a long time. A resolution of a similar nature, which was reported to the Senate from the Committee on Foreign Relations, February 17, 1853, met the same fate. But all these discussions had the effect of the Senate refusing to ratify the treaty with Switzerland in the form in which it was sent to it. Mr. Mann thereupon proceeded to negotiate another treaty which, while striking from it the clause objected to by the President and the other notable men mentioned above, yet in another form inserted a clause, the effect of which was the same as that of the clause which had been stricken out. Article I of this new treaty read as follows:
The citizens of the United States of America and the citizens of Switzerland shall be admitted and treated upon a footing of reciprocal equality in the two countries, where such admission and treatment shall not conflict with the constitutional or legal provisions, as well Federal as State and Cantonal of the contracting parties.
Despite the previous and many subsequent protests from numerous Jews, and also despite the attention of the government, which was attracted to the case of A. H. Gootman, an American-Jewish citizen, who was ordered expelled from the Canton of Neufchatel in 1853, the treaty containing the above article was ratified by the Senate November 6, 1855. Ratifications were exchanged two days afterward, and the treaty was proclaimed November 9, 1855, by President Franklin Pierce (1804–69), when William Learned Marcy (1786–1857) was Secretary of State.