History of the Jews in America / From the Period of the Discovery of the New World to the Present Time

by Peter Wiernik

In the diplomatic correspondence which followed, the American Government insisted on its rights under the treaty and urged its minister to claim absolutely equal treatment for all American citizens alike, Jews as well as others. The arguments and the mode of procedure which are now familiar to every one who is interested in the question, were all used thirty years ago, though the only effective remedy, suggested by the first resolution, “to take immediate steps to have the treaties amended,” had not been resorted to. But the question of former Russian subjects who return to Russia as American citizens, in which the principle of expatriation and right of naturalization is involved, is not touched upon in these early disputes. There is even a clear intimation that the Russian Government’s chief objection was against naturalized Jews from Germany. Mr. Foster, who was then our representative in St. Petersburg, in a dispatch dated December 30, 1880, reports an interview which he had with M. de Giers, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and says:

So far as concerned Jews who are bona fide American citizens (not disguised German Jews), he would assure me of the most liberal treatment, as he knew it was the desire of the Emperor to show all possible consideration to American citizens. If such came to St. Petersburg and encountered any trouble, if I would merely send him an unofficial note, he would give them all the time I might ask for them to remain here to attend to their business....

The same dispatch reports also a conversation with the Minister of Worship, who “listened with much interest to my presentation of the subject. He said that a commission was now engaged in studying the question of reform in these laws,” and “frankly recognized that the laws were not fully in accordance with the spirit of the age.” But in the end of this document Mr. Foster acknowledges his failure to obtain what he wanted and says that “the Russian Government was disposed to grant what we desired only as a favor when my government asked it as a right” (quoting Loris Melikov).

In a dispatch sent by Secretary of State James G. Blaine to Mr. Foster, dated July 29, 1881, the entire subject is historically reviewed and the principles involved are restated in strong and lucid terms. Two passages from this dispatch are worth quoting. One reads: “From the time when the treaty of 1832 was signed down to within a very recent period, there had been nothing in our relations with Russia to lead to the supposition that our flag did not carry with it equal protection to every American within the dominions of the empire.” The second is the last sentence of the dispatch and reads: “I cannot but feel assured that this earnest presentation of the views of this government will accord with the sense of justice and equity of that of Russia, and that the questions at issue will soon find their natural solution in harmony with the spirit of tolerance which pervaded the ukase of the Empress Catherine a century ago, and with the statesman-like declaration of the principle of reciprocity found in the later decree of the Czar Alexander II. in 1860.” Actual dealings with Russia were a novel experience for American diplomatists, and even so eminent a statesman as Mr. Blaine could believe—after the pogroms of the spring of that year—that the question would be solved in the same manner as in Switzerland—by the final emancipation of the Jews of that country.

In the meantime new cases had arisen, and the question was again brought before Congress. Representative Samuel S. Cox of New York introduced a second resolution in the House of Representatives on January 26, 1882, which was passed four days later, requesting the President, if it was not incompatible with the public service, to communicate to the House all correspondence between the Department of State and the United States minister at St. Petersburg, relative to the expulsion of American Israelites from Russia, and the persecution of the Jews in the Russian Empire. Another resolution, asking for further correspondence on the subject, was introduced by Mr. Cox on July 31 of the same year and referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. He submitted the same resolution again in February, 1883, when it was passed. There was another resolution in 1884, and more correspondence in 1886 between Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard and the American representative in Russia, with no better results than before.

The subject was taken up more earnestly than before in the following decade. Congressman S. Logan Chipman of Michigan introduced in the House, in February, 1892, a resolution “To inquire into the operation of the Anti-Jewish Laws of Russia on American Citizens.” It was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and reported on April 6, 1892, in a much amplified form, but its passage is not recorded. Mr. Irvine Dungan, of Ohio, introduced, on June 10, 1892, a joint resolution “directing the severance of diplomatic relations with Russia,” which seems not to have gone any further than the Committee on Foreign Affairs. There was new correspondence, too, as the result of new cases, and probably also as an indirect result of the resolutions which were introduced in the House. A letter written from the State Department in 1893 to Mr. Andrew D. White (b. 1832), the educator and historian, the greatest man who ever represented the United States in Russia, contained the “surmise that some strange misapprehension exists in this regard in the mind of His Majesty’s Government, which your accustomed ability and tact may explain and perhaps remove.” The events proved that he could do neither.

In 1894 the subject was again brought before the House, for the first time by a representative of Jewish extraction. Isidor Rayner (b. in Baltimore, 1850), who was successively a member of the Maryland Legislature, a State Senator, a representative in Congress for three terms, the Attorney-General of the State of Maryland, and is now serving his second term as United States Senator from that State (beginning March 4, 1911), was then serving his third term in the House and was recognized as one of the ablest orators and leaders of his party (the Democratic) in the popular branch of Congress. But his resolution, which was introduced May 28, 1894, in which the President was “directed to call the attention of the Government of Russia to its continued violation of the treaty rights,” met with no better fate than the preceding ones which were introduced by non-Jews. The disposition of the resolutions made, however, little difference, for the Government was urging a settlement of the difficulties as strongly as if it was commanded by Congress to do so.

Minister Breckinridge, who was in St. Petersburg in 1895, writing to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs in that year, states “that it has long been a matter of deep regret and concern to the United States that any of its citizens should be discriminated against for religious reasons while peacefully sojourning in this country.” The subject was apparently taken up more seriously now than before, and there was justification for the belief that it would have to be settled soon. Mr. H. H. D. Peirce, Secretary of Legation, writing in June, 1895, of an interview which he had with a high Russian official, declares that the latter admitted the force of the argument and “expressed himself as hopeful that it would be possible to bring about a satisfactory revision of Russian practice as regards the admission of American Jews into the Empire.” In the following month Assistant Secretary of State A. A. Adee wrote to the Legation at St. Petersburg:

Your conclusion that it is inexpedient to press the complaint to a formal answer at present appears to be discreet, but the Department must express its deep regret that you have encountered in the foreign office a reluctance to consider the matter in the light in which this Government has presented it. The Russian Government can not expect that its course in asserting inquisitorial authority in the United States over citizens of the United States as to their religious or civil status can ever be acceptable or even tolerable to such a Government as ours, and continuance in such a course after our views have been clearly but considerately made known may trench upon the just limits of consideration.

There were three more dispatches of considerable length sent about this subject in the same year, 1895; one from Mr. Breckinridge to Secretary of State Richard Olney, dated July 4; the second from Mr. Adee to Mr. Breckinridge, dated August 22, and a third, dated October 23, from Washington to the Russian capital, beginning with the acknowledgment of the receipt of a set of regulations relating to the Jews in Russia and commenting on it that: “If anything, it presents the subject in a still more unfavorable light, for it seems that those Russian agents in a foreign territory may in their discretion inquire into the business standing of the principal of the commercial house employing a Hebrew agent, and act favorably or unfavorably, according to their own judgment of its importance.” It continues that even “assuming for the argument’s sake but not by way of admission, that such a right may technically exist, the question remains whether the assumption to exercise it in face of the temperate but earnest remonstrances of this Government against foreign interference with the private concerns of its citizens, is in accordance with those courteous principles of comity which this Government is so anxious to observe in its relations with all foreign states.”