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THE GRANDEES: AMERICA'S SEPHARDIC ELITE |
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10. MISALLIANCES AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS
As MORE Ashkenazic Jews trickled in from Germany and central Europe, they found that the Sephardic culture, tradition, and form were what prevailed among Jews in America. The newcomers were accepted -- albeit a trifle disdainfully -- into the Sephardic synagogues, and became, as it were, honorary Sephardim. The Sephardic Old Guard made it quite clear to the Johnny-come-latelys that their elevated status was being bestowed upon them without being actually earned. No small degree of social difference existed between the "new" Sephardim and the authentic Sephardim, and this was not helped by the fact that the "rough-spoken" (meaning they had foreign accents) Germans, finding themselves Sephardic blue bloods in name, if not by inheritance, often took to putting on airs and otherwise pushing themselves forward socially in a way that the Old Guard found thoroughly offensive. It was a case of titled Spaniard versus ghetto German, of third- and fourth-generation American versus foreign-born, of rich versus poor, of the cultivated versus the uncouth. In a situation like this, there were bound to be reactions.
In New Orleans, for example, the general instability of the Jewish community -- still predominantly Sephardic, but with an admixture of Ashkenazic "outsiders" -- was not helped by a visit from young Mathias Gomez, one of Daniel Gomez' great-nephews. Mathias got into an argument with a young man of Ashkenazic extraction over, of all things, the correct wording of a quotation from a poem. It seemed terribly trifling, but not to Mathias when his Ashkenazic acquaintance called him a "fool." Immediately, Mathias insisted on the aristocratic privilege of challenging the man to a duel. They fought with muskets at forty paces, and each fired four times with no shot reaching a target. Normally, this is considered sufficient exercise to call off a duel, but Mathias insisted on a fifth shot, which wounded his opponent in both legs and killed Mathias himself instantly. He had made his point, however, that nobody, but nobody, should insult a Gomez.
It was said by the Sephardim, who had undergone so much horror and terror for the sake of their faith during the Inquisition, that the Jews of the rest of Europe might be Jewish, but they weren't very. They were said to lack piety, and to be easily swayed by Christian thinking and Christian methods. A case in point was certainly the New Orleans community. Everything went reasonably well in New Orleans as long as a member of one of the old Spanish families was in charge of the congregation. But when a German suddenly inherited the job of chief rabbi -- well, a hundred fifty years later the New Orleans Jewish community still remembers what happened.
He was Albert J. "Roley" Marks, who described himself as a "Part-Time rabbi," and who actually earned his living as a bit player in southern traveling theatrical companies. He had earned his nickname because one of his best performances was said to be that of Rowley in The School for Scandal. He was also of somewhat rolypoly proportions, which made the sobriquet appropriate. He was once described by a contemporary as:
[quote]A little below the middle size, IPeasuring in his stockings, about four feet and some inches. A gleam of good humor is always beaming on his countenance, except when he experiences a twinge of the gout (unfortunately pretty often), and he is one of the best-natured fellows in existence.[/quote]
"Roley" Marks's acting range was considerably limited by his size. His specialty parts were comic old men, and he was famous for a way he had of laughing on stage. "It would do your heart good to see one of his laughs," a critic of one of his performances wrote. "I say see one of them, for nothing in particular is heard when he laughs; a sort of turning up of his eyes, a filling up of his cheeks with wind, and suddenly letting it burst forth, at the same time giving himself a half turn, stooping as if to spit, indulging in a sly wink at the public, and swinging his cane about -- and it is done." He performed in such popular dramas of the day as Governor Heartall, Old Smacks, and Andrew Mucklestane. Of his performance in the title role of the latter, the same critic wrote:
[quote]Andrew Mucklestane! Ah! How often have I witnessed his impersonation of this character, which is nothing more or less than a sentimental Scotch fisherman, very benevolent in his feelings, and ever ready to rescue runaway countesses and drowning children! And to see Rowley sweating through the "business" of this character is a treat to all lovers of the romantic drama. Rowley introduces thirteen falls in his performance, and more than once has it been found necessary to prop the stage before subjecting it to his energetic manoeuvres. . . .[/quote]
How did such a charming buffoon manage to become chief rabbi of the Sephardic congregation in a sophisticated city like New Orleans? Apparently his good nature won the congregation over in a weak moment, and he was given the job. He also worked as a parttime inspector at the custom-house and as a fireman. He was made a director of the Firemen's Charitable Association, helped it put on burlesques and reviews for fund-raising purposes, and composed a ditty called "The Fireman's Song," in return for which the City of New Orleans appointed him "Poet Laureate of the Firemen."
His antics, however, were somewhat differently regarded by the Sephardic elders of the synagogue, who began referring to him as "a stain on the Jewish clergy." It was reported that "Roley" Marks did not keep the dietary laws, that he had not bothered to have his sons circumcised, and that at one point, on the festival of Purim, he found himself too busy with other activities to conduct the services. At last, during a Rosh Hashanah service, an older member of the congregation rose boldly to his feet and announced to the assemblage that it was a disgrace that a man should act as rabbi "who did not have his sons initiated into the covenant of Abraham," and who "got beastly drunk on the day when his two sons died." This was too much for even "Roley" Marks's good nature. He banged his fists on the pulpit and shouted, "By Jesus Christ! I have a right to pray!"
It would have been easier to blame "Roley" Marks's outrageous behavior on his "low" Ashkenazic origins if it could have been claimed that the "old" Sephardic members of the New Orleans synagogue were all, to a man, acting on their best behavior. Alas, many were not. There was the case of Victor Souza, of pure Spanish bloodlines on both sides (his mother was a Pereira), who became engaged to a girl named Rose Bourdeaux, a Catholic. Nineteen days before the marriage, Victor underwent Roman Catholic baptism and the pair were married by Pere Antoine in New Orleans' Saint Louis Cathedral. This did not prevent Victor Souza's being identified as an "Israelite" in the church records several years later, and the scandal of his intermarriage was as nothing compared with the announcement, not long afterward, that he and his partner, Decadie Baiz -- another member of an "old" Sephardic family that had distinguished connections both in New York and on the island of Saint Thomas -- had "absconded and defrauded their creditors whom they have shamefully deceived." A thousand dollars was offered for the capture of the pair, or five-hundred dollars for either, and the Catholic convert was described in the 'Wanted" poster:
[quote]Victor Souza, a Jew, is about 4 feet 11 inches high, has a large face, large nose and a small mouth; his face is red and his beard strong and black. D. Baiz, a Jew, about 5 feet 3 or 4 inches high, full face and pock marked, strong black beard. . . .[/quote]
Victor Souza was caught, tried for fraud, convicted, and sent to prison.
The business feuds between those of Ashkenazic origins and the Sephardim were probably the worst of all, even though the men were all of one, supposedly unifying, congregation. One of the most disgraceful battles in New Orleans took place between Mr. Solomon Audler and Mr. L. A. Levy, Jr. The Audlers had come from Germany, and had made some money manufacturing something called Asiatic Lenitive, a ninety-proof patent medicine advertised "for the cure of toothaches, headaches, and other diseases." Solomon Audler also ran a leather and dry goods store. The Mr. Levy was one of several Sephardic Levy families who were now scattered up and down the Atlantic Coast. The quarrel was over an overcoat.
It seems that a certain Mr. Phillips (also old Sephardic) was selling a consignment of linen overcoats at auction, and he had promised his friend Levy a coat, if any were left over, at the same price the coats had brought at auction. After the auction, when Levy went to Phillips' establishment to look over the remainder from the sale, he could not find an overcoat that fit him. So he -- rather highhandedly, it seems -- exchanged one of the remaining coats for a coat that did fit him out of a pile of coats purchased by Mr. Audler. Levy then paid Phillips for the coat. When Mr. Audler found out about the switch in coats he was not amused. He had, after all, made his selection of coat sizes with a reason. So he sent Mr. Levy a bill for the coat, which Levy, seeing no need to pay for his coat twice, refused to pay. Audler then sued Levy for the price of the coat, lost his suit, and, in a fury, stormed Mr. Levy at his place of business and called Levy a thief. Immediately Levy challenged Audler to a duel, but Audler haughtily refused the challenge, saying that Levy was "not a gentleman and therefore not entitled to satisfaction." Levy promptly ordered a handbill printed and distributed in the streets, which proclaimed:
[quote]Notice to the public.... S. Audler having gravely insulted me this morning. . . I deem it my duty in justice to my reputation, to state to the public, that my friends called upon the said individual for satisfaction, which he did not grant, I hereby proclaim him to the public, as a coward, and no gentleman, and beneath the notice of the community.[/quote]
The tempest in a teapot continued to escalate. Audler, not to be put down by mere handbills, took an advertisement in the newspaper in which he demanded to know:
[quote]I have been required to give gentlemanly satisfaction, to whom? I would ask -- to a man? a gentleman? No! it is to one who cannot prove himself a gentleman, for the act of which he stands charged by me cannot be termed the act of a gentleman. A man he is not; it needs but a glance to perceive it; he was well aware at the time he wrote the challenge that he could not obtain a gentlemanly satisfaction from me, otherwise he would not have demanded it.[/quote]
Audler ran his advertisement not only in New Orleans but also -- doubtless to impress his friends and relatives -- in the newspapers of New York and Philadelphia as well. Levy, not to be outdone, added the city of Charleston to the list of cities in which he ran his advertisement, which contained this sort of frenzied invective:
[quote]This self-same Audler -- this vendor of worn-out harness -- this wash-tub dealer has the impudence and characteristic daring inherent in triflers called me ... "a Thief" ... Sol Audler!!! and who does not shrink at the very letters of his name. He has been is and ever will be the detestation of the honest man, the land mark for the Coward, the beacon for the Insolvent debtor, the light house for the smuggler ... Oznaburgs, Italian silk cottonades, old swords and belts &c. &c. groan loudly a requiem for the ledger of his poor creditors. .. this blackened lump of infamy . . . the public must condemn him for calling me a Thief when he himself is so notoriously known as an adept in the business. . . .[/quote]
Well. A good lawyer must have seen that Audler had a cause for action after being subjected to that sort of public abuse. But Audler, at this point -- perhaps aware of the amusement the word battle was creating up and down the eastern seaboard -- chose politely to withdraw with the calmly worded announcement that "after a long residence in this city (I flatter myself without reproach) . . . my reputation cannot suffer in the opinion of an impartial public, by the slanderous and unfounded accusations of such a worthless fellow as Levy." Therewith the battle ended, as both parties withdrew to their tents to lick their wounds.
At the same time, when an Ashkenazic Jew married one of the Sephardim, there were almost certain to be troubles, as happened in New Orleans to Samuel Jacobs (German) and his wife, Rosette (Sephardic), a Spanish-tempered lady who spoke sneeringly of her husband's "peasant" ancestry, even though Germany's Jews were somewhat worse off than the peasants. It was not long before readers of the Louisiana Gazette were titillated to see the following paid notice:
[quote]CAUTION. Whereas my wife Rosette has left my house without any just cause whatever, this is to caution the public not to trust her on my account, as I will not pay any debts contracted by her.[/quote]
A month later, Mr. Jacobs published a retraction to the above, saying that it had all been "merely through a mistake," and adding, "I have the pleasure to let the public know that we live in perfect harmony." Despite this claim, however, the marriage continued to be a stormy one and, in less than a year, the couple were granted a legal separation, one of the first in Louisiana history and a great rarity in its days -- particularly in a Jewish marriage.
When word of these scandalous goings-on in New Orleans reached the ears of Jews in such staid northern cities as New York and Newport, the reaction was one of shock and dismay. The fabric of Jewish life in New Orleans seemed to be flying apart, and this was something that Jews in the North could not accept with equanimity. Many of the New Orleans Jewish families were the northerners' close relatives. A close tie between Newport and New Orleans, for example, lay in the person of Judah Touro, the man whose celebrated will has made him something of a legend among American Jewish philanthropists.
The Touros were an old Spanish family who came to Newport by way of the West Indies, and Isaac Touro -- the first to arrive -- was immediately taken in by Jacob Rivera and Aaron Lopez, and made a member of Newport's exclusive Jewish club. Isaac Touro, along with Lopez and Rivera, was among those who drew up the plans for Newport's famous synagogue in 1759, and Isaac was the one selected to perform the dedication of the building when it was completed four years later. The building (which has since been renamed the Touro Synagogue and designated a national historic site) contains an architectural detail that is a haunting reminder of the Marrano past of its builders, and the dangers their ancestors faced if they wished to practice their faith in Inquisitional Spain. The plans call for "a few small stairs which lead from the altar in the center, to a secret passage in the basement" -- for escape.
Isaac Touro married a Hays, another old Sephardic family, [i] and their daughter married one of Aaron Lopez' many sons, thus bringing the Touros, who had been merely friends, into the Lopez-Gomez-Rivera family complex.
Just what brought Isaac Touro's son Judah to New Orleans is something of a mystery. Since Judah Touro has become a legend, his life has suffered the fate of so much that is Jewish legend-distortion, and expansion out of all proportion to the facts at hand. Since he did indeed become a very rich man, and since he did write a famous will, leaving a fortune to different charities, Jewish legend makers have tended to have it that he was one of New Orleans' bestloved figures, that the entire city went into mourning when he died, and so on.
The facts indicate that Judah Touro was actually not well liked in the southern city, that he was an odd little man who may not have been even very bright, a recluse, a string saver, a nineteenth-century Collyer brother. It has been said that he left his native Newport because of blighted love, that he loved a beautiful cousin, and that his stem old uncle Moses Hays (his mother's brother) refused to let his daughter marry such a close relation. One version of the tale has it that he left Newport because of the death of this cousin, Rebecca Hays. Actually, Rebecca died nine months after he left.
Another version insists that the cousin was not Rebecca but her sister Catherine, and that Uncle Moses would not let them wed. And yet Uncle Moses Hays died a few days after Judah Touro arrived in New Orleans. With the opposition out of the way, wouldn't this have been the moment for him to hurry home and claim his love, or for her to run to him? It is true that neither Catherine Hays nor Judah ever married, and that they never set eyes on each other again. A romantic story exists that, throughout their lives, the two corresponded in a long series of love letters, and that in these letters the lovers never aged, that they wrote to each other as if they were both still teen-agers, even in their seventies speaking of "your tiny dancing feet and glancing eyes." It may be true, but no one has ever discovered this remarkable correspondence. It is said that in the delirium of his last illness Judah Touro "talked of walking in a beautiful garden with Catherine Hays, his first and only love." Perhaps, but just to whom he spoke these words is not recorded. He did, it is true, leave her a small sum of money in his will, apparently unaware that she had died a few days before he signed this document.
In any case, he did indeed, as a young man, move permanently from his native Newport to New Orleans. There may have been a falling out with his uncle Moses, because Judah did not come, as might have been expected, to represent his uncle's business. He came independently, as a loner, and set himself up in business as a loner. He became a commission merchant, and his earliest advertisements show him dealing in such diverse merchandise as beer, herring, lobster, butter, cigars, candles, soap, nuts, and Holland gin. He prospered, in a modest way.
The man who may have known Judah Touro best, an executor of the famous will, considered him a most peculiar man. He wrote, "Mr. Touro is the very impersonation of a snail, not to say of a crab whose progress (to use a paradox) is usually backward. . . . I must be very careful to humor him ... he is very slow .... You know he is a strange man." In business Judah Touro was hesitant, indecisive, never adventuresome or imaginative. And yet he was successful. He was by no means the most successful commission merchant in New Orleans. He was not even the most successful Jewish commission merchant. And yet, little by little, he was becoming very rich, and, little by little, the rest of New Orleans began to suspect this fact and to study him with new interest. What was his formula to riches? It was simply that he didn't spend. The fortune Judah Touro was amassing was coming to him penny by hard penny, and he was squirreling it away in banks. As a rabbi acquaintance explained it:
[quote]Mr. T. was not a man of brilliant mind; on the contrary, he was slow, and not given to bursts of enthusiasm, as little as he was fond of hazardous speculations; and he used to say that he could only be said to have saved a fortune by strict economy, while others had spent one by their liberal expenditures . . . he had no tastes for the wasteful outlay of means on enjoyments which he had no relish for. He had thus the best wines always by him, without drinking them himself; his table, whatever delicacies it bore, had only plain and simple food for him. . . .[/quote]
His existence was solitary. For most of his life he lived in a series of cheap rooming houses on the wrong side of town, at a time when other New Orleans rich men were trying to outdo each other by building elaborate mansions. Only late in life did he permit himself the luxury of buying a small house. When he bought real estate, it was as an investment. He never sold anything, and his real estate, in a growing city, tended to appreciate over the years. He was a hoarder, but only of the barest necessities of life. He shunned possessions to such an extent that, when he died and his estate was appraised, only $1,960 was assigned to personal property. This included silverware valued at $805 and $600 worth of wine -- wine seems to have been his sole personal indulgence -- and $555 worth of crockery, glassware, office furniture, his carpets, hat stand, bedspread, and chairs. His personal estate was valued at $928,774.74 -- doubtless an extremely low appraisal. Though the sum is not staggering by today's standards, there were probably only ten Americans in Judah Touro's day who were worth as much.
Judah Touro, according to the legend, gave away a fortune in private philanthropies during his lifetime. If true, he must have given anonymously, adhering to the Talmudic exhortation that "Twice blessed is he who gives in secret." He also, according to the legend, gave away the entire $80,000 fortune he inherited from his sister, Rebecca Touro Lopez, who died before him. This appears not to be true since no record of any such bequest exists in the various papers pertaining to Mrs. Lopez' estate. The plain fact is that, during his lifetime, Judah Touro evinced no interest in philanthropy whatever, and seemed obsessed only with the making and saving of money.
What prompted him, in the end, to give it all away remains another puzzle. But two weeks before his death he sat down and wrote his famous will. In sixty-five separate bequests, Judah Touro gave away money, in sums ranging from three thousand to twenty thousand dollars, to a long list of charitable causes throughout the eastern United States, from the orphans of Boston to the Ladies Benevolent Society in New Orleans. The Jewish congregations of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, Mobile, Savannah, Montgomery, Memphis, Louisville, Cincinatti, Cleveland, Saint Louis, Buffalo, Albany -- and, of course, New York and Newport -- all received bequests.
In Boston, Touro's name is now associated with Massachusetts General Hospital, the Asylum for Indigent Boys, the Female Orphan Asylum, the Humane Society, and many other charities. To New Orleans he left funds to combat yellow fever, which was in those days endemic, and a hospital -- the Touro Infirmary -- was established in that connection. A bequest to Newport's "Old Stone Mill," also known as the Newport Tower, saved that venerable structure from demolition by the city fathers, and he also left funds to the City of Newport for a public park to be laid out around the tower. This plot is now known as Touro Park.
All in all, a grand total of $483,000 went to charities. It was, indeed, the greatest display of philanthropic largesse the new world had ever seen. Thus, his death being the most significant act of his life, Judah Touro entered history, and legend.
The balance of his estate, after all the charitable bequests were paid, was directed to go to "my dear, old and devoted friend," Mr. Rezin Davis Shepherd. When serving in the Louisiana Militia during the Battle of New Orleans, Judah Touro had been wounded in the thigh by a shell, and it was Shepherd who carried him off the field to a doctor, and whom Touro always credited with saving his life. Shepherd, whose great-great-grandson is Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, received between $500,000 and $750,000 under Touro's will -- again a huge sum at the time -- and this windfall is one of the cornerstones of the Boston Saltonstalls' family fortune.
One of the elements of the Judah Touro legend is that he was an early pioneer for civil rights, and frequently bought Negro slaves only to set them free. Alas, there is no proof of this, either, although there is evidence that he did not trade in slavery as extensively as his southern contemporaries, and that he had a genuine aversion for the trade in which his sister's husband's family, the Lopezes, had made so much money. On the other hand, a timid trader, he didn't trade in anything extensively.
There are, however, two quite intriguing pieces of information in this regard that turned up after Judah Touro's death. One was the discovery that a certain Ellen Wilson, identified as an "F.W.C." (Free Woman of Color, in southern parlance), had had a house purchased for her in Judah Touro's name. Among his effects, a note to this same woman in the amount of $4,100 was found. Ellen Wilson, who may have already died, never came forward to claim her inheritance, and has never been identified.
The second fact is that Pierre Andre Destrac Cazenove, appointed by Judah as one of the executors of his will, and one of its beneficiaries -- Cazenove received a $10,000 gift -- was a mulatto. Little is known about Cazenove, except that he was some forty-eight years younger than Judah Touro, that he had once worked for Judah as a clerk and was described as a great "pet" of Mr. Touro's. At the time of Touro's death, young Cazenove was reportedly worth some $20,000, quite a lot for a black man in the antebellum South. By the time of the Civil War, Cazenove and his four sons were operating a funeral parlor and livery stable, and were said to be worth $100,000. The Cazenove family were described as "Quadroons-Creoles, more properly now called colored persons."
It is astonishing that when the contents of Judah Touro's will were made public -- and made headlines in newspapers all over America -- no mention was made of the startling fact that Touro had named a "colored person" as one of his executors, yet none was. Was this a fact deliberately suppressed, in order that the good Judah had done through his bequests should not be sullied by some sort of interracial scandal? Was Ellen Wilson actually Judah Touro's mistress? Such alliances were certainly not unheard of, but would have been considered by the press unsuitable for public consumption. Was the romantically named Pierre Andre Destrac Cazenove, then, of whom Judah Touro was so fond, one of the few men he could trust to execute his will, actually Judah Touro's son? And who was John Touro, who appeared in New Orleans between 1855 and 1865, not long after Judah Touro's death? None of his known relatives ever followed him there. All these questions can now be only the subject of speculation.
With all the embellishments of the legend that have grown around this odd little man, Jews today proudly point out to their children that America's first philanthropist on any important scale was a Jew. Sephardim today remind their children that Judah Touro was a Sephardic Jew, "one of us," with all his credentials in order. Judah Touro rests, along with all the puzzles and questions about his life, in the Jewish cemetery in his native Newport, with all his relatives. But what the purveyors of the legend do not tell their children -- what many of them, in fact, do not know -- is that many of Judah Touro's benefactions were to Christian causes. At one point, for example, when the First Congregational Church of New Orleans was having financial difficulties, and was about to be torn down, Judah Touro bought the church for $20,000 and then gave the building back to the congregation.
But Congregationalism was never quite his cup of tea. Quite early on, after his arrival in New Orleans, he rented a pew at Christ Church, and became an Episcopalian.
Meanwhile, farther north, in Philadelphia, another Sephardic Jew was becoming the center of a storm of controversy and the basis of a legend. Haym Salomon, his family and other admirers were claiming, had actually "financed the American Revolution" by presenting General George Washington with a large personal loan at a crucial moment. Salomon's detractors, meanwhile, were saying in loud voices that he had done no such thing. Once more, as in the case of Judah Touro, the extent of Jewish contribution to the course of American history was under examination.
From the beginning, of course, the spirit that guided the American Revolution had strong Judaic overtones. The Old Testament had become, in many ways, a Revolutionary textbook. For one thing, the Puritans of Colonial New England considered themselves the spiritual offspring of Old Testament characters. Like the Jews, they gave their children Old Testament names. It was to the Old Testament that the Puritans turned to find God. They regarded the New Testament as merely the story of Christ. In England, the Puritans had been called "Jewish fellow travelers," and they had compared their flight to America with the Jews' escape from Egypt. They called the Massachusetts Bay Colony "the New Jerusalem." There was a proposal that Hebrew be made the official language of the Colonies (it was on the regular curriculum, along with Latin and Greek, when Harvard was founded, a knowledge of the language being considered part of the equipment of a cultivated man). John Cotton had suggested that the Mosaic Code be used as the basis for Massachusetts laws. There is a manifestation of the Code, meanwhile, in the wording of the American Constitution.
Under the oppression of George III, the American colonists likened themselves to the Jews, and the king to the pharaoh. They quoted Samuel, who, when the people of Palestine came clamoring to him for the creation of a Hebrew royal family, raised strong objections to this notion, and the colonists found in his arguments a biblical authority for their refusal to submit to the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. In 1775, the Reverend Jonathan Mayhew, a Boston preacher, announced from the pulpit -- the most effective medium of communication of the day -- that the American colonists were like the people of Israel who resisted the unjust taxation of Solomon's successor, and the Reverend Samuel Langdon, president of Harvard, preached that just as ancient Israel was wrong to take a king for itself, so were the colonists wrong to accept a king who was a tyrant. Aaron Lopez' friend President Ezra Stiles of Yale delivered a sermon in which he traced the evolution of the democratic form of government from Palestine to America. He called America "God's American Israel," and George Washington "the American Joshua," called forth by God to set His people free.
The first Independence Day was something very close to a Jewish holiday. On July 4, 1776,the day that the great Declaration was officially published, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of three -- Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Jefferson -- and asked them to prepare a seal for the United States of America. The design chosen by the committee depicted Pharaoh, crowned, in an open chariot, with a sword in his hand, passing through the divided waters of the Red Sea in pursuit of the Israelites. On the opposite shore stood Moses bathed in light from a pillar of fire, extending his hands toward the sea and bidding the waters to close and swallow Pharaoh. The legend emblazoned upon the seal was: "Rebellion against tyranny is obedience to God." The theme, of course, was freedom, and this first Great Seal of the United States seems somewhat more appropriate than the present, more warlike seal, with its fierce eagle clutching a handful of arrows.
Haym Salomon, meanwhile, who mayor may not have "financed" the Revolution, was a member in good standing of two Sephardic congregations -- Shearith Israel in New York and, later on, when his activities were centered there, Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. He had, however, been born in Poland -- around 1740 -- and this fact, of course, made him Sephardic second class. In America, after his arrival in 1772, he made an auspicious marriage, to Rachel Franks, daughter of Moses Franks of Philadelphia. Frankses -- the name had been Franco in Spain -- were a prominent mercantile family in both Philadelphia and New York, and families such as the Gomezes, Lopezes, and "old" Levys considered the Franks family "one of us." At the time of his marriage to Miss Franks, Haym Salomon was thirty-seven. His bride was fifteen. Still, this alliance considerably elevated his social position in the Jewish community.
He also had acquired, before leaving Europe, a university education, which was unusual for a young Polish Jew in the late eighteenth century. He spoke a number of languages, including, as he once mentioned offhandedly in a letter, "French, Polish, Russian, Italian, etc. Languages." He also spoke Hebrew, and Yiddish -- a tongue the old Sephardic families had only vaguely heard of.
Despite his educated tastes, he first set himself up in New York as a dry goods merchant and, in 1776, Leonard Gansevoort, himself a prominent store owner, recommended young Salomon to Philip Schuyler, who commanded the troops of the Northern Department in upper New York State, and asked that Salomon be allowed "to go suttling to Lake George," that is, to accompany the troops and provide them with clothing, provisions, whiskey, and such. Gansevoort wrote to Schuyler: "I can inform the General that Mr. Salomon has hitherto sustained the Character of being warmly attached to America." He followed the troops through most of that summer, returned to New York in September, and when, on September 15, 1776, the British captured New York, Haym Salomon was one of a group of men who formed a dangerous plan to send fire ships into the Narrows of New York harbor to destroy the British Beet. The plan was discovered, and Haym Salomon was arrested as a spy.
Whether or not he was sentenced to be shot by a firing squad is another point widely disputed within and without the now extensive Salomon family, and among historians of the Revolution. Saleman's son, who may have had reasons to exaggerate certain aspects of his father's career, always insisted that the threat of death was there. In the only existing description of the event by Haym Salomon himself, he makes no mention of this. He became, however, a valuable prisoner. With his knowledge of languages he was able to communicate with a motley assortment of other prisoners, which included mercenary soldiers Britain had hired from all over Europe to fight its war, and Salomon was assigned the job of prison interpreter.
He must have done his job well, for he was eventually released. In 1778,threatened with arrest again, he fled to Philadelphia, where he decided to remain since he possessed "principles repugnant to British hostilities," as he put it in his somewhat flowery style.
In Philadelphia, he wasted no time before appealing to the Continental Congress for a job, citing in his letter his past services to the Revolution, and informing the Congress that he had left behind him all his "Effects and credits to the amount of five or six thousand pounds sterling and [a] distressed Wife and Child of a month old at New York, waiting that they may soon have an opportunity to come out from thence with empty hands." Robert Morris, the Philadelphia financier who had founded the Bank of North America -- and whose personal credit at one point during the war was better than the government's -- took Salomon on and assigned him to negotiate war loans. What this amounted to was going out into the market and selling the infant government's bonds. He was so good at this that soon he was being called "the most successful of the war brokers," and, though he charged only a modest 1/4 of 1 percent for his services, his account at the Bank of North America grew until it was nearly as large as Robert Morris'. With hands no longer empty, he sent for his wife and child, and the family settled comfortably on Philadelphia's Front Street.
He dealt in other goods than government securities, as is apparent in a letter that survives, written to a merchant in Virginia and advising that "The hats are so much higher than you judged that I shall defer sending them till I hear from you. They cannot be got for less than 10-1/2 dollars. Silk stockings are also high and scarce, and am afraid shall not be able to send the quantity you want. Goods are grown scarce, and from the number of vessels we have lost, and our capes now swarming with enemy cruisers, we expect they [the goods] will rise considerably." Wartime inflation was on, but still the amounts Salomon dealt in were not impossibly large. In this same letter he adds: "The forty dollars in favor of Robert B. Chew I have paid."
In 1781, he was prosperous enough to send off a draft in the amount of a thousand pounds to his family in Poland. This turned out to have been an unwise move. The minute his relatives in Europe discovered that they had an affluent kinsman on the other side of the Atlantic, they descended upon him in droves, hat in hand. Haym Salomon found to his dismay that he had more aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, and cousins in more corners of the Continent than he had ever imagined, and that they all expected to be put on allowances. Furthermore, as Jewish relatives have always tended to do, they did not simply ask for their share of their cousin's wealth. They demanded it as their right, and were highly indignant when they were turned down. By 1783, Haym Salomon had clearly begun to weary of their petitions, and we see him writing to an itinerant uncle in England: "I have ordered fifty guilders to be paid you by Mr. Gumple Samson in Amsterdam, which letter giving that order you must already have rec'd, and I now send you an order for six guineas." As patiently as possible he tries to outline his financial situation to his uncle:
[quote]Your bias of my riches are too extensive. Rich I am not, but the little I have, think it my duty to share with my poor father and mother. They are the first that are to be provided for by me, and must and shall have the preference. Whatever little more I can squeeze out I will give my relations, but I tell you plainly and truly that it is not in my power to give you or any relations yearly allowances. Don't you nor any of them expect it. Don't fill your mind with vain and idle expectations and golden dreams that never will nor can be accomplished. Besides my father and mother, my wife and children must be provided for. I have three young children, and as my wife is very young may have more, and if you and the rest of my relatives will consider things with reason, they will be sensible of this I now write. But notwithstanding this I mean to assist my relations as far as lays in my power.[/quote]
His uncle had mentioned coming to America, where, without doubt, he expected to be put on the payroll. Haym wrote him indignantly:
[quote]I am much surprised at your intention of coming here. Your yikes [family background and education] is worth very little here, nor can I imagine what you mean to do here. I think your duty calls for your going to your family, and besides these six guineas you will receive in Amsterdam fifty guineas from Mr. Gumple Samson. . . . I desire no relation may be sent. Have I not children, are they not relations? When I shall be fully informed of all the young people of our family and their qualifications explained, I may then perhaps advise sending one or two to this country. I will explain to you the nature of this country: vinig yidishkayt ['little Jewishness"].[/quote]
He had a sense of humor, and was capable of writing gossipy letters, too, as he did to a friend whom he accused of not keeping him posted, twitting him that doubtless "your whole time is devoted to the ladies, and can't spare time to inform a friend of your welfare. . . . I doubt if the ladies here have the same reason to complain of your neglect. Am certain you would not make it long before your return, was you to know how desirous the ladies are of your presence. And one in particular who wishes that no pecuniary views may get the better of the partiality you always entertained for her.... "
He was proud of his position as the Revolution's leading -- and best -- banker, and he guarded this position jealously. Other Jewish brokers were doing what Haym Salomon was doing, buying and selling government notes. These included Isaac Franks, Benjamin Nones, and Lion Moses, but Salomon did the biggest amount of business and, in 1782, he asked Robert Morris for permission to advertise himself as "Broker to the Office of Finance." Morris gave him permission to use this prestigious title, noting in his diary: "This broker has been usefull to the public interest, and requests leave to publish himself as broker to the office which I have consented, as I do not see that any disadvantage can possibly arise to the public service but the reverse, and he expects individual benefits therefrom" -- benefits, of course, in respect to his competition. In his advertisements, Haym Salomon frequently made such statements as one which announced that the advertiser "Hatters himself that his assiduity, punctuality, and extensive connections in business, as a broker, is well established in various parts of Europe, and in the United States in particular." He continued to buy and sell on commission tobacco, sugar, tea, silk stockings, and ladies' bonnets. But he summed himself up in a letter to a London merchant when he said: "My business is a broker, and chiefly in bills of exchange, and so very extensive that I am generally known to the mercantile part of North America." All this is most certainly true.
On Yom Kippur eve, 1779 -- it is said -- Washington's armies were in desperate straits. His soldiers had not been paid for several months, they were at the point of mutiny, and battle was at hand. Washington pleaded with his men, then threatened, but they were adamant; they would fight no more without their wages. At last a desperate Washington sent a messenger on horseback through the night to Philadelphia with instructions to obtain, from Haym Salomon, a loan of $400,000,an enormous sum in those days, to pay and provision his troops. The messenger found Salomon in the synagogue, and a hasty whispered conference took place. Salomon rose and quickly moved about the synagogue, collecting certain friends. A small group left together, and that night the money was raised. Did Haym Salomon himself contribute $240,000 of the money? So the legend, perpetuated in many accounts, insists.
It is at this point, alas, that the story of Haym Salomon dissolves into speculation and controversy. Did he, as his son later claimed, loan "vast sums" to the government, personally pay soldiers' salaries, and pay for the Revolution? There is no proof of it. He did, however, extend personal loans to many prominent individuals of the Revolution and members of the Continental Congress, including James Wilson, General St. Clair, Edmund Randolph, and many Philadelphians, and often charged them no interest. Presidents Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were all aided by him at one time or another when short of ready cash. Poor Madison was perennially in financial difficulties and in 1782wrote to his friend Edmund Randolph: "I cannot in any way make you more sensible of the importance of your kind attention to pecuniary remittances for me than by informing you that I have for some time past been a pensioner on the favor of Haym Salomon, a Jew broker." A few weeks later, Madison was in as bad shape as ever, and Salomon had come to be something more to him than "a Jew broker." He wrote, again to Randolph:
[quote]I am almost ashamed to reiterate my wants so incessantly to you, but they begin to be so urgent that it is impossible to suppress them. The kindness of our little friend in Front Street, near the coffee house, is a fund which will preserve me from extremities, but I never resort to it without great mortification, as he so obstinately rejects all recompense. The price of money is so usurious that he thinks it ought to be extorted from none but those who aim at profitable speculations. To a necessitous delegate he gratuitously spares a supply out of his private stock.[/quote]
Salomon's son claimed that his father also aided the Polish patriots Pulaski and Kosciusko with enormous loans, but there is no proof of this either. He did, however, when the British fleet cut off all communication with Europe, maintain the Spanish ambassador to the Revolutionary government, Don Francesco Randon, out of his own funds. And it can be argued, from this, that a vital service was performed, since, had Salomon not done so, Spain might have damaged American prestige -- such as it was -- abroad. And it is known that he did sell hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of American bonds, which found their way to the bourses of Paris, London, and Frankfurt, and which certainly did much to establish American credit in the world market.
Does the United States government still owe Haym Salomon a huge amount of money? His son, Haym Moses Salomon, always said so, and his many descendents -- he had four children, and a multitude of grandchildren -- who are scattered about the country in such places as New Orleans; Galveston; Houston; Saint Louis; Ardmore, Oklahoma; and Canton, Kansas, would like to think so, and grow wistful dreaming of the fortune they might split if only they could prove that it existed.
His son's story is this: Between the years 1778 and 1782, Haym Salomon loaned the United States government money in the neighborhood of $700,000, more than half of which was never repaid. On January 5, 1785, the government sent Haym Salomon a full and complete accounting of all the money it owed him. But it was a Sabbath day and, pious Jew that he was, Salomon refused -- though a few years earlier he had supposedly been willing to interrupt high holy day services to help George Washington -- to sign the papers until the day of rest and prayer was over. On the next day, Sunday, January 6, before he had a chance to examine the government's statement, he died -- a victim of the heart disease he had contracted while a prisoner of the British in New York.
The figure of $700,000, his son claimed, represented money that had gone through Haym Salomon's bank account, payable to the government of the United States, and this same figure has been given authority in such publications as the Dictionary of American Biography, in its sketch on Salomon, as the amount he "loaned" the government. It would have been an extraordinarily large sum in 1782. Salomon cmit have been that rich. If he had -- and, on top of that, supported his family and all his European relatives -- he would have been by far the richest man in America. In 1778, he had escaped from New York and arrived in Philadelphia without a penny to his name. How, in four short years' time, would he have possibly amassed so staggering a fortune? It is hard to credit, too, that, just a year after his escape, he could personally have come up with $240,000 to loan George Washington. His wife's family, the Frankses, was rich, but Rachel Franks Salomon descended from the poor branch.
How reliable was his son? It was from him, too, that biographers learned that Haym Salomon's parents in Poland were "wealthy." But still Salomon thought it needful to send them a thousand pounds when at last he became successful, and in his letter he spoke of his "poor father and mother." In his will, he provided that his mother be bequeathed a gold chain, and his aged father enough money to purchase a burial plot.
Several years ago, the Federation of Polish Jews of America attempted to have a statue erected in Haym Salomon's memory, citing, among other sources, the Dictionary of American Biography account of his services to the Revolution, and saying: "America failed to repay the money he advanced, and now men seek to rob him of his posthumous fame." What the Federation wanted to demonstrate, of course, with their statue, was that there had been Polish Jews in America long before the Czarist pogroms of 1881, and that they had contributed mightily. The chief "robber" of Salomon's posthumous fame was the late historian Max J. Kohler. Kohler called the Poles' project ridiculous, and there was a great deal of angry talk. Kohler was a German Jew, and the mutual antipathy that has existed between the earlier-arrived Germans and the later -- arriving Poles and Russians was at the heart of most of it. The project sputtered, with much acrimony, to no conclusion.
Haym Salomon was, in his own words, a broker, a trader of government bonds, an agent. The $700,000that may have gone through his account over the four years in question was not his money; it was the government's and represented funds from securities he had sold, deposited, and then turned over to Robert Morris. On these moneys Morris now paid him a tidy commission -- 1/2 of 1 percent. Haym Salomon was also a generous man. Even the remote uncles got their guineas. He was generous, too, to his friends in Philadelphia, offering unsecured loans, loans without interest -- generous to a fault. After his death, merchants to whom he had loaned money could not pay. His estate was found to be insolvent. His chief creditor was the Bank of North America, Robert Morris' bank.
His son claimed that the United States government owed Haym Salomon $354,000 -- which today, with interest, would be worth in the tens of millions of dollars. His son said the government had come with a detailed statement to that effect. True, his son waited decades after his father's death to make this claim, and after all records had inconveniently been destroyed when the British captured Washington during the War of 1812. Mysteriously, the government never came around with that statement again. The money has never been paid. The papers are gone.
But the Polish Americans did get their statue -- not in New York, where they wanted it, but in Chicago. And it is a memorial not to one but to three men. Haym Salomon shares the marble pedestaland perfectly properly, it would seem -- with George Washington and Robert Morris. At the time of the statue's dedication, President Franklin D. Roosevelt turned to an aide and, in full innocence, asked: "I know who the other two are, but who. . . ?"
To those of the Old Guard Sephardim who had questioned the importance of Haym Salomon's Revolutionary role, there was always the point that he was "not really Sephardic," something of an interloper and stealer of Sephardic thunder. Now, however, that his statue stands proudly in Chicago, and in such illustrious company, for all the world to see, most Sephardim prefer to claim him -- it seems too bad to give him to the Poles -- and Sephardic parents tell their children, "And he was one of us!"
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[b]Notes:[/b]
i. "The Hayses, through the mazelike tracery of Malcolm Stem's book, over the years became related or "connected" with most of the other old families, down to the recent publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Hays Sulzberger.
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