48 December 26, 1975 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS A Bicentennial Feature The Jewish Dilemna and Jewish Patriots of the 1770s By JACOB R. MARCUS American Jewish Archives Because most Jews were in commerce during the 1700s in America, support- ing themselves as petty shopkeepers, they were rather conservative. The thought of revolution and secession frightened them. They had a great deal to lose. The humble Jewish busi- nessman Philip Moses was typical of this group. He sol- diered with the Charleston militia, but when the city was taken by the British he, like most of his Christian and Jewish neighbors, swore allegiance to the En- glish; his only other choice would have been to leave town — which later, indeed, he did, quitting Charleston for Whiggish Philadelphia. Whether successful or not, the American Jews were primarily business- men, literate and intelli- gent. In agrarian America they were nearly all part of a respected middle class, though politically they were second-class citizens denied the vote in some colonies and forbidden office in all the colonies. A growing number were native Americans, chil- dren of the 1760's, the dec- ade of protest. Young Ja- cob Mordecai typified the new generation. In 1774, at the age of 12, this young patriot, armed and clad in a hunting shirt, joined a boys' military company which escorted the dele- gates to the Continental Congress as they rode into Philadelphia. Many of the Jewish Whigs were ardent patriots; they left their shops, homes, businesses, and warehouses in New York, Newport, Sa- vannah, and Charleston, preferring exile to life under British rule. Gershom Seixas, the minister of New York's Remnant of Israel (Shearith Israel), packed up the Torahs and moved with many of his elite to Con- necticut. The Jews in colonial America never constituted more than one-tenth of 1 percent of the population; yet- in Georgia it was a Jew who took the lead in estab- lishing the first "American" government in that prov- ince.'Mordecai Sheftall was a native whose father had come to Savannah shortly after the arrival of Ogle- thorpe himself. In the late summer of 1774, Sheftall became the head of the Par- ochial Committee of Christ Church Parish; he assumed the leadership of the new de facto county government implementing the anti-Bri- tish boycott-resolutions of the Continental Congress. When the war moved into an active phase, he became the commissary general for Georgia's mili- tia and Continental troops. Knowing the part he had played, the British, when they took Savannah in December, 1778, impris- oned him for about a year and a half before allowing him to return to his family. Sir James Wright, the British governor, was well aware that Sheftall was one of the "liberty" leaders. Re- porting back home to his su- perior in London, the gover- nor suggested that the Georgia Jews not be allowed to return to the province and that Jewish newcomers be entirely excluded: "For these people, my lord, were found to a man to have been violent rebels and persecutors of the king's loyal subjects. And however this law may appear at first sight, be assured, my lord, that the times require these exertions, and without which the loyal subjects can have no peace in the prov- ince or security in this prov- ince." Mordecai Sheftall's career during the Revolution was hardly typical. He was the highest ranking Jew in the Revolutionary forces, for his office carried the titular grade of colonel. Two other . Continentals became lieutenant colonels — quite an achievement when it is borne in mind that no one could hold a mil- itary office in the British- American colonies unless he took a Christian oath. David Salisbury Franks was an American who har' moved to Canada, the 14th colony. When General Rich- ard Montgomery took Mon- treal from the English, the civilian Franks lent the troops money, sold them supplies, and advanced them. funds when there was not a farthing in the mili- tary chest. Looked upon by the Bri- tish as one of the principal leaders of sedition, Franks had to flee with the Ameri- can forces when they were Haym Salomon, considered to be the Jewish finan- cier of the American revolution, is immortalized in a Chicago sculpture by Lorado Taft. The sculpture shows Salomon, at right, with Robert Morris, left, and George Washington. but that was after the war. In 1776, at the age of 17 he enlisted in a regiment of vol- unteers, arming and equip- ping himself at his own ex- pense. An even more enthusias- After athe Battle of Long tic patriot was Franks's fel- low Pennsylvanian Solomon Island, when his company Bush, who became a kins- retreated to New York City, men of Mordecai Sheftall he was captured by the Bri- when Sheftall's son Moses tish and thrown into prison. married Bush's sister Nelly. Three months later this dar- ing youngster escaped in the Young Solomon Bush dead of winter, crossing the joined the army in the early Hudson in a leaky skiff with days because he wanted to only one paddle. "revenge the wrongs of my Arriving on the Jersey injured country." shore, he rejoined the He soon rose to the rank American forces and re- of deputy adjutant general mained in the service until of the state militia. Severely 1782. For most of these wounded in a battle near years he was a forage mas- Philadelphia, he was carried ter and a noncommissioned to his father's home till be- quartermaster in and about trayed to the British by a West Point. "vilain." The highest rank he driven out. He joined them as a volunteer, remained in the service throughout the war, and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. The English were kind enough to parole the wounded officer, but while receiving medical treat- ment from them, he dis- covered that a spy had in- filtrated Washington's headquarters. Bush lost as little time as he could in alerting the Whigs. Isaac Franks, a Whig member of this widespread Anglo-American clan, be- came a lieutenant colonel in the Pennsylvania militia, reached during the Revo- lution was that of ensign in a Massachusetts regi- ment. After six years of practically continuous service with the Continen- tals, this veteran retired at the ripe age of 23 and went into business in Philadel- phia. Achieving a modest de- gree of success, he bought the Deshler House in Ger- mantown. During the war this attractive home had American Patriot Mordecai Sheftall served the British briefly as army headquarters; in 1793, during the yellow fever epi- demic, Franks rented the place furnished to President Washington. After the scourge had abated and the President had vacated the mansion, Washington could not. fail to notice as he scrutinized his bill that Ensign Franks had charged him for six missing items: one flat-iron, one large fork, and four plat- ters. Insight into the Life of Alfred Dreyfus "You are perhaps more Jewish than you think," the French author Bernard La- zare wrote on May 17, 1901, to Alfred Dreyfus who did not ascribe much import- ance to his Jewish descent. In 1894, Captain Dreyfus, the only Jewish member of the French General Staff, was sentenced to life im- prisonment for having passed on secret informa- tion to the German Military Attache in Paris, and was deported to French Guyana. presented by Mme. Levy shed light on prison regula- tions on Devil's Island. A letter to Mme. Dreyfus from the Colonial Ministry gives her permission to or- der for her husband, from a firm in Cayenne, the capital of French Guyana, 50 bot- tles of Vichy water, "kola," quinine and woollen under- wear. Though in 1898 a certain Colonel Henry admitted having forged the document which was the sole material evidence against Dreyfus, this only resulted in a re- duction of the sentence to 10 years' imprisonment, fol- lowed by a pardon "because of extenuating circumst- ances." Lazare's letter was an acknowledgment of a copy of Dreyfus' book "Five Years of My Life" — an account of his terrible ex- periences on Devil's Is- land, originally a home for lepers off the coast of Guyana. It formed part of the me- morabilia presented to the National Library recently by Alfred Dreyfus' 82-year- old daughter, Mme. Jeanne Levy. According to the Jerusa- lem Post, she and her son, Dr. Jean Louis Levy, a phy- sician at the Pasteur Insti- tute, came to Israel to hand over the documents person- ally. Some of the documents lection is Bernard Lazare's letter. The socialist author was one of the few French- Jewish writers who had given much thought to the problem of anti-Semitism, and became one of Dreyfus' first and staunchest cham- pions. ". . . You are perhaps more Jewish than you think," he wrote, "through your indefatigable hope, your belief in the power of the good, accompanied, however, by your power of fatalistic resignation. Being a Jew, you have fought for your life yourself and also for the victory of justice, which, I hope, will not keep us waiting too long and for which we will work together In fact, Lazare died in 1903, two years after this letter, but Dreyfus did not learn the lesson his friend had tried to teach him. He never learned to live with his Jewishness with dignity. ALFRED DREYFUS Another allows her to send him certain specified books, including Pierre Loti's newly published travelogue on the Holy Land. A third informs her that three books have been with- held from another parcel be- cause the pages have not been cut in accordance with regulations. The other "Jewish docu- ment" in Mme. Levy's col- The Dreyfusiana col- lected earlier by the Jeru- salem Library include a number of contemporary newspapers and other publications indicating the depth of anti-Semitic feel- ings among certain sec- tions of the French ruling class. It is interesting to note that after the first verdict of "guilty" by the Paris Mili- tary Court in 1894; Edouard Drummond's anti-Semitic weekly, "La Libre Parole," demanded, in a style made familiar later by the Nazis: "Out with the Jews from France! France for the French!" There is a valuable item in Hebrew in the Jerusalem Library's Dreyfus collec- tion. It is connected with the second trial, the proceedings of 1899 in Rennes at the end of which, no doubt under the pressure of world public opinion, Dreyfus was par- doned and released. This so excited Eliezer Ben_-Yehuda, that he de- cided to put out a special ed- ition of his Hebrew weekly "Hats'vi." In his excitement, however, he forgot to insert the date-line of the cable or the place of its dispatch — probably Paris. Affixed to the one-sheet special edition of "Hats'vi" is a Turkish tax stamp with- out which, it seems, Ben- Yehuda would not have been allowed to distribute the happy tidings or to affix the sheet outside his house and newspaper office. It may be assumed that his Dreyfus extra edition was the first of its kind in the history of the Hebrew press * * * Capt. Dreyfus' Kin Fights for Stern The grandson of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, Dr. Jean- Louis Levy of France, has asked the Soviet Union to follow France's example in his grandfather's case and release Dr. Mikhail Stern. . Dr. Levy contends that Dr. Stern was convicted on charges of swindling and accepting bribes on trumped up charges, much like his . grandfather's treason con- viction in 1894.