Jewish Support for the American Revolution
Dreaming of Equality: Francis Salvador, the American Jewish Revolutionary Patriot
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
By the time of the American Revolution, there were 2,000 to 2,500 Jews living in the colonies, they only represented one-tenth of a percent of the American population, which was about two million.[1] According to Hasia Diner, “Each of the five Jewish communities that existed on the eve of the American Revolution — New York, Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, and Savannah — has its own history. In each the process of initial settlement, the consecration of a cemetery, formation of a congregation, and the building of a synagogue took place. In each Jews, both accepted their status in the larger society and sought to expand the rights they enjoyed.” [2]
When the thirteen colonies decided to rebel against Britain fighting for their rights and liberties, most colonial Jews joined in the fight hoping their liberties would be extended and they would be granted political equality. In July 1776, with American independence, the Second Continental Congress declared, “all men are created equal,” and in 1789, the ratified Constitution promised a separation between Church and state. The United States “Constitution provided full legal equality for men and prevented the national government from showing favor or discrimination based on one’s religion.” [3] As Diner notes, “The process began of severing the bonds between religion and citizenship, between birthplace and access to full participation in civic life.”[4]
An independent America did not regulate religion or houses of worship and with the Bill of Rights, it granted the individual rights that were never seen in the government-controlled countries of Europe. Diner recounts, “The momentous events of the revolutionary era transformed America into a society built on individual entitlement rather than on corporate identities. In its emphasis on freedom of expression, however imperfectly realized, the United States became a society based on consent rather than descent. For the first time dissent also trumped descent.” [5]
With these liberties, the small American Jewish population had the opportunity to join in participating in a full American life like their Christian neighbors. For Jewish Whigs participating, supporting, and fighting in the war for American Independence was an opportunity to be part of the birth of a nation and gain an equal footing with their counterparts. Francis Salvador’s political and military firsts were all for the American cause and they represented that promise of equality colonial Jews dreamed of obtaining. Still, America considered itself a Protestant Christian nation and religious minorities remained tolerated especially in the individual states. American Jewry would use their sacrifices during the war as a bargaining chip to obtain political equality at the federal and state level, which took longer and more convincing to obtain.
When it came to the Revolution, the majority of American Jews sided with the Patriot Whigs. In the years leading up to the revolution, most American Jews rebelled and protested Britain’s increasing taxes and restrictions on the colonies. Historian Eli Faber notes, “Jews in American began to behave in a strikingly different manner: they began to comport themselves as if they actually had a role to play in public life.” [6] All over the six-port cities where most colonial Jews lived, they were getting more involved. In New York, for “several decades” since 1729, the colony allowed Jews to participate in public office by removing taking the oath on the Protestant Bible. American Jews were already allowed to participate in municipal politics. In Philadelphia, several Jewish joined their Christian counterparts in protesting the Stamp Act by signing the city’s nonimportation agreement to boycott all trade with Britain.[7] In Savannah, two of the city’s Jews participated in the city’s “committee for revolutionary activities,” one even served as a chairman of the committee.
Most Jews were businessman and they objected to the British restrictive policies, the majority of the Jewish Patriots supported independence through financial means, while a minority fought in the militias and army. Some Jews, however, were reluctant to break and rebel against Britain. A few of the wealthy Jewish families in New York, Newport, Philadelphia, and were Loyalists including the Franks family, who supplied British forces, Rodrigo Pacheco, Philip Moses, and Abraham Wag in New York, and Isaac Hart of Newport. Whigs forced Loyalist Jews into exile, David Franks left for England, while Isaac Hart fought with the British on Long Island and was killed for his loyalties. Others including the Gomez, Lopez, and Hays families were divided between being Loyalists or Whigs. [8] When the small number of Jewish families stayed in cities and towns occupied by Britain they made a statement showing they sided with Britain. [9]
Whig Jews also were forced to leave their homes in British occupied cities “New York, Newport, Savannah, and Charleston.” American Jewish Patriots also made a statement leaving British occupied cities, proving their loyalty to the American cause. Most of these Patriot Jews joined the already one hundred Jewish families in Philadelphia, swelling the colony and city’s Jewish population and they remained throughout the war. The community built its first synagogue in 1782 because of the growing population. America’s small Jewish population was mostly affected by the war playing out where they lived. Rezneck explains, “The Jews were affected by their mere presence as well as by the necessity or opportunity of participation.”[10]
Almost a hundred Jewish revolutionary soldiers served in the Continental Army and “local and state militias.” Curator and historian Leon Huhner points out, “The Jews of the South during the American Revolution proved conclusively, not only that Jews were staunch Patriots but also that they were willing to shed their blood as well as risk their fortunes in their country’s cause.” [11] Jews did not have much military experience, in most of the European country Jews, the governments did not allow Jews to serve as soldiers. As Rezneck points out “Jews were not historically or culturally accustomed to military service in the Western world.” [12] Many of the Jews who participated in the war did so because they were locally affected. Considering their numbers, however, American Jews made important contributions to the military aspect of the war. Rezneck describes, “Their role varied from place to place since they were involved in many zones of the war from north to south. Their participation, moreover, ranged from the lowest level of foot soldier to relative higher officer rank and from supply service to actual combat.” [13]
According to historians, it is difficult to determine the exact number of Jewish participants because of the Hebraic and Biblical sound of names in general; intermarriage and conversion, and that in outlying areas there may have been some Jews involved that were not counted. [14] Rezneck explains, “Moreover, there is no single standard or common denominator of patriotic service in a Revolution. As the records of membership applications for both the Daughters and Sons of the American Revolution a century later indicate, participation ranged widely from actual military service to some other civic and patriotic duty.”[15] Military service ranged from “brief enrollment in a local militia” to volunteering to serve in the Continental Army for a longer time. [16] Their age also varied from the young to the old. Among the oldest involved in fighting in the war was Daniel Gomez, who was eighty when he volunteered for service and to raise a company. [17]
Jewish contributions to the war were “operational” and not related policy-making with one rare exception, Francis Salvador. The Jewish population in America was small and a hundred men represented a good proportion of the Jewish male population. The Jewish men of Charleston joined Captain William Lushington’s company, which as Sachar recounts “became known as the ‘Jew Company.’” Despite their small numbers, Jews held high ranks within the military. As Sachar notes, “Mordecai Sheftall of Savannah was deputy commissary general of issue for Georgia. Colonel Solomon Bush became adjutant general of the Pennsylvania militia. Lieutenant Colonel David S. Franks — a cousin of the Loyalist David Franks — served as adjutant to General Benedict Arnold. Dr. Philip Moses Russell, George Washington’s surgeon, endured the hardships of Valley Forge.” [18]
Patriot Jews also served as “blockade-runners, civilian contractors, and financiers.” [19] Most Jews, who contributed financially, saw their fortunes ruined by aiding the Revolutionary cause. Isaac Moses’ shipments successfully arrived from Amsterdam to the Caribbean island of Saint Eustatius and then to America but Aaron Lopez saw most of the merchant ships seized by the British. Jewish civilian contractors supplied the Continental Army with “clothing, gunpowder, lead, and other needed equipment.” Michael Gratz supplied the army with uniforms and Joseph Simon provided rifles. Six percent of American Jews outfitted American military ships, with Lopez outfitting the most.[20]
Haym Salomon was the most significant Jewish financier of the Revolutionary cause. Salomon moved from New York to Philadelphia and set about exchanging Continentals bills for French and Dutch currencies. For his services, he only took a meager one percent of the fees. The Continental Congress officially named him, “Broker to the Office of Finance of the United States,” and France named him, “Treasurer of the French Army in America.”[21] Salomon also provided interest-free loans to “James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, James Wilson, Edmond Randolph, and Generals von Steuben, St. Clair, and Mifflin of the Continental Army. The diaries of Robert Morris, superintendent of finances, contain several appreciative references to the ‘little Jew broker.’” When Salomon died in 1745 at forty-five years old, he was $638,000 in debt to “public and private creditors,” with the government never returning the money they owed him.[22]
Despite Jewish contributions to the Revolutionary War, Jews were not involved with the declaring of independence itself. As Diner points out, “No Jews signed the Declaration of Independence. None sat through the deliberations in Philadelphia in 1787 that produced the Constitution, and none helped to persuade the voters in the newly independent states to ratify it.” [23] Diner acknowledged American Jews did play supporting roles. Southern Jew Moses Sheftall “chaired the nonimportation committee in Georgia.” [24] One Jew came close to participating in the decision-making process of independence, Francis Salvador, the only Jew to be elected to the South Carolina Provincial Congress and any legislative body in Colonial America.
[1] Jonathan D. Sarna, “THE IMPACT OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ON AMERICAN JEWS,” Modern Judaism — A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, Volume 1, Issue 2, September 1981, Pages 149–160, https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/1.2.149.
[2] Ibid., Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000, 26.
[3] Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America, x.
[4] Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000, 42.
[5] Ibid., Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000, 42.
[6] Faber “America’s Earliest Jewish Settlers, 1654–1820,” Raphael, The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America, 27.
[7] Faber “America’s Earliest Jewish Settlers, 1654–1820,” Raphael, The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America, 37.
[8] Sachar, A History of the Jews in America.
[9] Faber “America’s Earliest Jewish Settlers, 1654–1820,” Raphael, The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America, 37.
[10] Rezneck, Unrecognized Patriots: The Jews in the American Revolution, 21.
[11] Hühner, Leon. “FRANCIS SALVADOR, A Prominent Patriot of the Revolutionary War.” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, no. 9, 1901, pp. 107–122. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43058849, 107.
[12] Hühner, “FRANCIS SALVADOR, A Prominent Patriot of the Revolutionary War,” 107.
[13] Rezneck, Unrecognized Patriots: The Jews in the American Revolution, 22.
[14] Ibid., Rezneck, Unrecognized Patriots: The Jews in the American Revolution, 22.
[15] Ibid., Rezneck, Unrecognized Patriots: The Jews in the American Revolution, 22.
[16] Ibid., Rezneck, Unrecognized Patriots: The Jews in the American Revolution, 22.
[17] Ibid., Rezneck, Unrecognized Patriots: The Jews in the American Revolution, 23.
[18] Sachar, A History of the Jews in America.
[19] Ibid., Sachar, A History of the Jews in America.
[20] Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America: Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter: a History, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 51.
[21] Sachar, A History of the Jews in America.
[22] Ibid., Sachar, A History of the Jews in America.
[23] Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000, 44.
[24] Ibid., Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000, 45.
About the Author
Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS is a Professional Librarian (CBPQ) and historian. She is the author of Silver Boom! The Rise and Decline of Leadville, Colorado as the United States Silver Capital, 1860–1896, The Mysterious Prince of the Confederacy: Judah P. Benjamin and the Jewish goal of whiteness in the South, We Used to be Friends? The Long Complicated History of Jews, Blacks, and Anti-Semitism, and the viral article, “OTD in History… October 19, 1796, Alexander Hamilton accuses Thomas Jefferson of having an affair with his slave creating a 200-year-old controversy over Sally Hemings.”
Ms. Goodman has a BA in History and Art History, and a Masters in Library and Information Studies both from McGill University has done graduate work in Jewish history at Concordia University as part of the MA in Judaic Studies, where she focused Medieval and Modern Judaism. Her research area is North American Jewish history, particularly American Jewish history, and her thesis was entitled, “Unconditional Loyalty to the Cause: Southern Whiteness, Jewish Women, and Antisemitism, 1860–1913.”
Ms. Goodman contributed the overviews and chronologies to the “History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–2008,” edited by Gil Troy, Arthur M. Schlesinger, and Fred L. Israel (2012). She is the former Features Editor at the History News Network and reporter at Examiner.com, where she covered politics, universities, religion, and news. She currently blogs at Medium, where she was a top writer in history and regularly writes on “On This Day in History (#OTD in #History)” Feature and on the Times of Israel. Her scholarly articles can be found on Academia.edu. She has over a dozen years of experience in education and political journalism.