LITMIR.BIZ

      FOOTNOTES:

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      [2] According to a careful estimate by Mr. Isaac Harby, in 1826, there were then, nearly forty years after the Revolution, not over 6,000 Jews in the United States.

[3] See Markens, "The Hebrews in America" (New York, 1888), and Morais, "Jews of Philadelphia" (Philadelphia, 1894).

A SKETCH OF HAYM SALOMON.

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      From an Unpublished MS. in the Papers of Jared Sparks.

      [Contributed by Herbert B. Adams, Ph. D., Professor in the Johns Hopkins University. With Notes by J. H. Hollander.]

      In the fall of 1841, Jared Sparks, while professor of history in Harvard College, was delivering a course of lyceum lectures in New York City upon the American Revolution. His remarks upon the services of certain public men of the period excited deep interest in the mind of a Jewish hearer, Mr. Haym M. Salomon, who wrote to and afterwards called upon Mr. Sparks in reference to the patriotic activity of Haym Salomon, a contemporary and associate of Robert Morris, James Madison, Edmund Randolph and other distinguished publicists of the Revolutionary period. At the request of Mr. Sparks, Mr. Salomon prepared certain memoranda of the eminent services of his father, Haym Salomon, and this manuscript passed into the possession of Mr. Sparks.

      The interview and the information thus obtained seem to have made a profound impression upon Mr. Sparks. He mentioned something of the above matter to Mr. Joshua I. Cohen, of Baltimore, and almost a quarter of a century after the original interview, under date of October 29, 1865, Mr. Cohen wrote to Mr. Sparks as follows:

"You may probably recollect a conversation I had with you many years ago during a visit to Cambridge, in which I mentioned that Judge Noah, of New York, was then engaged in gathering together the facts and memorials of the part which our people, the Israelites, took in our Revolutionary struggle, and you kindly offered to him through me the use of your biographical series for any memoirs he might prepare on the subject. The death of Judge Noah, not long after, put an end to the project. I mentioned to you a military company that was formed in Charleston, S. C., composed almost exclusively of Israelites, of which my uncle was a member, and which behaved well during the war. Major Frank, one of Arnold's aids, was spoken of, and also Haym Salomon and others. In connection with Mr. Salomon you expressed yourself very fully, and, in substance (if I recollect correctly), that his association with Robert Morris was very close and intimate, and that a great part of the success that Mr. Morris attained in his financial schemes was due to the skill and ability of Haym Salomon. I do not pretend to quote your language, but only the idea. The matter was brought up to my mind recently by the marriage of a great-grandson of Mr. Salomon to a niece of mine, one of the young ladies of our household."[4]

      The original sketch of Haym Salomon thus prepared by his son was found in a somewhat mutilated condition by Professor Herbert B. Adams, of the Johns Hopkins University, among the Sparks Papers, which had been entrusted to his care during the preparation of "The Life and Writings of Jared Sparks," published in 1893 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The manuscript was stitched to other papers and had been apparently cut down somewhat in order to make it more uniform in size with the smaller sheets. This fact will explain certain tantalizing, but apparently brief omissions in the text. The appended copy of the manuscript is furnished by Professor Adams with the full consent of the Sparks family.

Haym Salomon, who died in Philadelphia, then the metropolis of the United States, January, 1785, was the fellow-countryman and intimate associate of the Polish Generals Pulaski and Kosciuszko, and was first publicly known in 1778, when he was taken by the British General Sir H. Clinton in New York on charges that he had received orders from General Washington to burn their fleets and destroy their store-houses, which he had attempted to execute to their great injury and damage. He was accordingly imprisoned, treated inhumanly, and ordered to suffer military death. From the sacrifice of his life, with which he was threatened in consequence of the sentence, he escaped by means of a considerable bribe in gold. This is corroborated from his letter to his brother-in-law, Major Franks, dated soon after in Philadelphia, in which his intimacy is stated with the brave General McDougall, who then commanded the American army in the neighborhood of New York, and with whom it appears he must have been in co-operation in order to drive … away from the comfortable quarters, which the maritime and military positions of that city so happily promised them after its abandonment by the friends of the Revolution.[5]

      A few days after his escape from the merciless enemy he safely arrived in Philadelphia, where he was welcomed and esteemed as one devoted to the principle … [MS. cut off.]

      We then find him meriting the well-placed confidence and affection of the patriots who had been distinguished in the Revolutionary Congress of 1776; also the great men who were famous in those succeeding sessions, 1780, '81, '82, '83 and '84, as furnished us by such circumstantial testimony as yet remains of that immortal body of devoted patriots.

It is seen as soon as the generous monarch of France agreed to furnish the expiring government of that day with means to reanimate their exertions in the glorious cause. It was he who was charged with the negotiation of the entire amount

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