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MORDECAI M. NOAH and the Mormon ZION


Introduction: Who Was M. M. Noah?     Part 1: 30 Ararat-Mormon Parallels
Part 3: M. M. Noah & Oliver Cowdery     Part 4: M. M. Noah & the Masons
Return to: American New Israelites




-- Part Two --

"Mordecai Noah everyone astounded,
When he said, "A Jewish state will be founded
On Grand Island, by freedom surrounded."
(Patriots and Peddlers - Anonymous)




Resources for the Further Study of M. M. Noah,
His Israelite Gathering, and Related Topics


1815-a Books by Elias Boudinot

A. The Second Advent
    (Trenton: Fenton & Hutchinson, 1815)
B. A Star in the West
    (Trenton: Fenton & Hutchinson, 1816)

1815-b Articles from the Washington Reporter (Wash., PA)

A. (Oct. 9, 1815) Purchase of Grand Island
B. (Oct. 30, 1815) "Indian Treaty" (Grand Island)

1819-a Mordecai M. Noah   graphic
Travels in England... Barbary States, etc.
(New York City: Kirk and Mercein)


1823-a Ethan Smith
A View of The Hebrews
(Poultney: Smith & Shute, 1823)


1823-b Articles from the Niles Register (Baltimore, MD).

A. (Apr. 5, 1823) "The Jews"
B. (Oct. 1, 1825) "Ararat"
C. (Jan. 21, 1826) "Re-assemblage of the Jews"

1825-a Articles from the Buffalo Patriot

(under construction)
1825-b Articles from the Ontario Repository (Canandaigua, Ontario, NY).

A. (Apr. 20) "The Restoration of Israel" (reprinted poem)
B. (Jun. 15) "A Peep at the West" #1 (Noah's travels west)
C. (Jun. 22) "A Peep at the West" #2 (Noah's travels west)
D. (Jul. 20) "A Peep at the West" #3 (Noah's travels west)
E. (Sep. 28) "Revival of Jewish Government" (Noah's "Proclamation")
F. (Oct. 05) Noah's Dedication Speech of Sept. 15th in Buffalo

Note: Articles E & F (above) are substantially the same as these articles
reprinted in the Wayne Sentinel of Palmyra, NY:

A. (Sep. 27, 1825): (M.M. Noah's "Proclamation to the Jews."
B. (Oct. 04, 1825): (M.M. Noah's Sept. 15th Speech - 1st half)
C. (Oct. 11, 1825): (M.M. Noah's Sept. 15th Speech - 2nd half)

In addition to these three articles, the Wayne Sentinel also ran a follow-up M. M. Noah story in its issue of Nov. 15, 1825.

1831-a David Staats Burnet
Something New: The Golden Bible
(see: "M. M. Noah and the Mormons" in the Comments section)


1835-a Articles from M. M. Noah's Evening Star (NYC)
(under construction)


1835-b Article from LDS Messenger & Advocate (Kirtland, OH):

A. (Dec 1835) "Thou Shalt Not Lie"

Note: Letter from W. W. Phelps to John Whitmer (editor of the LDS newspaper)
quotes The M. M. Noah "Heathen Temple" article from Noah's Evening Star.
The article was reprinted in the LDS History of the Church Vol II, p. 351.
In that volume the editor appends this comment, apparently from Joseph Smith, Jr:

"Thus much from M. M. Noah, a Jew, who had used all the influence in his power,
to dupe his fellow Jews, and make them believe that the New Jerusalem for them,
was to be built on Grand Island, whose banks are surrounded by the waters of the
same Lake Erie. The Lord reward him according to his deeds."

1837-a Mordecai M. Noah
"Discourse on the American Indians"


1837-b W. R. Callington
1837 Survey: Panorama of the Niagara River
detail of Grand Island & Niagara Falls


1845-a Mordecai M. Noah
"Restoration of the Jews"


1848-a Articles from Gospel Herald (Voree, Walworth Co., WI):

A. (c. late 1848) (this article being researched)
B. (Feb. 15, 1849) "Major Noah and the Temple"

Note: James J. Strang's Mormon splinter group published several different
periodicals in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Probably several these issues
carried articles on M. M. Noah. See, for example, the Gospel Herald for
Mar. 1, 1849, which printed a letter from J. Litch, commenting on that paper's
Feb. 15th article on M. M. Noah. Litch's "Major M. Noah and Solomon's
Temple" contains no useful information and is not reproduced here.

1851-a M. M. Noah obituaries

A. (April 1851)  from The Occident
B. (April 26, 1851)  from the Boston Museum

1866-a Lewis F. Allen
"Founding of the City of Ararat on Grand Island"
reprint 1: Buffalo Hist. Soc. Pub. Vol I, 1879
reprint 2: Buffalo Hist. Soc. Pub. Vol XXV, 1921


1866-b Land Plat of Grand Island
(map showing the survey divisions of the island)


1907-a Morris U. Schappes (ed)
Doc. Hist Jews in U. S. 1654-1875 NYC: Citidel Press (reprint) 1950
(prints several early letters relating to M. M. Noah)


1921-a Lewis F. Allen   excerpt from the 1866 text
"The Story of the Tablet of... Ararat"
Buffalo Hist. Soc. Pub. Vol. XXV


1931-a Harry K. Gutmann
Mordecai M. Noah: the American Jew
Cincinnati 1931, np


1936-a Isaac Goldberg   excerpts: VI   VIII
Major Noah: American-Jewish Pioneer
Philadelphia: Alfred A. Knopf
(reprint: Jewish Publication Society 1938)


1947-a Robert W. Bingham (ed)   excerpt
Niagara Frontier Miscellany,
Buffalo Hist. Soc. Pub. Vol. XXXIV


1953-a Abram Leon Sacher
A History of the Jews, 4th ed.
New York: Alfred Knopf
(Description of Noah's 1825 dedication ceremony: p. 396)


1960-a Selig Adler (ed.)   excerpt
From Ararat to Suburbia... Jewish Community of Buffalo
Philadelphia 1960


1963-a Joseph L. Blau & Salo, W. Baron (eds.)
Jews of the US: 1790-1840, vol. 2
NYC: Columbia Univ. Press, 1963
(includes several M. M Noah letters from 1823-1833)


1963-b Joseph L. Blau & Salo, W. Baron (eds.)
Jews of the US: 1790-1840, vol. 3   excerpt
NYC: Columbia Univ. Press, 1963
(includes several M. M Noah letters from 1820-1826)


1965-a S. Joshua Kohn   excerpt
"Mordecai Manual Noah's Ararat Project"
Am. Jewish Hist. Quarterly 55:2 (Dec. 1965 p. 162ff)


1968-a William L. Shulman
"The 'National Advocate' 1812-1829"
(NYC: Yashiva Univ, unpub. Ed.D. thesis)


1977-a I. Harold Sharfman   excerpt
Jews on the Frontier
Chicago: Henry Regnery Co.
(Oct. 22, 1825 M. M. Noah letter on Ararat: p. 214 )


1981-a Jonathan D. Sarna (ed.)   excerpt: Ararat project
Jacksonian Jew: The Two Worlds of Mordecai Noah
New York: Holmes and Meir, 1981


1981-b Edward Pessen
"Jackson Jew..." (book review)
American Jewish History
Vol. LXXI No. 1, September, 1981


1982-a Richard H. Popkin   excerpt
"M. Noah, Gregoire, & Paris Sanhedrin"
Modern Judaism II:2, May 1982


1984-a Jonathan D. Sarna
"Literary Contributions of M. M. Noah" Jewish Book Annual
Volume 42, 1984-85


1985-a Jan Shipps   excerpt
Mormonism: Story of a New Religious Tradition
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985


1986-a Jonathan D. Sarna (ed.)
The American Jewish Experience
New York 1986: Holmes and Meir


1986-b Dan Vogel   excerpt
Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon...
Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1986


1987-a Abraham I. Karp
Mordecai M. Noah, the First American Jew
New York 1987: Yeshiva University Museum
(illustrated 75 page catalog of M. M. Noah historical items)
(see Karp's on-line selection of items in Library of Congress)


1989-a Jacob R. Marcus   vol. 1 excerpt
United States Jewry, 1886-1985
Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1989


1992-a Steven Epperson   excerpt
Mormons and Jews: Early Mormon Theologies of Israel
Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992


1992-b Robert N. Hullinger   excerpt
Joseph Smith's Response to Skepticism
Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992


1992-c Wesley Walters & H. Michael Marquardt
Inventing Mormonism...   excerpt
Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992


1992-d Howard M. Sachar
History of the Jews in America
NYC: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992
(comments on M. M. Noah and historical context)


1993 Grant Underwood   excerpt
The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism
Urbana: University of Illinois, 1993


1998-a Ben Katchor (author & illustrator)
The Jew of New York (a graphic novel)
New York: Pantheon, 98 pp., $20

A Graphic Novel:   excerpt
Note: This illustrated book is about the impending theatrical production
of "The Jew of New York," a fictional comedy satirizing M. M. Noah's
failed attempt to establish a Jewish homeland Grand Island. The fictional
story looks at claims for American Indians being the Tribes of Israel, etc.

1999-a Michael Schuldiner and Daniel J. Kleinfeld (eds.)
The Selected Writings of Mordecai Noah
Greenwood Press: Westport, CT 1999.

This volume includes:

  • Noah's 1819 play "She Would be a Soldier"

  • Excerpts from Noah's 1820 "Essays of Howard, on Domestic Economy."

  • 1825 "Ararat" proclamation & speech (Jewish homeland in New York)

  • Noah's 1832 essay "A Memoir of the Theatre.

  • Noah's 1945 "Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews" (Jewish homeland in Syria)

  • Noah's 1849 tract, "Address... to Aid in the Erection of the Temple at Jerusalem" (1849).


  • 2000-a Julia Neuffer (with excerpts from Ellen G. White)
    The Gathering of Israel (on-line text)


    2000-b Rahel Musleah
    Jewish History of Buffalo, NY (on-line text)


    2000-c No Author Indicated
    The History of Grand Island (on-line text)




    Excerpts from publications with
    information about M. M. Noah

     


    L A T T E R   D A Y   S A I N T S'
    MESSENGER AND ADVOCATE.

    Vol. II. No. 3.]         KIRTLAND OHIO, DECEMBER 1835.         [Whole No. 15.

    [p. 232]
    ["Thou Shalt Not Lie" by W. W. Phelps -- begins on p. 230]

    ... I shall next present you with a short article that recently appeared in M. M. Noah's
    N. Y. Evening Star
    :

    "Heathen Temple on Lake Erie: -- That bold-faced imposter, Joe Smith, of Gold bible and Mormon memory, has caused his poor fanatic followers to erect on the shores of Lake Erie; near Painesville, (Ohio) a stone building 58 by 78 feet with dormer windows, denominating the same the "Temple of the Lord." We should think this work of iniquity extorted out of the pockets of his dupes, as it reflects its shadows over the blue lake, would make the waters crimson with shame at the prostitution of its beautiful banks to such unhallowed purposes."

    We can hardly believe that an honest man would write such a foolish, figurative statement: but when a man has failed to dupe his fellow Jews, with a New Jerusalem on Grant Island, I suppose that you cannot "crimson" [his face] with shame, at the prostitution of his life and character, to vices, that are forbidden by the law of Moses, by the law of the land, and by every honest judge in Israel. Let me ask, who made Noah an umpire to say whether the church of the Latter Day Saints, has not as good a right to build a house at Kirtland, for worshipping the Lord, as he had to lay a stone on Grant Island, to wheedle money from the Jews to fill his own pockets? again, let me ask what any of the Saints have done to injure Noah, or any other man, that he should wilfully ridicule them, and reproach them with iniquity? &c. &c. Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! When thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled; and when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee. -- Isaiah 33:1.


    One more example of folly, and I will cease quoting for the present: It is from the Sunday Morning News, of Nov. 15, and reads thus:

    "Good. Abner Kneeland, the notorious leader of the infidels in boston, has been convicted of blasphemy before the supreme court of Mass. On three previous trials the jury could not agree upon a verdict. We cannot suggest a better course for the gray headed scoundrel than that he forthwith take up his line of march for the land of the Mormons, and associate himself with his brother imposter, Matthias; and to strengthen their proselytes in the faith, Fanny Wright, perhaps, may be induced to take up her residence with them. What a pretty little family the trio would make, with the addition of the X Dey of Algiers, X Charles, and with a few others which we cannot readily call to mind; we will toss into the caldron another Frenchman, Louis Phillippe, who can, in the course of a few months, be spared without any trouble."

    The editor of this Sabbath paper, is Mr. S. J. Smith, and what evil have the Saints, (Mormons, as he stiles them,) done to him or his reputed city? what reason can he offer for endeavoring to reproach and ridicule a society of people, by tossing into their faces, the despised among men. His holy day paper poorly comports with the Savior's golden rule; "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets."

    It is a matter of astonishment to me, that intelligent men, are so apt to slander and belie their fellow beings! It must arise from the face, that Satan is an enemy to pure religion: for Cain slew his brother because the Lord had respect to the purity of Abel's heart: Religion though based upon eternal truth, and always flourishing in the regions of glory, is treated strangely in this world. On account of abusing its light and knowledge, Cain became "a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth." For striving against the Spirit of God, and being full of violence, the inhabitants of the old world, except Noah and his family, were destroyed by the flood.

    Pharaoh and his host were sunk in the Red Sea, for insulting the Saints of God: and I might go on from Moses till the final dispersion of the Jews, and the destruction of Jerusalem, after the Lord of glory was crucified, but I pause.

    The hour of judgment is near, "And all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." Why is it that such men as Noah, Dwight, Woodward, S. J. Smith and a phalanx of others, should be striving to put down the church of the Latter Day Saints, when they have received no injury from them?

    Is it because they have inhaled the cankering air, that has been tainted by the stenching breath of such men as Mr. Campbell, Mr. Avery, Mr. Clapp, Mr. Hurlburt, and least of all the persecutors the dark colored man with a pitchfork? If this is the case I am sorry for them: -- for a wise man ought always to hear both sides of a matter before he judges it. I shall bring no railing accusations against them: I have merely drawn a picture of what they have hastily done, that they may look upon it and consider how many innocent men, women, and children have to suffer persecution, hunger, thirst, and other afflictions, for such rash words, and foolish deeds. No wonder Lynch law is murdering throughout our once happy country; no wonder mob after mob is breaking the tender thread of law, and bursting the strong bands of society, to spread anarchy, confusion, destruction and death: no preference is made to virtue more than vice, by men in high places; and when a scourge sweeps off its thousands, the survivors, seem to have been spared only to mock at the calamity; I do sincerely hope that all that have slandered the church of Latter Day Saints will repent of their sins and folly: [D&C 97:22-24] "For behold and lo vengeance cometh speedily upon the ungodly, as the whirlwind, and who shall escape it: the Lord's scourge shall pass over by night and by day; and the report thereof shall vex all people; yet, it shall not be stayed until the Lord come: for the indignation of the Lord is kindled against their abominations, and all their wicked works."

    [p. 233]
    For the love of liberty: venerating the memory of our worthy forefathers who bled that we might live free; for the benefit of the oppressed; for the continuance of virtue, and in the blessed name of Jesus Christ, it is devoutly to be hoped that every man that has injured, or spoken evil of the church of Latter Day Saints, will be as free to make reparation, as he was to give currency to reports without foundation: that they may not remain among that class of beings, to whom the Savior's language to the Scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites, will apply: for there is a woe to such as make clean the out side of the platter; that praise virtue but never practice it; that pay tithes, for the sake of honor, and esteem men and money more than truth and meekness, and omit the "weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith."

    In the love of god, and in the hope of the prosperity of the pure in heart, praying that the Lord will have mercy upon all that turn from the evil of their ways; having virtue for my aim; truth for my standard, and seeking eternity for an everlasting inheritance, I shall continue to defend the cause of goodness and humanity.

    As ever
    W. W. PHELPS.
    To JOHN WHITMER Esq.



     
     

    G O S P E L   |__|   H E R A L D.

    Vol. III. No. 48.]         VOREE, WIS., THURSDAY, FEB. 15, 1849.         [WHOLE No. 112.

    [p. 259]

    MAJOR NOAH AND THE TEMPLE.

    We gave, some few weeks since, some extracts from the address of Mr. NOAH, in which he attempted to show the failure of the prediction of the SAVIOR, that in the destruction of the Temple, not one stone should be left upon another. On this claim of a failure, the Louisville Journal, in a long article, remarks as follows: --
    "We shall now show that the prediction of the Savior was fulfilled in the most literal sense. The prediction was, that the building upon which the disciples were then looking should be utterly destroyed. This address was made in reference to what was a matter of sight, not to underground arches. See Matt. xxiv. 2; Mark. xiii. 2. The language is plain, and easily understood. It was also promised, in the same connection, that Jerusalem should be laid even with the ground, and that not one stone should be left upon another. -- These things were fulfilled in the most exact sense. Titus did all in his power to save the Temple, but could not. The Jews set fire to the porticos, and the infuriated Romans completed the work of ruin, while Titus was making personal executions to save it. Josephus says the Temple was burned against the will of Caesar. Titus then gave orders to demolish the foundations of the Temple and of the city... It is rather too late in the day for Major Noah to contradict facts that were never contradicted by those who were contemporaries of the events. The Major is behind the times.

    "There is one more prophecy of the Savior, on the occasion of the one which Major Noah impugns, which has been literally fulfilled, and which the Major felt sensibly, at the very moment he was endeavoring to blow away the character of its author. It was more remarkable than the one that has excited the Major's Jewish doubts. We allude to the predicyion that 'Judea should be trodden down by the Gentiles...'"


     


    THE OCCIDENT

    Vol. IX.                    PHILADELPHIA, APRIL 1851.                    NUMBER 1.


    NOAH, Mordecai Manuel, journalist, b. in Philadelphia, Pa., 14 July, 1785; d. in New York City, 22 May. 1851. He engaged in trade, but soon studied law, and, removing to Charleston, S. C., turned his attention to politics. In 1811 he was appointed by President Madison U.S. Consul at Riga, Russia, but declined, and in 1813 secured the post of consul-general at Tunis, with a special mission to Algiers. His consulship was made memorable by his rescue of several Americans that were held as slaves in the Barbary States, and he protested against the payment of an annual tribute to the pirate government of Morocco as security for the American merchant marine. On his return to New York he entered journalism, and founded and edited in rapid succession the "National Advertiser," the "Courier and Enquirer," the "Evening Star." and the "Sunday Times." As surveyor of the port, to which post he was appointed by Gen. Jackson in 1832, and judge of the court of sessions, he enjoyed civil esteem, while his personal efforts as sheriff in behalf of imprisoner debtors showed the warmer side of his nature, which political and journalistic strife could not stifle. A courious incident of his life was his project in 1820 to rehabilitate the Jewish nation at Grand Island in [the] Niagara River. His enthusiasm went so far that he erected at Whitehaven, on the eastern side of the island, opposite Tonawanda, a monument of brick and wood. with the inscription "Ararat, a City of Refuge for the Jews, founded by Mordecai M. Noah in the Month of Tishri (September, 1825) and in the Fiftith Year of American Independence." This has since disappeared. His most important published work is "Travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States" (London, 1819). He wrote, in addition, a large mass of miscellaneous addresses and essays, political and religious, a collection of which appeared under the title 'Gleanings from a Gathered Harvest" (New York, 1845). His addresses in clude one on the "Restoration of the Jews" (1845). He also published a "Translation of the Book of Jasher" (1840), and was the author of several successful dramas, including "The Fortress of Sorrente," "Paul and Alexander." "She would be a Soldier," "Marion, or the Hero of Lake George," "The Grecean Captive," and "The Seige of Tripoli,"





     


    BOSTON MUSEUM.

    Vol. 3.     BOSTON, MASSACHUSSETTS., SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1851.     NUMBER 46.



    THE  LATE  M. M. NOAH.


    MORDECAI M. NOAH was born in the city of Philadelphia on the 14th of July 1785. He early gave indications of his being possessed of those high mental powers which subsequently made him for a long period one of the chief [members] of the editorial [fraternity] of the United States. He was educated at Philadelphia College, and having access to the Franklin Library he acquired a great deal of miscellaneous knowledge, reading much at a time of life when it is easy to fix [acquisitions] permanently in the memory. Major Noah found the advantages that follow from youthful reading in middle life and old age. That which we read in our youth is retained so long as intellect is allowed to [be].

    When but thirteen years of age, young Noah delivered a Fourth of July Address, a sort of intellectual [feat] which was then thought to have more [pretention] to [originality] than it now has. He was then a Clerk in the Auditor's Office.

    In [------] when [eleven] years old, he was apprenticed to a [carver] and [gilder], but [---------] principally at his master's [request.] His connection with the press commenced very early. He was employed as a Reporter of the proceedings of the Legislature if Pennsylvania, by the celebrated John [-------], who then published the Democratic Press, a noted organ in the day of the old Republican or Democratic party. At the same time he was the chief [contributor] to a [---------] and [---------] weekly journal called the [The Tatler]. It was about this time that he obtained his title of Major, which became so thoroughly connected with his anme that it almost seemed to form a portion of it. He was elevated to this military office through the influence of the celebrated Simon Synder, Governor of Pennsylvania, and who played so prominent a part for many years in the politics of that great State....

    About the year [1799] Major Noah left Philadelphia and took up his residence in Charleston, South Carolina, then perhaps, the most [intellectual] community in the Union, and the host of the most polished and [refined] society of the [southeast]. He connected himself with the City Gazette newspaper which was edited by {Isaac] Thomas and [Isaac Harley], the latter gentleman being an excellent Hebrew scholar...

    In such society as Charleston afforded, Major Noah soon made himself at home. The [amenity] of his [manners], his genial termprement, and his great conversational powers, which were enriched by his extensive reading made him a welcome guest in the best [circles] of Charleston society. He beacme acquainted with all the celebrities of that region. On a visit to Columbus, the capital of the State, he made teh acquaintance of John C. Calhoun, who had then just entered upon what was destined to be a brilliant public career. Mr. Calhoun saw and appreciated the talents of his new acquiantance, whom he advised to visit New York, as the place best apated to a man of his peculiar powers.

    In 1811 President Madison appointed Mr,. Noah American Consul at Riga, in Russia, an office of some [significance], but he preferred remaining at home, and [maintaining] his [connection] with the press. he had something to do with the Charleston theatre. While residing in the South he fought a duel, a lively account of which he published some years [later]....

    In 1813, when he was but twenty-eight years old, Major Noah was appointewd by our government Consul at Tunis, with apecial [reference] to the redemption of American captives [there] held and the conclusion of a commercial treaty with the Bey. Sailing from Charleston in a private armed vessel, bound for Honduras, he had the misfortune to be captured, just before he should have reached his place of destination, and was carried into Liverpool. the war between the United States and England was then at its height and the English were but little inclined to show any courtesy to a diplomatist from a country which they hates with an intensity that men of this time can have but small conception of. After considerable delay, and having been subjected to not a few of those petty annoyances which the English delight to heap upon those which they dislike, he was allowed to proceed to Tunis.

    Arrived at the place where his official life was to commence, Major Noah soon proved himself a zealous and vigilant functionary. He was ever ready to assist any one who was in distress, an observation that will apply [to him for the rest] of his life, either public or private.... The bey of Tunis... demanded his recall... Mr. Noah being a Jew...

    Returning to the United States, Major Noah [hastened] to Washington, for the purpose of [settling] with the government.... He had a quarrel with the President and the Secretary of State in respect to his conduct while the Consul at Tunis, which covered the whole subject of his recall. He was at last compelled to make an appeal to Congress. In that body the matter was debated with a great deal of earnestness.... After the the practice of a great deal of petty but characteristic [inquiry]... the government acknowledged that there was due to Major Noah the sum of $3,500... There was never a man in this country who had less of the stuff in him from which [defrauders] are made than Major Noah....

    Major Noah, on his return to America became a resident of the city of New York, where his talents soon procured advancement [for him]....

    When the Advocate, however, passed into the hands of Henry [Eckhard] and his friends, major Noah was obliged to leave it. He then set up a paper for himself, to which he gave the name of National Advocate... and then the name New York Enquirer... [and then] a union of the Enquirer with the New York Courier newspaper...

    With the Courier and Enquiere Major Noah was connected for several years, giving to that journal all the weight and character he had, his partner [Webb] being a man of no [account] whatever. One of the greatest difficulties of the Major's [position grew out of the follies and [---------] of his partner, and it was with no ordinary pleasure that he disolved his connection with him in 183[3]. The Courier and Enquirer had been the principal organ in New York of the Jackson party... Major Noah commenced the publication of the Evening Star, a daily paper.... The Star was subsequently merged into the New York Times.

    During the administration of President Tyler, Major Naoh was for a time employed as editor of the organ of that party in New York... Major Noah was a Jew and lived and died in the faith of his fathers...




     

    Buffalo Hist. Soc. Publications
    Vol. XXV, 1921 (text reprinted from 1866)

    [ 113 ]





    THE  STORY  OF  THE  TABLET  OF
    THE  CITY  OF  ARARAT
    _________

    BY  HON.  LEWIS F.  ALLEN

    (One of the relics that has a story, in the Historical Society museum, is the "Ararat stone," so called. In volume I of these Publications it was described and its curious history recorded by Hon. Lewis F. Allen. It was not, however, pictured, nor has it ever been, except crudely, in a newspaper. The volume containing Mr. Allen's narrative has long been out of print; in picturing the Ararat tablet in this volume, the editor feels that he cannot do better than to reprint the account which Mr. Allen wrote, and which the author read at a meeting of the Historical Society, March 5, 1866. -- EDITOR.)

    Grand Island lies in the Niagara river, County of Erie, and State of New York. Its south end is about four miles below the mouth of Lake Erie, to the north, and its north end is about the same distance above the Niagara Falls. Its extreme mean length is a trifle over eight miles; its extreme breadth is a little over six miles -- but that width extends only a small distance -- the average being probably four and a half miles; containing in its whole area, by survey, 17,381 acres. It is a body of good agricultural land, and until about the year 1834, with the exception of ten or twelve hundred acres, was covered with a heavy growth of timber. Its situation along the shore of the river is exceedingly pleasant and commanding, elevated six to thirty feet above the water; and along its various coasts embraces many picturesque views of the city of Buffalo, the villages of Tonawanda and Niagara Falls, and the adjacent Canadian and American shores. At its southwestern extremity lies, separated by the small arm of Beaver creek about one


     



    114             STORY  OF  THE  TABLET  OF  THE  CITY  OF  ARARAT            


    hundred feet in width, Beaver Island, containing forty acres. At its northwestern extremity, is a small inlet of deep water, called Burnt Ship bay, in which are two sunken hulks of vessels, said, by tradition (and no doubt truly), to be driven in there from Chippewa by the British forces and destroyed by their French commanders, in the French-and-English Canadian war of the year 1755. In very low water the timber heads of one of these vessels may be seen a few inches above the surface. Separated by this bay, a narrow marsh, and an insignificant streamlet of only a few feet in width, lies Buckhorn Island, containing, by survey, one hundred and forty-six and one-half acres. No other islands are immediately contiguous to Grand Island.

    Spafford's Gazetteer, printed in the year 1821, relates that the State of New York, by a treaty held with the Seneca Indians at Buffalo, September 12, 1815, purchased of that tribe, Grand and several other small islands in the Niagara river. For Grand Island, this authority does not give the price paid by the State. My impression is, that I have seen in some other work that eleven thousand dollars was the consideration; and for the other small islands, Spafford states that the consideration was one thousand dollars and an annuity of five hundred dollars.

    Immediately after its purchase by the State, numerous squatters flocked on to Grand Island, and built cabins along its shores on both sides -- On the west, or Canadian side, mostly -- for the purpose of cutting, and working into staves, the valuable white-oak timber which abounded there, for the Montreal and Quebec markets. From those cities the staves were shipped, mainly, to the British West India Islands. The staves were taken from Grand Island in scow-boats to Chippewa, thence wagoned around the Falls to Lewiston, and there put on board sail-vessels for Montreal and Quebec.


     



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    At the time the State of New York purchased Grand Island, the territorial titles of the lake and river islands between the United States and Canada were undetermined, and so they remained until the year 1822, when all the islands in the Niagara river, excepting Navy Island, opposite the foot of Grand Island, were declared by the boundary commissioners, appointed by the governments of the United States and Great Britain, to belong to the United States, and consequently they came under the jurisdiction of the State of New York. Up to the year 1819, the squatters held undisputed possession of the land, amenable to neither New York nor Canadian law; setting up a sort of government of their own, wherein they settled their own disputes, if they had any, but defying the authority of either jurisdiction on the opposite shores. In a foot-note to the Field Notes of the survey of the island made in the months of October and November, in the year 1824, by Silas D. Kellogg and James Tanner, after describing Lot No. 18, on the east, or American bank of the river, the surveyors remark:

    "On this lot stands the remains of a log cabin, in which the renowned Mr. Clarke used to reside. While it was undetermined to which government the island belonged, this man came on, and became generalissimo and the director of an independent judiciary, whose laws and customs were enforced and practiced like those of the King of the Outlaws."

    This Mr. Clarke -- "Governor" he used to be called when administering squatter-law on the islands -- I knew very well in the year 1835. He then lived at Pendleton, in Niagara county, on the Erie canal, where he had the reputation of a good citizen. I asked him about his residence and administration at Grand Island. He evidently disliked to talk upon the subject, and waived it at every attempt I made to get a history of the affair, but acknowledged the fact of living there, and being somewhat a conspicuous man among the people. He


     



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    was then perhaps fifty years of age, but whether now living or not, I am unable to say. So annoying had the squatters on the island become to the neighboring shores, by their frequent acts of outlawry, and their depredations on the valuable timber of the island, that the New York State authorities took summary measures to remove them. An instance was related, that when a sheriff or constable, armed with a civil process, had landed there to arrest one of the squatters, several of them assembled, and treated both the officer and his authority with contempt; took his oars or paddles out of his boat, and set him adrift down the river, where he floated for some distance, until some one, touched by his distress, put out with another boat and took him over to the American shore.

    Immediately after this, in the year 1819, Sheriff Cronk, of this county (then Niagara), was clothed with a requisition from the State authorities, to call out a company of the militia in and about Buffalo, to make a descent on the island, and rid it of the squatters. Colonel Benjamin Hodge (still living with us) then having the requisite military command, with a sufficient number of armed men, and accompanied by the sheriff, took boats from the "Seeley Tavern," about three miles below Black Rock, on the river shore -- landed on the island -- made its entire circuit -- drove off every squatter, either on to the Canadian or American shores, and burned every dwelling and other building to the ground. Thus was established the authority and law of the State over Grand Island. A portion of these squatters, however, immediately returned; but, as they ceased cutting timber and held themselves amenable to the law, they were not again molested by State authority. They rebuilt their cabins, cultivated their little patches of clearing, and remained peaceable citizens, taking a little timber "on the sly," only; keeping a few cattle and pigs, and


     



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    eking out a poor, but, to them, quite satisfactory subsistence.

    Grand Island, in those days of the Niagara frontier, in its grand and deep solitude, was a charming place for those who loved to range the woods, or float on the quiet pellucid waters of the noble river encircling it. From head to foot, along the shores, or in the deepest wilderness, on a still day, the roar of the Falls below was always heard, and along its westerly shore their ascending spray was always in sight. Men of thought and reflection loved occasionally to camp for days on its shores, and fish and hunt, as the mood for either recreation impelled them; and no wonder that the ''loafing,'' desultory habits of the squatters found there a congenial dwelling place. There was the serene sky, the clear waters, the venerable trees -- all in quiet summer beauty, inviting to repose, to listlessness and laziness so congenial to squatter and roving life. Who can blame the vagabonds for loving to live and harbor there!

    The woods abounded with deer; occasionally a bear, a wolf, or other large game worthy a hunter's elevated ambition, was found. Great numbers of raccoons, squirrels, and other small furry quadrupeds inhabited the woods, while myraids of ducks and other game-birds thronged the shores and waters in their proper season. The Indians from the Seneca and Tonawanda reservations, held annual hunts of days or weeks upon the island, and carried away canoe-loads of the choicest venison.

    The fishing too, was magnificent. Tons of the finest muskelonge, yellow pike, sturgeon, black bass, pickerel, mullet and smaller fish were hauled up to the shore in seines in their seasons, or drawn out by the hook and line of an adroit angler. The hook-and-line fishing of the Niagara was nowhere excelled. No wonder such a paradise of hunters and sportsmen was sought and lived


     



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    upon by those to whose habits steady labor was irksome. The warm, sunny nooks of "the clearings" produced every annual garden-fruit and vegetable of the climate. Melons and other choice delicacies abounded with every one who had the industry to plant and cultivate them. Hunting parties would go down from Black Rock and Buffalo, for a week's recreation, and "drive" the woods for deer, while ";coons," squirrels, ducks, and other game were the continuous incidental trophies of their sport. So passed, for several years, the squatter and camp life of Grand Island.

    In the year 1824, the State ordered a survey of the island into farm lots, and in that year a party was fitted out for the purpose. A part of the work was done under the supervision of Silas D. Kellogg, in that year. But Mr. Kellogg sickened and died before the work was completed; and, early in the next year, James Tanner was commissioned, and finished the work.

    In this year (1825) an eventful history was about to open on the Niagara frontier. Those members of our Society who then lived here, in the relation of their reminiscences of that period, have been prone to mark it as an eventful year in three striking incidents relating to the history of Buffalo, viz: the visit of General Lafayette, the completion and opening of the Erie canal, and "the hanging of the three Thayers." They might have added to it another memorable occurrence, not only to Buffalo, but to the Niagara frontier. Following the survey of Grand Island into farm-lots, for settlement, of which the State authorities gave notice in the public newspapers, an idea occurred to the late Major Mordecai Manuel Noah, a distinguished Israelite, of the city of New York, then editor of a prominent political journal, called The National Advocate, that Grand Island would make a suitable asylum for the Jews of all nations, whereon they could establish a great city, and become


     



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    emancipated from the oppression bearing so heavily upon them in foreign countries.

    To understand this matter thoroughly, it is necessary to go somewhat into particulars. I knew Major Noah well. Physically, he was a man of large muscular frame, rotund person, a benignant face, and most portly bearing. Although a native of the United States, the lineaments of his race were impressed upon his features with unmistakable character; and if the blood of the elder Patriarchs or David or Solomon flowed not in his veins, then both chronology and genealogy must be at fault. He was a Jew, thorough and accomplished. His manners were genial, his heart kind, and his generous sympathies embraced all Israel, even to the end of the earth. He was learned, too, not only in the Jewish and civil ]aw, but in the ways of the world at large, and particulally in the faith and politics of "Saint Tammany" and "the Bucktail party" of the State, of which his newspaper was the organ and chief expounder in the city of New York. He was a counselor at law in onr courts, had been Consul-General for the United States at the Kingdom of Tunis, on the coast of Barbary, -- at the time he held it, a most responsible trust. Although a visionary, -- as some would call him -- and an enthusiast in his enterprises, he had won many friends among the Gentiles, who had adopted him into their political associations. He had warm attachments and few hates, and if the sharpness of his political attacks created, for the time, a personal rancor in the breasts of his opponents, his genial, frank, childlike ingenuousness healed it all at the first opportunity. He was a pundit in Hebrew law, traditions and customs. "To the manner born," he was loyal to his religion; and no argument or sophistry could swerve him from his fidelity, or uproot his hereditary faith. My friend and neighbor, William A. Bird, Esq., has related to me the following anecdote: Many


     



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    years ago, when his mother, the late Mrs. Eunice Porter Bird Pawling, resided at Troy, New York, a society was formed, auxiliary to one organized in the city of New York, for the purpose of christianizing the Jews in all parts of the world. Mrs. Pawling, an energetic doer of good work, in the then infant city of her residence, was applied to for her co-operation in that novel benefaction. She had her own doubts, both of its utility and success, of which results have proved the correctness. But, determined to act understandingly, she wrote a letter to Major Noah, asking his views on so important a subject. He replied in a letter, elaborately setting forth the principles, the faith, and the policy of the Jewish people, their ancient hereditary traditions, their venerable history, their hope of a coming Messiah; and concluded by expressing the probability that the modern Gentiles would sooner be converted to the Jewish faith, than that the Jews would be converted to theirs.

    Major Noah -- as I observed, a visionary, somewhat, and an enthusiast altogether -- made two grand mistakes in his plan. In the first place, he had no power or authority over his people; and, in the next, he was utterly mistaken in their aptitude for the new calling he proposed them to fulfill. But he went on. He induced his friend, the late Samuel Leggett, of New York, to make a purchase of twenty-five hundred and fifty-five acres, partly at the head of Grand Island, and partly at its center, opposite Tonewanda, at the entrance of the Erie canal into the Niagara river. Either or both of those localities were favorable for building a city. These two tracts he thought sufficient for a settlement of his Jewish brethren; which, if successful, would result in all the lands of the island falling into their hands. Nor, on a fairly supposititious ground -- presuming the Jews, in business affairs, to be like the Gentiles -- were his theories so much mistaken. The canal, opening a new avenue


     



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    to the great western world, from Lake Erie to the ultima thule of civilization at that day, was about to be completed. The Lakes had no extensive commerce. Capital was unknown as a commercial power in Western New York. The Jews had untold wealth, ready to be converted into active and profitable investment. Tonawanda, in common with Black Rock and Buffalo, with a perfect and capacious natural harbor, was one of the western termini of the Erie canal, and at the foot of the commerce of the western lakes. With sufficient steam-power, every sail craft and steamship on the Lake could reach Grand Island and Tonawanda, discharge into, and take on their cargoes from canal-boats, and by their ample means thus command the western trade. Buffalo and Black Rock, although up to that time the chief recipients of the lake commerce, lacking moneyed capital, would not be able to compete with the energy and abundant resources of the proposed commercial cities to be established on Grand Island and at Tonawanda, and they must yield to the rivalry of the Jews. Such was Major Noah's theory, and such his plans. Mr. Leggett's cooperation, with abundant means for the land purchase, he had already secured. Through the columns of his own widely circulating National Advocate he promulgated his plan, and by the time the sale of the Grand Island lots was to be made at the State Land Office in Albany, other parties of capitalists had concluded to take a venture in the speculation.

    The sale took place. Mr. Leggett purchased one thousand and twenty acres at the head of the island, at the cost of several thousand two hundred dollars, and fifteen hundred and thirty-five acres along the river in a compact body, above, opposite, and below Tonawanda, at the price of nine thousand seven hundred and eighty-five dollars; being about fifty per cent. above the average of what the whole body of land sold at per acre, -- that


     



    122             STORY  OF  THE  TABLET  OF  THE  CITY  OF  ARARAT            


    is to say: the whole seventeen thousand three hundred and eighty-one acres sold for seventy-six thousand two hundred and thirty dollars; being an average, including Mr. Leggett's purchase, of about four dollars and thirty-eight cents per acre.

    Next to Leggett, Messrs. John B. Yates and Archibald McIntyre, then proprietors, by purchase from the State, of the vast system of lotteries, embracing those for the benefit of Union College, and other eleemosynary purposes -- gambling in lotteries for the benefit of colleges and churches was thought to be a moral instrument in those days -- purchased through other parties a large amount of the land, and "Peter Smith, of Peterboro" (living, however, at Schenectady, -- and the most extensive land speculator in the state, -- father of the present Gerrit Smith) took a large share of the remainder. To sum up, briefly, the result of the sale of the Grand Island lands: Leggett and Yates and McIntyre complied with the stipulated terms of the sale, paid over to the State their one-eighth of the purchase-money, and gave their bonds for the remainder; while Smith -- wary in land-purchasing practice, when the State of New York was the seller -- did no such thing. He paid his one-eighth of the purchase money down, as did the others, but neglected to give his bond for payment of the balance. The consequence was, when the eclat of Noah's Ararat subsided, and his scheme proved a failure, the land went down in value, and Smith forfeited his first payment, and the lots fell back to the State. But on a lower re-appraisal by the State some years afterwards, Smith again bought at less than half the price at which he originally purchased, made his one-eighth payment again, and gave his bond as required; thus pocketing, by his future sale of the property, over twenty thousand dollars in the transaction!

    All this, however, aside from Mr. Leggett's purchase


     



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    for the benefit of Major Noah, has nothing to do with our main history, and is only given as an occurrence of the times.

    Major Noah, now secure in the possession of a nucleus for his coveted "City of Refuge for the Jews," addressed himself to its foundation and dedication. He had heralded his intentions through the columns of his National Advocate. His cotemporaries of the press ridiculed his scheme, and predicted its failure; yet, true to his original purpose, he determined to carry it through. Wise Jews around him shook their heads in doubt of his ability to effect his plans, and withheld from him their support. But, nothing daunted, he ventured it unaided, and almost alone. By the aid of an indomitable friend, and equally enthusiastic co-laborer, Mr. A. B. Siexas, of New York, he made due preparations; and, late in the month of August, in the year 1825, with robes of office and insignia of rank securely packed, they left the city of New York for Buffalo. He was a stranger in our then little village of twenty-five hundred people, and could rely for countenance and aid only on his old friend, the late Isaac H. Smith, then residing here, whom he had known abroad while in his consulate at Tunis. In Mr. Smith, however, he found a ready assistant in his plans. Major Noah, with his friend Siexas, arrived in Buffalo in the last days of August. He had got prepared a stone which was to be "the chief of the corner," with proper inscription and of ample dimensions for the occasion. This stone was obtained from the Cleveland, Ohio, sandstone quarries. The inscription, written by Major Noah, was cut by the late Seth Chapin of Buffalo.

    As, on examination when arriving here, he could not well get to Grand Island to locate and establish his city, it was concluded to lay the corner-stone in the Episcopal church of the village, then under the rectorship of the


     



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    Rev. Addison Searle. At this strange and remarkable proceeding, and the novel act of laying a foundation for a Jewish city, with its imposing rites and formulae, its regal pomp and Jewish ceremony, in a Christian Episcopal church, with the aid of its authorized rector, may strike the present generation with surprise, a word or two may be said of the transaction.

    The Rev. Mr. Searle was, at that time, the officiating clergyman in the little church of St. Paul's, in the village of Buffalo, and had been placed there as a missionary by the late, wise and excellent Bishop Hobart. He held a government commission as chaplain of the United States, and had been granted a some years' furlough from active duty. He had been on foreign cruises, -- had coasted the Mediterranean, and spent months in the chief cities of its classic shores, and visited the beautiful Greek Island of Scio, a few weeks after the burning of its towns and the massacre of its people by the Turks, in 1822. He was an accomplished and genial man, of commanding person and portly mien; his manners were bland, and his address courtly. Whether he had made the acquaintance of Major Noah abroad or in New York, or whether he first met him on this occasion at Buffalo, I know not; but their intercourse here was cordial and friendly.

    On the second day of September, 1826, the imposing ceremony of laying the corner-stone of the city of Ararat, to be built on Grand Island, took place; and, as a full account of the doings of the day, written by Major Noah himself, was published at the time in The Buffalo Patriot, Extra, I take the liberty of repeating them from that paper:

    It was known, at the sale of that beautiful and valuable tract called Grand Island, a few miles below this port, In the Niagara river, that it was purchased, in part, by the friends of Major Noah of New York, avowedly to offer it as an asylum


     



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    126             STORY  OF  THE  TABLET  OF  THE  CITY  OF  ARARAT            


    for his brethren of the Jewish persuasion, who, in the other parts of the world, are much oppressed; and it was likewise known that it was intended to erect upon the island a city called ARARAT. We are gratified to perceive, by the documents in this day's Extra, that coupled with this colonization is a Declaration of Independence, and the revival of the Jewish government under the protection of the United States, -- after the dispersion of that ancient and wealthy people for nearly two thousand years, -- and the appointment of Mr. Noah as first Judge. It was intended, pursuant to the public notice, to celebrate the event on the island; and a flag-staff was erected for the Grand Standard of Israel, and other arrangements made; but it was discovered that a sufficient number of boats could not be procured in time to convey all those to the island who were desirous of witnessing the ceremony, and the celebration took place this day in the village, which was both interesting and impressive. At dawn of day, a salute was fired in front of the Court House, and from the terrace facing the lake. At ten o'clock the Masonic and military companies assembled in front of the Lodge, and at eleven the line of procession was formed as follows:


    ORDER  OF  PROCESSION.

    Grand Marshal, Col. Potter, on horseback.
    Music.
    Military.
    Citizens.
    Civil Officers.
    United States Officers.
    State Officers in Uniform.
    President and Trustees of the Corporation.
    Tyler.
    Stewards.
    Entered Apprentices.
    Fellow Crafts.
    Master Masons.
    Senior and Junior Deacons.
    Secretary and Treasurer.
    Senior and Junior Wardens.
    Masters of Lodges.
    Past Masters.
    Rev. Clergy.
    Stewards, with corn, wine and oil.



    (under construction)


     

    Isaac Goldberg
    Major Noah: American-Jewish Pioneer
    Philadelphia: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936

    [ 131 ]





    VI

    SAINT  TAMMANY  AND  THE
    PROMISED  LAND


    I. ODIUM  POLITICUM


    NOAH had returned from his Grand Tour. For the moment, employment under the government was out of the question. He had left as a good Jeffersonian; he returned as a son of Saint Tammany. On the surface, these were the same thing; beneath, the division had already well begun. Naphtali Phillips, his uncle and benefactor, came once again to his aid.

    Phillips was a power in the politics of New York. He had been a journalist from the beginning, having first served on Claypole's American Advertiser, one of the important newspapers of Philadelphia. As a youngster of sixteen, and the worthy son of his patriot father, Jonas, he had formed part of the cavalcade that escorted President Washington from Philadelphia to New York, for the inauguration. The Rachel to whom Noah refers in his letters to his uncle was Rachel Hannah, daughter of Moses Mendez Seixas, whom Naphtali had married in 1797. Phillips had been living in New York since the opening year of the new century, and had become proprietor of the National Advocate, which he was to own


     



    132                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    for a considerable period. He would outlive his nephew -- and his contemporaries, indeed -- by many years, not dying until November 1, 1870, at the age of ninety-eight. 1

    It was Phillips, then, who placed Noah at once in the editorial chair of The National Advocate, which had been established in 1813 by Tammany Hall under the editorship of the highly capable Henry Wheaton. Wheaton, an authority on international law, had been appointed one of the Justices of the Marine Court, New York. In 1816, during the agitation over Noah's dismissal and rehabilitation, the ex-diplomat succeeded to Wheaton's position, which for the next decade he was to occupy with varying fortunes. On September 8, 1818, in the midst of his troubles with the government, he was elected a member of the New York Historical Society, to which he belonged until his resignation in 1828.

    American journalism was not yet out of its black period, -- an orgy of assault, battery, libel, recrimination, accusation, bribery, scurrility, chicanery, such as makes the succeeding development of yellow journalism appear by comparison a Sunday school picnic. Such was, indeed, the tradition of journalism in our adolescent United States.

    Newspapers in those days were dull, unwieldy, tasteless sheets, supported by advertisers who expected support in turn. The editors were far more interested in what was occurring in distant Washington than in what was happening directly under the editorial nose. When Noah succeeded to the throne -- he did develop a habit of assuming royal airs, and for a while commanded close attention from party leaders at Albany -- there were over three hundred newspapers in the

    __________
    1 See AJHS, vol. xxi, pp. 172-174


     



                    SAINT  TAMMANY  AND  THE  PROMISED  LAND                 133


    country, most of them weeklies, semi-weeklies or even triweeklies. At the close of the War of 1812 New York had seven dailies; the ~ldvocate had a circulation of eight hundred. Peddling of papers was in its prenatal stage and would not be born until The Sun rose in 1833; the subscriber paid in advance and the journal was delivered to him.

    Boston and Philadelphia still led New York in the development of journalism. The gazette, like the national literature itself, had already emerged from theology into politics; journalism in the sense by which we know it today had not yet definitely arisen, and would not arise for ten years or more, when the stress of political revolution in Europe and in America was to alter the complexion of world affairs.

    It is easy to become over-virtuous in condemnation of the political career upon which Noah was now embarking. It was even more easy for his enemies to do so, or for him, in the same half-sincere spirit, to condemn his political opponents. Allowing for all exaggeration, Noah's public career Ñand of how many politicians is this not true.;Ñat times stands in strange contrast to the idealisms of his private life.

    What Noah wanted of The National ~dvocate was a living, and power to advance himself in the local, state and national politics. His eye swept the panorama, as it were, alighting now on the shrievalty, now on the contract for the state printing, again upon a foreign post that would make him once again the proudÑand redeemedÑrepresentative of his nation and of his people.

    During these ventures, however, he would, by very force of his lively personality rather than through any conscious purpose, be contributing to the improvement of the New York press. And certainly the press of the city could stand much in the way of improvement over its ship listings, its


     



    134                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                



    (pages 134-147 not transcribed)






     



    148                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    d'affaires to Vienna for the promotion of them. He is an incorrect, and very ignorant, but sprightly writer, and as a partisan editor of a newspaper has considerable power. He argues with great earnestness his merits in supporting the administration, as a title to the President's favor. He is, like all editors of newspapers in this country who have any talent, an author to be let. There is not one of them whose friendship is worth having, nor one whose enmity is not formidable. They are a sort of assassins who sit with loaded blunder-busses at the corner of streets and fire them off for hire or for sport at any passenger they select. They are principally foreigners; but Noah is a native. He is salaried at a low rate by the anti-Clintonian Tammanies at New York to keep up a constant fire against his administration; and Noah pretends that this is serving the General Government, because Clinton is a standing presidential candidate and carries on an insidious war against Mr. Monroe." 1

    The "great projects for colonizing Jews in this country" were already well in progress early in this same year; they must have been formed, indeed, during Noah's stay abroad, as is to be inferred from certain of his statements with regard to the condition of Jews in foreign lands. The legislative records of New York State contain entries indicating that Noah had already applied for a grant of Grand Island, the site of his never materialized colony:

    Wednesday, January `9, 1820. "The memorial of Mordecai M. Noah, of New York, praying the State to authorize the sale to him of Grand Island, in the Niagara River, was read and referred to the select committee consisting of Mr. [Michael] Ulshoeffer, Mr. Hatfield and Mr. Oakley." 2

    __________
    1 See Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of his Diary from 1795 to 1848. Edited by Charles Francis Adams. Philadelphia, 1875.

    2 I quote &om AJHS, vol. ii, pp. 131-137, article, "New Matter Relating to Mordecai M. Noah," by G. Herbert Cone. Mr. Cone drew his material from the Assembly Journal, 1820.


     



                    SAINT  TAMMANY  AND  THE  PROMISED  LAND                 149


    Monday, January 24, 1820. "Mr. Ulshoeffer from the select committee to whom was referred the memorial of Mordecai M. Noah, of the city of New York, relative to the purchase of Grand Island, reported:

    "That the petitioner applies to the State for a grant of the said island, for the purpose of attempting to have the same settled by emigrants of the Jewish religion from Europe; that he not only considers the situation of Grand Island as well adapted for the contemplated purpose, but that the obtaining of the title from the State would be very advantageous in inducing the emigration of capitalists, as well as others.

    "The committee did not doubt, but that the recent persecution of the Jews in various parts of Europe, may favor the views of the petitioner, and that the settlement of Grand Island would be a desirable object to this State. It is one of the greatest characteristics of the United States that they offer an asylum to the unfortunate and persecuted of all religious denominations; but to preserve our equal rights, it is essential, as the petitioner states, that we should offer no preference to any sect. Without reference, therefore, to any object of the petitioner, which may be supposed to present a claim for any purpose of religion, but considering that the legislature has repeatedly declared its intention of affording equal protection and enjoyment to all who may inhabit within it, and that it is for the interest of the State to dispose of the said island, there can be no objection, in the opinion of the committee, to the grant thereof to Mr. Noah for value, in the usual way.

    "They have accordingly prepared a bill, providing for the survey and sale of said island, agreeably to the prayer of the petitioner, which they have directed their chairman to ask leave to bring in."

    "Ordered that leave be given to bring in said bill.

    "Mr. Ulshoeffer, according to leave, brought in the said bill entitled 'An act directing the commissioners of the land


     



    150                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    office to survey and sell Grand Island, in the Niagara River, to Mordecai M. Noah,' which said bill was read the first time, and by unanimous consent was also read the second hme and committed to the committee of the house."

    Nothing, however, came of Noah's application. Yet, as ever, he rebounded from this failure with hopes undimmed. If not Grand Island, then how, for example, about Newport? In less than a year he is discovered hard at work trumpeting, through the columns of The National Advocate -- his paper, it would appear, as well as Tammany's! -- the virtues of Little Rhode Island as a temporary haven for the European Jew. In the interim he has been disabused of his notions concerning the inherited agriculturalism of Israel.

    "The Jews in Europe, however, have expressed to me their doubt as to the disposition of their brethren to clear land, make settlements, and cultivate the soil, so incompatible with their present pursuits, and have rather given the preference to commercial places, where all the necessaries of life, and even luxuries may be purchased; and where immediate and beneficial application may be had for their money and enterprise. In fact there have been some earnest enquiries as to the advantages of manufacturing establishments of cloth, linens, glass, silks, and other articles, which now languish in Germany and France, and which if transferred to this country, it is hoped would yield a better profit, while they afforded the proprietors additional rights and privileges. Accordingly, a more central situation has been examined, and the State of Rhode Island appears to combine the greatest advantages.

    "The Town of Newport has a Harbor inferior to none in the Union. The climate is remarkably healthy, expenses of livingg moderate; it has been the residence of respectable Jewish merchants, and has a very spacious place of worship already erected. The whole state, which is not as large as


     



                    SAINT  TAMMANY  AND  THE  PROMISED  LAND                 151


    one county in this state, appears well calculated for manufactures and the charter on subjects of religion is as liberal as could be desired. It follows then, from the most prudent calculations that Rhode Island is at present the most eligible spot for Jewish emigrants, and will, I trust occupy their immediate attention. There is nothing visionary or even difficult in promoting an extensive Jewish emigration to this country. Men everywhere consult their safety and happiness; and when once they are satisfied that their civil and religious liberty will be respected -- their health and enterprise preserved and encouraged, they will venture upon an experiment which promises every advantage. I am tired of seeing a nation of seven millions of people, rich and intelligent, wandering about the world, without a home, which they can claim as their own, and looking to the restoration to an ancient country, which one eighth would not inhabit, if they recovered it tomorrow. Where the Jews can be protected by laws which they will have some agency in enacting, and where a laudable ambition will lead to the possession of posts of honor and confidence, and where they can mingle their voice freely in the councils of the nation and have the privilege of taking their place in the field and in the cabinet, I do consider that they will possess every temporal blessing which has been promised them. It is not however perfectly in order, to make a colony of them in this country. It could not be done. They will spread themselves over the Union, and be amalgamated with other citizens. They may be most numerous in places where their interest is best promoted." 1

    This Noah fellow blows hot and cold. Agriculture? Yes -- and No. Colony? Yes --and, less than a year later, No. And, as we shall see in a few years, yet Yes again. Such alternation of mood and opinion suggests at once the opportunism of the politician and the instability of a sanguine temperament. There is no more reason, however, to question

    __________
    1 See the New Hampshire Gazette, January 16,1821, which quotes a current issue of The Nanonal Advocate..


     



    152                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    the fundamental sincerity of Noah's motives than to overlook the practical possibilities -- for him -- that accompanied such a project....

    (pages 152-161 not transcribed)





     



    162                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    offered to buy him out, he refused. Further, he stigmatized Noah as a turncoat who was deserting Tammany and going over to their arch-enemy, Clinton. He had his man Friday censor Noah's editorials, rewriting them as he pleased. When, as the last straw, Eckford placed Judge Van Ness in the Advocate office, gradually making him the virtual editor, Noah was compelled by self-respect to resign.

    There was to be an epilogue to this tale. Noah, of whom it was later said that he would have liked to edit every paper in the city, -- of whom, indeed, it has been noticed, from certain passages in his Travels, that he considered himself sufficiently able to sit in the Presidential chair of the nation, -- had one infallible remedy for journalistic trial and defeat: invariably he founded another newspaper.

    The split with Eckford was very soon to cost that scheming fellow dear, and he would be sent to disgrace by the very editor whom he had ousted from the first Advocate. For New York was soon in the midst of a journalistic battle of various Advocates. Noah was determined, in founding a new paper, to retain the name of the old. When he established his own National Advocate, Eckford and Snowden (Snowden was the latest editor of the original Advocate) enjoined him from using the name. He altered the title now to Noah's New York National Advocate, was again enjoined, and this time chose the name, The New York Enquirer, 1 From a political, internal dissension, the fight gradually grew into a battle of classes, with Noah, suddenly emerging as a muckraker, in the role of St. George against the dragon of Wall Street business interests.

    __________
    A Statement of Facts Relating to the Conduct of Henry Eckford, As Connected With The National Advocate. By M. M. Noah. New York, 1814.


     



                    SAINT  TAMMANY  AND  THE  PROMISED  LAND                 163


    This episode, however, in which Noah triumphed over the forces of evil, was to culminate after the fiasco of Ararat in I825. The fury of Noah's attack, indeed, may have gathered animus from that colossal disappointment. Meantime the artistry of the man, and his social appetites, were being fed by a success on the stage and in the green-room that paralleled his never-complete vindications in the halls of justice. He was still the Major Bombastes Furioso, the "most puissant Bombastes," that the Evening Post had called him in 1821. On January 17 of that year William Coleman had printed the letter by Silvanus Miller that was to eventuate, after much ink-slinging, in the abortive trial of December, 1823.



     

    Isaac Goldberg
    Major Noah: American-Jewish Pioneer
    Philadelphia: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936

    [ 189 ]





    VIII

    EMBARKATION  FOR  UTOPIA


    I. PAGEANT  OF  PARADOX


    AT daybreak of September 15, 1825, the inhabitants of the frontier village of Buffalo were startled out of their slumber by a loud detonation booming from the front of the Court House and reverberating across the Lake. Dawn was coming up like thunder. Cannon, in many-mouthed celebration, were to roar before that historic day was done. Shortly, excited communicants in Masonic and military array, accompanied by throngs of exalted civilians, would be streaming in from the general direction of New York City, to swell beyond comfort the normal population of twenty-five hundred. Sleepy Buffalo had suddenly acquired a place upon the map. Today, in the fiftieth year of American independence, was to be founded a republic within the republic, -- a haven of religious freedom within the haven of political liberty. A new, if self-appointed, redeemer had arisen in Zion.

    By ten o'clock the military and Masonic companies had lined up before the Masonic Lodge. Within an hour the procession, led by Grand Marshal Colonel Potter on a prancing steed, was moving. The tramp of soldiery, of national,


     



    190                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    state and municipal officers, advanced to the spot where the corner stone of a new Canaan was to be laid. Behind the band and the vanguard filed stewards, apprentices and representatives of their associated crafts, master masons, senior and junior deacons, senior and junior wardens, masters and past-masters of Lodges, members of the reverend clergy, more stewards bearing the symbolic corn, wine and oil, and a principal architect, with square, level and plumb, flanked on either side by a Globe, and backed by a Bible. There must have been, too, in this paradoxical pageantry, a sprinkling of the Chosen People for whom this new Promised Land, this Ararat, had been chosen . . .

    And now all eyes were fixed upon a portly gentleman of forty, proudly erect of carriage, florid of face, keen of eye, sandy-haired over fleshy cheeks and an eagle's beak, who strode just ahead of the rear guard of Royal Arch Masons and Knights Templar. Over his black costume, majestically austere, were thrown rich judicial robes of crimson silk, trimmed with the purity of ermine. From his thickish neck depended a medal of gold glistening from high embossments.

    It was a striking rig-out, and he himself, with a practiced theatrical eye, had designed it. More: he had designed his ephemeral eminence and its grandiose title. This was the prime mover of the day unto which would be more than sufficient the evil and good thereof. This was he who, for his redemptorist activities, had by Palestine been named Prince of the House of David... "I, Mordecai Manuel Noah, Citizen of the United States of America, late Consul of the said States for the City and Kingdom of Tunis, High Sheriff of New York, Counsellor at Law, and, by the grace of God (and printer's ink!) Governor and Judge of Israel."


     



                                    EMBARKATION  FOR  UTOPIA                                 191


    Through the blare of the band under this sunny sky the striding Prince beholds an apocalyptic vision. The Jews, rightful possessors of Palestine, are slaves in their own territory. In the Holy Land (outside of Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias, where there are but several hundred families, comprising three of the most ancient congregations in the world) dwell some hundred thousand of these Dispossessed of history. Suddenly, at the signal of his proclamation, the Disinherited of the nations arise beneath their burdens, and begin, across coninents, across oceans, a March to Freedom. From Erez Yisrael they come, from the shores of the Mediterranean... From the few hundreds in Samaria they come... From Crimea and the Ukraine, from the ten thousand in Cochin China, black Jews and white... From the coasts of Malabar and Coremandel, from the heart of India... From the million and a half in the dominions of the Ottoman Porte and the Barbary States, from the hundred thousand in Constantinople and Saloniki, from Cairo and Ispahan and from beyond the Euphrates... Now in straggling knots, now in regiments, tramping sturdily, inaudibly, here beside their redeemer...

    God moves in ways mysterious His wonders to perform. For whither, of all places, should our Messiah and his pageant be directing their steps, if not to the one spot in Buffalo where a Jewish Messiah would be only less welcome than the Prince of Darkness, or the Pope of the Holy Roman Catholic Church? To the modest frame structure, then but five years old, under whose tiny four-pointed tower was housed the St. Paul's Episcopal Church... And where should the corner stone of the nascent Utopia be reposing if not -- in four-square defiance of all anathema -- upon the very communion table of St. Paul's?


     



    192                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    Underneath a Hebrew inscription from Deuteronomy, 6.4, which every pious Jew prays in the face of danger and before delivering himself up to sleep or to death, was engraved upon the face of the stone, which is still to be seen in the Buffalo Historical Museum, the legend:

    ARARAT
    A City of Refuge for the Jews
    Founded by MORDECAI MANUEL NOAH
    in the month of Tizri Sept. 1825 &
    in the Fiftieth Year of American Independence

    Reaching the door to the church, the troops, like the waters of the Red Sea, divided to make way for the entrance of the procession into the aisles. The band struck up the Grand March from Judas Maccabeus. No sooner had these strains died out than within, from the pipes of the new Hall and Erben organ installed but ten days earlier, at an expense of $430., poured forth a Junilate. There was a flutter of femininity in the red-cushioned seats as the Reverend Addison Searle began, in emphatic tones, the reading of the Morning Service. The choir, to the tune of Old Hundredth, intoned "Before Jehovah's Awful Throne." There was the morning prayer, followed by lessons, respectively, from Jeremiah 31 and Zephaniah 3.8. There were special Psalms for the occasion, 97, 98, 99, 100, and 127, the last recited in verse. Antecommunion service, a Psalm in the original Hebrew, Benediction... and the religious observance was over.


     



                                    EMBARKATION  FOR  UTOPIA                                 193


    Mr. Mordecai Manuel Noah, however, had just begun. That which had preceded had been but a theatrical setting for his Messianic maneuvers. Luck, too, had been with him.

    The blueprint of Ararat had been mapped out not against the lanes of Buffalo but across the wilderness of Grand Island, a body of some 17,381 acres, Iying in the Niagara River, County of Erie, State of New York, about eight miles long, six miles across at the greatest breadth and, at the time of this embarkation, densely grown with timber. Noah, amid the metaphysics of his crowded plans, had little time for such practicalities as geography. Curiosity, if not adherence, attracted to the frontier village throngs far in excess of the boating facilities to Grand Island. It was necessary to find quickly a spot that should serve as symbolical proxy for the founding of the Jewish Intra-nation.

    Noah knew but two souls in Buffalo, -- Isaac S. Smith, whom he had met in Africa, during the exciting consular days at Tunis, and the Reverend Mr. Addison Searle, who, in those selfsame days, had been a United States chaplain on a government ship cruising the Mediterranean waters. It was through Mr. Smith that the corner stone of Ararat had been procured from the sandstone quarries at Cleveland, Ohio; the inscription, prepared by Noah, was cut by Seth Chapin of Buffalo. And it was through the cordiality of Searle that the tiny stronghold of Episcopalianism was thrown open to Hebrew endeavor.

    The Reverend Mr. Searle had entered upon his new duties on March 30 of that year, and there is every reason to believe that if he had not been rector on September 15, 1825, there would have been no dedicatory services in St. Paul's. As it turned out, Noah's latitudinarian friend-in-need was censured


     



    194                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    for this unwonted display of toleration and for having taken part in the play. 1

    For a play it was, since nothing that was Noah could ever free itself entirely from histrionism. Against the background of the hymns and lessons and services of this kaleidoscopic morning the self-appointed Judge in Israel arose to deliver a meandering discourse, strangely, yet humanly, compounded of religiosity, theology, politics, patriotism, ethnology, delusions of grandeur and... real estate.


    2. HANDS ACROSS THE CREEDS

    This was, declared the Patriarch -- and Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall -- a Jewish Declaration of Independence.

    Magniloquently he reaffirmed the Chosen-ness of his People, and the reestablishment of the Hebrew government. The nations of the old and new world, he said, "including the children of Africa, have had their rights acknowledged and their governments recognized. The oldest of nations, powerful in numbers and great in resources, remains isolated, without a home, country, or government... In calling the Jews together under the protection of the American Constitution and laws and governed by our happy and salutary institutions, it is proper for me to state that this asylum is temporary and provisionary. The Jews never should and never will relinquish the just hope of regaining possession of their ancient heritage, and events in the neighborhood of Palestine indicate an extraordinary change of affairs."

    __________
    1 For information about the edifice in which the foundation ceremonies took place, consult History of St. Paul's Church, Buffalo, N. Y., 1817-1903, by Charles W. Evans (d. 1889) and Continued from 1889 to 1903 by Alice M. Evans Bartlett and G. Hunter Bartlett.


     



                                    EMBARKATION  FOR  UTOPIA                                 195


    Greece was almost independent of the Ottoman Porte. Turkey was weakening. Russia was about to march against Constantinople. Egypt was encouraging commerce and agriculture. The Turks, driven beyond the Bosphorus, might leave the land of Canaan open to its rightful owners.

    For this reorganization of the Jews, Noah, after swiftly reviewing the various systems by which they had governed themselves, decided upon the latest, -- that of Judges presided over by the non-hereditary office of Chief Magistrate. Wherefore, having elected himself to that distinction, he justified his choice.

    "Born in a free country, and educated in liberal principles, familiar with all the duties of government, having enjoyed the confidence of my fellow citizens in various public trusts, ardently attached to the principles of our holy faith, and having devoted years of labor and study to ameliorate the condition of the Jews, with an unsullied conscience and a firm reliance on Almighty God, I offer myself as an humble instrument of his divine will, and solicit the confidence and protection of our beloved brethren throughout the world. If there be any person possessing greater facilities and a more ardent zeal in attempting to restore the Jews to their rights as a sovereign and independent people, to such will I cheerfully surrender the trust...

    "Firm of purpose, when the object is public good, I allow no difficulties to check my progress. Urged to its considera tion by strong and irresistible impulse, the project has always presented itself to me in the most cheering light, in the most alluring colors; and if the attempt shall result in ameliorating the condition of the Jews, and shall create a generous and liberal feeling towards them and open to them the avenues of science, learning, fame, honor and happiness, who shall


     



    196                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    say that I have failed? I ask the trial -- and will abide the result."

    Hereupon, Noah proceeded to orate a condensed history of the Jews in Europe, from the moment that they settled in England with Julius Caesar down to the very shores of Grand Island, anno Domini 1825. It was not an unaffecting summary, based upon something deeper than the chronology of cruelty and misunderstanding with which Noah, from long study and frequent speech-making, was so familiar; it was a dignified, if conservative, emotional epitome.

    For Noah, declaiming there in booming prose, at the rector's desk in the high pulpit, to the pews and the full gallery around three sides of the little church, hope smiled down from the heavens. For his hearers, too. It was the Jubilee of the republic. The United States was still something new under God's sun. Optimism was not only a personal idiosyncrasy; it was a national mood.

    "Why?" he asked, under the roof of a church into whose liturgy was still written the curse against his own people, -- "Why should Christians persecute Jews? Sprung from a common stock, and connected by human ties which should be binding; -- if those ties are empty and evanescent, where is the warrant for this intolerance? not in the religion which they profess; that teaches mildness, charity and good will to all... The Jews and Christians are only known by their hostility towards each other. This hostility neither religion recognizes... Times have undergone an important change -- we all begin to feel that we are formed of the same materials, subject to the same frailties, destined to the same death, and hoping for the same immortality. -- Here, then, in this free and happy country, distinctions in religion are


     



                                    EMBARKATION  FOR  UTOPIA                                 197


    unknown; here we enjoy liberty without licentiousness, and land without oppression."

    Land... Before the Jews had been a nation they had been an agricultural people, and it was again the ambition of Noah to reestablish the Jews upon the soil. He waxed lyrical, proclaiming agriculture the natural and noble pursuit of man. The State of New York, with its six million acres of cultivated land, suddenly blossomed into a quasi-Sicilian landscape brushed by the stylus of Theocritus.

    Between one sentence and another the prophecy becomes a prospectus, and Theocritus is shortly holding out to Jewish capital the inducements of profitable investments in gristmills, saw-mills, oil mills, fulling mills, carding machines, cotton and woolen factories, iron foundries, trip hammers, distilleries, tanneries, asheries, breweries and numerous etceteras. Grand Island, seat of the New Jerusalem, and surrounded by water-power, flashes forth as an ideal site for the erection of... industrial plants.


    3. "IT IS MY WILL" --
    AND THE INDIANS ARE JEWS

    Noah had already sent forth to the world his "Proclamation to the Jews." Not a little of his discourse, indeed, was a paraphrase of that ambitious, unsuspecting document. It was in this noble -- and practical -- pronunciamento that he had dubbed himself Governor and Judge of Israel, and had outlined, against the background of Grand Island, an international polity. His Ararat was not for Jews alone; he invited "my beloved people throughout the world, in common with those of every religious denomination." He renewed, in the name of the Lord, the government of the Jewish nation, and


     



    198                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    enjoined it "upon all our pious and venerable Rabbis, our Priesdents and Elders of Synagogues, Chiefs of Colleges, and brethren in authority throughout the world, to circulate and make known this my proclamation, and give to it full publicity, credence and effect."

    He ordered -- "It is my will" -- that a census of Jews throughout the world be taken.

    He permitted to remain those Jews who preferred to remain where they were, but asked them to encourage the emigration of the young.

    He enjoined all Jews who happened at the time to be in "military employment of the different sovereigns of Europe" to "keep in the ranks until further orders, and conduct themselves with bravery and fidelity." Until further orders!

    He commanded that, in the impending wars between Greece and Turkey, the Jews observe strict neutrality.

    He abolished forever polygamy among the Jews. At this word, the Asiatic and African Jews, presumably, were to lay aside their superfluous -- if superfluous -- wives and return meekly to double, instead of triple or quadruple, blessedness.

    Prayers "shall forever be said in the Hebrew language;" Noah, however, affably permitted the delivery of discourses on the principles of the Jewish faith in the language of the country.

    The wide orbit of his invitation to Utopia, circumscribing Jews of all climes and colors, included among these colors none other than Lo, the American Indian,Ñ"in all probability, the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, which were carried captive by the King of Assyria." Noah desired finally to reunite them "with their brethren the chosen people."


     



                                    EMBARKATION  FOR  UTOPIA                                 199


    The theory that the American Indian is of Semitic descent is an outcropping of the greater theory concerning the Lost Tribes of Israel. The minor theory originated contemporaneously with the study of the Indian by the earliest explorers of this continent, -- gentry, on the whole, too well versed in the literal contents of the Bible and, in the data of ethnology, too ill. To them, correspondence of custom (whether imaginary or real) spelt identity of origin. Noah's researches, of course, were nothing more brow-furrowing than the perusal of books long ago refuted. 1

    It was not so many years before the issuance of this proclamation that the Governor and Judge of Israel, in his speech of 1817, had looked down upon the Indian as "the savage of the wilderness, whose repast is blood, and whose mercy is death." What had caused this volte-face? The theory that the ancient Jews had cultural relations with the Red Man is now considered obsolete and enlists no support among ethnological experts. Yet contemporary investigators, while maintaining a scientific objectivity, suggest, without endorsing it, a persistence of the notion. Thus, Mr. Walter Hart Blumenthal writes: "Although recurrent announcements that Phoenician inscriptions have been found as petroglyphs on the Amazon may be baseless, and indeed most of the allegations advanced as 'arguments,' groundless, yet there are phases of the problem that invite serious investigation. Moreover, it is not beyond the bounds of probability that indications will be discovered of ancient cultural affiliations which had their roots in the primitive Semitic area, almost certainly among the racial

    __________
    1 For a rapid survey of the Lost Tribes theory as applied to the American Indian see The Lost Tribes Theory, Suggestions Toward Rewriting Hebrew History, by Allen H. Godbey, Ph.D., Durham (North Carolina), 1930, Chapter 1. Professor Godbey also gives valuable collateral references.


     



    200                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    strains centered of old on the Mediterranean and the Nile, -- if not within the historic vista, at least among their precursors. In other words, there are ramifications of the outworn and crude Ten Tribe theory still within the purview of scholarship..." 1

    I doubt that Noah, once having accepted the theory that the American Indians were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, ever abandoned it. As late as twelve years after the building of Ararat upon a foundation of oratory he was delivering, before the Mercantile Library Association, Clinton Hall, New York, and handing over to the printer, a Discourse on the subject. Once again, beginning with the authority of Menasseh Ben Israel, who in 1650 had published in Amsterdam his Mikveh Israel (The Hope of Israel), based upon the contemporary belief that the lost tribes had been found in Red America, and quoting with an appearance of vast ethnological learning, from Lopez de Gomara, Erecella (he means Ercilla), the Abbe Clavigero, De Vega, Du Pratz, Bartram and whom not else, Noah reaffirms the Semitic origin of our aborigines. 2

    The Semitico-Indian theory appeared more convincing in Noah's day than in our own. Nor, in the light of that earlier day, need Noah have been such a fool or fanatic as he may appear in the perspective of history. As he was not the first or the last to be lured by the mirage of Utopia, so in his

    __________
    1 See In Old America, Random Chapters on the Early Aborigines. By Walter Hart Blumenthal. With a Foreword by George Alexander Kobut. New York. 1931. Introduction, p. vii.

    2 See Discourse on The Evidences of The American Indians Being The Descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. By M. M. Noah. New York. James Van Norden. 27 Pine St., 1837. The discourse was translated into German in 1838. For Menasseh Ben Israel's notions upon the subject, consult The Life of Menasseh Ben Israel, by Cecil Roth, Philadelphia, 1934, pp. 176-224.


     



                                    EMBARKATION  FOR  UTOPIA                                 201


    facile ethnological research he erred in respectable company. His stretching forth of the brotherly hand may have been dictated, too, not only by a poetic gullibility, but by a very practical consideration. When he invited the Indians to Ararat-by-the-Niagara together with all the other Jews of the world it may well have been because there were tribes of them as close by as Tonawanda, and a conciliatory gesture was good policy.

    Proceeding from Indians to the practical considerations of financing Utopia, Noah invented a poll tax, to consist of three shekels in silver, per annum, or one Spanish dollar, which "is hereby levied upon each Jew throughout the world, to be collected by the Treasurers of the different congregations, for the purpose of defraying the various expenses of re-organizing the government, of aiding emigrants in the purchase of agricultural implements, providing for their immediate wants and comforts, and assisting their families in making their first settlements; together with such free-will offerings as may be generously made in the furtherance of the laudable objects connected with the restoration of the people and the glory of the Jewish nation. A Judge of Israel shall be chosen once in every four years by the Consistory at Paris, at which time proxies from every congregation shall be received."

    The Proclamation concluded with a summons to the Jewish intelligentsia of Europe, and a prayer for universal peace.

    "I do hereby name as Commissioners, the most learned and pious Abraham de Cologna, Knight of the Iron Crown of Lombardy, Grand Rabbi of the Jews, and President of the Consistory at Paris; likewise the Grand Rabbi Andrade of Bordeaux; and also our learned and esteemed Grand Rabbis of the German and Portugal Jews, in London, Rabbis


     



    202                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    Herschell and Mendola; together with the Honorable Aaron Nunez Cardoza, of Gibraltar, Abraham Busnac, of Leghorn, Benjamin Gradis, of Bordeaux, Dr. E. Gans and Professor Zunz, of Berlin, and Dr. Leo Woolf of Hamburgh; to aid and assist in carrying into effect the provisions of this my proclamation, with powers to appomt the necessary agents in the several parts of the world, and to establish Emigration societies, in order that the Jews may be concentrated and capacitated to act as a distinct body, having at the head of each kingdom or republic such presiding officers as I shall upon their recommendation appoint. Instructions to these my Commissioners shall be forthwith transmitted; and a more enlarged and general view of plan, motives and objects will be detailed in the address to the nation. The Consistory at Paris is hereby authorized and empowered to name three discreet persons of competent abilities, to visit the United States, and make such report to the nation as the actual condition of this country shall warrant.

    "I do appoint Roshodes Adar, February 7th, 1826, to be observed with suitable demonstrations as a day of Thanksgiving to the Lord God of Israel, for the manifold blessings and signal protection which He has deigned to extend to his people, and in order that on that great occasion our prayers may be offered for the continuance of his divine mercy and the fulfillment of all the promises and pledges made to the race of Jacob.

    "I recommend peace and union among us; charity and good-will to all; toleration and liberality to our brethren of every religious denomination, enjoined by the mild and just precepts of our holy religion; honor and good faith in the fulfillment of all our contracts; together with temperance, economy and industry in our habits.

    "I humbly intreat to be remembered in your prayers; and, lastly and most earnestly, I do enjoin you to 'Keep the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes and his commandments and his judgments and his testimonies,


     



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    as it is written in the laws of Moses, that thou mayest prosper in all thou doest, and whithersoever thou turnest thyself.'"

    The Proclamation was signed by Noah's friend, A. B. Seixas, Secretary pro tem., and given at Buffalo as of the second day of Tizri, in the year of the World, 5596, corresponding with the fifteenth day of September, 1825, and in the fiftieth year of American Independence. 1

    The day had been greeted with gunpowder; it ended with music, cannonade and libation. The ceremonies over, a salute of twenty-four guns was fired by the artillery. The band burst into a medley of popular airs, after which the procession returned to the Masonic Lodge. Here disbanding, Masons and military, ready now no doubt for the real business of the day, repaired to the Eagle Tavern.

    And Noah? For the local newspaper, The Buffalo Patriot, he prepared a full account of the solemn ceremonies. To it, later, he added a plan of the proposed City, and a further appeal to his brethren in Europe. Without so much as setting foot upon the City of his dreams -- it is questionable, indeed, whether he ever trod the soil of Grand Island, before this day or after -- he returned to New York, to the secular cares, to the world of harsh factuality.

    It was all over... Already... A still, though not a noiseless, birth... To paraphrase the greatest of poets, the baseless fabric of Noah's vision, like an insubstantial pageant, faded and left but a rock behind -- a decaying corner stone

    __________
    1 In many places September 2nd is given as the date of the founding of Ararat. This may be owing to confusion with the "second day of Tizri." It has been pointed out that Noah selected September 15th because it was the first available date after the opening of the current Hebrew New Year.


     



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    that would haunt the unredeemed redeemer. The mockery of Europe and America would heat his ears, then silence, the mockery of mockery... Nobody had heeded the call of the latter-day savior. No flood descended from the heavens to submerge the iniquity and the indifference of the nations. Noah's Ark, grounded upon a barren Ararat, was left high, dry and empty.

    It was a sardonic apotheosis, -- a cenotaph of hope and reputation. Noah had been the orator at a funeral. 1


    4. VALUES -- SPIRITUAL AND REAL ESTATE

    Noah having been at once Quixote and Sancho, it is sometimes diflicult to say whether his Grand Island scheme was predominantly an ardent ideal or a cold investment... Ararat and Barataria...

    There is concrete evidence that, however high-minded our paladin may have been about his City of Refuge, he was not blind to the possibilities of Ararat as a venture in real estate. Land booms were already old phenomena in the United States. Grand Island had been purchased by the State of New York in 1815, and was shortly infested by squatters. It became the haunt of timber-pirates and outlaws in general, constituting a sort of no man's country. The State is said to have paid to the Seneca Indians $11,000. for the territory, -- a price more fair at least than the $24. for which the isle of Manhattan was purchased from the red man.

    __________
    1 The chief source of information about the ceremonies attending the foundation of Ararat is an account written by Lewis F. Allen, and read by him at a meeting of the Buffalo Historical Society on March 5, 1866 It appeared, originally, in Thomas' Buffalo City Directory for 1867, pp. 25-37; it was reprinted in vol. 1 of the Society's publications, 1879, and again reprinted in vol. 25, 1921, pp. 113-144. It is to be found most easily as reprinted in aAJHS, vol. viii, pp. 98-118.


     



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    A year before the Noachian debacle the State had surveyed the island, which was dense with timber and notable as a hunting and fishing ground. Whether any of Noah's money went into the purchase of the 2550 acres that was made by his friend, Samuel Leggett, is not certain. Surely, however, Noah hoped, with the success of his enterprise, to acquire gradually the ownership of the entire island. The 2550 acres were in two lots, one at the head of the island, the other at the center, opposite Tonawanda and, what is more important, at the entrance of the Erie canal into the Niagara River. Noah, as an anti-Clintonian, had opposed the crowning achievement of Clinton's career. He was not averse, however, to profiting from the immense volume of new business that would be opened by the inauguration of the Erie Canal. He sat now, indeed, upon the Canal celebration committee. Buffalo lacked the capital to compete with the cities that Noah planned to establish at strategical positions on the island.

    His reasoning, as a commercial organizer, seemed so sound that other capitalists were led to speculate in Island lots; notably, John B. Yates and Archibald McIntyre, who had purchased from the State the system of lotteries by which, in those days, colleges and churches were often financed. Among other purchasers were Levi Beardsley, James O'Morse and Alvan Stewart, who acquired a considerable portion of the Island. Beardsley has related 1 that, having been offered a handsome advance on their purchase, they wrote for advice to Noah. Noah advised them "by no means to sell at present, as he had no doubt of the success of his project, which would greatly enhance the value of our lands."

    __________
    1 See his Reminiscences, New York, 1852, pp. 156-157.


     



    206                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    As late as October 5, 1825, Noah was writing to Alvan Stewart, "We have not as yet been able to fix upon any definitive plans relative to Grand Island, waiting to see the effect produced in Europe. Although I think the land worth more than 50 per cent advance on the purchase, I am sure it will bring more yet..." 1

    Grand Island, alas, was to prove as fruitless temporally as spiritually. Whether as an investment of the soul or of the national currency, it was equally a failure. Before the new year was very old, Noah would know only too well "the effect produced in Europe."


    5. AFTERMATH

    It is interesting that though the futility, the vanity, the self-seeking of Noah's "Ararat" have not been forgotten, his position in the history of Jewish self-determination is on the whole a highly honored one. The intention has been taken for the achievement. He emerges as an eccentric, surely, but none the less as an important pioneer in the story of Zionistic endeavor. If his descendants in the struggle for a Jewish homeland cannot honor his head, they do all honor to his heart.

    This was, with one or two exceptions, the charitable attitude even of those contemporaries who were in high positions to pass upon his megalomaniac sentimentality. The very deputies upon whom he called to assist him, in one way or another betrayed his unsolicited faith. Eduard Gans, who, together with Dr. Leopold Zunz, had, as recently as January 1, 1822, written to him so sincerely, so hopefully from Europe,

    __________
    1 The original of this letter is in the private collection of Leon Huhner, Esq.


     



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    abandoned his Jewishness and adopted Christianity in the very year of Noah's "Ararat."

    The letter had told how eagerly the Jews of Europe looked to the United States as an ark of freedom, and asked for particulars concerning the Jews of the country, State by State. Curiously enough, Noah did not make the document public until October 4, 1825, when, in answer to the storm of hostile and ridiculing criticism called forth by his Messianic scheme, he printed it in The Albany Daily Advertiser. He published it, he averred, "to exhibit an evidence of the fact that, although the Jews in the United States were not prepared for emigration... yet those abroad... have been alive to the project and in expectation of events which have taken place." Still more curiously, and to show how closely hand in hand went Noah's idealism and his hopes for profitable real-estate returns, his letter to Alvan Stewart, already quoted, was written on the very next day after the Zunz document was printed, with Noah's protestations, in The Albany Advertiser.

    Zunz's defection was as a premonitory symbol. In the Journal des De'bats, Abraham de Cologna, Chief Rabbi of Paris, rejecting Noah's invitation, administered the rebuke pious. This in itself was a coup de grace.

    The letter to the journalistic spokesman of the French government was translated into a number of tongues and was widely reprinted in Europe and in the United States.

    "Sir -- The wisdom and love of truth which distinguish your journal, and the well merited reputation it enjoys in France and in foreign countries, induce me to hope that your politeness will grant me a place in your next number for some

    __________
    1 The full text of this letter, with interesting annotations, is to be found in AJHS, vol. xx, pp. 147-149.


     



    208                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    observations which I address to the public in interests of reason and truth.

    "The French and English papers have lately announced the singular project of a Mr. Noah, who calls himself the founder of the city Ararat, in the United States of North America. Certainly if Mr. Noah was, as he is supposed to be, the proprietor or occupier of a great extent of uncultivated land, and confined himself to the engagement of men without fortunes to run the risk of colonizing with him, promising them at the same time mountains of gold, nobody would think of disputing his right to follow the fashion of sending forth projects; but Mr. Noah aspires to play a much more elevated character. He dreams of a heavenly mission, he talks prophetically; he styles himself a judge over Israel he gives orders to all the Israelites in the world; he levies the tax upon all Hebrew heads. In his exaltation he even goes so far as to make the central Jewish consistory of France his Charge d'affaires, and he honours the President of this body with the noble rank of 'Commissioner of Emigration.' The whole is excellent; but two trifles are wanting; first, the well authenticated proof of the mission and authority of Mr. Noah. 2ndly, the prophetic text which points out a marsh in North America as the spot for re-assembling the scattered remains of Israel.

    "To speak seriously, it is right at once to inform Mr. Noah, that the venerable Messrs. Herschell and Mendola, Chief Rabbis at London, and myself, thank him, but positively refuse the appointments he has been pleased to confer upon us. We declare that according to our dogmas, God alone knows the epoch of the Israelitish restoration, that he alone will make it known to the whole universe by signs entirely unequivocal, and that every attempt on our part to reassemble with any politico-national design is forbidden, as an act of high treason against the Divine Majesty. Mr. Noah has doubtless forgotten that the Israelites, faithful to the principles of their belief, are too much attached to the countries where they dwell, and devoted to the Governments


     



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    under which they enjoy liberty and protection, not to treat as a mere jest the chimerical consulate of a pseudo-restorer.

    "As however justice requires some consideration to the absent, we should be sorry to refuse him the title of a visionary of good intentions.

    "Accept, Mr. Editor, the assurance of the distinguished and respectful sentiments with which I remain your most humble servant,

               The Grand Rabbi. DE COLOGNA."

    To this Noah made a weak reply. He was happy to be considered at least a visionary of good intentions... "The result of the experiment," he maintained, "will show something of practical utility, or I am mistaken in the character of this country and its institutions. At all events, this opposition to an incipient stage will do good; it will excite curiosity and promote inquiry, which is all I ask at present." 1

    If De Cologna and Herschell were content to find Noah, at worst, guilty of blasphemy, Andrade, the Chief Rabbi of Bordeaux, declared him a plain charlatan. So did Judah Jeitteles, the leader of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) in Austria. In the pages of the journal, Bikkure Ha'Ittim, he translated the details of Noah's call unto the nations, and subjected it to blistering ridicule.

    It is to be questioned whether Noah's proclamation was allowed to appear in any of the papers of Poland and Russia. The police headquarters of Vienna scented, in the Grand Island scheme, a disguised revolutionary plot aiming at the overthrow of the Hapsburg monarchy. So that, as Gelber reports, the copies of the proclamation were withheld. Russia, for like reasons, enforced a like suppression; a condensed

    __________
    1 As quoted in Niles' Register, January 21, 1826, pp. 350-351. A copy, in English, of the letter from the Grand Rabbi, Abraham de Cologna, appears also in this issue.


     



    210                 MAJOR  NOAH: AMERICAN-JEWISH  PIONEER                


    notice of Noah's call, however, did appear in the Moscow Telegraph.

    The English, German and Austria