Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II JEWS IN THE WARS OF THE REPUBLIC The Jews in New York were not on a footing of political equality with Christians until the adoption of the first constitution of the State of New York, in 1777, New York having been the first state actually granting full religious liberty to the Jews. Even in Maryland, to which Bancroft has referred as among the first colonies, which " adopted religious freedom as the basis of the State," religious freedom was limited to those who believed in Jesus Christ, and accompanied by a proviso, which declared that any person who denied the Trinity should be punished with death. Even after the Revo- Si lution, though under the Constitution of the United States, a Jew was eligible to any office, no one could hold any office under the government of Maryland without signing a declaration that he believed in the Christian religion. These intolerant provisions were not repealed in Maryland until February 26, 1825. Though subjected to civil disabilities and unreasonable demands in most of the States, where they had settled prior to the Revolu- ton, yet the Colonial cause found among the Jews its stanchest friends. Freely, they gave their lives for independence and aided, with their money, to equip and maintain the armies of the Revolution. The Non-Importation Resolution in 1765, the first organized movement in the agitation for separation from the mother country,—a document still preserved in Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia,—contains the following Jewish names: Benjamin Levy, Samson Levy, Joseph Jacobs, Hyman Levy, Jr., DavidJEWS IN AMERICAN WARS 53 Franks, Mathias Bush, Michael Gratz, Barnard Gratz, and Moses Mordecai. In 1769, a corps of volunteer infantry composed chiefly of Hebrews under command of Captain Lushington, was raised ...