Auction 43 Catalogue - Kestenbaum & Company

Lot 24
24 (AMERICAN JUDAICA). Governor Worthington’s Speech, on the Maryland Test Act, 1824.
Speech of Col. W.G.D. Worthington, A member of the General Assembly of Maryland, from the City of Baltimore. On the Confi rmatory Act,
Abolishing the Religious Test. Numerous old corrections in sepia ink. pp. 40. Crisp, clean copy. Small holes on title expertly repaired. Modern archival stiff
wrappers. Sm. 4to. [Singerman 0411; Rosenbach 261].
Baltimore, William Wooddy: 1824. $15,000-20,000
❧ EXCEPTIONALLY SCARCE AND FUNDAMENTALLY IMPORTANT TRACT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN-JEWISH CITIZENRY.
While the Federal Constitution and Bill of Rights guaranteed full equality to the Jews, its provisions were not binding on state
governments prior to the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Consequently, every state, with the exception of New York,
proceeded to adopt a constitution that deprived the Jews of political equality. In Maryland alone there was a protracted struggle to invest
the Jews with political equality.
Maryland’s fi rst constitution, passed in 1776, retained a colonial statute requiring all public servants to invoke a Christian oath. Not only
were governmental offi cials and members of the legislature considered public servants, but so were lawyers, militia offi cers and jurors. Thus,
a Jew was deprived of a possible livelihood, opportunities to demonstrate his loyalty and a trial by his peers. Maryland Jews protested their
inferior status as early as 1797, but it was not until 1826, when the Jew Bill was confi rmed by the legislature, that Jews were alleviated of all
disabilities. The staunchest advocates of the Jewish cause during this struggle were Henry M. Brackenridge, John S. Tyson and William G.
D. Worthington.
The impact of the Jew Bill extended well beyond Maryland, despite the fact that it was a state issue. It caught the young nation’s attention,
and reverberated overseas. In Britain, where the Jewish question was an even more contentious issue, members of Parliament received
copies of pro-Jew Bill speeches.
Much useful information concerning the Jews of the newly formed United States is contained in “Solomon Etting’s Answers to Col.
Worthington’s Queries” (pp. 17-18). Thus, we learn that the Jews of Maryland numbered some 150 and that their general wealth was
estimated at half a million dollars, while the number of Jews in the United States came to some 6000, and their combined wealth was
estimated at tens of millions of dollars. We are also treated to facts concerning those Jews who served their country in the American
Revolution and after, such as Uriah P. Levy, Lieutenant in the Navy of the United States (pp. 18-20). Worthington made use of the
correspondence between George Washington and the Hebrew Congregations of Savannah, Newport, New York, Charleston and Richmond
(pp. 22-27). Worthington’s point being that were Washington still alive, he would not “support a Religious Test against any religion whatever,
much less that of the children of Abraham” (p. 28).
See S. W. Baron and J. L. Blau, The Jews of the United States, Vol. 1; S. F. Chyet, “The Political Rights of the Jews in the United States,”
American Jewish Archives 10.1 (Apr. 1958): 14-75; Edward Eitches, “Maryland’s Jew Bill,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 60.3 (Mar.
1971): 258-79; A. J. Karp, Beginnings: Early American Judaica, 31-6.
Worthington’s speech, originally printed in 1824, was reprinted in the collection, “Speeches on the Jew Bill in the House of Delegates in
Maryland” (Philadelphia, 1829) and sold by Kestenbaum & Company, September 2005, Lot 27.
[SEE ILLUSTRATION ABOVE]
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