Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

78 // JASON H. SILVERMAN
tion of slavery. By 1830, 87 percent of the white households in Charleston had
slaves; for the Jews the figure was 83 percent, perhaps the highest percentage
in the urban South. By mid-century the Jews who could afford slaves averaged
5.5 slaves per household. And although many of the Jews of Charleston held
bondsmen, their holdings appear to be quite small when compared to the white
Christian slaveowners of the city.
Isaac Harby and Jacob Cardozo owned and edited two of Charleston's newspapers,
the Southern Patriot and the Evening News, both of which condoned slavery.
Harby penned a series of editorials under the pseudonym of Junius which attacked
the abolitionists. South Carolina "can never consent to those newfangled doctrines,"
Harby wrote, "which, if carried to any extent might not only jeopardize
the well-being of the Planting States, but...shake the married calm of the whole
Union." And later he concluded that "our eyes [are now} opened to the character
and sentiments of certain men [who seek to} destroy the guarantee, which secures
the possession of slaves to their owners." Even more evidence of the support of
Charleston's Jews for slavery can be seen in the speech by Judah Barrett Cohen to
the first anniversary meeting of the South Carolina Historical Society, in which he
exclaimed that "the state of South Carolina is bound to reverence those men to
whom she owes her position to the present day. She owes much to Sir John
Yeamans, who first introduced slaves,—that incalculable benefit to our soil and
necessary to our climate." 13
"It would seem realistic to conclude," surmised Bertram Wallace Korn, the
dean of historians who study Jews and slavery, some thirty-four years ago, "that
any Jew who could afford to own slaves and had a need for their services would do
so." Indeed,
Jewish owners of slaves were not exceptional figures. Slavery was an
axiomatic foundation of the social pattern of the Old South. Jews wanted
to acclimate themselves in every way to their environment; in both a social
and psychological sense, they needed to be accepted as equals and fellowcitizens.
It was therefore only a matter of financial circumstances and
familial status whether they were to become slaveowners. 14
For those Jews who owned slaves the records demonstrate that they were not
significantly different from other masters in their treatment of bondsmen.
Southern Jews were just as likely, or unlikely, to manumit their slaves and, if their
last wills and testaments are any indication, Jews occasionally regarded their
slaves as chattel, to be retained if possible, or to be sold if the situation warranted.
The will of Emanuel Stern, for example, who died in New Orleans in 1828,
instructed his executor to sell off his twelve-year-old slave Mathilda at auction.
Mathilda brought $400, a profitable transaction since she was valued at $250 in
the inventory. Yet, at the opposite end of the spectrum, was the unusual David
Perayra Brandon of Charleston, who bequeathed in his will that his servant be left