Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

The Law of the Land Is the Law \\ 79
to his stepdaughter and her husband and implored that they "take him under
their protection to treat him as well as they would do me and to give him Such
portion of my Cloths as they think useful to him and never forsake him being the
best friend I ever had." It is indeed hard to imagine many other white southerners
remembering their servant as the "best friend I ever had." Perhaps more typical,
though, for the Jews, as well as the non-Jews, was the will that simply
bequeathed slaves to relatives or friends without specific instructions. Upon the
death of their Jewish masters, slaves faced the prospect of being torn away from
familiar surroundings and sold to less benevolent strangers—a potential fate, of
course, for all slaves in the Old South. 15
Incidents of cruel, sadistic, or violent Jewish slaveowners are rare, in part
because such episodes generally occurred in the rural South where there were very
few Jews. The most aberrant case on record is that of Joseph Cohen of Lynchburg,
Virginia, who, in 1819, murdered his slave. Though court records for this case
have not survived in their entirety, it is known that Cohen was indicted, tried,
convicted, and sentenced for this crime in a fashion very much consistent with
the law of the antebellum South. Conversely, urban Jews "appear to have been
quite content to abide by the excessively cruel punishments meted out to Blacks
who were caught by the law." And Jewish immigrants in the South were among
the many who participated as public officials in the apprehension, prosecution,
and incarceration of slaves. Jewish residents of Charleston, Richmond, Mobile,
and New Orleans held such positions as constable, turnkey, sheriff, marshal, and
detective. 16
There were many Jewish merchants who participated in the selling of slaves
as auctioneers, commission merchants, and brokers. "This was an avenue of commerce
in which many Jews found their niche," wrote Bertram Korn, "because no
stock of merchandise or investment of capital was required, at least at the beginning."
However, contrary to popular myth, none of the major slave traders in the
Old South were Jewish nor did they represent a large percentage of the traders in
any particular community. In Richmond, Virginia, only three of seventy traders
were Jewish; in Charleston, South Carolina, only four of forty-four; in Memphis,
Tennessee, only one in twelve. In Kentucky and Mississippi, not a single Jewish
name appears in the long list of slave traders. It is entirely possible that all of the
Jewish slave traders in all of the southern urban areas bought and sold fewer slaves
than did the one firm of Franklin and Armfield, the South's largest trader of
slaves. In all likelihood, the largest Jewish slave trading firm in the antebellum
South was the Davis family of Petersburg and Richmond, referred to by Harriet
Beecher Stowe in her A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin as "great slave traders" who buy
their slaves at low prices, "trim, shave, wash them, [and] fatten them so that they
may look sleek, and sell them to great profit." 17
Much has been made of the fact that no Jewish southerner emerged as an outspoken
critic of the slaveowning Old South. 18 This perhaps is subjecting a southern
ethnic and religious minority to undue and unrealistic historical standards or