By Jerry Klinger
MOUNT RUSHMORE, South Dakota — On August 18, 1790, President George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. He reflected his vision of the new American Federal Constitutional system.
“Everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig-tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.
He continued:
“For happily the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Washington’s letter did not single out Jews. His letter was to all Americans. As Washington’s letter was read from the Bima, Jews were deliberately barred from public office in many Eastern States.
A cruel vestige of British colonial influence stood in the way.
Jews, non-Jews, atheists, even Quakers, could not take the Test Oaths for Office, “upon my faith as a Christian, I will uphold the laws of…” without perjuring themselves. Maryland was particularly vicious.
Maryland’s religious test oath that barred Jews from holding office was not removed from the State’s Constitution until 1827. It was a bitter, vicious struggle led by Thomas Kennedy, a Scotch-Irish immigrant who had never met a Jew in his life. Kennedy deeply believed in the revolutionary experiment, the new American Republican form of government.
Jews were emancipated in Maryland in 1827. Maryland refused to emancipate Quakers until 1903.
Jews historically have not asked for special carve-outs or affirmative action quotas because of past and present discrimination. Jews asked for, identically to what a great Black American, Dr. Martin Luther King asked for 173 years later from his imperfect country, “”I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Mt. Rushmore is a contradiction and a hope, as is the nearby Crazy Horse Native American Memorial.
There are those who denigrate Mt. Rushmore because they say it has desecrated the natural sacred Native American land with white American symbology. The same critics never denigrate the Crazy Horse memorial also carved out of a sacred Lakota mountain.
Crazy Horse is the artistic interpretation of Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski. He was approached by the Native American Lakota Elders, led by Chief Henry Standing Bear, in 1939. Mt. Rushmore had been dedicated fourteen years previously, in 1925.
Chief Henry Standing Bear told Ziolowski, “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too.”
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson was a great American 19th-century transcendentalist. He began as an antisemite and evolved into a philosemite.
The unique character of the American system, built into the Constitution, is its ability to change, to grow.
President Lincoln observed in his first inaugural address, while facing Civil War, the American purpose was “to form a more perfect Union.” Lincoln too, declared the American system was perfectible but not perfect…yet.
Mt. Rushmore was the artistic interpretive vision of Gutzon Borglum, a rabid antisemite. He selected four giants of the American experience to memorialize, to interpret, to forever be carved into Mt. Rushmore: Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
The four Presidents were men of their times, each with their own imperfections and prejudices.
Washington and Jefferson were slave holders. Jefferson believed in ending slavery eventually. Jefferson did not free his own slaves. He was too deeply in debt. Slaves were money.
Jefferson advocated for freedom of religion. The Jews, he believed, when exposed to a non-antisemitic, non-coercive Christianity, would voluntarily convert to a clearly superior faith, Christianity.
Lincoln grew up with a frontier Western view of Jews; like Emerson, he outgrew its dark limitations.
General (and future President) Ulysses S. Grant, during the Civil War, issued the most vicious government-sanctioned military order in American history, General Order No. 11. Lincoln, alerted, took action. General Order #11 banished all Jews, “as a class,” without distinction, Southern sympathizers or Union loyalists, from his Department of the War in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi.
On January 3, 1863, Lincoln, echoing the admonition of Washington, reversed Grant’s vicious antisemitic decree. Lincoln, said after he was asked to protect the Jews, “I don’t like to see a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners… And this protection they shall have at once.”
Ironically, Lincoln contravened Grant two days after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves still within the unconquered Confederacy only.
Professor Andrew Porwancher wrote about Theodore Roosevelt in his new book, American Macabee.
“America is a nation of contradictions, and perhaps no one better inhabited the national tensions than our 26th president. He was both New York patrician and North Dakota cowboy, trigger-happy colonel and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, boxing-ring brawler and wordsmithing scholar. He felt a genuine affinity for the Jewish people, championed their causes, and earned their gratitude. But at the same time, he was not wholly immune from the antisemitic currents coursing through American history.”
On one hand, Roosevelt associated with vicious, antisemitic American influencers such as Harvard Professor Henry Adams. On the other hand, he courageously stood up to blatant discrimination and Jew hatred, even supporting Zionism.”
At the dedication of a Jewish American Society Historical marker for the first permanent Jewish house of worship in Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1862, I observed to the attendees: “The establishment of Temple B’nai Jeshurun is an affirmation of the American principles of freedom of religion and assembly. Principles unique only in America.
“Freedom is a process. The Constitution was not a fully realized ideal for all people when it was ratified. Mistakes are made. The extraordinary genius of the American system is that when the Ship of State’s ballast lists, and it does periodically, we have the ability to correct ourselves, bring the ship back to a balance, and continue on our journey forward.”
Contemporarily, the American ship of state has once again gone out of balance. Antisemitism has reemerged, with many young Americans being infused with hatred, bigotry, and ignorance.
The American system is in the process of rebalancing again, with difficulty.
The Grandview Plaza, facing Mt. Rushmore, is a vast open panorama that looks towards the carved visages of the four presidents. It is a powerful, staggering view. A dedication opportunity to fund support for Mt. Rushmore presented itself.
The Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation was the first ever Jewish organization to have the name “Jewish” engraved on the donor walls of Mt. Rushmore. It was with pride, humility, and belief in the American system that we did so.
Happy 4th – to All.
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Jerry Klinger is the President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.