(Congressional Report). Discriminations in Switzerland against Citizens of the United States of the Hebrew Persuasion.

This publication contains thirty-six government documents and letters pertaining to Swiss discrimination against American Jews. The contents were collected by order of President James Buchanan in compliance with an 1859 House resolution requesting information on the discrimination stemming from a Swiss-American treaty. The earliest document concerns A. Gootmann, an American citizen residing in Switzerland who was threatened with expulsion on account of his Jewish faith. America and Switzerland had signed a commercial treaty in the 1850s that permitted only Christians from doing business in Switzerland. American diplomats and politicians were aware of the implications of this illiberal clause, but were willing to turn a blind eye because of the imperative for the rapidly-industrializing nation to develop markets in Europe. This treaty represented a rare instance of government sponsored anti-Semitism in America. American Jews were outraged and they attempted to use their leverage with elected officials to have the treaty amended or abrogated. For example, Leeser, who was infuriated that an “American diplomat could be so ignorant of this country’s institutions as to sanction … the spirit of discrimination,” corresponded with leading senators on the matter (Occident, vol. 8, p. 614). These efforts were largely unsuccessful, and it was owing to French insistence that the Swiss finally ceased barring Jewish merchants in 1879. Nonetheless, from a historical perspective the opposition of American Jews to the treaty was important, as it was central to the creation of a national Jewish consciousness. “The greatest benefit that accrued to American Jewry,” observed historian Jacob Rader Marcus, “was the growth of a sense of Jewish homogeneity in the land. A common threat created a common Jewry … national agitation made for national Jewish unity. There was still no national organization tying Jews together but there is no question that national Jewish unity was slowly but surely being forged” (J. R. Marcus, United States Jewry, II, 290-7). The involvement of a Democratic government in the passage of the treaty must also be considered as an underlying reason that many Jews in this period shifted their loyalties to the Republican party.