Autograph Letter Signed by “An Israelite,” addressed to the Editor of The Occident, Rev. Isaac Leeser.

Historic letter appealing to Isaac Leeser to help fight against the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States. With contemporary clipping attached to the letter: A Baltimore newspaper, dated April 27th, 1853, concerning “The Loss Of The Independence. Full particulars of the burning and wreck, where many passengers on their way from New York to San Francisco perished at the accident in the sea.” The report takes a decidedly anti-Semitic turn noting, “out of a party of 18 Jews who were on board ship, 16 perished from the weight of coin which they attempted to bring with them through the waves.” Leeser’s correspondent notes “I was surprised to see that the writer of the article should have singled out a particular class of citizens as having perished from the weight of coin.” The doctor who supplied the account to the newspaper “assigned such a cause (of death) is strange indeed when in the same sentence he states that the outward current was so strong as to carry off numbers of persons who were good swimmers or floated and who would othewise have been saved.” The letter offers reasons as to why the reporter was prejudiced and that it would have been impossible for those drowned Jews to have died for the reasons advanced and makes analogies to the Gentile passengers who also died even though they had “floated” and were not “carrying coin.”