(Blackstone, William E.) Palestine for the Jews. A Copy of the Memorial Presented to President Harrison March 5, 1891.

William Eugene Blackstone (1841-1935) American evangelist and Christian Zionist was the author of this celebrated petition to President Benjamin Harrison favoring the delivery of Palestine to the Jews. It was endorsed by such leading Americans as John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Cyrus McCormick, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Senators, Congressmen, religious leaders of all denominations, newspaper editors, etc. The Memorial was motivated by concern over the plight of the Jews of Russia who were being viciously brutalized in a series of government-incited pogroms. Blackstone asks President Harrison, “What shall be done for the Russian Jews?… Why not give Palestine back to them again? According to God’s distribution of nations, it is their home, an inalienable possession, from which they were expelled by force… Why shall not the powers which under the treaty of Berlin in 1878 gave Bulgaria to the Bulgarians and Servia to the Servians now give Palestine back to the Jews?… Let us now restore them to the land of which they were so cruelly despoiled by our Roman ancestors.”