Washington Letter Research Articles

The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher

Reviewed by: The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher Dana Y. Rabin (bio) The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton. By Andrew Porwancher. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. ix + 254 pp. In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher promises to reveal the place of Judaism in the life of Alexander Hamilton and to show the influence of Judaism on Hamilton's values, his politics, his economic policies, and his religious toleration. Porwancher claims that "the Hamiltonian-Jewish connections offer us an enriched perspective on the early republic, one that suggests the egalitarian rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence was not an empty promise, even if progress was halting" (9). Unfortunately, the author does not deliver on this promise. The book considers Hamilton's life and the founding fathers and their attitudes about both individual Jewish people and Judaism as a religion. It introduces real Jews in a peripatetic survey of events well known to Jewish historians of the period, featuring prominent Jewish men in the era and their interactions with political and economic affairs including each and every Jewish client that Hamilton represented or advised. The connection between Hamilton and Judaism is traced to his mother Rachel Faucette's marriage to Johan Levine in St. Croix. Porwancher posits that Rachel converted to Judaism in order to marry Levine and that she retained her ties to a Jewish identity even after the union with Levine dissolved, while she had a relationship with Alexander's father James Hamilton, and in the years that she raised Alexander and his brother Peter on Nevis before her death in 1768. The two documented [End Page 316] facts are that Rachel never gave up her married name and that Alexander Hamilton attended a Jewish school on Nevis. Having provided the details of Hamilton's precarious relationship with Jews during his short time in the Caribbean, the book's subsequent chapters take us through Hamilton's life from his move to New York at age 18, his matriculation at King's College (later Columbia University), his involvement in the American Revolution, his work ensuring the passage of the Constitution, his service to the new United States as Secretary of the Treasury, his profession as a lawyer, and his death in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804. The penultimate chapter on church and state revisits the much-known story of George Washington's letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island. Wherever possible, the author introduces Hamilton's relationship with Jews, whether in his practice of law or in his establishment of the Bank of America. The book demonstrates the virulent and widespread antisemitism so common in the American colonies and the early republic. The dismissive and hateful rhetoric of other founding fathers—John Adams, James Madison, John Jay, and particularly Benjamin Franklin—is quoted at length. Porwancher rehearses the conflicts between Federalists and Anti-Federalists and between those colonists who wished to embed a religious test in the Constitution and those who did not, those who believed that religion had a place in the governing structure of the United States and those who did not. The attempt to demonstrate the promise of the Declaration of Independence is belied by its entanglement with histories of racism, slavery, and the extermination of Native Americans. These atrocities formed the bedrock of colonial America and the United States and accompanied the dehumanization of the enslaved, the appropriation of Native American land, and the prejudices that withheld rights from the enslaved and circumscribed those of free people of color. The relationship of any rights bestowed on Jews in the early republic certainly is related to whiteness and an understanding of religious and ethnic groups that might come to be included or partially included in this shifting category. Religious hatred, which had always excluded Jews and Catholics from certain rights of English men, seemed to change in the context of the American colonies where the divides and hierarchies were oriented differently. Throughout the author seems determined to prove that Hamilton believed in the rule of law and its corollary, equality before the law. It is certainly possible that Hamilton was not antisemitic. But the law and its inequalities were...

“Serve It Up Hot and Brief”: The Journalistic Innovations and Influence of Willard M. Kiplinger

The newsletter format has witnessed a popular resurgence in digital media but little is known about the origins of this multi-billion dollar industry for specialized information. Newsletter industry pioneer Willard M. Kiplinger, whose Kiplinger Washington Letter claims to be the oldest continuously published newsletter in the US, perfected a type of reporting that influenced publications ranging from Newsweek to U.S. News & World Report, Bloomberg, Axios, and others. The Kiplinger Washington Letter was influential during the New Deal, with Kiplinger serving as a crucial bridge between conservative business leaders and New Deal regulators. Kiplinger’s weekly newsletter nurtured a close reader engagement through a specialized research service and extensive correspondence with his subscribers, a type of early crowdsourcing that anticipated the active audience interaction in digital journalism.

Mark Twain in Washington, D.C.: The Adventures of a Capital Correspondent

Mark Twain in Washington, D.C.: The Adventures of a Capital Correspondent

The Papers of George Washington. Revolutionary War Series

With volume 24 of the Revolutionary War Series, the conflict enters a new decade. New Year's Day 1780 finds Washington in winter quarters at Morristown, N.J., having established his headquarters at the Ford mansion there one month earlier. During the weeks covered by this volume, the Continental army experienced the harshest winter of the war. But the severity of the winter did not prevent Washington from mounting an offensive against British forces. Ice had formed a natural bridge to Staten Island, and Washington decided to use the situation to launch a major attack on the enemy's forts there. He assigned Major General Stirling to command the strike and assigned him 2,600 troops. Stirling launched the assault as planned in the early morning of 15 January, but the next day he had to report to Washington that the operation had failed. Although the attack was fruitless, it provides evidence of Washington's aggressive generalship: a major winter attack designed to cut off and capture enemy garrisons. Washington's enemy was not idle either. In addition to several raids on New Jersey towns and surprise attacks on outlying detachments, the British launched one operation with a far more ambitious goal: to seize Washington at the Ford mansion and carry him into New York City as a prisoner. The attack failed, but it was the deep snow--and not American bullets--that stopped the cavalry force sent to capture Washington. Enemy operations, however, were not the greatest threat to the survival of Washington's army. The harshness of the winter, the precarious state of Continental finances, and the resulting lack of provisions threatened his forces with starvation. To feed his troops, Washington implemented an emergency requisition of provisions throughout New Jersey. As usual, administration of the army consumed much of Washington's time. In addition to obtaining supplies, he had to oversee recruiting the army, obtaining clothing for his men, negotiating for the exchange of prisoners, and conducting inspections, as well as attending to the professionalism and discipline of the army. His burden became so heavy that in February he felt it would be impossible for him to execute the duties of commander in chief unless he received more support from his senior officers. Several letters to or from well-known figures of the Revolution appear in this volume, including Benedict Arnold, Benjamin Franklin, and Robert Morris. Washington's letter to Morris gives rare insight into the general's personal life. The commander in chief expressed his inclination to accept Morris's invitation to spend some of the winter with him, but he lamented that public duty necessitated remaining with the army at Morristown. He would, he explained to Morris, have to forgo such social enjoyments until the end of the war.

An Unknown "Washington Letter" by Walt Whitman

Reprints "Whitman's last war-time letter to the New York Times," parts of which he published in Memoranda During the War, but parts of which (including a description of freed black soldiers) he never republished.

A New-Found Washington Letter of 1774 and the Fairfax Resolves

O N July II, I774, George Washington wrote from Mount Vernon to one of his three brothers. The letter is on one large sheet of paper folded once to make four pages, all of which are filled with Washington's neat, legible hand. It is a newsy sort of letter discussing prices being paid for corn and wheat and dependability of payment from several merchants in Alexandria, eight miles up Potomac River from Mount Vernon. In addition, Washington spoke of approaching of Inhabitants of this County that would frame some resolves for county's representative to carry to meeting of first Virginia Convention in August I774. The letter has special significance for at least two reasons. First, existence of letter has escaped notice of every major-and presumably minor-Washington scholar to present day. Second, it casts new light on authorship and genesis of Fairfax Resolves, the lengthiest and most detailed of all proposals submitted to [first Virginia] convention.1 Washington did not make copies of most of his personal correspondence before Revolution. Even if he had, a friendly note to a younger brother was unlikely to have been copied for record purposes. The recipient also probably gave letter no special consideration. What became of it from that day to this is unknown. It is not even certain, although it is likely, that letter was posted or that it reached its intended destination. The first documented notice of its existence came in I939. A note on a typescript of letter, inaccurately transcribed, in library at Mount Vernon indicates that in that year it was owned by Lenox Uhler of Washington, D.C. The Mount Vernon librarians are not sure when, or from whom, they acquired transcript. The White House,

Washington Letter News from the Capital

Washington Letter News from the Capital

Washington Letter: News from the Capital

Washington Letter: News from the Capital

Washington Letter: News from the Capital

Washington Letter: News from the Capital

Washington Letter: News from the Capital

Washington Letter: News from the Capital

ORGANIZATION SECTION

<h3>Washington Letter</h3> (From a Special Correspondent) Sept. 12, 1949. <h3>Brookings Institution Launches Broad Health Survey</h3> The Brookings Institution of Washington has confirmed a report, first published in the Washington Report on the Medical Sciences, that it has launched a comprehensive survey of medical care in the United States. The study, which it is estimated will take about two years, will examine the facts and figures of private medical practice, voluntary prepayment systems, insurance indemnity coverage, hospital facilities, industrial health protection and all other major aspects of the problem. Observations will be published in two volumes, one on availability of services and the other on evaluation, according to present plans. <h3>Funds for Military to Employ Civilian Doctors</h3> Medical department appropriations for Army, Navy and Air Force in 1950 could be used, when necessary, for employment of civilian physicians, dentists and nurses, by provisions of the military appropriations bill in the form

ORGANIZATION SECTION

<h3>Washington Letter</h3> (From a Special Correspondent) July 18, 1949. <h3>Ewing Denies Welfare Department Would Propagandize for Socialized Medicine</h3> Testifying on July 21 before the Senate Committee on Expenditures in support of establishment of a Department of Welfare in the President's Cabinet, Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing denied that facilities of the Department would be "used" to promote sentiment for socialized medicine. His statement to that effect came in the course of questioning of the witness by Senator John L. McClellan (Democrat, Arkansas), chairman, and Senators Irving M. Ives (Republican, New York), Russell B. Long (Democrat, Louisiana), Margaret Chase Smith (Republican, Maine) and James O. Eastland (Democrat, Mississippi). Senator McClellan, who served as a member of the Hoover Commission, is committed in favor of a Department of Welfare which would take over functions now handled by the Federal Security Agency. He is, moreover, one of the Senate's most articulate opponents of

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