Mordecai Manuel Noah (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Mordecai Manuel Noah (July 14, 1785, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - May 22, 1851, New York) was an American playwright, diplomat, journalist, and utopian. Born in a family of Portuguese Sephardic ancestry; he was the most important Jewish lay leader in New York in the pre-Civil War period, and the first Jew born in the United States to reach national prominence. Noah engaged in trade and law, but when removing to Charleston, South Carolina, dedicated himself to politics. In 1811, he was appointed by President James Madison as consul at Riga, then part of Imperial Russia, but declined, and, in 1813, was nominated Consul to the Kingdom of Tunis, where he rescued American citizens kept as slaves by Moroccan masters. In 1815, Noah received a stunning blow; in the words of US Secretary of State James Monroe, his religion was "an obstacle to the exercise of [his] Consular function." The incident caused outrage among Jews and non-Jews alike.