where so many Jews were elected to high office, and the North, where Jews constituted a larger percentage of the population, yet had achieved fewer honors.119 The Negroes acted as an escape-valve in Southern society. The Jews gained in status and security from the very presence of this large mass of defenseless victims who were compelled to absorb all of the prejudices which might otherwise have been expressed more frequently in anti-Jewish sentiment. As I. J. Benjamin said,
The white inhabitants felt themselves united with, and closer to, other whites — as opposed to the Negroes. Since the Israelites there did not do the humbler kinds of work which the Negro did, he was quickly received among the upper classes, and early rose to high political rank.
Although this was too broad a generalization, and not all Jews were treated so generously, the road to social and economic advancement
119 MM, vol. Ill, p. 104; I. J. Benjamin, Three Years in America (Philadelphia, 1956), p. 76.
68 Jews and Negro Slavery in the Old South, 1789-1865
and acceptance for many Jews was smoothed by the ever-present race distinction which imputed superiority to all whites. And even the path of the poor, foreign Jew was made easier by the institution of slavery. Oscar Straus remembered that when his father was peddling through the rural areas of Georgia, he
was treated by the owners of the plantations with a spirit of equality that is hard to appreciate today. Then, too, the existence of slavery drew a distinct line of demarcation between the white and black races. This gave to the white [peddler] a status of equality that probably otherwise he would not have enjoyed to such a degree.120
Slavery, therefore, played a more significant role in the development of Jewish life in the Old South, than Jews themselves played in the