From the Journal of Charles Pickney of South Carolina on the Constitutional Convention of 1789: ‘There is a great danger for the United States of America. This great danger is the jew’

Excerpt from the Journal of Charles Pickney of South Carolina, of the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of 1789, regarding the statement of Benjamin Franklin at the Convention, concerning Jewish immigration.

“There is a great danger for the United States of America. This great danger is the jew. Gentlemen, in every land which the jews have settled, they have depressed the moral level and lowered the degree of commercial honesty. They have remained apart and unassimilated. They have created a state within a state, and when they are oppressed they attempt to strangle the nation financially as in the case of Portugal and Spain.

For more than 1700 years, they have lamented their sorrowful fate-namely, that they were driven out of their motherland. But gentlemen, if the civilized world today should give them back Palestine and their property they would immediately find pressing reasons for not returning there. Why? Because they are vampires, and vampires cannot live on other vampires, they cannot live among themselves; and they must live among Christians others who do not belong to their race.

If they are not excluded from the United States, by the Constitution, within less than 100 years, they will stream into this country in such numbers they will rule and destroy us and change our form of government for which we Americans shed our blood and sacrificed life, property and personal freedom. If the jews are not excluded within 200 years, our children will be working in the fields to feed the jews while they remain in the counting house gleefully rubbing their hands.

I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude the jews forever, your children and your children’s children will curse you in your graves. Their ideas are not those of Americans even when they have lived among us for ten generations. The leopard cannot change its spots. The jews are a danger to this land and if they are allowed to enter they will imperil our institutions-they should be excluded by the Constitution.”

~Original of this copy in Franklin Institute Philadelphia, Pa.