e best blood of France. They readily identified
themselves with the industries and aspirations of the colonies and at
once became leaders in the professional and business life in their
communities. In Boston, in Charleston, in New York, and in other
commercial centers, the names of streets, squares, and public
buildings attest their prominence in trade and politics. Few names are
more illustrious than those of Paul Revere, Peter Faneuil, and James
Bowdoin of Massachusetts; John Jay, Nicholas Bayard, Stephen DeLancey
of New York; Elias Boudinot of New Jersey; Henry Laurens and Francis
Marion of South Carolina. Like the Scotch-Irish, these French
Protestants and their descendants have distinguished themselves for
their capacity for leadership.

The Jews came early to New York, and as far back as 1691 they had a
synagogue in Manhattan. The civil disabilities then so common in
Europe were not enforced against them in America, except that they
could not vote for members of the legislature. As that body itself
declared in 1737, the Jews did not possess the parliamentary franchise
in England, and no special act had endowed them with this right in the
colonies. The earliest representatives of this race in America came to
New Amsterdam with the Dutch and were nearly all Spanish and
Portuguese Jews, who had found refuge in Holland after their wholesale
expulsion from the Iberian peninsula in 1492. Rhode Island, too, and
Pennsylvania had a substantial Jewish population. The Jews settled
characteristically in the towns and soon became a factor in commercial
enterprise. It is to be noted that they contributed liberally to the
patriot cause in the Revolution.

While the ships bearing these many different stocks were sailing
westward, England did not gain possession of the whole Atlantic
seaboard without contest. The Dutch came to Manhattan in 1623 and for
fifty years held sway over the imperial valley of the Hudson. It was a
brief interval, as history goes, but it was long enough to stamp upon
the town of Manhattan the cosmopolitan character it has ever since
maintained. Into its liberal and congenial atmosphere were drawn Jews,
Moravians, and Anabaptists; Scotch Presbyterians and English
Nonconformists; Waldenses from Piedmont and Huguenots from France. The
same spirit that made Holland the lenient host to political and
religious refugees from every land in that restive age characterized
her colony and laid the foundations of the