The Jews in America Trilogy (97 page)

When the date and hour arrived, a sizable audience had gathered. There were a number of Uriah's shipmates off the
Franklin,
an equal number of friends and fellow officers of Potter, the two men's seconds and their friends, the mandatory physician, a judge, and a crowd of Philadelphians who had come out to see the show. Thus what happened is well attested to by witnesses. A distance of twenty paces was chosen. This was somewhat farther apart than most duelists elected to stand. Ten paces was a commoner stand-off distance, and even shorter distances—of two paces, or even one—were frequently selected, with the result that both duelists, firing at each other from arm's length, were virtually guaranteed death. But both Levy and Potter were rated as excellent shots, and so the greater stretch of ground between them may have been regarded as a test of marksmanship. The judge asked each man whether he had anything to say. Uriah Levy asked permission to utter a Hebrew prayer, the Shema, and then in a characteristic gesture said: “I also wish to state that, although I am a crack shot, I shall not fire at my opponent. I suggest it would be wiser if this ridiculous affair be abandoned.” “Coward!” Potter shouted in reply. “Gentlemen, no further words,” the judge instructed, and began his count.

Both men turned to face each other. Potter fired first, missing Uriah widely. Uriah then raised his arm straight up and fired a bullet into the air. The duel might have ended there, for Potter could have considered his honor satisfied, but Uriah's gesture clearly had enraged him. He began reloading his pistol for a second round and Uriah, according to the code, was required to do the same. The second volley ended with the same results, Potter missing
his mark and Uriah firing skyward. Now, like a man possessed, Lieutenant Potter began reloading a third time and, perhaps because his fury was affecting his aim, the third series of shots was a repetition of the first two. But clearly the affair had gone too far for sanity, and the seconds and a number of Potter's friends rushed in to try to persuade him to abandon the duel “with honor,” but he would have none of it. For a fourth time he reloaded and fired at Uriah, missing again. On Uriah's side of the field, his friends shouted to him to kill Potter, but once again Uriah merely reached into the air and fired. He then cried out to Potter's aides, “Gentlemen, stop him or I must!”

But Lieutenant Potter was at this point beyond control. He reloaded for a fifth shot and, screaming, “Stand back! I mean to have his life!” fired again, nicking Uriah's left ear. Blood spurted across his face and shoulder. This time, Uriah held his fire altogether. Then, as Potter reloaded for a sixth shot, Uriah's limits of patience and temper were reached. Shouting, “Very well, I'll spoil his dancing,” Uriah for the first time took aim and fired at his opponent. From his remark about dancing, the audience assumed that Uriah Levy intended to shoot the lieutenant in the leg. But the bullet struck him in the chest, Lieutenant Potter fell to the ground without a word, and was immediately pronounced dead by the doctor.

It was, everyone agreed, an extraordinary duel. Potter had behaved extraordinarily badly, and Levy had conducted himself extraordinarily well. There were, however, some unfortunate realities to be faced. In the eyes of the law, Uriah Phillips Levy had committed a murder. In the eyes of the United States Navy, an important bylaw of the club had been breached. An enlisted man—a mere sailing master—had not only slapped, but now had killed, an officer. No one, least of all Uriah Levy, was sure how this might affect a man whose ambition was already “to rise to
high rank in the Navy,” and to set an example for future Jews to follow.

The affair created a stir of major proportions in Philadelphia. The press praised him for the way “Levy fired shots in the air, and then for the first time fired at his antagonist, and with the unerring certainty of a true marksman, made him bite the dust.” Uriah was particularly idolized by his fellow crew members on the
Franklin.
But there was an element, and a strong one, in Philadelphia that was less than happy with the outcome of the duel, and said so. Lieutenant Potter might have been a boor and a drunk, but he had been a popular young man about Philadelphia parties. Levy might have been astonishingly coolheaded and brave, but he was, despite his proper connections, nonetheless—to some—an “outsider.” It was, after all, a case of a Jew having killed a Christian. The Navy commodore investigating the episode decided that Uriah had been neither the provocator nor the aggressor in the case, and dismissed it without action. But the Philadelphia grand jury felt otherwise, and handed down an indictment for “making a challenge to a duel.”

Almost immediately, Uriah was in another difficulty. One Sunday morning shortly after the duel, he walked into the wardroom aboard the
Franklin
for breakfast. In one corner of the room sat a certain Lieutenant Bond, breakfasting with two other officers. Uriah seated himself at a table on the opposite side of the room. The table was cluttered with used crockery and partly filled coffee cups, and Uriah asked a passing cabin boy to please clear it for him. Instantly, Lieutenant Bond was on his feet shouting that Uriah had no right to give orders to cabin boys. Uriah replied that he had given no orders, but had merely asked that the table be cleared. Bond answered that he had heard Uriah order the cabin boy to bring him breakfast. Uriah replied that he had not, and suddenly, amid shouts of “Liar!” “No gentleman!” and “Dictator!” the fight was
on. Both men were on their feet, and it took the other two officers in the room plus two cabin boys to prevent them from coming to blows. And presently Bond was calling Uriah a “damned Jew.”

In the lengthy transcript of the court-martial that followed—a trial which, in Navy history, has been called “the Breakfast Court Martial” and “the Tempest in the Coffee Cups”—there is endless testimony not only about who accused whom of what, but also about how many dishes were on the table at the time, their degree of dirtiness, whether soiled coffee cups or tea cups were involved, and what the various participants in the fracas were wearing. It is hard to see why all this was taken so seriously, and yet it was. Uriah made a long and impassioned speech in which he added patriotism, honor, manliness, and duty to the other issues in the case. It ended at last in a draw. Both Uriah and Lieutenant Bond were ordered reprimanded by the Secretary of the Navy for un-naval behavior.

But while all this trivial and generally undignified business was going on, things were looking up for Uriah Levy again. In Philadelphia, the dueling case had come to trial in the civilian court and, despite the fact that public sentiment had been running against him, Uriah had been acquitted by the jury. The foreman, in fact, had risen from the jury box to add to its decision that “any man brave enough to fire in the air and let his opponent take deadly aim at him, deserved his life.”

And so, despite the fact that naval court-martial proceedings were under way against him, Uriah took the unusual step of applying for a commission in the Navy. He was applying under the rule which stated that “Masters of extraordinary merit, and for extraordinary services, may be promoted to Lieutenant.” His friends who saw him as a man involved in two actions—one civil and one military—begged him to wait until the fuss had died down. But Uriah, confident of his extraordinary capabilities, plunged
ahead. His commission was signed by President Monroe on March 5, 1817. The U.S. Navy had a Jewish officer at last.

The first thing Uriah did when he had donned his gold-fringed lieutenant's epaulets was to have his portrait painted by Thomas Sully. Sully always romanticized his subjects—which was certainly the key to his great popularity—and generously overlooked their physical shortcomings. So we must not take the Sully portrait of Uriah Levy entirely at face value. But it portrays a striking figure. Uriah's face in the portrait is the face of a boy—he was twenty-five that year—clean-jawed, with a straight nose, wide forehead, large and arresting black eyes, a mop of dark curly hair, and dashing Rhett Butler sideburns. Sully exaggerates Uriah's slight build so that his figure appears almost girl-like, frail and delicate, the slim legs almost spidery. Yet as he stands in the portrait, arms folded across his chest, the picture pulses with haughtiness, arrogance, defiance. The picture has been described as making Uriah Levy look “a little vain, more than a little handsome, and very determined.”

The officer corps of the United States Navy was not at all sure how it wished to treat this brash young upstart. The first few months of Uriah's lieutenancy were particularly difficult for him aboard his ship, the
Franklin.
A former enlisted man was, after all, now an officer. A man who had taken commands was now giving them. The
Franklin
's other officers, with whom Uriah had once worked cheerfully, as well as the enlisted men, who had once been his equals, all looked at him now with distrust and disdain. The friends who had cheered him in his duel and in the ordeal after it were suddenly chilly and aloof. Uriah had a long voyage to England, and then to Sicily, in this hostile atmosphere, before he was notified that he was to be transferred to the frigate
United States.

The
United States
was one of the Navy's most prestigious addresses. The ship had been the heroine of several
important battles in the 1812 war and she had, in the process, become known as a “gentlemen's ship.” Nowhere was the clublike nature of the Navy more apparent. The great Stephen Decatur (“our country, right or wrong”) had been the
United States
's commander when the ship had overcome and captured H.M.S.
Macedonian,
and now she was captained by the equally aristocratic William Crane, a man of whom it was said that he “believed his blood ran bluer than all the rest.”

The day before Uriah was to report, Captain Crane dispatched a long letter to Commodore Charles Stewart, in charge of the Navy's Mediterranean Fleet. In it, Captain Crane argued vaguely about Uriah being a “disturbing influence,” and suggested that he might create “disharmony” among the ship's other officers. In concluding the letter he said flatly: “Considerations of a personal nature render Lieutenant Levy particularly objectionable, and I trust he will not be forced on me.”

It is seldom in the Navy that an officer attempts to tell a superior what to do. But Captain Crane's letter displays a great deal of confidence, and it is likely that he thought he stood a good chance of getting his way. And he may have. Though the commodore is said to have been “boiling mad” at Crane's note, his reply—signed “Your obedient servant”—is both a lengthy and a mealymouthed affair, when one would have thought that a terse note of reprimand would have been in order. It is clear that Commodore Stewart realized that he was involved in a ticklish situation, and that Lieutenant Levy's Jewishness was what it was all about. In his reply, Commodore Stewart “regrets exceedingly” having to disappoint his captain and, after several conciliatory paragraphs, he adds: “Should you be possessed of a knowledge of any conduct on the part of Lieutenant Levy which would render him unworthy of the commission he holds, I would at the request of any commander represent it to the government. As your letter contains no
specific notice of his misconduct, I can find nothing therein whereupon to find a reason for countermanding the order for changing his destination.”

The commodore showed both Crane's and his own letter to Uriah, assured him that “everything would be all right,” and the next morning Uriah set off to present himself to his new commander. Navy protocol required that an arriving officer pay two visits to his captain—the first, briefly and formally to present his orders, and the second, a longer social visit to be carried out within forty-eight hours. But when Uriah was admitted to his cabin, Captain Crane, without even looking up from his desk, said, “The
United States
has as many officers as I need or want.” He ordered that Uriah be escorted off his ship and back to the
Franklin.
Now Crane was not merely advising, but defying, a superior officer.

This, it turned out, was too much for the commodore, who now wrote:

S
IR
:

Lt. U. P. Levy will report to you for duty on board the frigate
United States
under your command.

It is not without regret that a second order is found necessary to change the position of one officer in this squadron.

C
HARLES
S
TEWART

In humiliating fashion, Uriah was rowed back to the
United States
to present his orders a second time. Crane kept him waiting outside his cabin for over two hours. Then, ordering him in, Crane glanced at the letter, handed it back to Uriah, and muttered, “So be it.” He returned to his paperwork. He did not so much as rise, offer a handshake, or even return Uriah's salute. Uriah carried his gear to the wardroom. There he was told by another officer—there were only eight others aboard—that theirs had been “a very pleasant and harmonious officers' mess,” until now.

It was aboard the
United States
that Uriah was required to witness his first flogging. The practice was commonplace. American naval regulations were based on the British Articles of War, which dated back to the earliest days of the Restoration, when they had been formulated by the Duke of York, Lord High Admiral of the British Navy, who later became King James II. Flogging was advocated as the most practical way to maintain discipline and order on shipboard, and its benefits had been touted by commanders for generations. “Low company,” Commodore Edward Thompson had written, “is the bane of all young men, but in a man-of-war you have the collected filth of jails. The scenes of horror and infamy on board are many.” Thus, the horror of flogging was merely another to be endured. By the nineteenth century, when sailors stripped to the waist to work, it was not remarkable to see that the backs of many of them were solidly ridged and bubbled with scar tissue.