Moses Elias Levy (1782-1854) was one of the antebellum South's most
influential and interesting Jewish citizens. Only recently,
however, have historians begun to appreciate his role as a social
activist. C. S. Monaco discovered Levy's Plan for the Abolition of
Slavery in the late 1990s, and now, in the first full-scale
biography of Levy, Monaco completes the picture of his life and
work. Long known only as the father of David L. Yulee, the first
Jew elected to the U.S. Senate, Levy appears here in all his many,
sometimes contradictory roles: abolitionist and slave owner,
utopian coloniser and former arms-dealer, religious reformer and
biblical conservative. Each aspect of Levy's life and character
comes into sharp relief as Monaco follows him from his affluent
upbringing in a Sephardic Jewish household in Morocco, where his
father was a courtier to the sultan, through his career as a
successful merchant shipper, to his radical reform activities in
Florida. With his many residences abroad, in Morocco, Gibraltar,
Danish Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Curacao, England, Levy
virtually epitomized the Atlantic world, and Monaco escorts readers
from country to country, considering Levy's accomplishments in
each. The sole Jewish voice during the British abolitionist
crusade, Levy was so extraordinary in his activism in London that
some Protestants believed he heralded the millennium. In his search
for equilibrium between Enlightenment thinking and pre-modern
religion, Levy founded the United States' first Jewish
communitarian settlement in the wilds of the East Florida frontier.
As one of the region's largest landowners, he also reintroduced
sugarcane as a viable crop, organised the first Florida development
corporation, helped establish the earliest free public school, and
served as the territory's first education commissioner. In Moses
Levy of Florida, C. S. Monaco offers a radical reappraisal of this
complex and formerly underestimated figure, bringing to light for
the first time the full and fascinating extent of his remarkable
contributions to nineteenth-century America.
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