“Commemoration of the 135th anniversary of the battle of Lexington”

As a sort of “guest blogger” entry today I’m running an article that appeared in the 19 Apr 1910 Boston Herald reporting on an anniversary oration in Lexington by Rabbi Charles Fleischer (1871–1942), then of Temple Adath Israel of Boston.

Exercises Begin at Lexington

Rabbi Fleischer Delivers Address on “Americanizing America” and Criticises Conditions Prevailing at Present Here.

“Is America American? Are we as a people, and as individuals, democratic? Are our institutions democratic? Have we made any serious effort to organize our national life on the basis of democracy?” These were the questions asked, and answered in the negative, by Rabbi Charles Fleischer in an address at Lexington last night.

The occasion was the commemoration of the 135th anniversary of the battle of Lexington, at the town hall, by the Lexington Historical Society. Rabbi Fleischer’s address was on “Americanizing Americans.” He said in part:

“Let us see what this process of Americanizing and democratizing America implies. In politics it means, not only war on the machine and on boss rule, but it means an end to discrimination against sex, the actual institution of universal suffrage, female as well as male, this being implied in a political democracy, in which the ballot is the symbol of social status.

“Also it means the elimination of business from politics, the cutting away of that cancerous growth, the corruption of corporate influence, which threatens the integrity of our political democracy. We don’t want the business man as such in politics. Nor, on the other hand, is the tariff to be considered a political question, but an industrial problem.

“The Americanization of America further involves the democratization of industry to the end of distributing more equably (not equally, of course), the fruits of the co-operation between capital and labor. This is demanded by the situation, not only to promote economic justice, but still more is it needed in order to prevent our degenerating into the most corroding type of human society, a soulless plutocracy—already prefigured in our worship of the almighty dollar.[”]

I share this not because it offers information about the Revolutionary War but because it shows what at least some Americans of 115 years ago thought that American history pointed toward.

Charles Fleischer was a Reform rabbi—radical Reform, some might say. He left Temple Adath Israel the year following this address in order to start a non-sectarian movement he called “Sunday Commons.” Here’s a Commentary article about Fleischer written by Arthur Mann in 1954.