While the last vestiges of discrimination against the Jews were being removed in Maryland, a grandiose plan for solving the Jewish problem through colonization in America was conceived by one of the most prominent Jews of New York. This man was Mordecai Manuel Noah (b. in Philadelphia, July 19, 1785; d. in New York March 22, 1851). He was of Portuguese descent, a son of Manuel Mordecai Noah of South Carolina, who served in the Revolutionary army, and a cousin of Henry M. Phillips (b. in Philadelphia, 1811; d. there 1884), who was a member from the fourth district of Pennsylvania in the Thirty-fifth Congress (elected as a Democrat in 1856), and besides occupying various positions of honor and trust, also served as Grand Master of Free Masons of his native State. Noah was left an orphan at the age of four, and was brought up by his maternal grandfather, Jonas Phillips (b. in Germany, 1736; d. in Philadelphia, 1803). Noah was apprenticed to a carver and gilder, but his studious habits and abilities attracted the attention of some prominent men, and it is said that the financier, Robert Morris, procured the cancellation of his indentures and obtained for him an appointment as clerk in the office of the Auditor of the United States Treasury. Upon the removal of the national capital to Washington, young Noah resigned his clerkship and accepted employment as a reporter at the sessions of the Pennsylvania Legislature at Harrisburg, where he acquired his first experience in journalism. Several years later he removed to Charleston, S. C., where he became in 1809 the editor of “The City Gazette” and became an ardent advocate of war with England. This was against the prevailing spirit of the wealthy seaport town, and it involved him in many quarrels and in several duels, in one of which he killed his opponent. It was also in this city that his first play, “Paul and Alexis,” or “The Orphans of the Rhine,” was performed for the first time. It was afterwards taken to England, where it was somewhat altered, and with its name changed to “The Wandering Boys” was brought out in 1820 at the Park Theatre in New York with great success.