As almost all the early Jewish settlers in America belonged to the wealthy classes, and most of them were in everything, except as to their faith, aristocratic Spaniards or Portuguese, it was natural for them to accept the institution of slavery as they found it, and to derive as much benefit from it as other affluent men. There were numerous Jewish slave holders in various parts of the New World, including the West Indies, New York and New England, long before and down to the American Revolution. There are several early references even to American-Jewish slave dealers. The growth of democracy and changed economic conditions had gradually put an end to slavery in the north soon after the beginning of the nineteenth century; but in the South slavery remained common, among Jews as well as among others. Public opinion in the South not only sanctioned slavery, but considered it the basis of its prosperity and predominance; and the prominent Jew of that part of the country was simply acting and feeling like his non-Jewish neighbors and fellow-citizens when he owned slaves or defended the institution at every possible opportunity. And those Jews who attained high political or social position in the South were by force of circumstances pro-slavery men. There was no lack of individual instances of Jews who evinced special tenderness for the black man, and even went so far as to liberate the negroes of whom they were the owners. It is thus related of the philanthropist Judah Touro “that the negroes who waited upon him in the house of the Shepards――with whom he lived for forty years――were all emancipated by his aid and supplied with the means of establishing themselves; and the only slave he personally possessed he trained to business, then emancipated, furnishing him with money and valuable advice.” The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, in its report in 1853, noted that some Jews in the Southern States “have refused to have any right of property in man, or even to have any slaves about them” and that the cruel persecutions they themselves were subjected to tended to make them friends of universal freedom.[37] But these were exceptional, not typical cases, and not more common among Jews than among gentiles.