Objection was made to this resolution as an encroachment upon the powers of the Executive, and action was delayed for a long time. A resolution of a similar nature, which was reported to the Senate from the Committee on Foreign Relations, February 17, 1853, met the same fate. But all these discussions had the effect of the Senate refusing to ratify the treaty with Switzerland in the form in which it was sent to it. Mr. Mann thereupon proceeded to negotiate another treaty which, while striking from it the clause objected to by the President and the other notable men mentioned above, yet in another form inserted a clause, the effect of which was the same as that of the clause which had been stricken out. Article I of this new treaty read as follows:
The citizens of the United States of America and the citizens of Switzerland shall be admitted and treated upon a footing of reciprocal equality in the two countries, where such admission and treatment shall not conflict with the constitutional or legal provisions, as well Federal as State and Cantonal of the contracting parties.
Despite the previous and many subsequent protests from numerous Jews, and also despite the attention of the government, which was attracted to the case of A. H. Gootman, an American-Jewish citizen, who was ordered expelled from the Canton of Neufchatel in 1853, the treaty containing the above article was ratified by the Senate November 6, 1855. Ratifications were exchanged two days afterward, and the treaty was proclaimed November 9, 1855, by President Franklin Pierce (1804–69), when William Learned Marcy (1786–1857) was Secretary of State.
In 1856 the above mentioned Mr. Gootman, who had remained in Neufchatel by special permission, again requested, through the American minister to Switzerland, Mr. Theo. S. Fay, the intervention of the United States Government against his expulsion. In his letter to the State Department Mr. Fay states it as a matter of fact that the treaty between the two republics “does not grant to Israelites the right of domicile in Switzerland,” and in a second letter he says “that it may be superfluous to repeat that the obnoxious clause in the treaty was unavoidable without a revision of the federal constitution of Switzerland.” He also repeats “that the admission of American Jews would necessitate that of Jews of other nations, and particular inconvenience is apprehended from the usurious Israelitish population of the French province of Alsace.” This second Gootman case became generally known, and public sentiment was aroused against the treaty. The result of the agitation was apparent even in the general press of the country, and many protest meetings were held, memorials drawn and forwarded to Washington and committees appointed to consider the matter. A delegation of prominent Jews went to the Capital in October, 1857, and presented a memorial to President James Buchanan (1791–1868), who gave an explicit promise to remedy the wrong of which the Jews complained.