Levin, Lewis C. (Lewis Charles), 1808-1860

Lewis Charles Levin (November 10, 1808 – March 14, 1860) was an American politician, Know Nothing, and anti-Catholic social activist of the 1840s and 1850s. He served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 1st congressional district between 1845 and 1851. He was the first Jewish man elected as a U.S. Representative though Florida's David Levy Yulee had previously served as a territorial delegate.

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, he graduated from South Carolina College (later the University of South Carolina) in 1828. After graduating, Levin briefly taught school in Woodville, Mississippi before leaving after being wounded in a duel. He then practiced law in Maryland and Kentucky before settling in Philadelphia around 1838. In Philadelphia, Levin founded and edited a journal called the Temperance Advocate and campaigned against Catholic political power. Though not Protestant himself, he supported the concept of nativist Americanism supported by northern Protestants ideologically against Catholics and co-founded the American Party in 1842. Levin was famous as a political orator and a mouthpiece of xenophobia, playing a leading role in inciting the Nativist Riots of 1844 in Philadelphia, which led to the killing of over 20 Irish Americans, the burning of many of their homes and the destruction of three Catholic churches associated with their community.

Shortly after the 1844 Philadelphia riots, Levin ran for Congress and was elected on his party's platform:

• (1) to extend the period of naturalization to twenty-one years;
• (2) to elect only native born to all offices;
• (3) to reject foreign interference in all institutions, social, religious, and political.

After leaving Congress in 1851, Levin continued to campaign for the Native American or Know-Nothing movement, as it became known. He attempted to campaign for U.S. Senator, which prior to the 17th Amendment was a seat elected by the state legislature rather than by popular vote. Levin was accused of bribing members of the Pennsylvania Assembly and was subpoenaed by a state investigation in February 1855. The findings were inconclusive, but Levin never again held office.

Levin and other Nativists helped tilt the 1852 Presidential election toward Democrat Franklin Pierce and away from the Whigs' candidate, the popular Mexican–American War leader General Winfield Scott. There were Catholics in Scott's family, and he was accused of papist connections. Levin was an organizing speaker of the first Know-Nothing Party convention in March 1855. Though in notably failing health, he was a featured speaker at the American Order's rally that autumn in a New York City park.

Suffering from mental decline, Levin ended up being committed in the Philadelphia Hospital for the Insane in 1856 and again in 1859. He died there of "insanity" in March 1860 and was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.