Jews and the Civil War
Sermon, July 30, 2004
Rabbi Bruce Kadden
“Only 150,000 Jews lived in the United States on the eve of the Civil War,
but their collective experience provides a study, in microcosm, of the
accommodating power of American democracy. That the Jews emerged from the
ordeal of war with new civil guarantees and a heightened sense of belonging
testifies to the temperateness of their leaders and to the decency of Americans
at large.”
Those words, from the back cover of Bertram W. Korn’s book American Jewry
and the Civil War, aptly summarize the Jewish experience during this most
important event in American history. As I continue my series of sermons on
American Jewish history, I turn this evening to issues which affected the Jewish
community during the Civil War.
At the time of the American Revolution, only a few thousand Jews were living
in the 13 colonies. Most were Sephardim, who had made there way to North
America either from South or Central America or directly from Holland. The
Jewish population of the United States remained small through the early 19th
century. But events in Europe would change that. The French conquest of
Germany by Napoleon had brought civil rights to the Jews there, but when he was
defeated at Waterloo, many of these rights were revoked. This turn of events
led to significant emigration from Germany, not only of Jews, but of Catholics
and Protestants as well.
According to Howard Sachar, “two million German-speaking Europeans migrated
to the United States” between 1815 and the beginning of the Civil War. Among
them were almost 150,000 Jews. They settled not only in East Coast cities such
as New York, and Charleston, cities which already had synagogues and small
Jewish communities, but in the Midwest and South, in such places as Cincinnati,
St. Louis and New Orleans. Some even made their way out west to San Francisco
and Seattle.
Though they were a growing presence, according to Sachar, “they remained
essentially an immigrant one. Dispersed throughout the country, still without
authoritative leadership, still vulnerable economically and psychologically as
non-Christians, they were more exposed even more than Gentile immigrants to the
pressures and ideologies of American life.”
Thus, as the issues of slavery and secession from the Union became
increasingly contentious, Jewish leaders found themselves pressured to speak out
on these issues. And although they turned to the Torah and other Jewish sources
to support their positions, they were more strongly influenced by their
circumstance of geography than by religious ideology. For the most part, rabbis
and Jewish leaders in the South supported slavery and the cause of the southern
states, while their northern counterparts voiced opposition to slavery and to
secessionism.
Some northern Jewish leaders refrained from taking a public position on these
controversial issues, but others –like Rabbi David Einhorn of Baltimore’s Har
Sinai Congregation—spoke out vociferously. Though Maryland was a border state
which did not secede from the Union, many of its citizens were sympathetic to
the South and its cause. “Einhorn sermonized so vigorously against slavery from
his Baltimore pulpit that a secessionist mob eventually destroyed his
congregational newspaper and forced him to leave town,” according to Sachar.
On the other hand, Rabbi Morris Raphall of New York spoke in favor of
slavery, citing biblical texts to support his position. While Rabbi Raphall
pointed out that the slave “is a person in whom the dignity of human nature is
to be respected” which was clearly not the case in the South, his remarks were
widely interpreted as supporting this institution.
As for Jewish leaders of the South, no record of public opposition to slavery
has been recorded; a few Jews wrote in support of the practice. In fact, many
Jews, like their neighbors, owned slaves and some were slave dealers, though the
claim that Jews ran the slave business is demonstrably false.
When the southern states seceded from the Union, Jewish leaders increased
their public support for the Confederacy. Judah P. Benjamin, who had been a
senator from Louisiana until he resigned, became one of Jefferson Davis’s
closest advisors and served in his cabinet as Secretary of War and then as
Secretary of State. Benjamin and other prominent southern Jews were often the
subject of anti-Semitism, even though their ties to the Jewish community were
tenuous at best.
Anti-Jewish sentiment was also apparent in the North, and at the center of
two significant controversies. Until the Civil War, all military chaplains had
been Christian. In 1861, a bill before congress insisted that regimental
chaplains be “regularly ordained minister[s] of some Christian denomination.”
Despite an attempt by at least one Congressman to amend the bill to include
other religions, it passed without change.
The matter, however, attracted little attention until it was discovered that
a regiment of the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry had a Jewish chaplain,
Michael Allen. Although he was a devout Jew, who had studied under Rabbi Isaac
Leeser, he was a chaplain to all the troops, and apparently served without any
controversy until the fact that he was a Jew was made public by YMCA worker.
Rather than face the humiliation of being dismissed from his post, Allen
resigned, citing ill health.
This incident caught the attention of Jewish leaders, who began a campaign to
change the law. Before the end of the year, the matter was brought to the
attention of President Lincoln by Jewish leaders, and the President promised to
support “a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the
Israelites.” By the middle of the next year, Lincoln indeed signed a law,
delivering on his promise.
A more serious controversy soon arose, however. The war had brought
disruption to a number of industries and to the transportation and trade of
certain commodities. Yet, the demand for basic products, such cotton, as well
as military and medical supplies, remained high. Many Jews were among traders
in such cities as Memphis; they often stood out because of their accents and
appearance.
General U.S. Grant initially ordered that within 24 hours “all cotton
speculators, Jews, and other vagrants…leave” the Department of Tennessee as his
territory was called. But when this decree was made official by Order No. 11,
it only made reference to Jews, accusing them of “violating every regulation of
trade established by the Treasury Department.” Although aimed a traders, the
order was applied to all Jews in the territory, which encompassed not only
Tennessee, but also Mississippi and much of Kentucky.
In response to this Order, Cesar Kaskel, a merchant from Paducah, Kentucky,
sent a telegram of protest to President Lincoln and then traveled to the White
House to meet with the President. Although reaction to Grant’s Order was mixed,
Kaskel had many letters and editorials in opposing the measure. Lincoln
immediately cancelled the order. Although Grant never expressed regret for his
order, as President he became “a model of solicitude in behalf of Jews living
both in the Untied States and abroad,” according to Sachar.
The end of the Civil War began the long, but difficult process of healing.
Many Jewish soldiers had died on both sides and family members had often fought
against other family members. The Jewish leadership took a number of lessons
from the war, lessons that we should remember today. First of all they
recognized the importance of speaking out on the issues of the day. Although
Rabbi Einhorn was run out of town for his outspoken opposition to slavery, and
other rabbis and community leaders were criticized for the stands they took,
most Jews wanted their leaders to speak out.
A second lesson was the importance of access to political leaders and the
political process. The chaplaincy controversy and Grant’s Order No. 11
demonstrated that being able to work with members of Congress and the President
was crucial to protecting the rights of Jews. Indeed, even Grant, on becoming
President, recognized the benefits of supporting Jewish causes.
A final lesson that the Jewish community learned was the need for the Jewish
community to be unified. Up to this point, there was no national body or
organization that represented the Jewish community. Individual Jews, because of
their prominence, often spoke for the Jewish community, but their voices
sometimes clashed, to the detriment of their cause. Next week I will discuss
the effort to bring the American Jewish community together by Isaac Mayer Wise.
The Jewish community learned much from its experiences before and during the
Civil War. It learned that it was important to speak out on the issues of the
day; it learned of the importance of access to political power, and it learned
of the importance to being a unified community. Almost a century and a half
later, we still need to remind ourselves of these important lessons as we
struggle with the issues that we face today. Building on these lessons, we can
maintain a strong Jewish community and continue to play a vital role in the
unfolding story of the American people.
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