The Jewish Soldier at Andersonville

Jewish-American History on the Web ^ | December, 1888 | Alice Hyneman Rhine

[Alouette]

Unlike the mass of war literature of the period, the following sketch in place of treating of the generals in command is simply a chronicle of passages in the war record of the "rank and file." A humble sergeant, who among the many generous high-spirited young men volunteered in "61" to fight for the perpetuation of the Union, and who through a self-negation equal to Sidney's heroic act, suffered captivity and death in the prison pen at Andersonville.

Elias Leon Hyneman, one of the martyrs of our Civil war, was the son of Rebekah Hyneman, a poetess whose position in American Jewish literature corresponds to that of Grace Aguilar's among English writers. His father was the brother of Leon Hyneman, the well-known Masonic author and editor. From both parents he inherited a handsome form, dignified bearing and oriental type of face. A portrait taken in his uniform July '61, represents him, a tall fine-looking young man with the bearing of a soldier. One can almost imagine fire flashing from the large luminous black eyes, and expect to hear the word of command issue from the small resolute mouth, over which curls a thick, soft black moustache drawn military fashion away from the thin curved lip. It is a beautiful face, haughty and high spirited. Every lineament in it is indicative of pride and lofty resolve. There is the aquiline nose, square determined chin, broad high forehead shaded by waving black hair, finely penciled brows, and a massive well shaped bead, poised firmly above the broad shoulders, holding itself proudly and defiantly erect as though its owner instead of being an ordinary soldier, commanded armies or ruled the destinies of a world.

[Alouette]

The Vicious Babushka

[NavVet]

I am one of those evil Southerners, so I think it best if you remove me from your Ping List.

[flowerplough]

5th Pennsylvania Cavalry.

My Great-great Grandfather and two coworkers’ ancestors also “jined” this particular cavalry. According to this (http://www.pa-roots.com/pacw/cavalry/5thcav/5thcavcoc.html) roster, Elias L. Hyneman was a Sergeant who enlisted July 26, 1861, for three years.

Captured June 29, 1864; died at Andersonville, Ga., February 7, 1865; grave # 12,610; Vet

[RegulatorCountry]

Judah Benjamin was another fine Jew in that conflict.

[RegulatorCountry]

When John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln in 1865, Davis and Benjamin were suspected of having plotted the event and, as the martyred Lincoln was compared to Christ in the Northern press, Benjamin was pilloried as Judas Iscariot. When the South was defeated, fearing that he could never receive a fair trial if charged with Lincoln’s murder, Benjamin fled to England, where he lived out his life as a barrister, publishing a classic legal text on the sale of personal property. Evans speculates that, had Benjamin been captured by Union troops, the United States might have had its own Dreyfus Trial.

A solitary man, estranged from his wife, Benjamin died alone in England. His daughter arranged to have him buried in the Catholic Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Until 1938, when the Paris chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy provided an inscription with his American name, his simple tombstone was engraved with the name "Philippe Benjamin."

While Judah Benjamin preferred such obscurity, his prominence as a Jew assured that he would come under harsh scrutiny during and after his life. For example, on the floor of the Senate Ben Wade of Ohio charged Benjamin, a defender of slavery, with being an "Israelite in Egyptian clothing." With characteristic eloquence, Benjamin replied, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain."

[SunkenCiv]

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[SJackson]

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[Alouette]

died at Andersonville, Ga., February 7, 1865; grave # 12,610; Vet

His grave is actually in Philadelphia. In 1866, his family and the Civil War equivalent of "Zaka" went to Andersonville and retrieved the remains for Jewish burial.

[Wuli]

I have a relative (Albert Worthey), from my mother’s side, buried at the cemetery commemorating the Union soldiers who died at Andersonville.

He heard his father, a Baptist minister, preaching in support of Lincoln and damning slavery, and on June 25, 1861, at age 16, he ran off with a friend to Springfield, and joined the 21st Illinois regiment, then commanded by Ulysses S. Grant.

A little over two years later, in September 1863, he was captured at the battle of Chicamauga, in Georgia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chickamauga

He was taken to Andersonville, where he later died.

The family later learned of his gruesome death from buddies who made it back home at war’s end.

For Albert, like the majority of those who died at Andersonville, the basic cause was starvation - they had very little to eat.

Towards the end, in what the Confederate soldiers saw as compassionate, they offered the starving an early release from their misery. If a prisoner could simply not take it any more but still had enough strength to walk across a particular line in the prison yard, the Confederate guards would provide the bullet to end their misery.

Albert was said by friends who later reported on his death, to have been nothing but skin and bones when he took the walk to the line he knew the guards would use to end his life.

I cry every time I think of this ancestor in my family, and see the pictures of Andersonville.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andersonville_National_Historic_Site

http://images.google.com/images?q=andersonville+prison+camp&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=vOsbSrrcMsuLtgfMivnnDA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title

[justiceseeker93]

His grave is actually in Philadelphia.

Thanks for the info, Alouette. The story doesn't mention his hometown, so I suppose that answers the question.

[woollyone]

ty for the ping.

A sad chapter in our Nation’s history.