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No kidding. My guess is, if stories like that existed, it was more than likely due to rampant anti-Semitism in the Northern states. In Southern cities, Jews were welcomed into high society and treated like equals, in Northern cities, they were spat upon and segregated into ghettoes, so any talk of moral high ground on the part of Northerners evaporates when you see how people of different ethnicities were treated. The first state to elect a governor of Italian descent was Mississippi. But don't tell that to Northerners, who are often so full of themselves with their beliefs that they are better than Southerners that it gets nauseating.

It is interesting to note that while the Davis administration had a Jew in a cabinet-level position, Mr. Lincoln had none. And that 2 of the 22 Confederate senators (9%) were Jewish. I don't think the U.S. Senate had any, but I'd have to look that up.

It's also interesting to note that the first general on either side to provide separate religious services for his Jewish soldiers was R.E. Lee; also, the only cemetery in the United States dedicated exclusively to Jewish Civil War veterans is located in Richmond. Its funding was a joint effort by the Hebrew Ladies Association of Richmond and the United Confederate Veterans.

Antebellum Charleston or New Orleans wasn't so different from South Africa in the gold and diamond rush days. Educated Jews were successful there, because the White community needed commercial and professional talent. In New York or London, it was harder to make one's mark.

I doubt very many Jews were spat on in antebellum Philadelphia or Boston or New York or Chicago. Some Jews were accepted into the elite in Philadelphia (many intermarried or converted, but that was also true of many acculturated Southern Jews).

Anti-semitism grew stronger after the Civil War with the rise in the immigrant Jewish population. As minorities grow larger, so do frictions. Southern immigrant populations, whether Catholic or Jewish, were not that large, but one could see some of those frictions come to a head in the 1891 anti-Italian riots in New Orleans.

In the American Civil War there were at least seven Jewish generals on the Union side, and apparently none on the Condfederate side. That's as valid or significant a statistic as any other (There were also six Jewish recipients of the Medal of Honor in the Civil War).

"They think they're better than us" is a two way street. A lot of the neoconfederate factoid collectors and creators really do think they're better than the rest of the country. Why encourage them?