Posted on 11/21/2006 5:23:06 AM PST by SJackson
Shame of the Yankees - America's Worst Anti-Jewish Action
By: Lewis Regenstein
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
This year, the second day of Chanukah will coincide with the 144th anniversary of the worst official act of anti-Semitism in American history.
On December 17, 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, Union general Ulysses S. Grant issued his infamous "General Order # 11," expelling all Jews "as a class" from his conquered territories within 24 hours. Henry Halleck, the Union general-in-chief, wired Grant in support of his action, saying that neither he nor President Lincoln were opposed "to your expelling traitors and Jew peddlers."
A few months earlier, on August 11, General William Tecumseh Sherman had warned in a letter to the adjutant general of the Union Army that "the country will swarm with dishonest Jews" if continued trade in cotton were encouraged. And Grant also issued orders in November 1862 banning travel in general, by "the Israelites especially," because they were "such an intolerable nuisance," and railroad conductors were told that "no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad."
As a result of Grant's expulsion order, Jewish families were forced out of their homes in Paducah, Kentucky, and Holly Springs and Oxford, Mississippi – and a few were sent to prison. When some Jewish victims protested to President Lincoln, Attorney General Edward Bates advised the president that he was indifferent to such objections.
Lincoln rescinded Grant's odious order, but not before Jewish families in the area had been humiliated, terrified, and jailed, and some stripped of their possessions.
Captain Philip Trounstine of the Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, being unable in good conscience to round up and expel his fellow Jews, resigned his army commission, saying he could "no longer bear the taunts and malice of his fellow officers brought on by that order."
The officials responsible for the United States government's most vicious anti-Jewish actions ever were never dismissed, admonished or, apparently, even officially criticized for the religious persecution they inflicted on innocent citizens. Northern Animus, Southern Hospitality
The exact reason for Grant's decree remains uncertain. As author and military historian Mel Young points out in his book Where They Lie, Grant's own family was involved in cotton speculation (as well as owning slaves), so perhaps he considered Jewish traders to be competition. And the language spoken by the many Dutch and German-speaking peddlers and merchants in the area was probably confused with Yiddish and many were mistakenly taken to be Jewish.
But most likely the underlying reason for the order was the prejudice against and hatred of Jews so widely felt among the Union forces.
Such bigotry is described in detail by Robert Rosen in his authoritative work The Jewish Confederates; by Bertram Korn in his classic American Jewry and the Civil War; and by other historians of the era. They recount how Jews in Union-occupied areas, such as New Orleans and Memphis, were singled out by Union forces for vicious abuse and vilification.
In New Orleans, the ruling general, Benjamin "Beast" Butler, harshly vilifiedJews and was quoted by a Jewish newspaper as saying he could "suck the blood of every Jew, and will detain every Jew as long as he can." An Associated Press reporter from the North wrote that "The Jews in New Orleans and all the South ought to be exterminated. They run the blockade, and are always to be found at the bottom of every new villainy."
Of Memphis, whose Mississippi River port was a center of illegal cotton trading, the Chicago Tribune reported in July 1862: "The Israelites have come down upon the city like locusts. Every boat brings in a load of the hooked-nose fraternity."
Rosen writes at length about the blatant and widespread anti-Semitism throughout the North, with even The New York Times castigating the anti-war Democratic Party for having a chairman who was "the agent of foreign Jew bankers."
New Englanders were especially hateful, and one leading abolitionist minister, Theodore Parker, called Jews "lecherous," and said that their intellects were "sadly pinched in those narrow foreheads" and that they "did sometimes kill a Christian baby at the Passover."
Meanwhile, in the South, Jews were playing a prominent role in the Confederate government and armed forces, and "were used to being treated as equals," as Rosen puts it, an acceptance they had enjoyed for a century and a half.
Dale and Theodore Rosengarten, in A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life, observe that in 1800 Charleston had more Jews than any city in North America, and many were respected citizens, office holders, and successful entrepreneurs. Some referred to the city as "our Jerusalem" and Myer Moses, my maternal family patriarch, in 1806 called his hometown "this land of milk and honey." And so it seemed.
Some 3,000 or more Jews fought for the South, practically every male of military age. Many carried with them to the front the famous soldiers' prayer written by Richmond rabbi Max Michelbacher, who after secession had issued a widely-published benediction comparing Southerners to "the Children of Israel crossing the Red Sea."
Many Jewish Confederates distinguished themselves by showing, along with their Christian comrades, amazing courage, dedication and valor, and enduring incredible hardships against overwhelming and often hopeless odds.
The Confederacy's secretary of war (he would later become secretary of state) was Judah P. Benjamin, and the top Confederate commander, General Robert E. Lee, was renowned for making every effort to accommodate his Jewish soldiers on their holidays.
Some find it peculiar that a people once held in slavery by the Egyptians, and who celebrate their liberation every year at Passover, would fight for a nation dedicated to maintaining that institution. But while slavery is usually emphasized, falsely, as the cause of the war, Confederate soldiers felt they were fighting for their homeland and their families, against an invading army that was trying, with great success, to kill them and their comrades, burn their homes, and destroy their cities.
Anyone with family who fought to defend the South, as over two dozen members of my extended family did, cannot help but appreciate the dire circumstances our ancestors encountered. The Moses Family
Near the end of the War Between the States, as I grew up hearing it called, my great grandfather, Andrew Jackson Moses, participated in a dangerous mission as hopeless as it was valiant. The date was April 9, 1865, the same day Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. Having run away from school at 16 to become a Confederate scout, Jack rode out as part of a hastily formed local militia to defend his hometown of Sumter, South Carolina.
Approaching rapidly were the 2,700 men of Potter's Raiders, a unit attached to Sherman's army that had just burned Columbia and most everything else in its path, and Sumter expected similar treatment.
Along wih a few other teenagers, old men, invalids, and wounded from the local hospital, Sumter's 158 ragtag defenders were able to hold off Potter's battle-seasoned veterans for over an hour and a half at the cost of a dozen lives.
Jack got away with a price on his head, and Sumter was not burned after all. But some buildings were, and there are documented instances of murder, rape, and arson by the Yankees, including the torching of our family's 196 bales of cotton.
Meanwhile, on that same day, Jack's eldest brother, Lt. Joshua Lazarus Moses, who'd been wounded in the war's first real battle, First Manassas (Bull Run), was defending Mobile in the last infantry battle of the war. With his forces outnumbered 12 to one, Josh was commanding an artillery battalion that, before being overrun, fired the last shots in defense of Mobile.
Refusing to lay down his arms, he was killed in a battle at Fort Blakely a few hours after Lee, unbeknownst to them, had surrendered. In that battle, one of Josh's brothers, Perry, was wounded, and another brother, Horace, was captured while laying land mines.
The fifth brother, Isaac Harby Moses, having served with distinction in combat in the legendary Wade Hampton's cavalry, rode home from North Carolina after the Battle of Bentonville, the last major battle of the war, where he had commanded his company after all the officers had been killed or wounded. His mother proudly observed in her memoirs that he never surrendered to the enemy forces.
He was among those who fired the first shots of the war when his company of Citadel cadets opened up on the Union ship, Star of the West, which was attempting to resupply the besieged Fort Sumter in January 1861, three months before the war officially began. Last Order Of The Lost Cause
The Moses brothers' uncle, Major Raphael J. Moses, from Columbus, Georgia, is credited with being the father of Georgia's peach industry. He was General James Longstreet's chief commissary officer and was responsible for supplying and feeding up to 50,000 men (including porters and other non-combatants).
Their commander, Robert E. Lee, had forbidden Moses from entering private homes in search of supplies during raids into Union territory, even when food and other provisions were in painfully short supply. And he always paid for what he took from farms and businesses, albeit in Confederate tender – often enduring, in good humor, harsh verbal abuse from the local women.
Interestingly, Moses ended up attending the last meeting and carrying out the last order of the Confederate government, which was to deliver the remnant of the Confederate treasury ($40,000 in gold and silver bullion) to help feed, supply and provide medical help to the defeated Confederate soldiers in hospitals and straggling home after the war – weary, hungry, often sick or wounded, shoeless, and in tattered uniforms. With the help of a small group of determined armed guards, he successfully carried out the order from President Jefferson Davis, despite repeated attempts by mobs to forcibly take the bullion.
Major Moses's three sons also served the Confederacy. One of them, Albert Moses Luria, was killed in 1862 at age 19 after courageously throwing a live Union artillery shell out of his fortification before it exploded, thereby saving the lives of many of his compatriots. He was the first Jewish Confederate killed in the war; his cousin Josh, killed at Mobile, the last.
Moses had always been intensely proud of his Jewish heritage, having named one son Luria after an ancestor who was court physician to Spain's Queen Isabella. Another son he named Nunez, after Dr. Samuel Nunez, the court physician in Lisbon who fled religious persecution in Portugal and arrived from England in July 1733 with some 41 other Jews on a tiny, storm-tossed ship. As one of the first Jews in Georgia, Nunez is credited with having saved the colony in Savannah from perishing from malaria or some ther kind of tropical fever.
After the war, Raphael Moses was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives and named chairman of the Judiciary Committee. One of his best known writings, reproduced countless times in books and articles, is a lengthy, open letter he wrote in 1878 to a political opponent who'd attacked him for being "a Jew."
This was a rare deviation from the general acceptance the South showed toward its Jews, and Moses hit back hard.
"Had your overburdened heart sought relief in some exhibition of unmeasured gratitude, had you a wealth of gifts and selected from your abundance your richest offering to lay at my feet," he wrote, "you could not have honored me more highly, nor distinguished me more gratefully than by proclaiming me a Jew."
One cannot help but respect the dignity and gentlemanly policies of Lee and Moses, and the courage of the greatly outnumbered, out-supplied but rarely outfought Confederate soldiers.
In stark contrast and in violation of the then-prevailing rules of warfare, the troops of Union generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan burned and looted homes, farms, courthouses, libraries, businesses, and entire cities full of defenseless civilians (including my hometown of Atlanta) as part of official Union policy not simply to defeat but to utterly destroy the South.
And before, during, and after the war, this Union army (led by many of the same generals, including Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Custer) used the same and even worse tactics to massacre Native Americans in what we euphemistically call the Indian Wars. It would be more accurate to call it mass murder – a virtual genocide – of Native Americans, including helpless old men, women, and children in their villages. Why We Revere Our Ancestors
The valor of the Jewish Confederates and the other Southern soldiers and the blatant anti-Semitism so prevalent in the North form a nearly forgotten chapter of American history. It is, seemingly, an embarrassment to many Jewish historians – and hardly politically correct – in this day of constantly reiterated demonization of the Confederacy and worshipful reverence for Lincoln and his brutal generals.
But the anniversary of Grant's little-remembered Nazi-like decree and his other atrocities should serve to remind us what the Southern soldiers and civilians were up against. Perhaps it will help people understand why native Southerners, including many Jewish families, revere their ancestors' courage and, despite the controversy it causes in certain "enlightened" circles, still take much pride in this heritage.
Lewis Regenstein, a native Atlantan, is a writer and author. He can be reached at
free dixie,sw
Seceding and revolting, six of one, half a dozen of the other, right?
Wrong.
Secession is done peacefully, and may end in war, but a revolt is war first and foremost. The colonist demanded nicely to be separate from England, they didn't go sack British garrisons in New York and New Jersey prior to declaring independence.
When South Caroline and the New England states were going to secede, they held conferences and conventions, they didn't rush into the White House and perform a coup d'etat.
I hope this makes sense to you.
As for the Founders, all save Alexander Hamilton (another Whig statist) were at odds with Lincoln's philosophy. When Washington had to put down the Whiskey Rebellion with troops (first suspension of habeas corpus in America), he did so peacefully and rescinded the tariff that upset the rebels in the first place.
And guess who proposed the tax that started the uprising in the first place? Yep, Hamilton, Lincoln's hero. The difference between Lincoln and Washington is that Washington listened to the people and backed off, Lincoln did not.
And let me spell something out for those who don't realize the cost of the Civil War in human life. Adjusted for the current US population it would be the equivalent of 6 million dead Americans. Think about that when you see all the pissing and moaning over a couple thousand dead in Iraq.
Also, Lincoln expected the war to last a month or two. He completely botched his assessment of its duration and cost.
The vast majority of the southron contingent around here could take a lesson from General Lee.
What I don't understand is why you hold our forefathers in such esteem, but hold Lee in such contempt. Perhaps he committed the one sin America cannot abide. He lost.
I don't hold Lee in any contempt at all. But I don't raise him high on the pedestal, either. He fought for what he believed in. I happen to believe that his cause was wrong, and his loyalty to state over county misplaced.
may i suggest you look up the article in Army Lawyer, written by the Judge Advocate General, a serving Major General of the US Army, in 1999?
in that article,the General states that CPT Wurtz:
1. was tried by a tribunal, which had NO authority to try a civilian,
2. KNOWINGLY refused to allow him to call witnesses in his defense,
3.ALLOWED the subornation of perjury to be admitted to evidence, which was KNOWN to be FALSE before the trial opened,
4.UNLAWFULLY convicted him &
5. sentenced him to hang.
it was NOT either a FAIR trial NOR did CPT Wurtz commit ANY of the crimes for which he was hanged! NONE of them.
free dixie,sw
I didn't overstate or understate the case on Lincoln and slavery at all. His clear objective was "preserving the Union" - not freeing slaves.
But hey, let's just make this simple. There were four slave states in the North and Lincoln let them keep their slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was aimed at the South, but slavery in the North was just ducky.
It was all about tariffs and Lincoln's obstinate devotion to the American System.
And also, I take issue with your "typical southern distortion" nonsense. Although currently in the South, I just moved back after 15 years in New York City and New Jersey.
My view on this matter has nothing whatsoever to do with fidelity to the south but rather with criticism of Lincoln, who was a total politician who ruled with an iron fist. Many nations rid themselves of slavery peacefully through compensation. The Industrial Revolution just a few years later would've ended it period. Lincoln wanted to collect the huge tariffs on the South and that was that, and he did so at a price that was far, far, in excess of even what he imagined.
Now that aside, did Lee have his own slaves? Both Fitzhugh Lee and General Long (both biographer of Lee) seem indicate that he did.
As for the Liberia claim - I have not heard that, but if he did, he did it as the executor of his father-in-law's will.
Lee never owned Arlington or the White House Plantation. At his father-in-law's death, Arlington went to his oldest son Custis and the White House Plantation to Rooney Lee. That is why Custis sued the government for the return of Arlington and the Washington memorabilia that disappeared during Arlington and the White House's occupation.
Washington Parke Custis allowed 5 years for the training of his "former" slaves in business so they could support themselves. In 1863, Lee took time from the war to sign the emancipation papers.
it was ANYTHING but a FAIR election!
free dixie,sw
laughing AT you, fool!
free dixie,sw
No, there is no contempt for the men in gray in any of your writings. No. LOL!
you'd look SMARTER!
free dixie,sw
If secession is done legally, and if the seceding states don't go out and shoot up federal forts. Then it most certainly ends in war.
...but a revolt is war first and foremost. The colonist demanded nicely to be separate from England, they didn't go sack British garrisons in New York and New Jersey prior to declaring independence.
They fought several pitched battles with the British between April 1775 and July 1776. They raised an army, captured Fort Ticonderoga, invaded Canada, lost and later forced the British out of Boston, and battled for New York, all before declaring independence. Hardly peaceful actions.
When South Caroline and the New England states were going to secede, they held conferences and conventions, they didn't rush into the White House and perform a coup d'etat.
And they didn't secede either. Didn't even seriously threaten to secede.
As for the Founders, all save Alexander Hamilton (another Whig statist) were at odds with Lincoln's philosophy. When Washington had to put down the Whiskey Rebellion with troops (first suspension of habeas corpus in America), he did so peacefully and rescinded the tariff that upset the rebels in the first place.
When Washington put down the Whiskey Rebellion it was by calling up 13,000 troops and sending them after the rebels. And interestingly enough Washington relied on the same piece of legislation to justify his actions as Lincoln used to call up the troops to put down the Southern rebellion, the Militia Act of 1792.
Oh, and it was a tax not a tariff. Tariffs are on imports, Washington's government was taxing domestically produced whiskey.
And let me spell something out for those who don't realize the cost of the Civil War in human life. Adjusted for the current US population it would be the equivalent of 6 million dead Americans. Think about that when you see all the pissing and moaning over a couple thousand dead in Iraq.
Let me ask you this. Had the war cost 600,000 lives, but the South had emerged victorious, would you say it was worth the cost?
Also, Lincoln expected the war to last a month or two. He completely botched his assessment of its duration and cost.
There was a lot of that going around then.
And when they raised their right hand, did they do so under duress or threat.
The Union soldiers wanted to see it done. They had fought for 4 years. They wanted victory in the field and voted for the man who believed that they could win.
Name-calling is about all he's got. You'll search far and wide for a ration post from him, backed up with verifiable documentation. He likes to quote from books that don't exist.
I saw that on a Web Site very good read too
How about providing a link? How about providing a name?
The article might hold a little water if it had been written in, say, 1899 by someone who actually served on the tribunal.
Any lawyer, military or civilian, can speculate about any conviction from 150 years ago and turn it upside down. That's why they're LAWYERS. Duh!
George Washington Parke Custis was dead. His daughter was his heir. Property of the wife belonged to the husband. Lee signed the papers that emancipated them.
Now that aside, did Lee have his own slaves? Both Fitzhugh Lee and General Long (both biographer of Lee) seem indicate that he did.
As do Douglas Southall Freeman and the Library of Congress.
As for the Liberia claim - I have not heard that, but if he did, he did it as the executor of his father-in-law's will.
No, it was done much earlier for some of his own slaves and while his father-in-law was still alive. At least one pair, William and Rosebella Burke, made the trip with their family in 1853. In Liberia, William Burke attended a Presbyterian seiminary and became an ordained minister. For those who condemn Lincoln for his support of colonization let me remind them that that was something William Burke could never have done had he remained in the South. We know about the Burke's because they corresponded with the Lee family up until the rebellion. But if Lee paid passager for the Burke's then there is no reason to believe he didn't do it for others as well.
Washington Parke Custis allowed 5 years for the training of his "former" slaves in business so they could support themselves. In 1863, Lee took time from the war to sign the emancipation papers.
Actually Lee worked the slaves, hiring them out to help pay off some of his father-in-law's debts. And Lee freed the slaves in December 1862, a day or two before the Emancipation Proclamation became effective, and about 5 months after the 5 year time limit that his father-in-law's will required. But since Lee was busy fighting the rebellion then one cannot criticize him for being just a little bit tardy.
Oh, and according to Virginia law those slaves that Lee freed had 12 months in which to leave Virginia or else they could be sold back into slavery. Nice guys, huh?
Of course, Spooner is writing before the 13th amendment DOES free all the slaves, including those in areas not in rebellion and thus not subject to the military measure that was the Emancipation Proclamation.
What part of that is so hard for you to comprehend? A tax on imported foreign goods, not on domestically produced goods.
However let me hasten to add that I wasn't trying to be hard on you, just accurate. Confusing tariff with an excise tax is among the least of the errors you've been posting.
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