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Lincoln rescinded Grant's odious order, but not before Jewish families in the area had been humiliated, terrified, and jailed, and some stripped of their possessions.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
You seem to think that I will be shocked that Lee had slaves. I'm not.
Nice guys, huh?
I am fully aware of the slave situation in Virginia and in the South. I am not shocked nor dismayed by it. You cannot surprise me with these little tidbits. So, you could save yourself some time, (only if you want) and leave those off your post.
Now, I would like to know how a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army could afford all those slaves?
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. Disallowed. Projected generality with no foundation but your opinion, which you now substitute as fact.
Non,
You said a tariff was not a tax and it is. There are domestic and foreign tariffs. A domestic one (as was the case with the Whiskey Rebellion) is sometimes called an excise tax, which often referred to as a tariff.
But the larger point is this my friend, it's a tax, no two ways about it. It's the govt in the pockets of someone. You can mince words and call it a "duty" or whatever, but it's a tax pure and simple.
If they were Julia Grant's property then I believe that yes, they would be considered Ulysses Grant's property. However, most evidence indicates that Julia Grant had use of the slaves but that title remained with her father. The slaves remained at the Dent plantation when the Grant's were out of state, it's hard to believe that Grant would free the one slave we know for a fact he owned and not the others, and Missouri records indicate that the slaves Julia Grant had use of were freed early in 1863 when the rest of the Dent family slaves were emancipated.
Now, I would like to know how a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army could afford all those slaves?
How could Thomas Jackson, a poorly paid college instructor, own as many as 9 or 10 slaves at a single time? Slave owneship was very much a middle-class institution. As for Lee, he married well, to begin with. And an army officer's pay provided a solidly middle-class livestyle.
Disallowed. Projected generality with no foundation but your opinion, which you now substitute as fact.
Then why would Lee pay passage for the Burke's and none of his other emancipated chattel? Did he have it in for them or something?
Two of them, Missouri and Maryland, ended slavery on their own, as did West Virginia. The 13th amendment, pushed by Lincoln and passed through congress after the Republicans made gains in the 1864 election, freed the rest. You guys always squawk about what the EP didn't do, but forget the 13th.
Did you not read the definition you posted from Wikipedia? "A tariff is a tax on foreign goods." It says nothing about domestic tariffs and foreign tariffs. At any rate a domestic tariff would be unconstitutional, per Article I, Section 9, Clause 5 and 6 wouldn't it?
This is nothing but a dodge on your attempt. Had use...no, they were hers. Here is what the official US government website has to say.
Her (Julia) playmates included slave children; eventually, the girls she played with as a child became her slave servants as adults.
By 1855, the Grants farmed 80 acres of land given to Julia as a wedding gift by her father. Ulysses also managed the rest of the White Haven estate. Those days were financially trying for the Grants, but Julia remained supportive of her hard-working husband. She considered herself “a splendid farmer’s wife,” raising chickens and even churning butter. Except for making cake once a week, she left the cooking to the slaves.
Letters helped to ease the pain of separation, and Julia frequently traveled to her husband’s encampments, both alone and with the children. It is ironic to note that her slave, Jule, usually assisted with the children’s care on such trips.
So, if you want hide to behind the "not her properity" gambit, then we really have nothing left to say, because you refuse to be honest. Now, you parse it all you want and put Bill Clinton to shame...but it does not change the fact. Julia Dent Grant had slaves and by your own logic, they belonged to U.S. Grant. But it's okay...they were emancipated. What a good guy.
Stonewall...just shows how little you know about him. He was good in business. He owned a farm, part interest in a saw mill, part interest in a bank. And yes, he owned slaves. Cause most of them came with the wife from North Carolina. And some times, slaves would ask him to because they wanted to work for their freedom and he did it. He had two slaves doing just that.
Again, your last argument is disallowed. Again, not shocked or shamed at the word chattel. You are suppositioning all over the place, and the argument is lost. Maybe the rest didn't want to go to Liberia? That is about as factual as your claim and made from the same straw.
Should read asked him to buy them because
Julia Grant in her memoirs reports that her family slaves remained her property until they were freed by the 13th amendment.
She also reported that she was very upset when her favorite slave ran away in 1864, apparently the slave did not realize that the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to her.
Ok fine, you were wrong Non-Seq, a tariff IS a tax. Just admit as much.
It's scary when people say things like "a tariff is not a tax" - at least to people like me.
Look, here's the bottom line of the Civil War, what the Civil War was all about. Follow me guys.
1) Lincoln was beholden to Northern Industrialists who were losing business to the South because the South traded predominantly with Europe.
2) Lincoln wanted to empower the federal govt and force his Henry Clay ideas (the American System) on everyone in the country by initiating massive publics works projects in the North.
3) Lincoln had to put massive tariffs on the South in order to fund his American system.
4) The South seceded because of the tariff, not because of some imaginary nonsense that Lincoln was going to war to free slaves in America. The Confederate Constitution is clear on this.
5) Lincoln stated he would collect the tariff revenue by force but was assured the war would only last a couple months.
BOTTOM LINE: This was a tariff war, not a war about slavery.
Hey, Alouette, I know that you are busy on the Israeli threads. Do you live in Israel?
I want to make an analogy here that I think will help some regarding the issue of slavery in the Civil War.
Lincoln used slavery the same way Saddam Hussein, Iran, and Osama Bin Laden used the Palestinians as an issue. They could care less about Palestinians. Hussein wanted to be a pan-arab leader, Bin Laden wanted all Westerners out of the Middle East, and Iran wanted the Shah and the US out (Iranians don't even consider themselves arabs, but Persians, and they look down on arabs like the Palestinians).
My point is, even tho they have clear agendas, they use the Palestinians as a sore point, a POLITICAL sore point, just as Lincoln did with slaves. This is why abolitionists HATED Lincoln and saw him for what he was: a politician.
But what Lee did was keep them doing the same plantation work at Arlington and to try to lease them out so that he could pay off some debts. In the end he kept them for two months past the five years that his father in law had stipulated. The slaves, who had been promised their freedom when George Custis died, were not happy to learn they weren't to be free for five more years and three of them tried to escape. They were quickly recaptured and, according to one of them, Wesley Norris, Lee had them all flogged--50 lashes for the two men and 20 for the woman.
Maybe that's the training you're talking about.
Declaration of Causes of Secession
The word "Tariff" does not appear in any of the Declarations of Secession.
SOUTH CAROLINA
But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.
MISSISSIPPI
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
GEORGIA
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.
TEXAS
She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy.
Lincoln's primary concern was keeping the union together. Slavery did not become an issue until 1863.
Yes, a tariff is a tax. But not all taxes are tariffs. The words are not synonyms.
As for the rest of your rant, it's odd how little tariffs are mentioned by the south as the motive for secession, and how often slavery is mentioned.
LOL! The Confederate Constitution FORBADE international slave trading (sorta curious for a bunch of slave addicts, doncha think?) and made a big point of PROHIBITING GOVT FROM INSTITUTING PROTECTIONIST TARIFFS!!!
Do you guys seriously, seriously think that one half of this country (that had four slave states) fought a war against the other half that in today's numbers would involve 6 million dead over the issue of slavery when every single other western nation resolved slavery peacefully?
The Civil War was about states rights vs the federal govt, not slavery. The HUGE contention was the Morrill Tariff, not slavery, which was on the way out anyway.
Spare me. Their constitution TOTALLY FORBADE imposing tariffs for "internal improvements" (a direct reference to Lincoln's American System) with the exception of making waterways and even then that was very, very limited.
Bear in mind that the govt's primary source of revenue then was tariffs, not income taxes as it is today. They literally said "No tariffs for federal improvements"
Sure, they said slavery should be legal, but so did one out of five of the Northern states (really more, because the north counted as allies western territories that had nothing to do with the issue. In fact, the large Indian tribes fought IN SUPPORT of the south).
But the Confederacy actually FORBADE international slave trading, following the then-liberal ideas of the day.
Geeze...
I posted a link to the Declaration of Causes for Secession (that is like the Declaration of Independence for Confederacy), in which South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas stated quite expliciting they were leaving the Union in order to keep the institution of slavery.
Obviously you didn't bother to even read it. You keep repeating the same junk.
No. The Civil War (or the "War of Northern Aggression" or "The War of the Rebellion") was fought to keep the Union together, not to get rid of slavery.
The reason the Southern states seceded is because they panicked and thought a Republican administration was going to come and take their slaves away.
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