Shame of the Yankees - America's Worst Anti-Jewish Action [Civil War thread]

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Lincoln rescinded Grant's odious order, but not before Jewish families in the area had been humiliated, terrified, and jailed, and some stripped of their possessions.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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Regenstein@mindspring.com.

Thomas was an American who felt a national kinship with the whole Union, not a narrow-focused southerner. Too bad they weren't more independent men like George Thomas. There were certainly more Union-loyal southerners than the "Lost Cause" myth allows, enough to put the lie to the fable of a "southern nation", but not enough to prevent regional suicide. In 1861 too many southerners had an exaggerated regional identity that could be manipulated to self-destruction by the powerful who only identified with the ease and wealth their slave society gave them.

How about this quote from CSA Secretary of State Robert Toomb, speaking of firing on Sumter: "Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal."

Lincoln promised that he would not reprovision the fort but, in typical Lincoln fashion, lied.

When did he make this promise? In the first inaugural, he said, ""There need be no blood-shed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere."

It was the south that resorted to violence, "having fired on bread."

It's many times the case that a deeper, scholarly reading of history overrides eventual assumptions commonly held by many. You just have to be up on this stuff.

This from the guy who apparently doesn't know the difference between a tariff and an excise tax. Read some of the Declarations of Causes. Read Alexander Stephens' Georgia speech and his "cornerstone" speech.

Well Bubba, at least you're moving forward on learning what really happened vs what you read in high school. In the scope of one post you go from "I always read that the South started the war...fired the first shots yada yada" to verifying my statement that Lincoln provoked that Fort Sumter incident even when everyone around him thought it was foolish.

Your second quote, the one from Lincoln, is a famous one among the Walter Williams/Thomas DiLorenzo/myself crowd of people tying to set the record straight on this issue, because it's Lincoln referencing collecting the Morril Tariff, which superceded the famous Tariff of Abonimations as the most unfair, one-sided tax in the land. It was crucial to Lincoln's American System ideas (which he inherited from Henry Clay) that these "duties" be collected from the South. Incidentially, Fort Sumter also served as a tariff collection point.

That quote says it all: pay or be destroyed.

DE,KY,MD,MO and (some would argue) NE (as they still had "lifetime indentured servitude" without pay = sounds like slavery to me!) were considered northern states.

I suppose "some" would be those voices in your head, but the Confederate flag makers sure considered them to be "Southern States" (with the exception of Nebraska which was not a state at all until long after the waR was over.)

Variation of the number of stars on Confederate Flags.
The reason for the variations in number of stars in the Stars and Bars was due to lack of centralized purchasing. The original ones had 7 stars and more were added as additional states joined and the flag makers became aware of the number of states.
In Oct. 1861, a rump legislative body in Missouri dissolved the bond to the union and joined the confederacy. Kentucky was recognized as neutral at first but later was represented in the Confederate congress, bringing the stars to 13. However many flagmakers only recognized those states that were able to maintain state governments within their own territory, so that 41% of the over 300 surviving STARS AND BARS have only 11 stars. Missouri and Kentucky were overrun by the union and maintained representation in the federal government.
One interesting variation is the 12 star version, used by Nathan Bedford Forest, who swore not to include the star for Georgia, "as long as a yankee remains on Georgia's soil."
Of the survivors those having eight stars, 9%; nine stars, 5%; ten stars, 4%; twelve stars, 9%; fourteen stars, 0.6%; and 15 stars, 5%. The fourteenth star was for Maryland, whose governor was under house arrest and whose legislature was disbanded until the jailed members were replaced in a election where all voters had to take an oath of allegiance to the federal government. The 15th star was for Delaware, the other slave state. Unlike Maryland, who raised a number of regiments in exile from citizens who escaped across the river into Virginia and actually had more troops in the field for the confederacy then Florida, Delaware, the first state in the union, remained loyal to the federals.
The most interesting (at least to me) version of the Stars and Bars is the 18 star version used by Gen. Stand Watie, the last confederate general to surrender his command, the Cherokee Brigade. It had 13 white stars in a circle and 5 red ones for the "five civilized nations", the five indian tribes that joined the confederacy.

OK....

1. Southerners were justifiably concerned that the Northern Abolitionist were not going to stop until they abolished slavery. No matter what Lincoln said in his inaugural address, it was obvious that he would not allow slavery to spread. To many Southerners slave owners this was the beginning of the end. 2. The Fugitive Slave Act was NOT being enforced in many Northern States, and the Federal Government refused to step in to solve the problem.

Now, regardless of our viewpoint today concerning slavery, the fact remains that slavery was a profitable part of the Southern economy. A male slave sold on the average for around $5000.00, which means that a plantation owner with even 50 slaves stood to lose a considerable investment.

From the Southern point of view at the time, the Federal Government and the Lincoln Administration were a threat to their economic well-being, and they saw no viable reason to remain in a Union that was hostile to them in every way.

Therefore, secession, by the thinking of the day, was justified.

Thanks. There are a few points I could disagree with on details, but in general, I agree. For the South, (or at least the small band of men who called all the shots) it was all about protecting and expanding their profits from slavery.

As to the overall point of secession being a "Last Resort", there was not a pressing emergency or immediate threat to the profits of slavery and the general complaints listed were no different in 1860-61 than they had been in 1858-59.

An interesting point to ponder is why the seven Cotton States were in such a hurry to push through secession that they didn't even want to wait for some overt act by Lincoln. The man hadn't even taken office yet.

The standard classification was North, South and Border. Only in the Border states and the South was slavery legal.

And, No, citing the existence of the Fugitive Slave Act as the Law of the Land blurs nothing except distortions you attempt. Most Northerners HATED that law and observed it only under compulsion. It was passed through Southern votes with a few Northern Democrats. It is a LIE to claim the North passed it. And you know it.

But I expect nothing but LIES, and distortions from your side. That is all you have. Well and false pretenses.

There was no compromise with those working night and day with the singleminded purpose of splitting the Union. They had NO intention of compromising what they had been working for for ten years. Lincoln could no more compromise with them than Bush could with al Queda.

Tariffs had nothing to do with the attacks on the Union and the Rebels didn't even claim they did. Only their modernday mendacious defenders make such silly claims even though it is easy to show that they attacked the Union ONLY because of their slaves. They were totally Single Issue and happily admitted it.

"...reduction in unfair tariffs on the Southern states' trade internally..." This is a new fantasy. There were NO "internal" tariffs within the US. Who knows what this is supposed to mean?

"...the notion that this poster has about some benevolent "North" (read: your average citizen) being anti-slavery is nuts." All that is well and good but has no bearing on anything I have ever said. Preserving the Union was Lincoln's goal as it was those who fought for the United States of America. You are the one who keeps deceptively bringing slavery up as their motive. That may have been true for a minority of Unionists but those of us supporting Lincoln make no such claims for most.

It is also a LIE to claim a 94% AWOL (whatever that means) rate for Union forces.

"Scores of blacks were beaten to death by black mobs in our most cosmopolitan northern city!" Black mobs? Now it is true that scores (maybe even hundreds) of blacks were beaten to death and hung by DEMOCRAT mobs sympathetic to the South who also attacked Republicans in 1863 in NYC. These DEMOCRAT mobs also attacked black orphanages established and run by REPUBLICANS. That city was ALWAYS against the war and pro-South throughout the war. Like today it is a wart on the face of America and a political disgrace for siding with the enemies of this nation.

after i read all that meaningLESS, off-point NONSENSE, i wonder 2 things:

1. why you bothered to post it & did you think anyone here (with the exception of "JSU&TI"- he will believe ANYTHING, that agrees with his BIGOTRY) would believe you &

2. why i bothered to read it and/or respond to that BILGE.

nonetheless, did you UNDERSTAND my original post or do you have a reading comprehension problem??? as i said previously, Brownmiller's SOURCES have NEVER been either "questioned as to ACCURACY" or "debunked". (her CONCLUSIONS are something else entirely.)

sorry, we aren't going to let you get away with trying to change the SUBJECT to something other than the FACTS that her source documents PROVE to the satisfaction of everyone except the HATE-filled, arrogantly (and KNOWINGLY) ignorant.

and your comments in an earlier post about "teacher's guides" will make you NO friends among FR's many teachers, as the post assumes that teachers are as DUMB, UNdiscerning & IGNORANT as you evidently hope they might be.

UNlike posters on this forum, teachers have at least a college degree & at least SOME understanding of FACTS, sources & other "trappings" of a university education.

POSTERS on the "worldwidewierd", otoh, simply need a CPU, a monitor/screen, an Internet connection of some sort & a keyboard. a functioning BRAIN is not required. neither is an EDUCATION, beyond that necessary to type & "smart off" about subjects of which they may know ZILCH (the arrogant ignorance of your "buddy", "JSU&TI" comes immediately to mind.)!

free dixie,sw

I have never claimed slavery was not protected by law even though a total contradiction of the ideals of our nation's founding. Lincoln would not have ended slavery and could not have since it would require a constitutional amendment which could never have passed. Some Nothern states would not have even supported such an amendment.

There were no new threats to slavery except the realization that it would be limited to the areas in which it currently existed. But there could be no "right" to possess slaves only the power to do so.

i have NO way of knowing if every word of the "teacher's guide" was written by Brownmiller (any more than i know that EVERY word of any book is SOLELY the work of ANY single author! have you ever heard of the word: "editor"???), herself.

otoh, it must be presumed (absent evidence to the contrary) that the work credited to (and particularly the direct quotes) Brownmiller is HERS alone!

care for a "do over", as you've LOST this argument???

free dixie,sw

well for ONCE you're correct. there were many southerners who "wore the blue" & at least as many northerners who "wore the gray". additionally, HUGE numbers of NON-Americans volunteered to fight for whichever side they thought best. (may i suggest that you find & read the GREAT book: CROSSBORDER WARRIOR, about Canadians in US uniform & Americans in Canadian uniform???)

Toms River, NJ (the last time i looked at a map, NJ wasn't in dixie.) had a WHOLE regiment that fought bravely for dixie FREEDOM. KY had at least one large unit that fought for the union.

otoh, we southerners call your "union-loyal" troops TRAITORS & TURNCOATS. (i suspect that the DAMNyankees & unionists had a similar label for northern lads, who chose the southern LIBERTY cause as their own.)

free dixie,sw

actually, MANY more than 5 Indian Nations allied themselves against the north.there were at least 15-20 tribes.

GEN Albert Pike designed the flag you are speaking of. (fwiw, we Tsaligiyi had our own WAR banner, too, which was flown with & sometimes instead of the "Cherokee Battle Flag".)

the Tsaligiyi battle flag was red with seven stars in the shape of "the Big Dipper" centered on the flag, with the constellation "tipped" so that the "water" would pour out. it was flown at least as early as February 1862. (the first KNOWN one, which is in the tribal museum, is made from the "underskirt" of a blood-RED wedding dress - fyi, Tsaligiyi brides did NOT traditionally wear WHITE wedding dresses, as WHITE is the traditional color of DEATH among our people! RED, being the color of LIFE, was ONE of the usual colors for wedding attire for both women & men.)

free dixie,sw

TO ALL: yet ANOTHER dumb, ignorant, hate-FILLED,DECEITFUL & (presumably UNeducated) post from FR;s "DUNCE-in-Chief"!

Brownmiller did NOT say that ALL "military forces" committed WAR CRIMES in the south.

OBVIOUSLY she is talking about the TENS of THOUSANDS of WAR CRIMES committed by the "criminals in blue". (even "JSU&TI", the lunatic, fool & BIGOT isn't DUMB enough to believe that when Brownmiller speaks of "the Union army" that she means ANYBODY but the union forces!!! otoh, he HOPES that his readers ARE stupid enough to NOT understand her clear text!)

free dixie,sw

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