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Lincoln rescinded Grant's odious order, but not before Jewish families in the area had been humiliated, terrified, and jailed, and some stripped of their possessions.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

"If there is, why is Wal Mart enjoying so much success?"

I'm not sure if that is a pro or anti Wal Mart reference - not that it matters, but I just have a hard time believing that the South couldn't have been persuaded by diplomatic means, even if it took 50 years, to slowly phase out the slave economy. Wouldn't that have been preferable to the destruction that took place?

If the war was ultimately over preservation of the "Union," then that opens up the whole right of secession debate, which I'm not knowledgable enough to form an opinion on just yet.

There was no ability to negoitiate with the Slavers since they would not discuss ending slavery. It would be of no more use than negoitiating with the Islamic Terrorists.

There was no right to secession. If you wonder what the Founders thought about secession read Washington's Farewell Address it is almost all about such foolish ideas.

"However, the Slavers' themselves made it very clear in their writings and statements what the War was about."

I suppose all the backcountry farmers, who had never even seen a black person, fought and died for slavery then. You've obviously got a vested interest in maintaining the triumphalist historical fiction written by the victors of that war. You cling to your illusions, and I'll deal with what I know from my own family history, OK?

Why is it that so many other countries were able to abolish slavery without resorting to a Civil war that took hundreds of thousands of lives?

In every case where slavery was ended it was done through government intervention and in the face of strong opposition on the part of the slave owners themselves. The U.S. was the only area where the slave owners formed a large enough segment of the population where they were able to forment a rebellion in order to protect their institution from what they saw as threats to it.

Wasn't there an economic way to abolish slavery, even if it took just a little bit longer?

Regardless of when slavery was ended, the country would still be faced with the social problem of what to do with all those free blacks suddenly wandering around. The North didn't want them, free or slave. The South sure didn't want them as free men and women. It's hard to imagine what sort of solution could have been found peacefully.

"It was an almost European feudal society dominated by high church Anglicans and Catholics"

This is incorrect, as far as NC is concerned.

1)North Carolina isn't the Deep South or Virginia/Maryland.

2)By "dominating," I didn't mean being the most numerous population segment. The planters were a minority, but they dominated the Deep South and Tidewater politically and economically. I am well aware that the majority of Southerners, then as now, were low-church Protestants.

Perhaps you need to look up "tactics".

"It is not surprising, therefore, that the 'underground railroad' did not end until it reached Canada. There was no freedom for slaves in the 'North'." Surely you are just pretending to be this dense. Or could it really be that you never heard of "The Fugitive Slave Law"?
This abomination made all Blacks suspect and unsafe in the North. Only in Canada were they safe. This does not mean that Northerners liked Blacks much most didn't. But only Republicans believed there was no right to enslave them.

Nor is it "fashionable" to paint the US as a whole as slave holding but it is true that a tiny minority of Southerners brought the disaster of war upon the whole. Defenders of Slaverocracy DO try to paint the US as if it were as bad as the South but not defenders of freedom.

"Regardless of when slavery was ended, the country would still be faced with the social problem of what to do with all those free blacks suddenly wandering around. The North didn't want them, free or slave. The South sure didn't want them as free men and women. It's hard to imagine what sort of solution could have been found."

I guess any sollution seems preferable to all the death and destruction, but I'm probably just living some pipe dream that there could have been any other way. If the North couldn't come up with any fair sollution for African Americans, then they are equally as culpable.

You will never hear me call all Americans any such things or America

Despite many allegations, by many different people: I do not want to starve children, rape the rain-forest, deplete the ozone, pollute the planet, oppress minorities, build glass ceilings, burn churches, lynch blacks, exploit third-world countries, or keep women barefoot & pregnant.

I am, also, not the son of Traitors.

As an American white male conservative, I am constantly reminded how evil I, my neighbors, and my country are....constantly. Your noble contribution to that chorus is recognized, and regretted in that appropriate context.

I just have a hard time believing that the South couldn't have been persuaded by diplomatic means, even if it took 50 years, to slowly phase out the slave economy. Wouldn't that have been preferable to the destruction that took place?

It would have achieved the same devastation, just over a longer period of time. Companies that use slave labor or sweatshop labor have a competitive advantage over companies who pay their workers state mandated minimum wage.

The U.S. used to be the world's largest exporter of raw cotton and manufactured textiles.

Not only do you believe incorrectly but you cannot find a single statement in the Constitution, in the Ratifying Conventions documents, in the writings of the Founders or in the logic of a Constitution which supports your incorrect view.

In FACT, the idea was explicitly rejected by Madison in a letter to Hamilton during the NY state convention. Once in the Union, always in the Union was what he said. Thus, the attempt to produce a "conditional" ratification with the possibility of future withdrawal was rejected.

I guess any sollution seems preferable to all the death and destruction, but I'm probably just living some pipe dream that there could have been any other way. If the North couldn't come up with any fair sollution for African Americans, then they are equally as culpable.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda is easy to play when we're blessed with 20/20 hindsight. Perhaps had both sides know what the cost would be there wouldn't have been a war but I doubt it. I think it was one of those issues that was never going to be settled peacefully.

Many of the "backcountry farmers" were drafted into the Southern army or pressured into joining (big slavers were exempt) and that was why so many deserted at the first opportunity. Desertion was a chronic and big problem for the CSA.

Over 100,000 white Southerners fought to preserve the Union under the Stars and Stripes. Most of the regions without Blacks: E. Tenn, W. Carolinas, N. Georgia, NW Ark and N. Alabama never supported the Secession and had to be occupied by CSA armies. They quickly and irrevocably were rejoined to the Union when the armies appeared providing it with recruits ready to fight.

My education as to the facts of the RAT Rebellion began as a typical Yankee-hating southern Arkansas boy so save your nonsense. It has no application to me or my knowledge. Although little can be expected from the viewpoint of Losers.

Most of the common people fighting for the CSA were uneducated, and ignorant of the real events going on about them believing instead the propaganda of their Ruling Class. Nothing particularly unusual about that since tyrants and tyrannies commonly dupe millions to follow them even when against their true interests.

North Carolina

AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union between the State of North Carolina and the other States united with her, under the compact of government entitled "The Constitution of the United States."

We, the people of the State of North Carolina in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by the State of North Carolina in the convention of 1789, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified and adopted, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly ratifying and adopting amendments to the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, rescinded, and abrogated.

We do further declare and ordain, That the union now subsisting between the State of North Carolina and the other States, under the title of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved, and that the State of North Carolina is in full possession and exercise of all those rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.

Done in convention at the city of Raleigh, this the 20th day of May, in the year of our Lord 1861, and in the eighty-fifth year of the independence of said State.

That is nice but has no legal meaning since no state convention has any authority over the state's relation to the Constitution and Union. NO state can take ANY unilateral action which affects the whole Union.

You post has nothing to do with what I said in #93 in any case.

Treason is defined in the Constitution itself. All those who fought against that Constitution and the Union it perfected are traitors. You can define words any way you want but the dictionary doesn't change because of your definition.

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