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Shame of the Yankees - America's Worst Anti-Jewish Action [Civil War thread]
Jewish Press ^ | 11-21-06 | Lewis Regenstein

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Lincoln rescinded Grant's odious order, but not before Jewish families in the area had been humiliated, terrified, and jailed, and some stripped of their possessions.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


TOPICS: History
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To: stand watie
inasmuch as Charleston merchants were PLEASED to sell everything (except munitions) to the fort right up to the opening of the shelling (and PERHAPS, according to 1st person reports, ON that same day!!), you post seems (at best) SILLY.

I'm quite sure that the Charleston merchants would have been willing to sell, but show us the documentation that the Confederates were willing to allow provisions to reach the garrison at Sumter.

Give us the source of your "1st person" report or simply admit that, once again, you are just lying.

981 posted on 12/04/2006 12:04:17 PM PST by Ditto
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To: TexConfederate1861
Make up your mind. In one post, you admit that the magazine damn near exploded and in the very next you claim that the fort was too strong to damage.

Pick one or the other.

982 posted on 12/04/2006 12:08:54 PM PST by Ditto
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To: TexConfederate1861
I disagree. As of Secession, all former Federal Property became the property of the C.S.A.

Based on what rule of law?

983 posted on 12/04/2006 12:10:00 PM PST by Non-Sequitur
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To: TexConfederate1861
Yes, and if you read the account, the fort was in flames, and at one point in danger of it's magazine exploding. Sounds like that Southern Artillery was pretty good.

It also doesn't sound like courtesy or gallantry, Southern or otherwise. More like a deliberate attempt at killing every man in the fort.

984 posted on 12/04/2006 12:33:11 PM PST by Non-Sequitur
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To: TexConfederate1861
Here's to your "strong casements"


985 posted on 12/04/2006 12:47:06 PM PST by Ditto
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To: Ditto
just out of curiosity, are you REALLY STUPID enough to believe the IDIOTS,HATERS & FOOLS that have so frequently accused me (FALSELY!)of lying???

every time i say ANYTHING that points out that the lincoln MALadministration & the TYRANT were CREEPS, CRIMINALS, etc., some DAMN-fool accuses me of lying just because he/she has NO "comeback".

when i have cited DOCUMENTERY PROOF, then those IDIOTS/HATERS/FOOLS have ALWAYS said: "that's not a good source" (i STILL laugh at the DAMNyankee who said that the OFFICIAL RECORDS of the war could NOT be believed as "they are just racist diatribes" AND "rebel propaganda". m(

fwiw, that is the sort of HATERS & IDIOTS that you're associating with.

the Charleston Mercury of the period reported what supplies were being delivered to the fort, including the LUXURY GOODS, like fresh bread/fruit/oysters,lace & chocolate for example.

the truth is that Fortress Monroe was ALSO supplied by civilian merchants for quite a while during the war.

the FACTS are NOT, at least in this case, on the Yankee/HATERS side.

free dixie,sw

986 posted on 12/04/2006 2:59:28 PM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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To: stand watie
the FACTS are NOT, at least in this case, on the Yankee/HATERS side.

I thought that YOU were the Yankee HATERS side.

987 posted on 12/04/2006 4:21:28 PM PST by Non-Sequitur
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To: stand watie
when i have cited DOCUMENTERY PROOF

When have you ever cited "documentery" (sic) proof that can actually be confirmed by anyone? You always end up resorting to some book that no one can find or some document that no one's ever mentioned before. (and I'm still waiting for some explanation why Jefferson Davis never mentions this alleged personal letter from Lincoln, in either his memoir or his speech to the CSA congress).

the Charleston Mercury of the period reported what supplies were being delivered to the fort, including the LUXURY GOODS, like fresh bread/fruit/oysters,lace & chocolate for example.

Last week you said it was a professor at the Citadel who wrote about this.

So, it's your position that when Anderson said his men were running out of supplies and would have to leave the fort soon, he was lying? When Capt. Foster wrote in his journal that the men were down to half rations of bread, he was lying? When he says that the men inside the fort were picking through the last of the damaged rice, trying to get the broken glass out of it so they could eat it, they were ignoring the oysters and chocolate that had been brought out to them that day? Are you saying that Abner Doubleday was lying when he wrote:

Many unfavorable comments having been made, even in the Southern States, more particularly in Kentucky, in relation to Governor Pickens’s treatment of us, he relaxed his severity, and on the 21st sent us over some fresh beef and vegetables ; as if we would consent to be fed by the charity of South Carolina. Anderson showed a good deal of proper spirit on this occasion. He declined to receive the provisions, but notified the governor that, if we were not interfered with, we would purchase our own supplies in Charleston market. The governor consented to this; but nothing came of it. There seemed to be a combination among the market-men not to sell us any food.

988 posted on 12/04/2006 4:39:46 PM PST by Bubba Ho-Tep
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To: stand watie
when i have cited DOCUMENTERY PROOF

The only THING you ever site is the fact that you are a nut.

Show the proof that Sumter was open to provisions from Charleston merchants, or be know as a damn lier and nut case that you are.

April 7, 1861. -- P. G. T. Beauregard orders all transports to Fort Sumter cut off. This ended the fort's supply of fresh food.

They had nothing left but old salt pork which is why Anderson told them that the 15th would be the last day and they would be forced to quit Sumter.

Why did Davis fire when he knew that in a few days Anderson would be starved out? Because Davis wanted and needed war. It was the only way he would ever get Virginia to join his little vicious slave driving republic that you so love and long for.

989 posted on 12/04/2006 5:21:42 PM PST by Ditto
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To: stand watie
just out of curiosity, are you REALLY STUPID enough to believe the IDIOTS,HATERS & FOOLS that have so frequently accused me (FALSELY!)of lying???

Just out of CURIOSITY, how much have you paid the shrinks and psychologists over the years trying to cure your INSANITY?

990 posted on 12/04/2006 5:24:20 PM PST by Ditto
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To: Ditto

You misunderstood....

The casemates were the only part of the fort that has survived both Confederate & Union Bombardments.

If the Magazine HAD exploded, which it almost did, those casemates, and all in them would have been history. (no pun intended :))


991 posted on 12/04/2006 5:32:01 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 ("Having a picture of John Wayne doesn't make you a Texan :) ")
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To: Non-Sequitur

Let's NOT go there, we have already argued that point into oblivion.......


992 posted on 12/04/2006 5:34:16 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 ("Having a picture of John Wayne doesn't make you a Texan :) ")
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To: Non-Sequitur

Wrong again. Upon seeing the fort in flames, and sensing the danger to the garrison, Col. Louis Wigfall of Texas, rowed over in a launch to inquire if assistance was needed. The bombardment was stopped at that time. Sounds pretty d*mn gallant to me.


993 posted on 12/04/2006 5:36:54 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 ("Having a picture of John Wayne doesn't make you a Texan :) ")
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To: Ditto

And your point is what? The article proves my point.


994 posted on 12/04/2006 5:38:56 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 ("Having a picture of John Wayne doesn't make you a Texan :) ")
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To: Ditto

BECAUSE Davis knew a warship was approaching with TROOPS & ARMS and SUPPLIES......DUH!


995 posted on 12/04/2006 5:40:47 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 ("Having a picture of John Wayne doesn't make you a Texan :) ")
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To: TexConfederate1861
The point of the discussion was that when the Confederates started the bombardment of Sumter, the loss of life was not a concern. That no Union troops were killed was pure luck and had noting to do with the fortifications.

Sumter, in coordination with the other forts that encircled it on the main land, was envisioned to provide cross-fire to protect from attack from ships entering the harbor, as happened when the Union ironclades entered in 1863. But it was impossible to protect itself from attacks from the mainland. It was, in 1861, a proverbial sitting duck if any of the encircling mainland installations were in enemy hands, (which is how it eventually fell to the Union in 1864.)

996 posted on 12/04/2006 5:44:42 PM PST by Ditto
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To: TexConfederate1861
BECAUSE Davis knew a warship was approaching with TROOPS & ARMS and SUPPLIES......DUH!

It was not a warship, it was a merchant vessel and it only carried provisions. If they had simply let it land, Anderson and his men would have sat there for another 30 or 60 days until they needed more supplies.

How long could they have sat on that rock before they finally gave up? Who knows for sure, but Jeff Davis knew damn well that Anderson and his 65 men were already fast becoming heroes throughout the nation (and not just in the north) and the more they were admired for their perseverance, the worse it made the radicals in Charleston look.

PR-101. When it starts looking bad for you side, do something -- anything -- to change the equation. For Davis, that was start shooting.

Let me ask you. Do you think order to fire on Charleston was based on Lincoln's decision to resupply the fort?

997 posted on 12/04/2006 5:56:03 PM PST by Ditto
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To: Ditto

Wrong....The Star of the West was a WARSHIP. It WAS carrying supplies & Troops. (Ask NS if you don't believe me)
The same warship was later captured by the Confederacy at the Battle of Galveston.


998 posted on 12/04/2006 7:34:53 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 ("Having a picture of John Wayne doesn't make you a Texan :) ")
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To: Ditto

Yes. The Order to fire was based on the knowledge that a ship was going to supply & reinforce the Fort.


999 posted on 12/04/2006 7:36:26 PM PST by TexConfederate1861 ("Having a picture of John Wayne doesn't make you a Texan :) ")
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To: TexConfederate1861
Upon seeing the fort in flames, and sensing the danger to the garrison, Col. Louis Wigfall of Texas, rowed over in a launch to inquire if assistance was needed.

Wigfall was glory-hunting. The flag had been shot away and he rowed out to see if the fort had surrendered. The welfare of the garrison was the last thing on his mind.

1,000 posted on 12/05/2006 3:47:01 AM PST by Non-Sequitur
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