Posted on 11/13/2005 6:10:28 PM PST by SJackson
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
FORT WORTH - In the back of an oak-shaded cemetery behind the county hospital flies a Confederate battle flag, carved into the massive Samuels family headstone.
Jacob Samuels, at his death in 1906 at the age of 70, had not forgotten that he rode with Waller's Texas Cavalry during the Civil War, that he had fought and nearly died in Louisiana for the Confederacy.
Not far from Samuels' grave are the graves of three other Civil War veterans, two of whom - Phillip W. Greenwall and Solomon Kahn -- proudly wore the gray of the Confederate army.
But occasionally history offers little surprises.
The men are buried at Emanuel Hebrew Rest Cemetery, a 1-acre plot all but hidden south of downtown. Samuels, Greenwall and Kahn were Jewish Johnny Rebs.
"It's not common knowledge that Jews fought in the Civil War," said Gary Whitfield, an amateur historian and a retired Fort Worth teacher. "But if you go to primary sources, you'll find that history is a little different than many people think."
In this case, the digging into Confederate rosters, generations of genealogies and crinkled obituaries was a collaboration of an 88-year-old Jewish man with a German accent, a Jewish former newspaper reporter and a Gentile with a drawl who wants to preserve the glory of the Confederacy.
The unlikely trio embarked on a years-long quest that taught each of them something about Southern history, an ancient faith and debunking stereotypes.
"Both Garys believe in what they're doing," said Hollace Weiner, a former Star-Telegram reporter who is the archivist at Temple Beth-El in Fort Worth.
She was referring to Whitfield and Gary Baum, a World War II veteran and longtime member of the Jewish War Veterans.
"You'd never have been able to pay people to do as much as they did," Weiner said.
As counterintuitive as it sounds -- that a people once enslaved themselves would fight for the Confederacy -- some Jews did take up arms against the North.
An estimated 2,500 to 3,000 Jews fought for the South out of a Jewish population of 25,000 that included sizable communities in Charleston, S.C., New Orleans and Richmond, Va. An additional 8,000 to 9,000 Jews fought for the North out of a Jewish population of 125,000, experts have said.
The investigation into this forgotten slice of Tarrant County history started with Whitfield, the 61-year-old history-keeper for the Fort Worth chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Whitfield spends his free time searching the area's cemeteries for the graves of Confederate veterans. Some of the headstones are deteriorated, are gone or never mention war service. Whitfield orders new granite headstones from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
But Whitfield knew little about the Jewish cemeteries or the faith's pioneers in Tarrant County.
"I figured there was bound to have been some Jews in Tarrant County who fought," he said.
Whitfield was surprised to learn from Weiner that there was an old cemetery even he didn't know about -- Emanuel Hebrew Rest, donated by John Peter Smith in 1879 as the area's first Jewish cemetery.
Whitfield combed the cemetery and found eight graves of men who could have been Civil War veterans, based on their ages. Only the Samuels headstone gave any clue to allegiance or service during the Civil War. And while Whitfield could check some historical records, Weiner and the members of Jewish War Veterans Post 755 provided far more.
"I felt it would be a nice project for us to undertake," Baum said.
Confirming the men's war service took months, if not years, of work, matching known Civil War veterans to the men buried in the cemetery. In one case, the three spent months on one man's history, only to find out that a man with the same name who fought for the Confederacy was buried in Louisiana, not Fort Worth.
They discovered that all the veterans were privates and that one of them, Simon Gabert. fought for the Union with troops from Missouri. On the other side, Samuels rode with Waller's Texas Cavalry, while Kahn served in the Alabama infantry and Greenwall in the Louisiana infantry.
Finding their descendants proved to be even more difficult. Baum, Weiner and Whitfield went down so many unproductive rabbit holes, they had trouble keeping people's names straight.
But they needed descendants because no one could order new VA headstones without the go-ahead of people who in some cases didn't even know their forefathers had fought in the war.
"We went to the earliest obituaries we could find," Baum said. "They would usually mention aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandchildren. We worked forward from that."
After eight months and much help from genealogists, they found a granddaughter of Samuels' in Corpus Christi, a great-grandson of Gabert's in Fort Worth, a great-granddaughter of Kahn's in Fort Worth and a great-granddaughter of Greenwall's in Garland. All agreed to have new headstones placed in the cemetery, alongside the existing stones.
Sandy Hoffman, Kahn's descendant, and her family knew that he had fought in the Civil War, because they have several artifacts from his service in the Alabama infantry.
"Jews fought on both sides of the war," said Sandy's husband, Alex Hoffman. "It was probably the same during the civil rights movement. People of the same faith were on opposite sides of the issue."
It may defy stereotypes, but the Old South was not anti-Semitic, said Robert Rosen, a lawyer in Charleston who wrote a book titled The Jewish Confederates. Jews held positions of stature in many Southern communities and were typically warmly accepted, including into politics. The first three Jewish U.S. senators were from the South, he said.
"The South has to plead guilty for being racist," he said. "It does not have to plead guilty to being anti-Semitic. ... A lot of the traditional problems Jewish citizens faced at the time, they didn't face in the Old South. They felt very much a part of the community. They had a very strong sense of patriotism and loyalty to the South."
Primarily, though, Jews fought for the South for the same reasons they fought for the North -- because they wanted to prove that they were loyal to their home, Rosen said.
"In the 19th century, there was the term 'the wandering Jew,'" Rosen said. "The stereotype was that they weren't loyal. They didn't live anywhere. But these were boys, both North and South, who really wanted to show they were part of the country."
There's a bit of a parallel between those long-dead soldiers in Emanuel Hebrew Rest Cemetery and Baum, and perhaps it explains his passion to see this project through.
He too was foreign-born, an immigrant from Germany at the outbreak of World War II. He enlisted in the Army and served with the 101st Airborne Division, eventually going in for the D-Day landings in a glider, a young man who decided to fight for his new home.
"This intrigued me," he said of the Civil War research. "I just grabbed it. I found it very enlightening."
IN THE KNOW
Civil War veterans
Dedication of the new headstones, 10 a.m. Sunday, Emanuel Hebrew Rest Cemetery, 1408 S. Main St.
Simon Gabert, 1836-1911. A German immigrant, he was the first Jewish pioneer in Fort Worth, arriving in 1856. When the Civil War started, he was in St. Louis and enlisted with the 4th Regular Missouri Cavalry. He was wounded in the battle of Pea Ridge, Ark., but served with his unit until the war ended. In 1880, he moved back to Fort Worth and became a cotton broker.
Phillip W. Greenwall, 1841-1917. He enlisted with the Bienville Guards, 5th Regiment, Louisiana Infantry. He fought in the battle of Yorktown in 1862. He was labeled a deserter but later turned up as a Union prisoner. After the war, he and his brother, Henry, managed Fort Worth's Greenwall Opera House.
Solomon Kahn, 1835-1914. German-born and living in Montgomery, Ala., he joined the 3rd Regiment, Alabama Infantry. He was wounded and captured near Richmond, Va., and spent the rest of the war in Union captivity. After the war, he moved to Fort Worth and later Dallas. He operated a general store in downtown Fort Worth.
Jacob Samuels, 1836-1906. Born in Poland, Samuels enlisted in the Confederate army in 1862 with his horse. He belonged to Peak's Tarrant County Rifles, which was renamed Company F, Waller's Texas Cavalry, Tom Green's Brigade, Walker's Division. After the war, he owned a dry-goods store.
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I am not surprised in the least that Jews fought for the Union or the CSA. Now an Amish or Quaker that would be a surprise.
Very cool. I have to get that.
I've been interested in both the Confederacy and the Jewish role in it ever since I read "Mr. Benjamin's Sword" as a kid.
Don't let Condi know.
Dixie Ping.
Library of CongressBENJAMIN, Judah Philip, a Senator from Louisiana; born on the Island of St. Croix, Danish West Indies (now Virgin Islands), August 6, 1811; immigrated to Savannah, Ga., in 1816 with his parents, who later settled in Wilmington, N.C.; attended the Fayetteville Academy, Fayetteville, N.C., and Yale College; moved to New Orleans, La., in 1831 and taught school; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1832 and commenced practice in New Orleans; elected to the lower house of the state legislature in 1842 and served until 1844; member of the State constitutional convention in 1845; elected as a Whig to the United States Senate in 1853; reelected as a Democrat in 1859 and served from March 4, 1853, to February 4, 1861, when he withdrew; chairman, Committee on Private Land Claims (Thirty-fourth through Thirty-sixth Congresses); appointed Attorney General under the provisional government of the Confederate States, February 1861; appointed Acting Secretary of War of the Confederate States in August 1861 and served until November 1861, when he was appointed Secretary of War; served in this capacity until February 1862, when he resigned to accept the appointment as Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Jefferson Davis, in which capacity he served until the end of the war; moved to Great Britain in 1865; studied English law at Lincoln’s Inn, London, was admitted to the bar in that city in 1866, and practiced law there; engaged in newspaper and magazine work; received the appointment of Queen’s counsel in 1872; retired in 1883 from active practice and public life; moved to Paris, France, and died there May 6, 1884; interment in Pere la Chaise Cemetery.
Now we really get to why Jesse Jaxxxxxxxxsuuuhnnn hates Jews.
FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel/Russian Jewry ping list.
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Judah Benjamin has good company in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris: rocker Jim Morrison.
If Jim Morrison is really dead.
LOL! For some fans, his genius lives still.
Judah Benjamin's grave in Pere La Chaise Cemetary, Paris, France.
Here's a link to the source.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6372266&pt=%3Cb%3EJudah%3C/b%3E%20Benjamin
The first Jew elected to the U.S. Senate was Florida Democrat David Levy Yulee. Yulee was first elected in 1845 and served until 1851 and then served another term from 1855 to 1861. He was the son of Moses Elias Levy, a Moroccan Jew who made his fortune in timber in the Caribbean, then bought 50,000 acres of land near Jacksonville, hoping to create a New Jerusalem for Jewish settlers. Levy County and the city of Yulee are named after this family. Yulee supported slavery and secession. The second Jew in the Senate was Judah Benjamin. More than two dozen Jews have served in the Senate since then.
Counterintuitive, shmounterintuitive. The Torah contains regulations for the treatment of both Jewish and gentile slaves and the ancient Israelites never saw a contradiction between this and coming out of slavery (though I believe there's a midrashic comment about the outrageousness of a Jew who chooses to remain a slave and this is what earns him a hole bored through his ear).
It may defy stereotypes, but the Old South was not anti-Semitic, said Robert Rosen, a lawyer in Charleston who wrote a book titled The Jewish Confederates. Jews held positions of stature in many Southern communities and were typically warmly accepted, including into politics. The first three Jewish U.S. senators were from the South, he said.
"The South has to plead guilty for being racist," he said. "It does not have to plead guilty to being anti-Semitic. ... A lot of the traditional problems Jewish citizens faced at the time, they didn't face in the Old South. They felt very much a part of the community. They had a very strong sense of patriotism and loyalty to the South."
The stereotype of the "anti-Semitic South" comes from an idiotic association of the Confederacy with Nazi Germany that is of fairly recent origin. Unfortunately however, later Southern populist (rightwing socialist) politicians did resort to anti-Semitism, and the current neo-Confederate movement buys into the "money power" / "international bankers" theories which seem fundamentally aimed at Jews. Shame on them!
By the way, two of my favorite historical figures are also buried there: the doomed lovers Heloise and Abelard (who died in the early 13th century).
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