Anti-Semitism in Civil War Days
American Jewry and the Civil War.
by Bertram Wallace Korn.
With an introduction by Allan Nevins. Jewish Publication Society of America. 331 pp. $4.00.
Rabbi Korn has gathered in this volume the fruits of years of earnest research. Wisely abandoning the familiar ground others have covered again and again, particularly the chronicle of individual participation, he has industriously unearthed a good deal of fresh material on the experience of the Jewish community during the Civil War. The sections in this volume on Lincoln and the Jews, on the chaplaincy controversy, and on the home front, are competently put together, and will long prove useful.
If this review devotes itself to another section of the work, the discussion of “prejudice against Jews as Jews,” it is not to minimize the importance of the balance, but to correct a serious misunderstanding of a problem that is worth extended discussion. Rabbi Korn gives over two chapters to the subject of anti-Semitic prejudice. The first examines in great detail the circumstances surrounding General Grant’s notorious general order number 11 that expelled Jews as a class from the General’s department. This order, Rabbi Korn believes, was not isolated or accidental, for “Anti-Jewish prejudice was actually a characteristic expression of the age.” Indeed, he hints “ . . . there was always a subtle undercurrent of prejudice which flowed through the American civilization.” The proof is presented in a chapter entitled “American Judaeophobia, 1861-1865.”
The chapter title is a misnomer. It contains no evidence of either fear or horror of the Jews. Instead it marshals a long list of slurs against individuals as Jews, mostly imputations of disloyalty, charges of dishonesty, or reflections upon mercenary motives. Even if this catalogue was to be accepted as accurate and representative, it would still not add up to Judaeophobia.
But there are grounds for doubting the accuracy of this account. Exaggerations and loose generalizations cast doubt on the sense of balance of the whole. Thus, implying that the use of these slurs was conscious policy, Rabbi Korn charges that American newspapers deliberately identified Jewish wrongdoers “while Jews who enlisted in the Army, or whose names were reported in the casualty columns were never identified.” His own evidence (p. 119, for instance) shows this charge erroneous.
Some of the sources used do not say exactly what Rabbi Korn says they say. So, he ascribes to R. E. Park the statement “that his Colonel was so prejudiced against the Jews that he attempted to block the promotion of Captain Adolph Proskauer.” The account cited refers merely to the preference of the Colonel for another candidate; there is not a word about prejudice (p. 176).
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Most important, the list itself is suspect, because Rabbi Korn did not himself examine the
sources from which the slurs were drawn. Instead he relied upon quotations from three Jewish periodicals of the period, the Messenger, the Israelite, and the Record. Unfortunately all three were hostile to the Abolitionists and sympathetic to the Democratic party; and they were inclined to use the charge of unfriendliness toward the Jews as a stick with which to beat the Republicans. They can hardly be relied upon for fair judgments of what the supporters of the war thought.
For example, on the basis of references in the Messenger and Israelite, Rabbi Korn writes, “Articles by the ‘Lounger’ in Harper’s Weekly said that all Jews were secessionists, copperheads, and rebels.” Had Rabbi Korn read the essays in question (February 28, March 7, and August 1, 1863), he would have found Lounger’s attitude rather more difficult to describe. It is true the charge that Jews had Southern sympathies out of mercenary motives is certainly there; but it is embedded in a long argument against anti-Semitism and against race prejudice of every kind. Using Rabbi Raphall’s proslavery sermon as its point of departure, Harper’s was attempting to persuade Jews that they had an indentity of interests with Negroes against prejudice of any sort.
This instance is instructive. Taken in its context, the slur still exists, but it is not the product of Judaeophobia. It is rather the expression of a society which recognizes diversities among its members and identifies many groups of them by stereotypes. A reading of the newspapers of this period would show the Jews were not singled out in this respect; Germans and Irishmen were accorded a like treatment. Because the slur did not involve sentiments of hatred or fear, men like General Grant could use the term Jew as if it were synonymous with sharp trader, and yet display, in their words and actions, the friendliest attitudes toward the Jews.
Failure to recognize this distinction prevents Rabbi Korn from arriving at an accurate estimate of the influence of the war upon the conception of the Jew in America. That is a pity, because the four years of conflict had a deep significance in the history of the group as in the history of the nation. They witnessed the beginning of a transformation in the social and economic status of the Jews in the United States and also in their ideological orientation. Rabbi Korn’s volume makes a start in gathering the information necessary to an understanding of that change. But we will not fully come to know the meaning of the period without seeing it in terms of the larger forces at work in American life.
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