The Jews of Dixie served with Distinction, Honour and Undying Loyalty to the Confederacy and to the Cause for which she stood.
Blacks, Jews Fight on Side
of the South
The Washington Times | June 15, 2002 |
Thomas C. Mandes
The term "Johnny Reb" evokes an image of a white soldier, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant and from an agrarian background. Many Southern soldiers, however, did not fit this mold. A number of ethnic backgrounds were represented during the conflict.
For example, thousands of black Americans fought as Johnny Rebs. Dr. Lewis Steiner of the U.S. Sanitary Commission observed that while the Confederate army marched through Maryland during the 1862 Sharpsburg (Antietam) campaign, "over 3,000 negroes had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie knives, dirks, etc. And were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate Army."
There also were Hispanic Confederates. Col. Santos Benavides, a former Texas Ranger, city attorney and mayor of Laredo, Texas, commanded the 33rd Texas Cavalry, while Gen. Refugio Benavides protected what was known as the Confederacy of the Rio Grande. Recent Irish Catholic immigrants also chose to fight for the South, as did a few stalwart Chinese who served nobly in Louisiana.
The largest ethnic group to serve the Confederacy, however, was made up of first-, second- and third-generation Jewish lads. Old Jewish families, initially Sephardic and later Ashkenazic, had settled in the South generations before the war. Jews had lived in Charleston, S.C., since 1695. By 1800, the largest Jewish community in America lived in Charleston, where the oldest synagogue in America, K.K. Beth Elohim, was founded. By 1861, a third of all the Jews in America lived in Louisiana.
More than 10,000 Jews fought for the Confederacy. As Rabbi Korn of Charleston related, "Nowhere else in America — certainly not in the Antebellum North — had Jews been accorded such an opportunity to be complete equals as in the old South." Gen. Robert E. Lee allowed his Jewish soldiers to observe all holy days, while Gens. Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman issued anti-Jewish orders.
Many young Jews served in the ranks. There were a number of Jewish officers who were part and parcel of Southern society. They had spent their formative years in the South defensive about slavery and hostile about what they perceived as Northern aggression and condescension toward the South. Some of the more notable among the officer corps included Abraham Myers, a West Point graduate and a classmate of Lee's in the class of 1832. Myers served as quartermaster general and, before the war, fought the Indians in Florida. The city of Fort Myers was named after him.
Another Jewish officer, Maj. Adolph Proskauer of Mobile, Ala., was wounded several times. One of his subordinate officers wrote, "I can see him now as he nobly carried himself at Gettysburg, standing coolly and calmly with a cigar in his mouth at the head of the 12th Alabama amid a perfect rain of bullets, shot, and shell. He was the personification of intrepid gallantry and imperturbable courage."
In North Carolina, the six Cohen brothers fought in the 40th Infantry. The first Confederate Jew killed in the war was Albert Lurie Moses of Charlotte, N.C. All-Jewish companies reported to the fray from Macon and Savannah in Georgia. In Louisiana, three Jews reached the rank of colonel: S.M. Hymans, Edwin Kunsheedt and Ira Moses.
Many Southern Jews became world-renowned during this period. Moses Jacob Ezekiel from Richmond fought at New Market with his fellow cadets from the Virginia Military Institute and became a noted sculptor. His mother, Catherine Ezekiel, said she would not tolerate a son who declined to fight for the Confederacy.
He wrote in his memoirs, "We were not fighting for the perpetuation of slavery, but for the principle of States Rights and Free Trade, and in defense of our homes which were being ruthlessly invaded." In tribute to Ezekiel, it was written, "The eye that saw is closed, the hand that executed is still, the soldier lad who fought so well was knighted and lauded in foreign land, but dying, his last request was that he might rest among his old comrades in Arlington Cemetery."
The most famous Southern Jew of the era was Judah Benjamin. He was the first Jewish U.S. senator and declined a seat on the Supreme Court and an offer to be ambassador to Spain. Educated in law at Yale, he was at one time or another during the war the Confederacy's attorney general, secretary of war and secretary of state. After the war, he settled in England, where he became a lawyer and wrote a seminal legal text.
Simon Baruch, a Prussian immigrant, settled in Camden, S.C. He received his degree from the Medical College of Virginia and entered the conflict as a physician in the 3rd South Carolina Battalion, where he joined the fighting before the Battle of Second Manassas. He eventually became surgeon general of the Confederacy.
While he was away during the war, his fiancee, Isabelle Wolfe, painted his portrait in the family home in South Carolina. It was at this time that Sherman began his March to the Sea. His raiders set the Wolfe house afire, and as she rescued the portrait, a Yankee ripped it with his bayonet and slapped her. Witnessing this, a Union officer gave the attacker a beating with his sword.
From this, a romance began to blossom — quickly squelched by the young woman's father, who remarked: "Marriage to a gentile is bad enough, but marriage to a Yankee, never, ever, it is out of the question." Isabelle Wolfe eventually married Baruch. After the war, they moved to New York City, where he set up what became a prominent medical practice on West 57th Street.
Mrs. Baruch became a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the couple raised their children with pro-Southern views. If a band struck up "Dixie," Dr. Baruch would jump up and give the Rebel yell, much to the chagrin of the family. A man of usual reserve and dignity, Dr. Baruch nevertheless would let loose with the piercing yell even in the Metropolitan Opera House.
Their son Bernard became the most successful financier of his time and one of the best-known American Jews of the 20th century. Bernard Baruch was an adviser to presidents from World War I to World War II and became a confidant of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Today, little remains of the Jewish Confederate South. With the mass migrations from Russia and Eastern Europe, new immigrants knew little if anything of the struggle that had ensued during the preceding half-century. Confederate Southern Jewry eventually disappeared.
• Thomas C. Mandes is a physician in Vienna, Va.
Private Louis Leon, Co. B, 53rd N.C.
Louis Leon was born in Mecklenburg, Germany, probably in 1842. He migrated to New York City with his parents on an unknown date prior to 1858. In that year Leon moved to Charlotte, in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and found employment as a clerk; he would not see his parents again until released from a yankee prisoner of war camp in 1865. That Charlotte's small Jewish community participated in the military duties of its citizenry is indicated by the presence of Second Lieutenant Solomon A. Cohen of the "Charlotte Guards," a volunteer company of the 85th Regiment N.C. Militia. Louis Leon enlisted in the "Charlotte Grays," subsequently Company C, 1st Regiment N.C. Volunteers, on April 19, 1861, and fought at Big Bethel. Among other members of the "Grays" were men with the surnames of Engle, Israel, Katz, Leopold, Levi, and Oppenheim. One cannot be sure, of course, that all of these men were Jewish.
During his service with the 1st N.C. Volunteers, Leon began keeping a diary, which he maintained for the duration of the war. Leon published his diary, with some obvious revisions, in 1913 as Diary of A Tar Heel Confederate Soldier (Charlotte, Stone Publishing). At that time Leon was an officer in the United Confederate Veterans and was commander of the Charlotte Camp. The frontispiece is a photograph of him, bespectacled and with a large white mustache, in the UCV uniform. The Maltese cross of the United Daughters of the Confederacy is prominently displayed on his breast and his collar bears the single star of a major--presumably his rank in the UCV.
When the 1st N.C. Volunteers, a six-month regiment, disbanded in November 1861, Leon returned home for the winter but enlisted again on April 14, 1862, as a private in Company B, 53rd Regiment N.C. Troops. Five members of that company have been identified as Jewish. They are:
Private Jacob Donau.
Private Jonas Engel.
Sergeant Major Aaron Katz.
Private Lous Leon.
Corporal Henry Wertheim.
Leon served until he was captured at Wilderness, May 5, 1864. Incarceration at Point Lookout and Elmira followed until, according to his compiled service records, he took the Oath of Allegiance on February 7, 1865, and was released. However, Leon states in his diary that he remained in prison until April 12: "we heard that Lee had surrendered on the 9th, and about 400, myself with them, took the cursed oath and were given transportation to wherever we wanted to go."
The historian of the 53rd North Carolina, W. T. Jordan, Jr., observes that "As far as one can judge from his diary, Leon's experiences as a Jew in the Confederate army were singularly lacking in episodes of prejudice, discrimination, or rejection. To all appearances he was a high-spirited soldier of exceptional skill and courage who was accepted, liked, and respected by his officers and comrades."
After the war Leon expressed the following sentiments:
When I commenced my life as a Confederate soldier, I was full of hope for the speedy termination of the war, and our independence. I was not quite nineteen years old. I am now twenty-three. The four years that I have given to my country I do not regret, nor am I sorry for one day I have given--my only regret is that we have lost that for which we fought. Nor do I for one moment think that we lost it by any other way than by being outnumbered at least five if not ten to one. . . . to the last I will say that, although but a private, I still say our Cause was just, nor do I regret one thing that I have done to cripple the North.
Captain Ezekiel J. Levy, ("Zeke") 46th Virginia
The Hebrew Confederate cemetery on Shock Hill in Richmond Virginia, is the only Jewish Military Cemetery in the world outside of Israel
The plaque in the cemetery with names of soldiers buried there reads.
TO THE GLORY OF
GOD
AND
IN MEMORY OF
THE HEBREW CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS
RESTING IN THIS HALLOWED SPOT
ERECTED BY
HEBREW LADIES MEMORIAL ASSOC.
RICHMOND, VA..
ORGANIZED 1866.
M. Levy,
Mississippi, killed May 31, 1862.
J. Rosenberg, Ga.
Henry Adler, 46th Va.
E.J. Sampson, 4th Texas, killed June 27th, 1862.
G. Wolfe, N.C.
I. Hessberg, Caroline co.
Unknown soldier
Henry Gersberg, Salem, Va., killed June 2, 1864.
T. Foltz, 16th Miss.
I. Cohen, Hampton (S.C.) Legion.
Sam Bear, Ga.
S. Bachrach, Lynchburg, Va.
Jonathan Sheuer, La.
J. Frank, Ga.
Henry Cohen, S.C. killed June 29, 1864.
Capt. Jacob A. Cohen, Co. A, 10th La., killed at 2nd Manassas,
August 30, 1862, age, 33 years.
M. Aaron, N.C.
A. Lehman, S.C.
Julius Zark, 7th Louisiana.
A. Heyman, Georgia.
Lieut. W.M. Wolf, Hagood's S.C. Brigade, died May 9, 1864.
Lieut. L.S. Lipman, 5th Louisiana, died May 9, 1863.
Erected by his brothers to the memory of Isaac Seldner, of the 6th
Virg. Inf. Reg., born December 23, 1837, killed at the battle of
Chancellorsville, Va., May 3rd, 1863. None knew him but to love
him.
S. Weiss, Ga.
H. Jacobs, S.C.
E.B. Miller, died April 6, 1864.
Corpl. G. Eiseman, 12th Miss.
M. Bachrach, Lynchburg, Va.
S. Oury, 16th Miss.; died June 10, 1861.
A. Robinson, 15th Ga., died Jan. 26, 1863.
Soldiers
killed in battle and buried elsewhere in the cemetery are
Gustavus Kann, 16th Mississippi; Henry Smith, Richmond, Otey
Battery; Marx Myers, Richmond Grays;
Captain Isaac J. Levy, Richmond Blues, and Captain M. Marcus, 15th
Georgia, killed October 13, 1864.
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