In early 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling on Americans to gather on Feb. 22 of that year to celebrate the birthday of George Washington. This act is viewed as a precursor to what was established in 1879 as Presidents’ Day, the federal holiday observed earlier this week to honor all of those who have served as commanders-in-chief.
In the spirit of that observance, NYU Press recently published a new edition of “Lincoln and the Jews: A History” by Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell. The second revised edition incorporates rarely seen manuscripts and documents with a new preface to explore the unique relationship between American Jewry and the 16th president of the United States.
Jmore recently spoke with Dr. Sarna about the award-winning book, which was hailed by Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer as the “definitive study of a long-neglected aspect of Civil War history and Lincoln biography.”
A Philadelphia native, Dr. Sarna is a professor of American Jewish history and director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
He is also the author of “American Judaism: A History” (Yale University Press) and “When General Grant Expelled the Jews” (Schocken). The latter book examines General Order No. 11, when Major-Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in 1862 issued a Union Army order expelling Jews from the military district comprising areas of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky to stop the illicit trade in Southern-produced cotton. Lincoln quickly reversed the order.
Why did you come out now with a second edition of “Lincoln and the Jews”?
There were some new documents that have come out, most importantly a broadside I’d never seen before telling Jews to vote for Lincoln during the 1864 election. There’s a sense out there that Jews kept their politics quiet until the 20th century, but this shows there was Jewish politics during that time as well.
There were some other new documents that confirmed details about a Jewish doctor [Dr. Charles H. Liebermann] who played a central role when Lincoln was assassinated.
The most important thing is that ‘Lincoln and the Jews’ was a big book [when originally published in 2015], not the kind of book you could bring on an airplane and read. One of the nice things is this is a paperback, so we wanted to make it more readily available.
How should we view Lincoln’s relationship with Jews in the context of what’s going on in our nation right now?
Funny you should ask. [Laughs] In his 1855 letter to [close friend] Joshua Speed, Lincoln wrote:
‘I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? … Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that, “All men are created equal.” We now practically read it, “All men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, “All men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.” When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.’
I think reading that in the wake of what has happened is quite interesting. Reading Lincoln in the wake of rising antisemitism is particularly interesting. He courageously battles it. When the [military] chaplaincy was set up only for Christian denominations, he figured out how to broaden that and appointed Jewish clergy. So there are a lot of moments where talking about Lincoln is timely to where we are as a nation today.
Why was Lincoln so enamored of Jews?
Our book argues that he respects Jews because he came to know Jews well, like [Illinois legislator Abraham] Jonas, who played a huge role in his [presidential] nomination. And there were others. Lincoln also had a Jewish chiropodist [Isachar Zacharie], since he had bad feet. There’s no question he spent a lot of time with Zacharie, so you see it made a difference for him to know Jews.
How impactful was the American Jewish community in those times?
Remember, in 1820 you might not find even 4,000 Jews. But by the time of Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, there are 150,000. So what’s important is that Jews immigrated here in large numbers and were spread out across the country. That’s a big change.
Lincoln came to know many Jews in Illinois and interacted with them. A lot of these Jews came from different places. The fact that Lincoln knew Jews is significant, and they respected him.
One of them was a former Baltimorean, Julius Hammerslough, a German-born merchant and haberdasher.
Baltimore was a good place for immigrants because there were suppliers there. So they’d go to Baltimore and sell their clothes wherever they could. Hammerslough was in Baltimore and then came to Springfield [Illinois] and got to know Lincoln. Being tall, Lincoln couldn’t just go to any store. So they knew each other quite well.
Some people have claimed Lincoln, though born a Baptist, was of Jewish ancestry. Your thoughts?
There is no evidence that Lincoln really imagined himself to be a Jew. He considered himself a Christian. Even the genealogists who claim he had some Sephardic blood doubt he ever might’ve known that.
That’s a myth that goes back to his assassination, and it shows how fond Jews were of him. But there’s no evidence. Lincoln’s son said he never mentioned it.
What about the alleged Jewish ancestry of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth?
In our book, we have it that John Wilkes Booth’s father [English-born actor Junius Brutus Booth] claimed he had some Jewish blood in his veins. [The younger Booth] was also friendly with Simon Wolf, a mediary between the Jews and presidents. But the bottom line is that Booth was firmly on the side of the Confederacy.
Were most Jews of that era pro-Union or pro-Confederacy?
There were certainly more Jews in the North than in the Confederacy. The Jews in the South were very loyal to the South and proud that they were accepted in the South. As long as they supported the Confederacy, Jews were able to rise in Southern society. And you had two significant Jews in the Confederate government and army – [Secretary of State] Judah P. Benjamin and Quartermaster-General [Abraham] Myers, for whom the Florida city of Fort Myers is named after.
But at the end of the day, more Jews were in the North. Of course, some [Northern Jews] were sympathetic [to the Confederacy], like Rabbi [Morris] Raphall of B’nai Jeshurun [in New York]. He delivered a sermon [in 1861] arguing that the Bible allowed slavery.
You have to remember that many Jews in the North were in the clothing business and sold in the South and used slaves. They had a lot to lose, so they said [before the war], ‘Let’s find a middle ground.’
Were Jews involved in the abolitionist movement?
There were people like [Jewish novelist and essayist] Cora Wilburn who had known slavery firsthand and absolutely hated it. But it’s not so common. Anti-Slavery was a new idea in the world at that time. Before that, people felt slavery existed in the world and the idea of abolitionism was rare.
Jews recoiled from the anti-Judaism coming from abolitionists like [William Lloyd] Garrison, and because of the abolitionist movement’s evangelical character.
But you had [Baltimore’s Rabbi David] Einhorn and other Jews and ‘Forty-eighters’ [immigrants who fought in the Revolutions of 1848 that swept through Europe] who were anti-slavery but not part of the abolitionist movement. There was a fear of that movement.
Why were Jews so viscerally impacted by Lincoln’s assassination?
He was assassinated on a Friday night – Good Friday and Chol Hamoed Pesach [an intermediate day of Passover]. So the first people to memorialize Lincoln in a house of worship were Jews.
But I don’t know if Jews had any more of a visceral reaction to the assassination than others. There was general grief around the nation. In fact, not all Jews joined in the mourning.
But a lot of Jews had come to deeply respect Lincoln during the Civil War. There were plenty of people with prejudice against Jews in the army and government. You don’t see that with Lincoln. He tended to be lenient and sympathetic with Jews.
Would you say Lincoln’s greatest moment with the Jewish community was his revoking of General Order No. 11?
It’s a very fine moment. You see his instinct there. As soon as he heard about the order, he reversed it. He was basically saying, ‘I don’t like any group maligned because of a couple of sinners.’ It was in the middle of a war, going against an order from one of his best generals. It was quite remarkable.
What do you hope this book achieves?
There’s still a lot of interest in Abraham Lincoln. Also, a lot of people think that the Jewish experience really started in the 20th century, with Eastern European Jews. A lot of the names in the book will be new to readers because this is a topic not written much about.
Do you feel the book has a special relevancy right now?
I think it speaks to the moment. I don’t want to get too political here, but [Lincoln] was a very different Republican than the incumbent and had a different sense of the presidency.
Why are we still so fascinated by Abe Lincoln?
There are role models in history of people who just hold up. I think that is true of Washington and of Lincoln. It’s wonderful to have a president who can be put on a pedestal based on their professional and personal lives. That’s certainly true of Lincoln. When we read about him, we think of what might be. That’s why we still read about Lincoln.
For information, visit nyupress.org/9781479832804/lincoln-and-the-jews/.
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