Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army

For three decades after the Civil War, the Jewish press and Jewish community institutions ignored the war, Jewish men who died, and Jewish war veterans, reflecting the ambivalence of Jewish leaders, rabbis, and community members to the war. Simon Wolf's 1895 The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen and the 1895 formation of the Hebrew Union Veterans Association stimulated interest in the role of Jews in the Civil War and Jewish patriotism. Unfortunately, Wolf's account left out a significant number of Jews and misidentified some non-Jewish soldiers. The Shapell Manuscript Foundation corrected Wolf's account identifying Jewish soldiers. Shapell's corrected database removed eight hundred non-Jews and four hundred duplicates from Wolf's study and added thirteen hundred Jewish soldiers Wolf missed. Based on this new information, Adam Mendelsohn, an expert on Jewish history, is writing two books on Jews in the Civil War. His second work will be on Confederate Jewish soldiers. Coincidently New York University Press recently published The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai (2024) about a Jewish woman's wartime experiences in the South.Unlike the Germans and the Irish, Jews were too few in numbers to organize Jewish military units. Mendelsohn notes that Jews sponsored Company C 82nd Illinois and Company A of the 149th New York, but non-Jews comprised most of the enlistees. Jews remained isolated and scattered in the Union forces. Many decided to change Jewish-sounding names and/or hide their Jewish identities to ease their relationships with their Christian fellow soldiers. Of course, this made it more difficult for both Wolf and the Shapell Foundation to document Jewish men in uniform. Adherence to Jewish dietary laws became impossible since pork comprised a major portion of rations. Jewish religious rituals became virtually impossible except for a few men bivouacked near an existing Jewish community.Mendelsohn found 80 percent of Jewish enlistees joined in 1861–1862. Reflecting the Jewish population, recent immigrants comprised most of the Jews who enlisted. The author emphasizes the regional differences, with Jews from Baden more likely to enlist than those from Bavaria, for example. About 20 percent of Jews in the Union forces were American-born. Jews enlisted at lower rates than other immigrants because Jewish leaders, and the Jewish community as a whole did not encourage enlistment.Anti-Semitism and nativism limited the Jewish community's response during the Civil War. Much larger Irish and German communities found themselves under attack for cowardice and lack of patriotism during the war. 1890s-era nativism helped create the American Irish Historical Society in 1897. During the same period, Jews reacting to anti-Semitic accusations that Jews were unpatriotic and not real Americans, rediscovered in Wolf's study a reaffirmation of Jewish patriotism and their role in American society. The isolation and dispersion of Jews in Union forces makes it hard to determine the problem anti-Semitism may have posed for individual soldiers. To what degree did the experiences of American-born Jews differ from those of Jewish immigrants? Outside of the military the Jewish community exploded in outrage at Grant's December 1862 General Orders No. 11, expelling Jews from the Department of the Treasury, and General Benjamin Butler's 1864 denunciation of Jews as unpatriotic blockade runners. These incidents and the anti-Semitic tropes they raised reinforced the ambivalence of the Jewish community to the war and may have affected the behavior of individual soldiers. However, when anti-Semitism resurfaced in the 1890s, Jews found solace in Wolf's account of Jewish patriotism and sacrifice during the war, and forgotten veterans, like August Bondi and Leopold Karpeles, became Jewish heroes.Mendelsohn has written the most thorough account of Jewish Union soldiers to date. Chapters explore where Jews, most of whom were recent immigrants, came from, their patterns and reasons for enlisting, and to what degree a Jewish soldier might encounter other Jews. He evaluates how Jews worked with non-Jews in their military units and dealt with their identity. Another chapter on sacred duties looks at the problems of practicing Judaism or following rituals in the military, especially with the inability to reach out for support from Jewish communities. This comprehensive study replaces Bertram Korn's 1949 American Jewry and the Civil War as the new standard on the Jewish role in the Civil War.