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267 10 “His Name Will Ever Be Green in Your Hearts”: Jews and the Cultural Preservation of Lincoln’s Legacy As we have seen, rabbis and Jewish leaders joined with their fellow citizens in eulogizing Lincoln after his assassination. Similarly, American Jews played an active role in the renaissance of interest in Lincoln’s life, which would ultimately lead to his virtual apotheosis toward the end of the nineteenth century and into the first decades of the twentieth century. During this time, American Jews not only celebrated Lincoln and his Jewish qualities through a wide range of oratorical and literary presentations but also produced a diverse array of fine arts that contributed to the overall national trend of memorializing and exalting Lincoln. Jews lauded Lincoln on canvas, in bronze, in music, in decorative arts, and in belles lettres. American Jews also actively participated in the growing interest in collecting, preserving, and studying Lincolniana, historical material relating to his life and legacy. Jewish Scholars of Lincoln In 1894, the publisher Samuel S. McClure (1857–1949) hired a talented reporter named Ida Tarbell (1857–1944) and directed her to find new material on Lincoln, who, in McClure’s opinion, was “the most vital factor in [American] life since the Civil War.”1 Tarbell delivered what McClure ordered, and the American public gobbled up her interesting articles on Lincoln that appeared serially in McClure’s Magazine beginning in 1895. Tarbell’s initial research convinced her that McClure had led her to an excellent topic. She realized that there existed a large field of unharvested primary source material on Lincoln, and she decided to begin work on a new Lincoln biography. Tarbell depended on the help of research assistants and also the reading public, who enjoyed her serialized articles on Lincoln and volunteered to assist her. She collected a remarkable array of new data on Lincoln and published a fresh two-volume biography titled The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Drawn from Original Sources and Containing Many Speeches, Letters and Telegrams Hitherto Unpublished. An unassuming and somewhat phlegmatic Jewish newspaper editor named Isaac Markens became one of those who eagerly contributed to Tarbell’s research on Lincoln. Markens, a modest businessman and journalist, was a pioneering Lincoln enthusiast and the first Jewish researcher to study Lincoln’s relationship with American Jewry. As “His Name Will Ever Be Green in Your Hearts” 268 a young man, Markens earned his living by working as a secretary and administrative assistant. He eventually became an editor for a number of newspapers in New York, including the New York Commercial Advertiser, the Mail and Express, and the New York Star. For many years, Markens was also a member of the New York Cotton Exchange.2 During the early 1880s, while working as an editor for the Mail and Express, Markens prepared a series of essays titled “Hebrews in America.” The positive response of the paper’s readers spurred Markens’s interest in writing about the history of Jewish life in America. By 1888, he had expanded his newspaper series into a significant publication that became a pioneering comprehensive effort to chronicle the history of American Jewry: Hebrews in America: A Series of Historical and Biographical Sketches. Although Markens was not a scientifically trained historian, he, like Ida Tarbell, approached his research with the zeal of an investigative reporter. He delved deeply into published volumes, state records, and historical societies in order to find his data. To his credit, Markens also solicited numerous oral histories from prominent contemporaries. Not surprisingly, the oral memoirs he procured from men like Isaac M. Wise, Bernhard Felsenthal (1822–1908), Isaac P. Mendes (1854–1904), Benjamin F. Peixotto, Jacob Ezekiel (1812–99), and many others often include interesting and valuable historical information that would have been lost had it not been for Markens and his various publications. At this same time, a small but noteworthy number of university-trained scholars such as Cyrus Adler (1863–1940) and Jacob H. Hollander (1871–1940) joined together with independent researchers such as Leon Hühner (1871–1957) and Max J. Kohler (1871–1934) to collect and preserve documentary evidence relating to the history of Jewish life in America as well. In 1892, a group of these scholars established the American Jewish Historical Society, and Markens participated in the work of the society from its earliest days.3 Isaac Markens, newspaper correspondent and prodigious researcher, was the first to write about Lincoln and American Jewry. Photographic print ICHi-59748; Chicago...

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