City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York, 3-volume box set

11 Politics, Race, and the Civil War

227 In September 1863, in the midst of a bloody war, with hundreds of thousands already dead and wounded and hundreds of thousands to follow in the next year at a half, the New York Times published its annual report of the Rosh Hashanah celebration. After explaining the meaning of the holiday and its rituals, the Times remarked, “The present anniversary is, according to the Jewish calendar, the five thousand six hundred and twenty fourth since the creation of the world, and owing to the rapid changes going on in Jewish society, and the many removals and deaths occasioned among them in this country, by the existing war, will be observed with peculiar formality and impressiveness.” This was an insightful observation. The Civil War fundamentally altered New York’s Jewish community, both its internal understanding of American society and its relationship with the Christian world.1 ■ New York Politics before the Civil War Antebellum New York politics, volatile and passionate in the 1850s, reached its tensest moments in the years prior to the Civil War. The city was a stronghold of the Democratic Party. Its earlier and still most popular champion, Andrew Jackson, drew a crowd of over one hundred thousand when he visited New York in 1833; Democrats were prosouthern, standing for laissez-faire economics , states’ rights, free immigration, noninterference with slavery, and hostility to reform movements. Democrats recruited their strongest supporters from the working classes, particularly the immigrant working classes, German and Irish immigrants, and merchants whose major economic ties were in the South. The party freely used municipal patronage to cement its base.2 C H A P T E R 1 1 Politics, Race, and the Civil War 228 ■ h av e n o f l i b e r t y Until the mid 1850s, the Democrats’ major opponents were the Whigs, supporters of a strong central government, federally sponsored internal improvements , a national banking system, and tariff support for manufacturing. Whigs feared immigration and, as supporters of “order, morals and religion,” welcomed reform. Bankers and merchants not entwined with the South generally backed Whigs. The Whigs also garnered the votes of middling master craftsmen and, during depressions, of a working class seeking government aid. Democrats won most elections in the city, except for a few mayoralty races lost due to infighting and recession.3 In the mid-1850s, Republicans replaced Whigs as the second major political party. With a platform opposing the extension of slavery in the territories, they drew the adherence of the city’s small antislavery contingent, including William Cullen Bryant and the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, along with a number of merchants, including those hoping for a transcontinental railroad. Republicanism never became a popular movement in New York, alienating the white working class with its probusiness, antislavery, and anti-immigrant outlook. In the 1856 presidential election, Republicans garnered only a fourth of the vote in New York, and in a three-way mayoral race in 1859 that elected prosouthern candidate Fernando Wood, the Republican challenger collected only 27 percent of the vote.4 Strong economic bonds between New York and the South strengthened Democrats and weakened Republicans. The garment industry, the city’s largest business and the trade in which most Jews worked, by 1860 produced 40 percent of the nation’s attire; it supplied clothing to southern whites and slaves. The city’s economy centered on cotton, the nation’s most valuable product. New York merchants controlled its trade and held “a virtual stranglehold on regularly scheduled ships shuttling between northern, southern and European ports.” A city merchant’s words to an abolitionist illustrate the importance of this trade: “Slavery is a great evil, a great wrong,” he admitted. “But a great portion of the property of the Southerners is invested under its sanction; and the business of the North . . . has become adjusted to it. There are millions upon millions of dollars due from Southerners to the merchants and mechanics alone, the payment of which would be jeopardized by any rupture between the North and the South.” “We cannot afford, sir,” he concluded, “to let you and your associates endeavor to overthrow slavery. It is not a matter of principles Politics, Race, and the Civil War ■ 229 with us. It is a matter of business necessity.” Debow’s Review, a respected periodical , commented that without slavery, ships would rot in New York’s harbor , grass would grow on...