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8. “The Best Southern Patriots”: Jews in Alabama during the Civil War
- The University of Alabama Press
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8 “The best southern Patriots” Jews in alabama during the Civil war Patricia A. Hoskins on april 26, 1861, two weeks after the firing on fort sumter, twenty-six-year-old solomon Kahn of montgomery, alabama, enlisted in the 3rd alabama infantry. During the first week of may, the 3rd alabama became the first alabama regiment to report to richmond, virginia, in defense of the newly formed Confederate states of america. over the next four years, Kahn and his fellow soldiers in the regiment would participate in many of the bloodiest battles of the war, including malvern hill, fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. The regiment suffered devastating losses at Gettysburg, and again at the wilderness, spotsylvania, and Cold harbor. enduring further losses at Petersburg, a little more than forty members of the regiment surrendered with Gen. robert e. lee at appomattox. after the war, solomon Kahn moved to several different states before finally settling in Dallas, Texas, where, like many of his former comrades, he became an active member of the local camp of the United Confederate veterans. when he died in 1914, the local newspaper praised him with typical lost Cause language: “when the tocsin of war sounded he was among the first of the gallant yeomanry of the country to respond to the call of arms and enlisted in an alabama regiment and served in the army of virginia.” The newspaper, however, omitted certain information in the obituary. The recently deceased Kahn was not a member of the yeomanry but a montgomery merchant. he was also Jewish.1 solomon Kahn was just one of the more than 130 Jewish alabamians who served in the Confederate army during the Civil war. many more supported the war on the home front, performed diplomatic missions for the Confederacy, or supplied the war effort. Jews played significant roles not just in alabama but throughout the United states during the war. of the approximately 150,000 Jews living in the United states in 1860, it is believed that roughly 2,000 Jews fought for the Confederacy , while 7,000 fought for the much more populous Union. several Jews held notable positions in the Confederacy. Judah P. benjamin of louisiana served in Jefferson Davis’s cabinet, first as attorney general, later as secretary of war, and finally as secretary of the treasury. rabbi m. J. michelbacher of 150 / hoskins richmond preached one of the most widely circulated printed sermons of the war, titled “a Prayer for the Confederacy.” Joshua moses of south Carolina became the last Jewish soldier to die in the war when he fell at fort blakely near mobile on the same day that robert e. lee surrendered at appomattox. some of the most notorious acts of the war concern Jews—in particular Gen. Ulysses s. Grant’s General orders No. 11, which expelled the “Jews as a class” from Kentucky, Tennessee, and mississippi on suspicion of illegal barter.2 The history of Jews in the Civil war and in the south in general, however, has received little attention. from the colonial period to the present, Jews have comprised less than 2 percent of the south’s population. Yet the first Jewish community in the south developed in savannah, Georgia, as early as 1733. by 1820 there were 700 Jews in Charleston, south Carolina, giving it the largest Jewish population in the United states at that time. by the time of fort sumter, richmond boasted three synagogues and dozens of Jewish-owned mercantile businesses. several other cities in Georgia, including macon, west Point, la Grange, and atlanta, also included successful Jewish families. other small communities of Jews could be found in mississippi , arkansas, and Texas. louisiana, and New orleans in particular, became somewhat of a marvel because of the size of its Jewish population, causing one european visitor to observe, “the Governor [of louisiana] is supposed to be somewhat under the influence of the hebrews.”3 Despite this, the antebellum history of Jews in the south tends to be eclipsed by the larger role they played in the postbellum history of the area. in the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries, Jews became objects of scorn and targets of xenophobia in the south, as evinced by the murder of leo frank in Georgia in 1915, their status as targets of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, and the bombing of several Jewish synagogues and buildings in the 1950s. in alabama, the older Jewish communities in mobile and montgomery became overshadowed by...