An interesting book review:
Tuesday, 12 June 2001 20:35 (ET)
Civilization: 'The Jewish Confederates'
By LOU MARANO
WASHINGTON, June 12 (UPI) -- History is full of surprises for those who
are open to them. One way to stay open is to shed the notion that the recent
past is a good indicator of the more distant past.
It's agreed that the Civil War changed America like nothing else.
Nevertheless, many falsely assume that the antebellum South was like the
post-Reconstruction South, only more so.
"The Jewish Confederates" (University of South Carolina Press, 517 pages,
$39.95), by Robert N. Rosen, parts that cloud to give a clear look at
vanished world.
Rosen, a Charleston, S.C., attorney, discussed his book Sunday before an
audience at The National Museum of American Jewish Military History in
Washington. The author, who holds an MA in history from Harvard, admitted
that he enjoys smashing stereotypes.
"I love pricking the balloon of political correctness," he said. "Not
being an academic, I can tell the truth."
The Jewish people have forgotten that the Jews of the Old South had
complete religious freedom and, unlike in the North, were accepted, Rosen
said. Most Jewish families in the South had come from the German-speaking
areas of Europe. For them, Dixie "was the Land of Canaan, true Palestine."
They accepted dueling and the southern code of honor. Slavery presented no
particular problem because of the biblical precedent. A few Jews owned
slaves, Rosen said, but not as many as those free blacks owned. In
Charleston, for example, free blacks owned three times the number of slaves
owned by the Jews of that city.
The first three Jewish U.S. senators were from the South. Foremost among
them was Judah P. Benjamin of New Orleans. Although Benjamin personally
thought secession would be a disaster, he came to be known as "the brains of
the Confederacy." The Louisianan held three posts in Jefferson Davis'
cabinet: attorney general, secretary of war and secretary of state.
"Benjamin was third in line for the (Confederate) presidency," Rosen said.
"He has no counterpart in the Union."
Southern Jews had no use for New England abolitionists, Rosen said,
calling John Quincy Adams "despicable" for his anti-Semitic utterances and
William Lloyd Garrison a virulent anti-Semite who also hated Catholics.
The abolitionists considered themselves modern and free from superstition,
Rosen said. But southerners, he wrote in his book, "believed fervently in
the God of the Old Testament and respected their Jewish neighbors' knowledge
of the Bible. The learned Jew of a small Southern town often settled
theological disputes among Christians."
Further, southerners saw the Jewish people of ancient times as noble and
heroic. In fact, when the war came, one heroic Jewish widow went so far as
to suggest that her Christian friends suspend for the duration their
religion of love and mercy to embrace the Old Testament God of retribution.
As manager of the huge military hospital in Richmond, Phoebe Yates Pember
saw war's horrors firsthand. In a letter to her sister Eugenia, who had been
banished to an island in the Mississippi River for her defiance of the
Federal occupiers of New Orleans, Pember told of an evening among a
particularly pious set of Yankee-haters.
"At last I lifted my voice and congratulated myself at being born of a
nation, and religion that did not enjoin forgiveness on its enemies, that
enjoyed the blessed privilege of praying for an eye for an eye, and a life
for a life, and was not one of those for whom Christ died in vain,
considering the present state of feelings. I proposed that till the war was
over they should all join the Jewish Church, let forgiveness and peace and
good will alone and put their trust in the sword of the Lord and Gideon."
Jews in the antebellum South "had experienced a freedom unknown to Jews
anywhere else in the world," Rosen wrote, and were more accepted as Jews
than at any other time since "the Golden Age of Jewry in medieval Spain."
They were intensely grateful and accepted their responsibilities when war
came.
"Why would they not fight for their homeland like all the others?" Rosen
asked Sunday. "The truth is the South was invaded." Jews fought for their
freedom and way of life, he said. And, like other Confederates, they were "a
people who wished to be left alone."
As do all responsible historians, Rosen sees slavery as the root cause of
secession, which was the proximate cause of the war. He also acknowledges
that all whites had a stake in the racial caste system. But he resists the
revisionist assertion that the typical Confederate soldier fought mainly to
preserve the peculiar institution.
At the Jewish Military History Museum, Rosen cited the example of Gustavus
Poznanski, son of a Charleston rabbi. When the war broke out, Poznanski
sailed from Canada to join his comrades in defense of his native city and
was killed at age 19.
"To say that this man died for slavery is an absolute lie," Rosen said.
The South continued to be a comfortable home for Jews as long as it was
run by "hierarchical liberal aristocrats" Rosen said. "In the hall of
Righteous Gentiles, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis deserve a place."
But things changed after the Civil War with the eclipse of the
philo-Semitic elite. By the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th
century, demagogues such as Tom Watson and "Pitchfork" Ben Tilman preached
emotional anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish populism.
"The Jewish Confederates" is an eye-opener for all readers and a must for
any serious student of the period. |
