Editorial Content for Lincoln and the Jews: A History

In this year that marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, distinguished American Jewish historian Jonathan D. Sarna and collector Benjamin Shapell have produced a gorgeous book on an unlikely subject: the relationship between our 16th president and the Jewish people. The subject is unlikely because, as the authors note, Lincoln probably never met a Jewish person until he had reached early adulthood. Yet, as his career progressed from his first days in Illinois politics until he reached the White House, it intertwined, at key points, with significant numbers of them. Throughout, as they demonstrate, Lincoln displayed an attitude of tolerance, and even affection, for the Jewish people.

Sarna and Shapell, the founder of the Shapell Manuscript Foundation, marry newly discovered documents with insightful text to portray Lincoln's web of connections with Jews. His lack of formal education is well-known, but the authors point out that his extensive self-education included a deep immersion in the Hebrew Bible, describing him as perhaps America's "most biblically literate president." References to the Old Testament, they note, far outnumbered ones to the New Testament in his speeches.

The authors make a persuasive case that Jewish supporters played key roles in advancing Lincoln's quest for the White House. His fellow lawyer Abraham Jonas, of Quincy, Illinois, a man Lincoln called "one of my most valued friends," was among the earliest of those promoting his candidacy. After he heard Lincoln's address at Cooper Union in New York in February 1860, New York lawyer Abram Dittenhoeffer became another ardent supporter. But not all Jews, even those who were not pro-slavery, were as enamored of the prospect of a Lincoln presidency. As Sarna and Shappell note, many of New York's Jews worked in the clothing trade and "depended for their livelihood upon Southern cotton and produced clothes destined for Southern markets." Prominent rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise described the 1860 election as "one of the greatest blunders a nation can commit."

"LINCOLN AND THE JEWS features high quality reproductions of dozens of documents, blending them effectively with numerous photographs to enhance the text. These features make it a volume to be lingered over and savored."

When Lincoln took office, he had the opportunity to demonstrate his broad-mindedness toward the Jewish people when that was anything but a universal sentiment. In 1862, after working with Congress to reinterpret legislation defining the qualifications for service as a chaplain that limited membership in those ranks to "a regularly ordained minister of a Christian denomination," he appointed Rev. Jacob Frankel as the first Jewish military chaplain in American history. He also named numerous Jews to the important positions of quartermasters and sutlers, whose responsibilities included housing and provisioning Union troops. 

The most striking example of Lincoln's disdain for anti-Jewish prejudice occurred just days after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, when he revoked General Orders 11, issued by General Ulysses S. Grant, the most prominent of the anti-Semitic generals in the Union's command. Frustrated by the persistent activity of speculators and smugglers in the Department of Tennessee, Grant's December 17, 1862 order expelled "Jews as a class" from that territory. "I do not like to hear a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners," Lincoln commented afterward to a group of Jewish leaders who came to thank him for his swift reversal of Grant's bigoted order.

Throughout the book, Sarna and Shappell share fascinating stories of Lincoln's interactions with individual Jews. One of the most intriguing involves a chiropodist (podiatrist today) named Isaac Zacharie. Born in England, Zacharie, a man of "many mysteries," as the authors characterize him, parlayed connections with Henry Clay and other prominent politicians into an introduction to Lincoln in 1862. After treating Lincoln successfully for everything from corns to a backache, Zacharie secured a presidential appointment as an emissary to the Jewish community of New Orleans, where he engaged both in espionage and diplomatic activity that included a meeting with Judah Benjamin, the Jewish secretary of state of the Confederacy, and other Confederate leaders.

In their effort to paint their sympathetic portrait, there are points when Sarna and Shapell seem to be straining to create an ever closer association between Lincoln and the Jewish people. One example of that occasional overreach includes the suggestion that the "four score and seven years" of the Gettysburg Address may have been inspired by a sermon delivered by Rabbi Sabato Morais, of Mikveh Israel Congregation in Philadelphia, on July 4, 1863. Another is the observation that Lincoln's second inaugural (whose address drew heavily on Old Testament texts) coincided with the date on the Hebrew calendar that marked the conclusion of Moses' final message to his people, as they were about to enter the Promised Land without him.

LINCOLN AND THE JEWS features high quality reproductions of dozens of documents, blending them effectively with numerous photographs to enhance the text. These features make it a volume to be lingered over and savored. The book's publication coincides with a major exhibit that opened at the New-York Historical Society on March 19th and will travel to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, Illinois. If you can't experience that exhibit in person, this sumptuous book is a worthy substitute.