The Jewish Confederates by Robert N. Rosen

Author:Robert N. Rosen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

When the Civil War began, Julius joined the Union army and served as a captain. Bertha and her family remained loyal to the South. Her brother served in the Confederate army. In fact, this pro-Southern wife of a Federal officer smuggled quinine across the river from Cincinnati to Kentucky to help the beleaguered Confederates. There is a family story that Bertha pushed her baby carriage, which contained contraband material hidden under one of the little Ochs boys, across the river to the Confederates. Adolph Ochs recalled in later years that “mother gave father a lot of trouble in those days.” According to their granddaughter, Bertha’s smuggling drugs to the Confederates came to the attention of the Union authorities and a warrant was issued for her arrest. As a loyal Union officer, Julius was able to have the charges dismissed. In 1928, The Confederate Veteran wrote, “for a mother in Israel to defy her husband and an entire army was no mean assertion of militant feminism in those days.”122

In 1864 Julius and Bertha and their young family moved to Knoxville, which was then occupied by the Union army. Adolph Ochs began his newspaper career as a paperboy in Knoxville. Julius became active in the Knoxville Jewish community and served as unofficial rabbi.123

Because Memphis was a large port on the Mississippi River and a center of cotton trading and illegal speculation, and because many Northern Jews flocked to Memphis, Tennessee became the flash point of the most infamous anti-Semitic event of the Civil War. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant issued Order Number 11 expelling all the Jews from the military district. This order, issued by Grant on December 17, 1862, stated: “The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department of Tennessee [which included parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.” Post commanders were ordered to see that “all of this class of people” be furnished with passes and made to leave the state. Jews were forced out of Paducah, Kentucky, and Holly Springs and Oxford, Mississippi, and some were imprisoned.124 A Union colonel told one victim that he was forced to flee because “You are Jews, and are neither a benefit to the Union or Confederacy.” The Jews of Paducah protested this “inhuman order” directly to Lincoln, and their leaders met with the president in Washington. Lincoln is said to have asked, “And so the children of Israel were driven from the happy land of Canaan?” Cesar Kaskel of Paducah told Lincoln, “Yes, and that is why we have come unto Father Abraham’s bosom, asking protection.” Lincoln replied, “And this protection they shall have at once.”125

Henry Halleck, the Union general in chief, could not have cared less about the Jews. He wired Grant that neither he nor the president had any objection “to your expelling traitors and Jew peddlers.” Atty. Gen. Edward Bates told the president he was indifferent to Jewish protests.

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