The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen
Simon Wolf
eBook
(@AnnieRoseBooks, July 6, 2015)
This 1895 directory of Jewish-American Civil War veterans has been made into a database and can be searched online. In December, 1891, there appeared in the North American Review a letter in reply to certain statements of a contributor to a previous number of the same magazine regarding the services of American Jewish citizens as soldiers in the Civil War. Under the caption “Jewish Soldiers in the Union Army,” the writer, after denying the statement that Generals Rosecrans and Lyon were of Jewish birth, proceeds as follows:“I had served in the field about eighteen months before being permanently disabled in action, and was quite familiar with several regiments; was then transferred to two different recruiting stations, but I cannot remember meeting one Jew in uniform, or hearing of any Jewish soldier. After the war, for twenty-five years, I was constantly engaged in traveling, always among old soldiers, but never found any who remembered serving with Jews. I learned of no place, where they stood, shoulder to shoulder, except in General Sherman's department, and he promptly ordered them out of it for speculating in cotton and carrying information to the Confederates. If so many Jews fought so bravely for their adopted country, surely their champion ought to be able to give the names of the regiments they condescended to accept service in, etc., etc.