Patrick's Introduction

         Americans think they know the story of the Civil War and the Confederacy, but too often it is simplified into the North and South fighting to decide the future of the nation’s most horrific institution. Parts of this narrative are of course true, but they leave out too much, leaving little room for the stories of minorities and the underprivileged in both Southern and Northern society, removing those groups’ own agency, including the efforts of black Americans to resist slavery on their own. One group, Jewish Americans, whose religion had been an important factor in the treatment of Jews for thousands of years, seem not to fit the simplistic narrative of the Civil War that has emerged in historical circles. However, it is vital to an understanding of the variety and diversity of American identity to discover the experiences of minority groups throughout the history of the United States, reminding the historian that pivotal events such as the Civil War affected all levels of society.

            On December 31^st, 1860, eleven days after the secession of the first confederate state and fewer than four months before the outbreak of war, a United States Senator from Louisiana passionately advocated for South Carolina’s fundamental right to secede from the Union. His name was Judah P. Benjamin, the first American Jew to be elected to the Senate who had not renounced Judaism. Being the sole Jew in the Senate at the time, he did not often make reference to that fact, and instead used his time to speak on the broader issues. At a time when people referred to their rights as “endowed by God,” Benjamin sought to contextualize the discussion of secession in the language of the Constitution, not religion. By doing so, Benjamin presents a potentially difficult exercise in analysis for the historian. How does one examine and interpret the ways in which the religion and culture of one of the most prominent Jewish Americans of the time period affected him when he does not describe that religion and culture in full? The answer is left open, and this paper will present the experiences of several Jewish Americans, some of whom spoke more openly about their religion, in an attempt to describe the Jewish Confederate experience of the Civil War and how their culture affected how they perceived their newfound national identity.

            From a Virginian nurse’s journal to the war letters of a confederate colonel who served as Quartermaster General, from a teenager growing up in New Orleans to a future governor who wasn’t raised as but was considered to be Jewish, the stories of the men and women who experienced the Civil War through the lens of Judaism and anti-Semitism are too diverse to explore in full. However, they can provide historians of American and Jewish history a better understanding of the variety of experiences that can lead people of similar backgrounds and religions to widely different conclusions. The story of the Civil War is a particularly complicated moment in American history, with a number of different groups participating in a myriad of ways. For American Jews in the South, their experience ranged widely, placing many on a spectrum between for and against slavery and the Confederacy, with some dedicating their lives to fighting for or against those institutions. Overall, their stories can be best told in examining individuals, reminding historians and readers of the value in exploring a range of experiences to understand partly the role of a group in history.