Notice_the_nose’s Reviews > Lincoln and the Jews: A History > Status Update

Andrew Johnson behaved in a way that was the antithesis of Lincoln’s admiration and respect for Jews. Of Senator David Levy Yulee, Johnson once remarked, “… a miserable little cuss—a contemptible Jew … despicable little beggar…” About Judah P. Benjamin, Johnson said in a speech on the floor of the Senate, that “he belongs to that tribe that parted the garments of our Savior.”

General Benjamin F. Butler, military governor of New Orleans, was notorious for, among other things, his anti-Semitism. Writing of arrested smugglers on October 23, 1862, he says, “They are Jews who betrayed their Savior; & also have betrayed us.”

On January 6, 1863, several urgent telegrams went out from Grant’s headquarters in obedience to that demand. “By direction of the General in Chief of the Army at Washington,” they read, “the General Order from these Head Quarters expelling Jews from this Department is hereby revoked.”

Writing in early December to General Sherman, whose quartermaster had created problems by selling cotton “to a Jew by the name of Haas,” Grant explained that “in consequence of the total disregard and evasion of orders by the Jews my policy is to exclude them so far as practicable from the Dept.”

Grant tightened his regulations against Jews: “Refuse all permits to come south of Jackson for the present,” he ordered. “The Isrealites [sic] especially should be kept out.” The very next day he strengthened that order: “no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the Rail Road southward from any point … they are such an intolerable nuisance that the Department must be purged for [sic] them.”

Significantly, he never again, in his official correspondence, referred to Americans as a “Christian people,” nor did he pay further heed to those who sought to publicly identify the government with Christianity. Instead, within a few weeks, Isaac Mayer Wise heard Lincoln reassure Jewish leaders that he would by no means allow any citizen to be “wronged on account of his place of birth or religious confession.”

Many of them, indeed, were better known as Germans than as Jews. Lincoln, from his previous interactions with Jews, had no reason to know that his reference to “Christianity” would offend them. Over time, as we shall see, he learned better.

Radical Jews like Rabbi David Einhorn and his followers, many of whom had supported the failed 1848 revolutions in Europe, detested slavery and cheered on its Republican opponents (as a result, Einhorn would be forced to flee the city in April). The majority of Jews, in the middle, having voted for the Democrats, promoted peace and reconciliation.

Lewis Naphtali Dembitz (1833–1907) of Louisville, Kentucky. An Orthodox Jew, attorney, and polymath (he read twelve languages), Dembitz immigrated to the United States, along with relatives named Brandeis and Wehle, in response to the failed 1848 liberal revolutions in central Europe. He fervently opposed slavery and, like Lincoln and Jonas, revered Henry Clay