Jews in the American Civil War: Loyalty, Prejudice, and Service

A House Divided — and Jews on Both Sides

When the first shots struck Fort Sumter in April 1861, there were roughly 150,000 Jews in the United States. They lived in New York and New Orleans, in Charleston and Cincinnati, in small towns and booming cities. They were peddlers and plantation owners, rabbis and shopkeepers. And like every other American community, they were about to be torn apart.

Approximately 7,000 Jews served in the Civil War — around 3,000 for the Union and 4,000 for the Confederacy. The numbers themselves tell a story: the Jewish population was more heavily concentrated in the South than people often assume. Jews had been in Charleston since the colonial era. New Orleans had a thriving Jewish community. The South was home.

Judah P. Benjamin: The Brains of the Confederacy

No figure better embodies the complexity of Jewish participation in the Civil War than Judah Philip Benjamin. Born in the British West Indies to Sephardic Jewish parents, raised in Charleston, educated at Yale (which he left under unclear circumstances), Benjamin became one of the most brilliant lawyers in America and the first acknowledged Jewish U.S. Senator.

When the Southern states seceded, Benjamin sided with the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis appointed him Attorney General, then Secretary of War, then Secretary of State — making him the highest-ranking Jewish government official in North American history up to that time. His detractors called him “the brains of the Confederacy.” His enemies — and he had many, on both sides — attacked him with undisguised antisemitism. Northern newspapers caricatured him with hooked noses and money bags. Southern critics blamed every military setback on “the Jew Benjamin.”

Benjamin was a complicated man in a complicated situation. He was culturally Jewish but not religiously observant. He owned slaves — a fact that sits uneasily with any attempt to lionize him. After the Confederacy fell, he burned his papers and fled to England, where he reinvented himself as one of the most successful barristers in the British Empire. He never returned to America.

The Soldiers

Beyond the famous names, thousands of ordinary Jews served in the ranks. Leopold Blumenberg, a German Jewish immigrant, commanded the 5th Maryland Infantry and was severely wounded at Antietam. Frederick Knefler, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, rose to the rank of brevet brigadier general in the Union army. Max Friedman organized a company known as “Cameron’s Dragoons” that was almost entirely Jewish.

In the Confederacy, the Levy family of Virginia sent multiple sons to war. Jewish soldiers from Shreveport formed their own company. A Jewish soldier from Georgia named Isaac Levy wrote letters home that survive as a vivid record of camp life, battle, and longing.

The Chaplaincy Fight

When Congress established the military chaplaincy in 1861, it required chaplains to be “regularly ordained ministers of some Christian denomination.” This effectively barred rabbis. The exclusion was not accidental — it reflected the assumption that America was fundamentally a Christian nation.

The Jewish community protested vigorously. Rabbi Arnold Fischel traveled to Washington and lobbied members of Congress. The Board of Delegates of American Israelites — one of the first national Jewish organizations — mounted a campaign. In July 1862, Congress amended the law to allow “religious denomination” rather than “Christian denomination,” opening the chaplaincy to rabbis.

Three rabbis served as chaplains during the war. The first was Rabbi Jacob Frankel of Philadelphia, who served in hospitals. The fight for the chaplaincy was a small battle in the context of the war, but it established an important principle: Jews in America would not accept second-class status, even in wartime.

General Order No. 11: The Darkest Moment

On December 17, 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11 from his headquarters in Holly Springs, Mississippi. It read, in part: “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 within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.”

The order was the most sweeping antisemitic act by an American government official in the nation’s history. It expelled all Jews — men, women, children, soldiers included — from a military district encompassing parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi. Families were forced from their homes. Some were marched to railroad stations under guard.

The background was cotton smuggling. With Southern cotton desperately needed by Northern textile mills, a thriving black market had developed. Jewish traders were involved — as were many non-Jewish traders — but Grant singled out Jews as a class. His motivations were likely a mix of genuine frustration with smuggling, personal pique (his own father had arrived with a Jewish business partner seeking cotton trading permits), and the casual antisemitism of the era.

The Jewish community responded with outrage. Cesar Kaskel, a Jew from Paducah, Kentucky, traveled to Washington and personally appealed to President Lincoln. Lincoln immediately revoked the order, reportedly telling General-in-Chief Henry Halleck: “I do not like to hear a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.”

The episode became a lasting issue. When Grant ran for president in 1868, Jewish voters remembered. Grant, to his credit, spent his presidency actively courting the Jewish community, appointing Jews to prominent positions, and attending synagogue dedications. He may have been the first president to attend a Jewish worship service. It was an imperfect redemption, but it was genuine.

Jews and Slavery: The Uncomfortable Truth

Any honest account of Jews in the Civil War must confront the question of slavery. Some Jews owned slaves. Judah Benjamin owned a plantation. Jewish merchants in the South participated in the slave economy. The historical record is clear and uncomfortable.

But context matters. Jews were a tiny minority in the South, and their slaveholding was proportionally smaller than that of the general white population. More importantly, Jews were not monolithic on the question. Rabbi David Einhorn of Baltimore was a fierce abolitionist whose views were so controversial that a mob forced him to flee the city. Rabbi Morris Raphall of New York delivered an infamous sermon arguing that the Bible sanctioned slavery — a position that drew sharp criticism from other rabbis.

The Jewish community was divided precisely because America was divided. Jews held the same range of views on slavery as their neighbors, influenced by the same economic interests, regional loyalties, and moral blind spots.

Women on the Home Front

Jewish women played vital roles during the war, as they did in every American community. Phoebe Yates Pember, a Jewish woman from South Carolina, served as the chief matron of Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond — the largest military hospital in the world at the time. Her memoir, A Southern Woman’s Story, is one of the finest firsthand accounts of Civil War medical care.

In the North, Jewish women organized relief efforts, rolled bandages, and managed businesses while their husbands were at war. Eugenia Levy Phillips, wife of a former congressman, was imprisoned by Union General Benjamin Butler in New Orleans for her Confederate sympathies.

After the War

The Civil War transformed American Jewish life. Jews had fought, bled, and died for both causes. They had proven their patriotism — and faced antisemitism despite it. The experience paralleled what Jewish soldiers worldwide would discover again and again: military service does not guarantee acceptance.

But the war also accelerated Jewish integration into American life. Returning soldiers had shared camps, marches, and battles with non-Jewish comrades. The shared sacrifice created bonds that transcended religious difference. Jewish veterans joined the Grand Army of the Republic and Confederate veterans’ organizations. They marched in parades. They told their stories.

The approximately 7,000 Jewish soldiers who served in the Civil War are rarely mentioned in the standard accounts. They should be. They were Americans who fought for what they believed — on both sides, with all the moral complexity that implies. Their story is not separate from the American story. It is woven into it.