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“LincolnandtheJews: A History” is thebasis for
the“WithFirmness intheRight: Lincolnandthe
Jews” museumexhibit. Credit: Thomas Dunne
Books.
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Abraham lincoln
Jews
Abraham Lincoln
museum
President Abraham
Lincoln
US antisemitism
Author:
Jennifer Brody /
JNS.org
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Spotlight on Lincoln’s Jewish Ties Part of
16th President’s Renaissance
JNS.org –At a time when America’s
heroes are dwindling, filmmakers and
historians are among those turning to
Abraham Lincoln for inspiration.
Our 16th president inspired Lincoln,
Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film
examining how his political acumen
helped him get Congress to pass the
13th Amendment. “Abraham Lincoln:
Vampire Hunter” imagines “The
Great Emancipator” as a slayer of
slaveholding Southern vampires.
But Lincoln’s relationship with Jews,
a lesser-known story, is the
inspiration for a groundbreaking
exhibit, “With Firmness in the Right:
Lincoln and the Jews,” that opens
Monday at the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library and Museum in
Springfield, Ill. Based on the book Lincoln and the Jews: A History, by Jonathan
D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell, the exhibit opened at the New York Historical
Society earlier this year.
“This is not the stories you’ve heard about Lincoln from textbooks. It opens up a
whole new world of another aspect of Lincoln’s life,” said Carla Knorowski, CEOof
the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation.
Considering that Lincoln grew up at a time of antisemitism, many people may be surprised to learn
that he was deeply committed to religious pluralism and had more Jewish friends and acquaintances
than any president before him. In 1809, the year of Lincoln’s birth, barely 3,000 Jews lived in
America. By 1865, the year of Lincoln’s assassination, that number had increased to 150,000.
The exhibit includes a series of letters between Lincoln and Abraham Jonas, a Jewish lawyer from
Quincy, Ill., who was instrumental in Lincoln’s political rise. In a friendship that spanned just more
than two decades, Jonas was one of the first to support Lincoln’s candidacy for president and urged
the Republican Party to woo political outsiders like the “liberal and freethinking Germans” and
“Israelites.”
In 1861, Lincoln rewarded Jonas’s contributions with the plum political appointment of Postmaster of
Quincy. But perhaps the greatest testament to their friendship was Lincoln’s handwritten order in May
1864 to allow one of Jonas’s sons, Charles, then a Confederate POW, “a parole of three weeks to visit
his dying father.”
Lincoln’s fundamental sense of fairness distinguished him throughout his political career. Evidence of
this trait appears in many of the documents, photographs, letters, bibles, and other artifacts
assembled for the “With Firmness in the Right” exhibit. The items are drawn from a variety of sources,
including the Shapell Manuscript Foundation, the Chicago Historical Society, Brown University, and
the Library of Congress. Some of them are being displayed publicly for the first time.
The exhibit includes a tracing of Lincoln’s own feet and highlights his close relationship with his
eccentric foot doctor, the British-born Dr. Issachar Zacharie, who is buried in London’s Highgate
Cemetery. In 1863, The New York World reported that the doctor “enjoyed Mr. Lincoln’s confidence
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Cemetery. In 1863, The New York World reported that the doctor “enjoyed Mr. Lincoln’s confidence
more than any other private individual.”
The president even sent Zacharie on peace and intelligence missions to the South during the Civil War.
Lincoln had just appointed General Nathaniel P. Banks to replace the antisemitic Benjamin F. Butler in
the Gulf. With Jewish connections in New Orleans, Zacharie was the ideal choice to help repair
relations with the area’s 2,000 Jews. Lincoln urged Banks to make somewhat mysterious use of
Zacharie’s skills, saying, “I think he might be of service to you, first in his peculiar profession, and,
secondly, as a means of access to his countrymen, who are quite numerous in some of the localities
you will probably visit.”
Lincoln made bold decisions that transformed Jews from outsiders to insiders in American society.
One significant example is Lincoln’s overturning of Ulysses Grant’s General Orders No. 11 (December
1862) that expelled Jews “as a class” from Union-controlled territory (including parts of southern
Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi). Born out of frustration with some Jewish cotton
smugglers, Grant’s edict qualified as “the most blatant state-sanctioned act of antisemitism in
American history,” according to the Lincoln and the Jews book.
Daniel Stowell, the Lincoln Presidential Library’s curator for the exhibit, agrees that Lincoln’s
countermand of Grant’s order shows how the president stood up to anti-Semitic generals.
“Lincoln gave wide latitude to generals that were succeeding, and Grant was one of them,” Stowell
said. “Lincoln would have had no trouble if Grant said, ‘Okay, all peddlers need to leave the area,’ but
Lincoln was quoted as saying he did not like condemning a whole group because of a few sinners.”
In September 1862, Lincoln took another bold action, appointing Rabbi Jacob Frankel of Philadelphia
as the U.S. military’s first Jewish chaplain. The document formalizing that appointment is included in
the Illinois exhibit. At that time, there were 7,000 Jews in the Union Army.
“Many Jews did feel like second-class citizens, especially in the decades prior to the Civil War, but
Lincoln establishes this sense that all sorts of people should be treated as equals. The Emancipation
Proclamation was all about that idea,” said Stowell.
Regarding renewed interest in Lincoln—the man and the politician—Sarna speculates that, at a time
when many Americans are disaffected by the political process, Lincoln’s mastery of politics is
admired.
“There may be a certain nostalgia toward a president who was ‘Honest Abe.’ It’s really extraordinary
when you see the extent to which he was able to live his values and accomplish so many things,” said
Sarna.
In the days after Lincoln’s assassination, rabbis compared the anti-slavery president to the greatest of
biblical heroes from the patriarch Abraham to the prophet Moses. When some of our heroes today
have disappointed us, it’s comforting to know we still have Lincoln.
Jennifer Brody is a former associate editor at JUF News and a freelance writer living in Chicago.
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