Jewish Confederates

“When I commenced this diary, of my life as a Confederate soldier I was full of hope for the speedy termination of the War, and our independence.
I was not quite nineteen years old. I am now twenty-three. The four years that I have given to my country, I do not regret, nor am I sorry for one day that I have given – my only regret is that we have lost that for which we fought. Nor do I for one minute think that we lost it by any other way than by being outnumbered at least five, if not ten to one. The world was open to the enemy, but shut out to us. I shall now close this diary in sorrow, but to the last I will say that, although but a private, I still say our Cause was just, nor do I regret one thing that I have done to cripple the North.”

The Jewish people have endured much throughout their long history, yet have always continued to hold on to their religious and cultural identity. Finding a safe harbor from persecution was perhaps the main justification for the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. Yet before this monumental event, amidst the often tumultuous sea of the diaspora, there did briefly exist another corner of the world in which calm waters were found for the Jewish people. Robert N. Rosen tells us in his book The Jewish Confederates that “the Old South was remarkably free of prejudice against Jews.”[1]

Though there were less than 25,000 Jewish people living in the South, they enjoyed comparatively unprecedented freedom and exercised considerable influence. “Numerous Southern Jews served in state legislatures, city councils, and in other positions of authority” including three Jewish members of congress before the war. This is not to say antisemitism did not exist in the Old South, but, according to Rabbi Bertram Korn “Nowhere else in America – certainly not in the Antebellum North – had Jews been accorded such an opportunity to be complete equals as in the old South.”[2]

Historian  Howard Sachar affirms: