Transcripts For CSPAN3 Abraham Lincoln And The Jewish Commun

Rights exhibit which you would have passed on your way in tonight, marks an episode when president Abraham Lincoln directly independent interseeded for american jews. The document is general grants to ber 1862 general order expel jews from the department of tennessee. Grant blamed jews for smuggling and demanded their immediate removal. Jewish citizens of paducah, kentucky, appealed to lincoln, expressing their outrage and lincoln counter manneded grants order. History cannot be written without the primary sources that tell us august. Incident rik lir auth incidentically what authentically what happened at a particular time. Grants order to expel jews and lincolns later order testify to a moment in history that many in the wider public are not aware of, yet it cannot be forgotten, because the records exist to tell us so. By brathing together and publishing the documents in his volume, dr. Zola has given access to a large number of primary source documents that present and future scholars can mine in the course of their research. David winefield, writing a review in the journell of Illinois State Historical Society called zolas annotated collection of primary sources a highly accessible narrative and historian erik thorner declared everyone interested in lincoln and the civil war, students, scholars, and lovers of history alike owe gary zola a debt of thanks for compiling this fascinating book. O lead us into tonights we called about him rabbi abraham, we aurn turn to laura apelbaum, executive director of the jewish Historical Society of greater washington. The useum is a steward for synagogue on eighth street and under lauras leadership has played an Important Role in presenting the history of the importance of the Jewish Community in metropolitan washington, d. C. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome laura cohen apelbaum. [applause] thank you, jim, for that terrific introduction and for talking so much about dr. Zolas book, which is a fantastic read. On the pageds of the book that brings us here tonight, you will encounter several Jewish Communal lead ears that walked the streets just outside of what is now the national archives. Zachary, solomon and simon wolf each had interactions with president Lynch Lincoln detailed in dr. Zolas new book. They were among the 2,000 jewish residents of the Nations Capital during the civil war. A burgeoning community of immigrants whose experiences were very similar to the jews ack limbcating to their new country. Podis. N sent his chiro t to Judah Benjamin secretly to discuss peace negotiations. This is documented with the primary source material in dr. Zolas research for the first time and david mckenzie, on our staff at the time, went into the Confederate States of america papers at garys dress request to find the document you will see in the book. Adolveo solomons book shop served as the salon for inteleight count ulse in the city. Among the open issues was whether a rabbi could serve as a military chaplain. Young lawyer, simon wolf, successfully pleaded clemency to president lincoln for a jewish soldier who had gone awol to visit his mothers death bed. Terwards, they invited grant to attend the synagogue. Perhaps in atonement for general orders number 11 that jim talked about. Our organization proudly preserveds this special schul, which will be moveded twice efore we build a new people museum. On behalf behalf of the directors i want to thank the arc ivists and staff here at the national archives, especially susan clifton, our fifth year of partnering for jewish heritage month. I want to thank the donors who make the visit possible. And i also want top acknowledge the presence of our president , russell smith. Dr. Zola is also also an ordained rabbi and his presence has led to a roomful of esteemed clergy. Pezner of g, rabbi the religious action century enter and rabbi donald berlin, rabbi emeritus of the temple in baltimore. Gary zola is executive director of the Jacob Rader Marcus center of the American Jewish archives and is the edward m. Ackerman family distinguished professor of the American Jewish experience and reform at Hebrew Union College in senate. It is the largest Free Standing center dedicated solely to the study of the American Jewish experience the dr. Zola has written and electricured on a vast array of topics on the American Jewish experience and just reverend returned from teaching in israel. He has served on commissions, he has been a force behind the National Steering committee for jewishAmerican Heritage month. Internationally he serves on the u. S. Commission for the preservation of American Heritage abroad. Dr. Zola will be joined in conversation by erin carlson mast. Erin is the executive director of president lincolns cottage where her work includes everything from Historical Research tosite development to caur cureation. For those who havent been, its a great site where lincoln had his summer retreat and drafted the emancination proclamation. s a nottobe mf nottobemissed site. And the book is incredibly timely. It is now my pleasure to invite dr. Gary zola and erin carlson mast to the stage. [applause] erin thank you, laura. Thank you all for joining us here tonight and thank you especially, dr. Zola for being ere the garay pleasure. Erin it was the primary resource documents that led to the title of your book. Can you tell us about that . Gary well, i can. Let me see if this works. If we turn on power point it will be a prosecutor. Omen for my answer to your question. We are coming father abe ram, 300,000 more, from mississippi and from the new england shore. We leave our wives and children dear we dare not look behind us, we are coming father abraham with 300,000 more we are come, coming our union to restore, we are coming father abraham with 300,000 more gary so the title of this sbook, as you can see, we called him rabbi abraham. The purpose of the book in a broad sense it is to try to answer the question of how exactly did that happen . The song you just heard is a very famous civil war song. It was apparently written by a prominent abolitionist by the name of gibbons and became well known after lincoln called for additional recruits to help defeat the rebels in 1862. And lincoln became known by this terminology, father abraham. So the whole military or many in the military were prefer referring to him as father abraham and my question was, how did he become known as rabbi abraham . That came from really this really remarkable document, and i usually use this as the sock doll, you know, as the dramatic conclusion, but well start right off with it. The person you are looking at is actually the uncle of Supreme Court Justice Brandeis and in fact, some of you know that brandeis, his middle initial was louis, d. Brandeis and thats because he took his unchles name to honor him. So when i was looking at eulogies i went to louisville and i saw in the secular press he spirity of brandeis of dembitz he was a delegate at the 1860 president ial convention and they let him give the eulogy in 1865 and it was pro reproduced in the newspaper and when i rode read the opening lines i couldnt believe my eyes. This is what it said. He opens his eulogy with the words, friends, you often jocosely, a 25 word for humorously, rabbi, as if he were one of our nation, one of the seed of our nation but in truth you might have called him abraham the child of our father abraham for indeed of all the israelites throughout the United States there was none who was more thoroughly fitted to the idea aling of what a a scent ideal of what descendant of abraham ought to be than lincoln. This taught me that the jews at least in louisville, kentucky, and i suspect elsewhere, were already referring to him as rabbi. My question was why . Erin to you so you had that question. There are so many volumes win written on Abraham Lincoln. He is by far one of the most writtenabout people in Human History and you have found the unicorn, the new material to bring to light. What inspired you to write the book . And what were sove the stories you found and what was maybe the most surprising . Gary i ill tell you, what brought me to write the book is not quite as noble. But ill tell you and then ill get to some of the good documents i found. I was involved in helping the nation to celebrate the 350th anniversary of jewish life in this country and i had just become the director of the American Jewish archives and i was motivated to do this because my predecessor, the distinguished scholar and historian Jacob Rader Marcus, was very involved in the centenary n of the ter 50 years earlier, so i was just following up in a small way what he did. I had an opportunity to meet many wonderful people here at the national archives, at the library of congress. I enjoyed the experience and i was involved in a commission related to this experience rand not . On the Commission Said are you going to be on the Lincoln Commission . And i said, i dont know a thing thing about it. They said, well, you should be on it, zola, theres a whole story about lincoln and the jews. I asked how do you get involved in it. And they said just ask ask your did, write to your governor and ask to be appointed. And i happened to know the governor of ohio and i asked and i was appointed, lo and behold, there i was. I found myself in a room of eople like doris kearns good winn and many of the people who were writing books on lincoln and finally it comes to me and im thinking oh, my gosh, what am i going to say, because i dont know a thing, really, about lincoln . And i had not planned to write anything at all. I mean i did come from illinois but i didnt think that was going to impress them. [laughter] so i just mustered every bit of courage i could and i said my name is gary zola. I direct the American Jewish archives. I told them what it was and i said i plan to do everything i can to teach the american Jewish Community about the story of Abraham Lincoln and the jews, which was all sincere and true. But in the teaching, erin, once i got involved and had to prepare, thats when i discovered there was a whole story that i wasnt aware of even though i did know a little bit about lincoln and the jews, some of 9 more famous the more famous episodes, and i wanted to retell that story. I realized it had been 60 years really since anybody had written seriously on lincoln and the jews. So let me tell you if i can, about one of the famous documents. You already heard i think, jim, maybe laura talked about this fellow. This is Abraham Lincolns cyron 0 divet. His chiropodist, podiatrist. But dont mock him this man was not just trimming lincolns toenails. He was a remarkable human being. Came here in england and probably was able to meet lincoln because he was a very apable podiatrist and table to give some of the high military echelon some comfort in their feed and they kept recommending him higher and higher. In fact, here he finally gets to treat lincolns feet and there you have a real document from the collection where you see dr. Zacharie has operated on my feet with Great Success considerable addition to my comfort. By the way, the important thing is the date on that. September 22, i make mention of that in the book, thats the date the preliminary emancipation proclamation was issued. So you wonder, you know, what was lincolns day like . Amazing. [laughter] but nevertheless, now, to go on, i think laura did mention is and that is that zacharie was really a person of some caliber and there are many documents which will demonstrate and prove, ive reproduced many of them in the book, that lincoln took him seriously. He was a thoughtful person and he had ideas and lincoln and seward and stanton all had regard for this man. He wads not a buffoon. Right. Gary he was ambition. Am bishs and he could be a little bit of a sycophant, but he was an intelligent man. As some know, throughout the course of the war there was an ongoing discussion of whether or not they we should try negotiate a peace with the south and bring the bloodshed to on an end or whether there should be unconditional victory. As some people who study lincoln know, this is snag he seemed he dabbled with this and every time the opportunity came to negotiate he would eventually back away from it, but apparently, i cant tell the whole pair because ill, well get to only a small area if i get too involved in every zacharie he, actually arranges for a meeting with the brains of the south, judah p. Benjamin. And although we have always known that there was a desire for these two people to meet, there was never any concrete evidence, any documentary evidence that the two had actually met and discussed the peace plan, a peace plan. And youre looking at right now an image from the library of congress. This is the actual document which dividend mckenzie i dont know. Is david in the room . If hes not, david introduced minimum him to me and i tried to offer suggestions and of course the secret is the letter is where buried some place where it shouldnt have been and probably because i was a bad researcher, i sent him to the wrong area and ended up finding this letter. As you can see, i will blow up this one area, i cant read it from where i am sitting but in the context of the letter he said, i shall go to waushtd and i shall meet with lincoln and i shall tell lincoln that there will be no petition for peace by the south. Then he goes on to say im going to try to talk sense into lincoln on your behalf and tell him to negotiate peace. At the last little area ive blown up he says, i cannot explain, i dont know what brought us together ult mayely but maybe it will be some are fog good. Its all reproduced in the book. A remarkable document. There are two examples of wonderful documents i found. By the way, i want to give credit to the Southern Illinois University Press for publishing the book the way it appears. If people enjoy it, then its their credit, not mine. Because when i submitted the manuscript, erin, originally i submitted it as a narrative history with just some documents in the back in an appendix, which was standard. And they said to me, we will consider publishing your work. Theres a lot of new material. But we want to recommend that you do it in a different way. Every chapter, write about a 10 to 15page narrative, followed by documents that are illuminated, meaning, by that i mean that this headnotes. And to tell you 9 truth the truth, that was a lot more work than i had anticipated. I thought i was down continued done and now i had to go back and really reorganize it. I probably, to tell you the truth, probably wouldnt have done it had i known how much work it was ultimately going to be but in my mind i thought ok, this isnt going so hard. Ill just separate what i was doing and bring the documents to the back of the chapters, blah, blah. Anyway, it took a lot longer, but if you like it it is to their credit because it was their idea to say make it very broad in its usage. Motorcycle make it so that people who just want to readed the narrative can just read the first 15, 10 pages of every go ter can learn it but ahead and put the documents at the bask each chapter. Thats how that happened. Erin its so much more satisfying than just footnote because you actually can dive into the source documents. Im glad they talked you into doing it that way. You gave a couple of examples of lincolns interaxes with jewish americans. He was the first to regularly interact with jews prior to arriving to the white house. There was hay major shift in demographickeds that made that possible, right . Gary thats right. Laura erane erin so what made that possible . Gary its been generally agreed by scolards that Abraham Lincoln probably when he was getting ready to run for senate or to be, he wanted to be chosen to be senator and, by the legislate eyre and ultimately when he ran for president probably knew more jews than all of his 15 predecessors put together. But as my teacher and colleague , dr. Jonathan sarna says, when he was a boy probably 9 only jews he knew were those in the bible. So the question is, what happened between those 50 years . And dr. Sarnas book, im steaming a page just to show you what a generous scholar i am as im promoting his book, too, theres a whole page in which you have a description of all the different jews that lincoln knew, including those who were distant connections and those who were really in a an inner circle. And the answer to your question, erin, has to do with immigration. You are looking at the good old midwest, what was called in those days the Northwest Territory or in the early part of the 19th century and in is this is a period if you stop and think about it in 1809, there were no major urban areas in any of this part of the world. Think about cincinnati, think about st. Louis, think about chicago, these places were either nonexistent or barely existent. By mid century, cincinnati, ohio, as an example, becomes the fifth largest urban area in the United States of america. So this is a part of the nation which explodes. And what scholars, not myself but others, have shown is that huge numbers of immigrants came. Many from central europe. From german extraction or what would be the german states, austria and the alsace region and these immigrants who came and settled here, at some point 70 to 80 of all those who were moving at some point in the 19 ssh 1840s to 1860579s