The Jewish Confederates | The Jerusalem Post

On July 3, the United States will mark the 156th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a decisive engagement in the American Civil War.

On that day, the Confederate Army stormed the federal position on Culp’s Hill on the extreme right flank of the Union defensive line. The attacking Southerners included Major Adolph Proskauer of the 12th Alabama Regiment, a Jewish immigrant from Prussia who lived in Mobile, Alabama, and enlisted in the Confederate Army in May 1861.

Though the Confederate assault on Culp’s Hill proved unsuccessful, Proskauer earned his men’s admiration. “I can see him now…as he nobly carried himself at Gettysburg, standing coolly and calmly, with cigar in his mouth, at the head of the Twelfth Alabama, amid a perfect rain of bullets, shot and shell,” one of them wrote years later.

Proskauer had joined the 3,000 Jews who fought for the Confederacy. Though some came from established Jewish families, many were immigrants who left Central Europe in order to escape conscription in those countries, and later volunteered for the Confederate Army.

In 1858, Charles Wessolovsky’s parents sent him to Georgia to join his brother Asa to keep him from being drafted into the Prussian Army. Upon his arrival in America, he worked as a peddler of goods to farmers in rural Georgia. Finding his customers largely free of anti-Jewish prejudice, Charles and Asa Wessolovsky enlisted in Company G of the 57th Georgia Regiment on May 7, 1862.

Like their fellow Southerners, the Jews had different motivations for fighting the war. “We were thoroughly imbued with the idea that we were not fighting for the perpetuation of slavery but for the principle of State’s rights and free trade, and in the defense of our homes, which were being ruthlessly invaded,” wrote Moses Ezekiel of Richmond, Virginia, speaking for many Jewish Confederates.

Upon entering the Confederate Army, the highest rank that most of the Jewish officers reached was lieutenant. None made general, and only a small group became colonels. Few Jews graduated from American military academies like West Point or the Virginia Military Institute. As recent immigrants, many also lacked the political connections needed to reach the top ranks.

Octavus Cohen, a 17-year-old from an assimilated Jewish family from Savannah, Georgia, enlisted though he was underage at the time. In June 1862, he fought in the Battle of Secessionville as an aide to General William Duncan Smith. He made Second Lieutenant on June 5, 1863. His war continued in 1864 during a major battle in Olustee, Florida. He finally surrendered as part of the 32nd Georgia Regiment on April 26, 1865, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The Jews who did reach the rank of colonel were those born in the South. Colonel Leon Dawson Marks, a native of Louisiana, helped form Company D of the 1st Louisiana Special Battalion. In April 1862, Marks became colonel of the 27th Louisiana Regiment, and was appointed commandant of the Post of Vicksburg in March 1863. During the Union siege of Vicksburg, Marks received a fatal wound by shrapnel from a detonated Union Parrott bomb while eating dinner on June 28, 1863.

The highest ranking Jewish Confederate was Judah P. Benjamin. He served as a trusted colleague of President Jefferson Davis from the Confederate government’s formation in February 1861 to its flight from Richmond, the Southern capital, in April 1865. Benjamin served as the South’s attorney-general, secretary of war and secretary of state.

By 1864, faced with the Union Army encamped less than 30 miles from Richmond, Benjamin also added the unofficial role of spymaster to his responsibilities. Unable to thwart the Union in battle, Benjamin dispatched Jacob Thompson, former governor of Mississippi, to destabilize the North through sabotage operations. These included a failed attempt to burn New York City, a bungled effort to derail a train of Confederate prisoners of war, and an unsuccessful attempt at kidnapping vice president Andrew Johnson in Louisville.

Despite the best efforts of Jewish and non-Jewish Confederates, the South could not prevail against a determined North with its superior manpower, resources, and industrial base, and by 1864, brilliant civilian and military leadership. The Union finally prevailed in April 1865.

Naim Peress is an attorney and thriller writer in the New York area