In 1891, a disturbing article appeared in the North American Review, which was the 19th-century version of todayâ??s Timeâ??it was the countryâ??s most popular public-affairs magazine. The article charged that Jews tended to shirk service in the military. It was soon followed by a letter to the editor from a non-Jewish Civil War veteran. He wrote that during months of service in the Union army, he had never seen a soldier who was a Jew.
Many Jewish leaders were infuriated with what they considered a bald display of anti-Semitism. One so powerful, apparently, that Mark Twain would repeat the claim (â??unpatriotic disinclination to stand by the flag as a soldierâ?) in an essay titled â??Concerning the Jews,â? published a few years later. One of the angriest Jews was Washington, D.C., attorney Simon Wolf, head of that cityâ??s Bâ??nai Bâ??rith. He vowed to debunk the libel and spent over three years compiling the names of every co-religionist he could find who had fought in American wars: from independence from England, to the war with Mexico, to the biggest conflict to dateâ??the Civil War. In 1895 he published the names in a ponderous tome, The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen. You can see it today on Google.
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