LITMIR.BIZ

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      The Orphan Home of the Order of B'nai B'rith at Atlanta, Ga., for the benefit of which Mr. Wolf has devoted the net income of the present publication was instituted in 1876, under the auspices of District Grand Lodge No. 5, comprising the States of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia, and the District of Columbia. The present building was dedicated in 1889. Its benefits are not restricted to the membership of the Order which maintains it, children of all Jews residing within the territory named being admitted to its shelter. There are now sixty children cared for in the institution, and a large number are waiting to be admitted when the new wing now in course of erection is completed. This addition is calculated to cost some $25,000, and when finished will enable this Home to adequately meet the existing requirements and bring it to a foremost rank with institutions of this character. It is managed by a Board of Control consisting of thirteen members, of which Mr. Wolf, to whose efforts the existence of the Home is primarily due, has been chairman since its foundation. The administration of the Home is supervised by a local Board of Managers, of which Hon. Joseph Hirsch is Chairman.

INTRODUCTION.

       Table of Contents

      In December, 1891, there was printed in the North American Review a letter in reply to certain statements of a contributor to a previous number of the same magazine regarding the services of American Jewish citizens as soldiers in the Civil War. Under the caption "Jewish Soldiers in the Union Army," the writer, after denying the statement that Generals Rosecrans and Lyon were of Jewish birth, proceeds as follows:—

      "I had served in the field about eighteen months before being permanently disabled in action, and was quite familiar with several regiments; was then transferred to two different recruiting stations, but I cannot remember meeting one Jew in uniform, or hearing of any Jewish soldier. After the war, for twenty-five years, I was constantly engaged in traveling, always among old soldiers, but never found any who remembered serving with Jews. I learned of no place, where they stood, shoulder to shoulder, except in General Sherman's department, and he promptly ordered them out of it for speculating in cotton and carrying information to the Confederates. If so many Jews fought so bravely for their adopted country, surely their champion ought to be able to give the names of the regiments they condescended to accept service in," etc., etc.

      A statement of this nature, logically inconclusive and practically absurd as it is, might well, under ordinary conditions have been left unnoticed. Under ordinary conditions a reply of any kind to such a tissue of misstatements, would but have dignified it beyond reason, and but helped, perhaps, to save it and its author from oblivion. But the conditions were not ordinary, but most unfortunately, otherwise. It was at a time when the public mind throughout the civilized world was wrought to a high pitch of excitement by the flaunting villainy of the Russian government in the outrageous persecution of its Jewish subjects, when the wave of anti-Semitism was at floodtide in Germany, and was flowing high in France, and when bigots like Stoecker, fools like Ahlwardt, and knaves like Drumont, were finding imitators on both sides of the Atlantic. Here in our country, public attention was being centered on the Jewish refugees from Russia, and the Jewish people throughout the land were massing their strength to cope with the problems which Muscovite tyranny had set before them. In the midst of this agitation, the magazine article referred to, slurring the Jewish people as it did, attracted unusual attention, and being widely quoted and commented on by the newspaper press, it attained a degree of publicity out of all proportion to its merits or its authorship.

      Under these circumstances I felt myself impelled to reply to the writer in the North American Review, and at once sent to that magazine a letter embodying a statement of a few indisputable facts bearing on the subject. This statement the publishers of the magazine declined to print on the ground that they had received so many articles on the subject that they could not undertake to discriminate in favor of any one of them, and that they would therefore publish none. My cursorily compiled citations were, however, published at the time in the Washington Post, and as germane to my present subject I reprint them in the main, as follows:—

"Has this much-traveled and keen observer, Mr. Rogers, ever heard of General Edward S. Salomon, who enlisted as Lieutenant-Colonel of the 82d Illinois? He became Colonel of the regiment after Colonel Frederick Hecker's retirement, was made Brigadier-General, was subsequently appointed by General Grant governor of Washington Territory, and, at present residing in San Francisco, has been Department Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, and is recognized as one of the bravest and most gallant officers that ever sat in saddle. This encomium I have from the lips of General Grant himself, and it will be cheerfully endorsed by General O. O. Howard, or by any of the officers yet living who served with him. In the same regiment, as I have learned from General Salomon, were more than one hundred private soldiers and subalterns of Jewish faith. General L. C. Newman, of the city of New York, who was fatally wounded in the first battle of the Rebellion, died in the city of Washington, while President Lincoln, who had brought Newman's commission as Brevet Brigadier-General, was with him at his bedside. General Leopold Blumenberg, of Baltimore, who, as Major of his regiment, was severely wounded at the battle of Antietam, and crippled for life and who was subsequently brevetted for his meritorious services, was one of the most loyal and brave of officers. Colonel M. M. Spiegel, of the 120th Ohio, who was severely wounded before Vicksburg, was entreated to retire from the army, but continued in the service and was killed in the campaign of General Banks, in Louisiana. Lieutenant Sachs, of the 32d Indiana, in command of a company of his regiment at Green River, in 1862, stood single-handed and alone against a company of Texas Rangers, and after killing and wounding eight of his assailants, fell riddled to death. His heroism and bravery had meanwhile given the command time to rally, and they thereupon dispersed the enemy. Captain A. Hart, of the 73d Pennsylvania, now of this city, who was Adjutant of his regiment, was severely wounded in the early part of the war, and is now a pensioner of the United States. Lieutenant Henry Franc, of the Kansas Volunteers, living in this city to-day, did splendid service. Judge. P. J. Joachimson, Lieutenant-Colonel of the 59th New York; Isidore Pinkson, Henry Pinkson and Moses Landauer, of the 110th New York; Captain Lyon and Lieutenant Ababot, of the 5th New York Cavalry; Theodore Wise, of the same regiment; Herman White, and A. T. Gross, of the 2d Maryland, and I. Feldstein, now a member of Koltes Post, New York, acquitted themselves with ample credit in their respective spheres. The 11th New York was more than half composed of men of Jewish faith. In the 2d Pennsylvania Artillery, serving under Captain R. M. Goundy, who lives in this city, there were three Jewish soldiers; Lieutenant Liebschutz, who served throughout the war and was promoted for gallantry on the field, now living in this city to-day; Leo Karpeles, who is now a clerk in the Post Office Department, to whom a special medal was awarded by Congress for bravery and for the capture with his own hands of rebel flags on the field of battle, and Simon Stern, who died lately in this city and whose widow has been granted a pension. George Stern, who died from disease contracted in the service, also left a widow, now pensioned. Dr. A. Behrend, of this city, who served in our army with great ability, not only as a hospital steward, but as an officer in the field, tells me that in 1863 a general order was issued permitting Jews to be furloughed over their Holy Days, and that at Fairfax Seminary he furloughed eleven on that occasion. Dr. Herman Bendall, of Albany, a prominent citizen of that city, was promoted to the grade of Lieutenant-Colonel in recognition of his meritorious services and was subsequently appointed by General Grant superintendent of Indian affairs of Arizona. Jacob Hirsch, of this city, died from disease contracted in the service and his orphan children are now receiving a pension for their father's sacrifice; Captain Cohn, of New York City, now connected with the Baron de Hirsch Trust Fund, was as brave an officer as ever did duty. M. L. Peixotto, of the 103 Ohio (a brother of the well-known Benjamin F. Peixotto), died last year in consequence of wounds received and disease contracted in the service. Mr. Bruckheimer, now a practicing physician in this city, Charles Raum, one of our leading merchants, Mr. Hoffa, Sol Livingston, M. Erdman, M. Augenstein, and S. Goodman, all of this city, Edward S. Woog, a clerk in the Interior Department; Morris Cohen, clerk in the War Department; Henry Blondheim, of Alexandria, Va., were soldiers in the late war. Captain Morris Lewis, of the 18th New York Cavalry, now living in this city, served on General Kearney's staff; he receives a special

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