Seven score and ten years ago — as a modern Abraham Lincoln might put it — the United States of America began literally to go to war with itself.
The Civil War (1861-65), which began 150 years ago this April 12, transformed this country and has been an endlessly fascinating subject ever since. Supposedly, more books have been written about it and its ramifications than about any other single event in all U.S. history.
That event affected every aspect of life and likely nearly every person living in this country — including the then tiny Jewish community.
According to Bertram W. Korn’s book “American Jewry and the Civil War” (1961), about 150,000 Jews lived in the U.S. in 1860, out of a total population of about 32 million. Therefore, only about one of every 213 Americans was Jewish then, compared to about one of every 50 today. Moreover, the majority of the Jews then were immigrants from central Europe — mostly what is now Germany and Austria.
It seems nearly impossible to know how many of these Jews were among the 776,000 people living in Wisconsin on the eve of the Civil War. It is certain that most of the state’s Jews lived in Milwaukee. It is nearly certain that most of these Jews were included among the estimated 16 percent of Wisconsin’s population that came from German states. (That figure comes from “The History of Wisconsin: Volume II: The Civil War Era” by Richard N. Current, 1976.)
The earliest reasonably accurate estimates of Wisconsin’s Jewish population date from the 1870s, according to the Rabbi Louis J. Swichkow and Lloyd Gartner “History of the Jews of Milwaukee” (1963). They give totals of about 2,000 for Milwaukee and another 600 or so in the rest of the state. Both of these figures were probably smaller in 1860.
Whatever the size, Wisconsin Jews appear to have largely followed the trends within this pro-Union state when it came to attitudes toward the issues that led to the war — secession and slavery — and toward the war when it arrived.
Two regiments had particular associations with Milwaukee. The 24th Wisconsin Infantry was known as “the Milwaukee Regiment” because the majority of its soldiers came from the city or its environs.
The 26th Wisconsin Infantry, on the other hand, was known as “the Sigel Regiment” because a significant proportion — though hardly all — of its members were German immigrants who responded to the call of General Franz Sigel (1824-1902), himself a German immigrant.
According to Swichkow and Gartner, Wisconsin Jews served in both units, particularly the 26th — although you wouldn’t know that from either William J. K. Beaudot’s 2003 book “The 24th Wisconsin Infantry in the Civil War” or James S. Pula’s 1998 book “The Sigel Regiment.” However, these books do demonstrate that, between them, the two regiments participated in some of the war’s most significant campaigns and battles.
The 26th started with the Army of the Potomac in the eastern theater. It was caught in Confederate General Stonewall Jackson’s flank attack at the battle of Chancellorsville, and its stand there with the 58th New York reportedly bought the Union army enough time to prevent that battle from being an even worse defeat than it was.
The 26th also had the bad luck to get routed in the first day of the battle of Gettysburg (July 1, 1863), which took place north of the Pennsylvania town. One of the unit’s Jewish soldiers, Sergeant-Major Alexander Metzel, 27, was wounded in that fight and died of complications of that wound at the end of the month, according to Swichkow and Gartner.
After Gettysburg, the 26th was transferred to the west. It helped raise the siege of Chattanooga; campaigned with General William Sherman’s army group that captured Atlanta; participated in the March to the Sea and the campaign through the Carolinas; and ended its service with the great review of Sherman’s army in Washington.
The 24th, for its part, spent all its time in the western theater, attached to the Army of the Cumberland. Swichkow and Gartner record the deaths of three Jewish members of this unit.
Sergeant Jonas Goldsmith, 26, died in the battle of Murfreesboro; and he reportedly had a brother in the regiment who had been killed in an earlier engagement, but whose name is not recorded. Another Jewish soldier of the 24th, Nathan E. Neustadtl, 24, died in the battle of Chickamauga.
Thereafter, the unit participated in the charge up Missionary Ridge that broke the siege of Chattanooga, and it served in the Atlanta campaign. It then was sent back to Tennessee, where it helped destroy General John Hood’s Confederate army at the battles of Franklin and Nashville.
Not everybody was eager to become a soldier, however. In fact, once the draft was established, it was possible to buy one’s way out of service, by either hiring a substitute or paying a commutation fee.
Swichkow and Gartner record two Milwaukee Jews who did this. Samuel Rindskopf, a distiller who after the war became a controversial Milwaukee politician, paid the $300 commutation fee.
Henry Stern, a Milwaukee merchant, was called for duty three times, and was disqualified twice. But when on the third time he was considered qualified, Stern paid an agent $600 to find a substitute.
Of course, there were other ways to serve the war effort besides joining the military.
Madison’s first Jewish residents were immigrants Samuel Klauber and his wife Caroline, who moved to the city in 1851. When the war began, Madison Mayor H. S. Orton appointed Samuel to serve on a committee to raise money to help support local families whose breadwinner had joined the military, according to Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky’s “From Generation to Generation: The Story of the Madison Jewish Community” (1955).
In the Milwaukee area, Philip Carpeles helped connect members of two Wisconsin regiments, the 8th and 11th, with their families; and Lion Silverman helped with recruitment in Ozaukee County, according to Swichkow and Gartner.
One nationally important Jew of the era had a brief connection with Wisconsin. German immigrant Rabbi Ferdinand Leopold Sarner (1820-1878) officiated at High Holiday services for what was then Milwaukee’s only synagogue, Congregation B’ne Jeshurun, in 1860; but he did not stay.
After serving a synagogue in Shreveport, Louisiana, Sarner moved north. In 1863, he enlisted in the 54th New York Infantry, and became the first rabbi ever to serve as a regimental chaplain in the U.S. Army.
One puzzle lingers from this period, and it involves a remarkable family.
The Salomon brothers — Charles (1824-1894), Frederick (1826-1897), Edward (1827-1909), and Herman (1834-1881) — were born in Halberstadt in what is now Germany. The three oldest of them settled, at least at first, in Manitowoc in the early 1850s, and they brought their parents and youngest brother there in 1855.
Of the four, three did commendable military service in the war. Charles rose to the rank of brigadier general, and Frederick went one better and became a major general. Herman, for his part, served as an enlisted man, and he re-enlisted after his three-year term ended, reportedly so that a married man could go home. (Herman did not marry until after the war.)
As for Edward, he moved to Milwaukee, and became an attorney and a politician. In 1861, he ran for, and was elected, lieutenant governor. When Gov. Louis P. Harvey died after only about 100 days in office, Edward Salomon became Wisconsin’s eighth governor.
He served the remainder of the two-year term; did excellent recruiting work; and he called out troops to suppress riots against the draft that occurred in several communities, most notably Port Washington, in 1862. But this last action destroyed his popularity; so the Republican Party did not nominate him for a second term in 1863. Eventually, he left Wisconsin and became the only one of the four brothers to return to, and die in, Germany.
Manitowoc still remembers these brothers. A monument to them was set up in front of the courthouse there in 1927.
Here’s the mystery: Current’s book and other accounts say that Gov. Salomon was Lutheran in religion. Yet his brother Frederick appears on at least one list of Jews who have served in the military — Seymour Brody’s “Jewish Generals and Admirals in America’s Military,” found on a Web site maintained by Florida Atlantic University.
Moreover, the Salomon brothers were contemporaries of another Salomon who also had a distinguished war record and who was known to have been Jewish.
Edward Selig Salomon (1836-1913) was born in Schleswig, at the time a duchy of Denmark. He moved to Chicago, where he became a successful attorney and an alderman.
He enlisted early in the war, also rose to brigadier general, and was cited for bravery at Gettysburg. After the war, President Grant appointed him territorial governor of what would become the state of Washington. After two years there, he built a new career in San Francisco, where he died.
And according to a number of sources, this Salomon and the Wisconsin Salomon brothers were cousins.
If these reports are accurate, what happened? Did the Salomon brothers’ parents convert, as many German Jews did at that time? Did their father convert in order to marry a non-Jewish woman? Did the brothers convert? Did Frederick identify himself as Jewish, or did others just assume he was?
If that branch of the family did convert, why; and why didn’t the Chicago Salomon’s family? Did these families’ members have any contact with each other in either Europe or the U.S.?
Kent Salomon, who works in sales in a marketing company in Manitowoc, is a great-great-grandson of Frederick Salomon. In an email to The Chronicle, he said he has been researching his family’s history for many years, but “there is a great deal we do not know.”
He said he has not been able to substantiate the relationship to the Chicago-Washington Salomon. Moreover, he wrote, “There is some evidence which would suggest that this part of the family is Lutheran and-or Catholic (based on baptism and church records)… While we do not rule out the possibility of the family coming from Jewish heritage, at this point we have not been able to confirm it.”
It seems likely that to solve this puzzle, one must begin in Germany, if the appropriate records survive there.
Perhaps some enterprising genealogist, historian, or historical novelist may hunt for and find the solution some day. There certainly seems to be material for at least an article and maybe even a book in the story of this family.
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