Abraham Lincoln – Friend of the Jewish People.

The name Abraham Lincoln is known to millions, not just in the United States, as one of America's greatest presidents. He is famous for maintaining the American Union and freeing negro slaves. Less known is that he also championed the rights of Jewish Americans, even when it was difficult and unfashionable to do so.

Replica of the 34-star silk flag presented to Abraham Lincoln by his friend, Abraham Kohn (1819-1871) of Chicago, on Lincoln's departure for Washington D.C. in 1860 as President-elect.

The inscription is from Joshua 1:9.

".הֲלוֹא צִוִּיתִיךָ חֲזַק וֶאֱמָץ, אַל-תַּעֲרֹץ וְאַל-תֵּחָת: כִּי עִמְּךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, בְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר תֵּלֵךְ" 

"Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not affrighted, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."

Abraham Kohn

President Lincoln's actions to assist the Jewish people, his most notable and public manifestation, was Lincoln's cancellation of a general order by Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant. On December 17, 1862 (the 26th of Kislev, 5623 in the Hebrew calendar), General Grant issued General Orders 11 expelling "Jews as a class," which stretched from northern Mississippi to the southern tip of Illinois and from the Mississippi to the Tennessee Rivers. It was the first day of Hanukkah. At the time, Hanukkah was not the major holiday it is now. But Grant's order, if carried out, meant that entire families would be uprooted during the holiday and beyond and exiled from their communities.

A long-time anti-Semite, Grant had come to think of Jews as speculators and war profiteers. The fact that thousands of Jews were heroically serving in the Union Army at the time seemingly did nothing to change his anti-Jewish hatred. Lincoln immediately canceled Grant's order upon learning of the order. 

Ha-Magid Newspaper (The Storyteller), published in Lyck, East Prussia (today, the City of Elk in northeastern Poland), specialized in the news of Jews around the world, such as the following story of February 19, 1863:

Text from the February 19, 1863 edition of Ha-Magid.

Translation: The ruler Abraham Lincoln, head of government of the Lands of the North (president [transliterated]) in America, during a recent visit of the learned rabbis, Messrs. Wise and Lilienthal from Cincinnati, and attorney (advocate) Martin Bijur from Louisville, who had come to vent their spleen upon General Grant, and ask him to reverse the evil decree issued by the general upon all the Jews in the territory of Tennessee, told them in the course of conversation, after promising to reverse the decree, that he (the president) sprang from the belly of Judah, and his forefathers were Jews; and these emissaries indeed report that the facial features of the president are evidence of his descent from the loins of the Hebrews.

Lincoln regularly quoted the Bible in letters, speeches, and ordinary conversation. But unlike many American Christians of his time, Lincoln did not focus primarily on the Christian parts of his Bible and seemed remarkably comfortable with the Torah. Also, unlike many 19th-century American Christians, Lincoln had many Jewish friends, the first of which was Julius Hammerslough (1832-1908). Hammerslough was a young store owner in Springfield, Illinois. When Lincoln was elected to the Illinois State Legislature in 1834, he met Hammerslough, and at a time when Jews were viewed with suspicion, Lincoln treated Hammerslough as an equal.

Julius Hammerslough

Julius, an owner of the Hammerslough Brothers Clothing Company, with locations in New York, Illinois, and Missouri, enjoyed amicable relations with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. Mr. Hammerslough witnessed Lincoln's first inauguration and was a frequent guest at the White House. President Lincoln invariably asked Mr. Hammerslough, "How are the boys?" referring to the Hammerslough Brothers in Springfield. Julius accompanied Lincoln's remains from Chicago to Springfield as one of a committee of citizens of Lincoln's old home chosen for that purpose. He also provided the plumes for the funeral car used in Springfield. Hammerslough took a very active part in the project for the erection of the Lincoln Monument in Springfield, being appointed by the national monument committee special agent to bring the subject to the notice of the Jews.

Abraham Jonas

Another of Lincoln's closest friends was Abraham Jonas, the first permanent Jewish resident in Quincy, Illinois. Jonas was a merchant, a politician, a member of the Illinois and Kentucky state legislatures, a leading lawyer, and a Freemason who supported and encouraged Lincoln for most of his life. Although Abraham Lincoln was no longer in the Illinois General Assembly, Jonas likely met Lincoln during his service in the legislature in Springfield. Jonas ran for the Illinois Senate in 1844 but was defeated by the Democratic candidate. But his loyalty to the Whig party earned him the position of the postmaster of Quincy, Illinois, in 1849, serving until 1853. Lincoln and Jonas remained dear friends during this time. When the Whig party died, Jonas and Lincoln joined the new anti-slavery Republican Party after its establishment in 1854. On November 1, 1854, Lincoln was accused of attending a Know-Nothing Party meeting but was vouched by Jonas, with whom he was actually with. Jonas arranged the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debate in Quincy and aided Lincoln in his candidacy. His law partner Henry Asbury suggested Lincoln's candidacy in front of a group of local Republicans. Asbury's suggestion was greeted by silence until Jonas agreed that it would be a good idea. Joans played a primary role in Lincoln's first Presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in May of 1860, at the "Wigwam" in Chicago. Jonas was the only person Lincoln ever referred to as "one of my most valued friends."

As the Civil War (1861-1865) started, Lincoln recruited military and civilian leaders to help lead the fight. He openly appointed Jewish faith members, never disparaging them for their religion, as many of his contemporaries constantly did. In addition to Jewish military officers, Lincoln also appointed dozens of Jews to be quartermasters, overseeing housing, supplies, transportation, and clothing for the troops. When Jews began lobbying Congress to allow Jewish chaplains in the army, Lincoln supported their cause, eventually seeing the passage of an 1862 law changing the requirements for becoming a military chaplain and allowing non-Christians in the post for the first time in history.

Rabbi Jacob Frankel

Lincoln signed Rabbi Jacob (Jakob) Frankel's (1808-1887) commission on September 18, 1862. Frankel was assigned to a hospital in Philadelphia in response to a request from the Board of Ministers of the Hebrew Congregations of that city. The appeal followed the deaths of two Jewish soldiers there without their being afforded the attention of clergy of their faith. Rabbi Frankel (1808-1887), nicknamed the "Sweet Singer of Israel," was the cantor of Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia. Throughout the Civil War, some 7,000 Jews served with the Northern forces against the Confederates, whose chaplaincy law required only that one be a "minister of religion." The total Jewish population of the North and South was approximately 250,000. Frankel continued to serve Rodeph Shalom (today the oldest active Ashkenazi synagogue in the United States) as a cantor. In contrast, he served in the military in the Army of the Potomac. No Rabbi is known to have applied for or received an application for chaplain, or, at least, no document or record of such application or commission has survived the destruction of large portions of the official documents and papers of the Confederacy.

On April 14, 1865, President and Mrs. Lincoln were attending the play, "Our American Cousin," a comedy, at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C., when Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, an enraged and unbalanced actor. Later, Mrs. Lincoln said Abraham had told her that he hoped one day they would travel to Palestine (a part of the Islamic-run Ottoman Empire (1517-1917) today's Israel) together, just a few minutes before Booth showed up.

A 34-Star Civil War Flag - Visual Aid

Among the millions who mourned the 16th President, many Jewish congregations held special services and composed prayers for their beloved President. In Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln was buried on May 4, 1865, his old friend Julius Hammerslough closed his store and displayed a portrait of Lincoln with a declaration that captured what so many felt: "Millions bless thy name."

Detail from "Lincoln," an oil painting by George Peter Alexander Healy in 1869.

In addition to monuments to Abraham Lincoln in the United States, a street in central Jerusalem is named for Abraham Lincoln, a fitting tribute to the Jewish people's gratitude to a President who championed and defended America's Jews.

ADDITIONAL READING

"Abraham Lincoln and the Jews," by Isaac Markens. Published in 1909. 

     Courtesy of my Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal™

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

#JewishThemed #JewishLife

The Inside Story of Abraham Lincoln’s Stovepipe Hats and the Downfall of Dr. Samuel Wheeler, Illinois State Historian.

President Lincoln at 6' 4"

Abraham Lincoln was our tallest president. At 6-foot-4, he would stand out even today, and he certainly towered over the men and women of his era. The stovepipe hat he habitually wore in public made him look taller. 

You couldn’t miss him in a crowd. The 16th president wore the stovepipe hat in war and peace, on the stump and in Washington, on occasions formal and informal.

In fact, Lincoln wore a variety of top hats, all with a different design. During his first inauguration in 1860, he donned a lower silk plush hat. During his second term in 1864, he once again wore a stovetop hat. His last top hat was purchased from a Washington hat maker by the name of J. Y. Davis. No one really knows when the hat was purchased or how many times it was worn. It was the last hat worn when he left for the Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, the night he was assassinated.

Nowadays, we have trouble envisioning Lincoln without his stovepipe hat, but how he began wearing it remains unclear. Early in his political career, historians tell us, Lincoln probably chose the hat as a gimmick. In those days he was rarely seen without his stovepipe, the traditional seven or even eight-inch-high hat that gentlemen had been wearing since early in the century. True, Lincoln’s version was often battered a bit, as if hard-worn, an affectation perhaps intended to suit his frontier image. 

The reformer Carl Schurz, who served as a general in the Civil War, fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg and other major battles, later recalled his first meeting with Lincoln, in a railroad car in the 1850s, on the way to one of the future president’s debates with Stephen Douglas. 

Schurz described Lincoln’s tailcoat as shabby and his stovepipe hat as crumpled, giving him what one historian has called a look “of unassuming simplicity.” So ubiquitous is the image of the battered stovepipe that the playwright John Drinkwater, in his popular Abraham Lincoln (1918) play, has Mrs.Lincoln saying, shortly after her husband is nominated for president, “I’ve tried for years to make him buy a new hat.”

John Drinkwater's 'Abraham Lincoln' (1952, CBS) Starring Robert Pastene and Judith Evelyn, the TV adaptation was notable for featuring actor James Dean in the small but significant role of William Scott, a Union soldier court-martialed and condemned to death for falling asleep on watch. May 26, 1952.

The stovepipe hat is likely a descendant of the 17th-century Capotain, Steeple, or Sugarloaf hats, which was in turn influenced by the headgear worn by soldiers, the stovepipe hat gained in popularity until, by the early 1800s, says Debbie Henderson in her book "The Top Hat: An Illustrated History," “it had become the irrepressible symbol of prestige and authority.

When Lincoln gave his famous speech at the Cooper Institute in New York in February of 1860, some observers were quoted as saying that his hat looked bashed in. But this is unlikely. As the biographer Harold Holzer points out, Lincoln, the very day of his speech, bought a new stovepipe hat from Knox Great Hat and Cap at 212 Broadway. His suit fit poorly, his boots hurt his feet, but when he gave his speech in his stovepipe, says Holzer, “at least he would look taller than any man in the city.”

Lincoln’s stovepipe hats were not always of the same design. At his first inauguration in 1860, he wore the lower silk plush hat that had by that time come into fashion. By the start of his second term in 1864, he was again wearing a stovepipe, following (or perhaps ushering) a style that would continue for a good decade or more after his assassination.

Lincoln’s stovepipe made him an easy mark for caricaturists, and many drawings have survived in which the hat is the viewer’s means for identifying him. But the cartoonists are not the only ones who found it easy to spot the 16th president in his hat.

In August of 1864, Lincoln was on horseback, on his way to the Soldiers’ Home, about three miles northeast of the White House, where he had the use of a stone cottage in the summer months. A would-be assassin fired from near the road, shooting the stovepipe off Lincoln’s head. Soldiers who found it said there was a bullet hole through the crown. This incident gave rise to the popular notion that the hat saved Lincoln’s life.

The better surmise is that the hat made Lincoln easy to spot in a crowd. In July of 1864, at the Battle of Fort Stevens, he stood in the battlements wearing his trademark hat—making him, in Carl Sandburg’s phrase, “too tall a target” for the Confederates—until warned by a Union officer to get down.

On the night Lincoln died, he dressed for the theater in a silk stovepipe hat, size 7⅛,  from the Washington hatmaker J.Y. Davis, to which he had added a black silk mourning band in memory of his son Willie. When Lincoln was shot, the hat was on the floor beside his chair.

The stovepipe hat that was worn by President Lincoln to Ford's Theatre the night he was shot.

No other president is so firmly connected in our imaginations with an item of haberdashery. We remember Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cigarette holder and John F. Kennedy’s rocker, but Lincoln alone is remembered for what he wore. Harold Holzer says, “Hats were important to Lincoln: They protected him against inclement weather, served as storage bins for important papers he stuck inside their lining, and further accentuated his great height advantage over other men.”

Lincoln’s taste for hats also gave us a remarkably durable image of our most remarkable president. Lincoln remains a giant in our memories and looms even taller in his stovepipe hat.

UPDATE ON THE STOVEPIPE HAT - JULY 2020

After finding no evidence that a purchased stovepipe hat belonged to Abraham Lincoln, Illinois State Historian, Dr. Samuel Wheeler was out of a job, fired by Governor J B Pritzker, on July 15, 2020, and had been escorted out of the building. Gov. Pritzker's office wanted a different role for the state historian. That is one of two titles Wheeler held in his $88,000-a-year job — the other being director of research.

Dr. Samuel Wheeler was the State of Illinois Historian and Director of Research and Collections for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation.

Dr. Samuel Wheeler had worked at the presidential library since 2013 and was named state historian in 2016.

“I think it was clear from the governor’s office that they wanted to go in a different direction with the position of historian and make it more like the poet laureate,” said Ray LaHood, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (opened April 2005) chairman of the board and a former member of Congress and U.S. secretary of transportation. He said the position would be subject to a term appointment and the historian would travel the state giving speeches at schools and universities, and also lecture at the Lincoln library and museum in Springfield. LaHood said he thinks the new state historian position would require legislation to create. The director of research would be a separate position.

Since questions arose about the hat’s authenticity a few years ago, it has been removed from the display list. Trustee Kathryn Harris said that the subcommittee authorized Wheeler to consult with textile experts to determine whether the hat’s material is from Lincoln’s era and whether labeling inside can connect the Great Emancipator with the hatmaker on July 7th.

This beaver-skin stovepipe hat purportedly belonged to Abraham Lincoln, but its provenance is now the topic of fierce debate. 

The hat was once appraised at $6.5 million. In the report, Wheeler focused on a history of double-dealing, conflicts of interest, and neglect of basic due diligence in studying the hat’s provenance before its purchase. He also slammed a “weaponization” of the hat during years of friction between the museum and the not-for-profit that acquired it on behalf of the museum, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, the state agency for which Wheeler worked.

The stovepipe hat was the cornerstone of a $25 million haul of Lincoln artifacts in 2007 by the foundation — just as the newly-opened, state-run museum was looking to establish itself as a can’t-miss Illinois tourism destination and a nationally respected institution. Wheeler’s report also found the hat is not in Lincoln’s size, meaning he could not have worn it.

Harris said she sits on a committee of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum’s board, complimented Wheeler’s work, saying she’d heard of no complaints of his performance. She said she couldn’t say whether Wheeler’s departure was related to his report. “When people say we’re going to go in a different direction, that means nothing,” she said. “It’s words strung together that don’t mean diddly squat.

“Dr. Wheeler was never informed of any performance issues, and from my understanding of the facts, what he did was what he was asked to do,” said Springfield attorney Carl Draper, who represented Wheeler. “He wrote the reports he was asked to and he tried to fulfill his obligations that relate to his job duties.”

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Contributor, Smithsonian Magazine

Contributor, The State Journal Register

Abraham Lincoln, Oil on Canvas by John Henry Brown. 1860

Abraham Lincoln, Oil on Canvas by John Henry Brown. The National Portrait Gallery in the Smithsonian Institution. 1860
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