Lincoln and the Jews: A History

By Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell

St. Martin's, 288 pp., $40

The distinguished abolitionist Frederick Douglass once praised Abraham Lincoln's "entire freedom from popular prejudice." Lincoln was the only white person who, he said, "in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color."

Others have questioned this assessment, but Douglass would seem to qualify as a pretty reliable witness.

"Lincoln and the Jews: A History" (St. Martin's, 288 pp., $40) by Brandeis University professor Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell, an eminent collector of Lincoln manuscripts, provides gratifying evidence that Lincoln was similarly accepting of religious differences.

Such tolerance was not typical of the time. The authors show how even noted abolitionists expressed vicious anti-Semitic sentiments. Theodore Parker, for example, suggested that Jews' intelligence "was sadly pinched in those narrow foreheads" and supposed that Jews sometimes murdered Christian babies at Passover.

Union generals persecuted Jews under their command. Ulysses S. Grant, suspecting all Jews of smuggling and insurrection, infamously expelled them from his area of command.

How did Lincoln avoid this prevailing bigotry? Though he knew no Jews in his childhood, he was steeped in the language and stories of the Hebrew Bible. He took pride in his first name, derived from the leader of the Jewish people.

In the 1830s, Lincoln moved to Springfield, Illinois. Encountering Jews for the first time, he regarded them as individuals rather than exemplars of a stigmatized race. He befriended Julius Hammerslough, the young proprietor of a clothing store where he shopped. He got to know Abraham Jonas, an Illinois state legislator and lawyer.

"Once he did meet Jews," the authors say, "he displayed no prejudice whatsoever against them - no religious hatred, no antipathy to them as immigrants, no desire to convert them." By the time of his death, Lincoln had more Jewish friends than any preceding president.

"Lincoln and the Jews" is a beautiful volume, packed with fascinating official documents, letters and photos collected by Shapell over many years. In his introduction, he poses the question: "With more than 16,000 Abraham Lincoln books published . . .: Is there anything new to say about Lincoln?"

His book answers the question with fascinating anecdotes. Lincoln's British podiatrist (called a "chiropodist" at the time), the mysterious Issachar Zacharie, not only soothed the president's sore feet but also lobbied to treat the entire footsore Union Army. Lincoln wrote this droll, down-to-earth testimonial for Zacharie: "He has so many times 'put me on my feet' that I would have no objection to giving his countrymen 'a leg up.' "

The story gets stranger. Lincoln sent Zacharie on a clandestine mission to convert Louisiana Jews to the Union cause. Self-promoting and cagey, Zacharie brought back unreliable intelligence and was suspected of corrupt dealings, at least by bigoted Union generals. After Lincoln's death, Zacharie returned to England and became a footnote (ahem) to history.

"I myself have a regard for the Jews," Lincoln said in 1863. He intervened on behalf of Jewish soldiers who suffered discrimination under military justice, appointed Jewish officers and chaplains, and maintained warm Jewish friendships.

In a period rife with vitriolic anti-Semitism, Lincoln took a principled, straightforward position. The authors put it simply: "The president of the United States . . . insisted on treating Jews on the same basis as everybody else."

Ewing is a critic in Cleveland Heights.