A Significant New Fact Has Been Discovered About A Famous Lincoln Anecdote
- Allie Tee
- Feb 9, 2023
- 2 min read
The best-known incident involving Jews in the Civil War is explained in a new book, which claims that the story is probably more complicated than the public consensus.
The Story Of The Famous Anecdote Of President Lincoln
In "Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: Union Army," historian Adam D. Mendelsohn recounts the story of Arnold Fischel, hazzan, or cantor, born in the Netherlands, to the Israel Shearith Congregation in New York, and how he persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to allow Jews to serve as military chaplains.
That is true, as Mendelsohn explained during a Twitter chat on Tuesday organized by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Congress prohibited non-Christian chaplains after the Civil War began, so Fischel traveled to Washington to plead his case directly to Abraham Lincoln in December 1861.
On July 17, 1862, Lincoln signed a law allowing Jews to serve as chaplains.
And yet, while researching his book, the author discovered parts of the story did not fit together. Commonly told is the version of the story in which Fischel was nominated to replace a fellow Jewish rabbi who had been forced out of the chaplaincy of the Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry. According to one commonly retold version of the story, Fischel was nominated by a Jewish delegation from the YMCA to replace a fellow rabbi who had been ousted from this post.
Allen was not discharged from the chaplaincy and was probably not released because he did not live far from the empty house where he was serving in the armed forces. The colonel was also not released, and there was no indication that an organized campaign was underway to replace Allen with Arnold Fischel. Fischel's deal with Shearith Israel had expired, and he was seeking the cavalry assignment since it was urgently needed by the cavalry's relatively generous pay for chaplains.
Meanwhile, Friedman denied media reports that his 700-man cavalry, including fewer than 20 Jewish soldiers, needed a Jewish chaplain.
It's more complicated than initially thought, but the result is the same. Dr. Mendelsohn, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and director of the Kaplan Center for Jewish Studies delivered these words on Tuesday.
The story of Fischel and Lincoln highlights the importance of digging deeper into Jewish American history, using sources like the Shapell Roster.
As for Fischel, he served as a sort of chaplain-at-large to the Army of the Potomac but never received a lucrative appointment. Lincoln expressed skepticism about his request that a rabbi is needed as a hospital chaplain in Washington, where Jews were only a fraction of the dead and wounded. Rejecting that mission, Fischel returns home to Europe in disappointment.
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