Protecting The Union: Michigan Jews In The Civil War
Judith Levin Cantor
Special to the Jewish News
Photo courtesy Burton Historical Collection
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Second Michigan Infantry drilling at Fort Wayne in 1861.
Photo courtesy Detroit Historical Museum
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ILINI:F.M.:TUFMTA OP AND WIIOLUALt DEALER
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PIECE GOODS, TAILORS' TRIMMINGS,
6ents furnising 6tols, etc.,
co,. ISO & I32 Woodward avenue,
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DETROIT, •
MICHIGAN.
Employe 300 Workmen. The Largest. Establishment in the City.
Emil S. Heineman supplied fugitive
slaves with new clothing. This ad for his
store is from 1861.
first regiment from a western state to
arrive in Washington, D.C. It is said that
President Abraham Lincoln, worried
and discouraged, exclaimed "Thank God
for Michigan!" as he looked up to see
the Michigan regiment marching down
Pennsylvania Avenue.
At the start of the war, Detroit, Jackson,
Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids were the
only four organized Jewish communities
in Michigan, communities with enough
population for a minyan and start-up con-
Photo cou r tesy Franklin Arc hives/Te mple Be th El
t the beginning of the Civil War
in 1861, from Detroit to the
Upper Peninsula, 151 Jewish
families lived in Michigan. From this
small number of families, 181 Jewish men
and boys served in the Union Army — an
astonishing percentage of more than one
soldier per family, higher than the national
average.
The Jewish soldiers came from Detroit,
where about half the families had settled,
as well as from towns and villages all over
the state. They either were immigrants
themselves or sons of immigrants. Among
them were peddlers, shopkeepers, mer-
chants and also many students.
Anxious to prove themselves "real
Americans:' they served in their country's
army with pride and honor.
Jews from Michigan were strong sup-
porters of President Abraham Lincoln. They
were against slavery, for emancipation and
for the preservation of the union of the
United States of America. Having emigrated
to America to escape repression and dis-
crimination and to seek new opportunity,
these new citizens championed the cause of
freedom for the Negro slave.
Detailed records show that the Jews of
Michigan participated in every regiment
and fought in every major battle of the war.
Eleven were officers; 38 Jewish soldiers
lost their lives. Most voluntarily enlisted in
the service. Many youngsters signed up at
age 16. Some valiant Jewish soldiers even
re-enlisted after they recovered from their
battle wounds.
The 181 Michigan Jewish "men in blue"
joined the more than 6,000 Jews nationally
who served in the Union Army. They were
not segregated, but fought side by side
with their fellow Americans.
At the same time, more than a thousand
Jews who lived in the southern states or
who supported that cause were partici-
pants in the Confederate Army. Judah P.
Benjamin, a Jew who was British West
Indian by birth, was attorney general
in the cabinet of Confederate President
Jefferson Davis.
The Civil War began dramatically with
the fall of Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C.,
to the Confederacy on April 13, 1961. It
was a bleak time because a United States
national army had not yet been orga-
nized. However, within 12 days, the first
Michigan regiment was formed, including
10 Jewish enlisted men.
The First Michigan Infantry was the
Mark
Sloman, fur
dealer and
civic leader
gregations.
But, by the 1860s, Jews had migrated and
settled around the state in many smaller
towns. So even from Adrian, White Pigeon,
Niles, Ypsilanti, Monroe, Hillsdale, Ionia,
Pontiac, Saginaw, Mt. Clemens, Coldwater
and Flint, Jews were part of the 29 different
Michigan Infantry regiments, the 11 caval-
ries and the United States Navy.
The many Michigan units, including its
Jewish soldiers, participated in hundreds
of battles. They were all involved in the
four years of the war's bloody conflict,
from Bull Run to Gettysburg to Shiloh to
Sherman's March to the Sea to the surren-
der of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox.
Helping Slaves Escape
Even before the Civil War began,
Jewish people had been active in the
Underground Railroad, helping fugitive
slaves from the South escape across the
Detroit River to freedom in Canada.
Rabbi Leibman Adler of Detroit's
Temple Beth El was preaching abolition
to his congregants and encouraging them
to help out even though it was against
the law of the land. Because slaves were
considered property before the 1863
Emancipation Proclamation, it was actu-
ally illegal to help a fugitive slave escape
rather than returning him to his "owner"
in the South. But humanitarian help was
given despite the harsh laws.
A member of Beth El's congregation,
Emil Heineman was a clothing manu-
facturer who found a valuable way he
could help in the Underground Railroad.
Because the escaped slaves had been run-
ning and hiding for weeks or months,
their ragged clothing made them eas-
ily detectable by the local Detroit police
— who under the law were supposed to
apprehend them and return them to their
owners. Therefore, Heineman donated new
sets of clothes to all the fugitives, making
them less recognizable — a great mitzvah!
Heineman's name is engraved on
the graphic memorial sculpture to the
Underground Railroad at the foot of Hart
Plaza.
Mark Sloman, also a Beth El member,
was a volunteer policeman who, dressed
in his uniform, was able to secretly escort
the fugitives without them being arrested.
Night after night, he accompanied the
escapees from their hiding places in "safe
houses" of the Underground Railroad to the
Detroit River. The dangerous journey across
the river's mile-wide water or ice brought
the fugitives to Canada and freedom.
As this bloodiest war that preserved the
Union drew to an end, in a spirit of heal-
ing the nation's wounds President Lincoln
declared, "With malice toward none, with
charity for all." But within days, the beloved
president himself was shot. While the funer-
al cortege of this brave but tragic leader
wound its way across the country, syna-
gogues around the nation joined their fellow
Americans in conducting special memorial
services, including Jackson's Beth Israel and
Detroit's Temple Beth El.
At Beth El, the eulogy likened the late
leader to Moses: "Lincoln shared the same
fate as Moses, the deliverer of Israel from ...
bondage, who was not permitted to lead the
freed men to the promised land. So could
[Lincoln] only perceive from the mountain
of victories ... the revived power and the
renewed glory of our blessed Union."
References: The Beth El Story, Irving Katz,
Wayne State University Press, 1955; The
Growth of the American Republic, Morrison
and Commager, Oxford University Press, 1942;
The Jewish Soldier from Michigan in the Civil
War, Irving Katz, Wayne State University Press,
1962; Jews in Michigan, Judith Levin Cantor,
Michigan State University Press, 2001
May 3 a 2007
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