The Jewish Confederates

The Jewish Confederates
File:The Jewish Confederates by Robert N. Rosen (book cover).jpg
Author	Robert N. Rosen
Language	English
Genre	American history
Publisher	University of South Carolina Press
Publication date	2001
ISBN	9781570033636
OCLC Number	254985354

The Jewish Confederates is a 2001 history book authored by Robert N. Rosen about Jewish citizens of the Confederate States of America who served in the Confederate States Army (CSA) during the American Civil War of 1861–1865. As they made up just 0.2% of the CSA, their story had not been heavily researched before Rosen, a Jewish lawyer in Charleston, South Carolina with a master's degree in History from Harvard University, authored the book. Rosen has written two more books about the city of Charleston. The book received both praise and criticism in many academic journals.

Summary

Rosen gives an overview of Jewish participation in the Confederate States Army (CSA) during the American Civil War of 1861–1865, and their attachment to the extant Confederate States of America. Even though Jews were only 2,000 out of 1 million members of the CSA, Rosen shows that both Sephardi Jews, who had been in the South for a long time, and Ashkenazi Jews, most of whom were immigrants from Prussia, joined the Confederacy alongside their neighbors and served honorably. While the book mentions well-known Jewish Confederates such as Judah P. Benjamin, Moses Ezekiel, David Levy Yulee, Abraham Myers and Phoebe Pember, and lesser known Jewish Confederates like Henry M. Hyams, Benjamin F. Jonas, Adolph Proskauer and Alexander Hart, it is also full of vignettes about the lives of ordinary Southern Jewish families who sent their sons to the war front, as well as their daughters and mothers, who often acted as Confederate informants.

Critical reception

In The Journal of Southern History, Leonard Dinnerstein, a professor of history at the University of Arizona, praised the book for its academic rigor. Similarly, in a review for The South Carolina Historical Magazine, Gordon C. Rhea called the book "a thoughtful and readable narrative packed with information and insights" as well as "a fine piece of scholarship and a fascinating read." Reviewing it for Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Sheldon S. Cohen praised it as "an engaging and expansive portrayal of a small, yet singular, group of Americans and their involvement in one of this nation's most determinative and monumental conflicts." In The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Mark K. Bauman of the Atlanta Metropolitan College praised the book as "a carefully documented, nuanced study based on numerous primary sources that is grounded in the appropriate historical literature."

In a review for The New York Times, Roy Hoffman called the book "comprehensive and readerly" but he stressed that it was "sometimes inconsistent as social analysis." Similarly, in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Frederic Krome of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, called the book "well-written and organized" but "not very analytical." In particular, he criticized Rosen's effort to "downplay" Southern anti-Semitism.

Reviewing it for Shofar, Robert E. May, a professor of history at Purdue University, highlighted Rosen's contention that Jews were better accepted in the South than the North both in the Antebellum era and during the war. He concluded by calling the book "a truly invaluable contribution to American Jewish historiography." In Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, David T. Gleeson, a professor of history at Northumbria University, criticized Rosen for failing to delve into the differences between anti-Semitism in the North and the South. Nevertheless, he praised the book for filling "a major gap in the historiography of the Confederacy."

Robert A. Taylor, a professor of History at Florida International University, praised the book as "a significant contribution to the literature of the Civil War South and American Jewish history." He also noted that the Jewish culture of the Antebellum South was mostly gone after the war, as new Jewish immigrants distanced themselves from it. Meanwhile, in American Jewish History, Jonathan D. Sarna, the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, dismissed the book as "an apologia, a pious bow to the 'religious of the lost cause'." Specifically, he criticized the chapters about Reconstruction Era on the grounds that Rosen's "sources are meager and his one-sidedness embarrassing." He concluded by reiterating that the book "does justice to one side of the conflict alone."