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Letter: Lincoln had interesting ties to Jewish people
Those were among the last words spoken by our beloved president, Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday we celebrate Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath!
According to numerous sources, Lincoln said this to his wife, Mary Todd, the day he was assassinated, Friday, April 14, 1865. Most sources report that during a carriage ride with Mary Todd, Lincoln shared his ardent desire to take her and their sons to the Holy Land when he left the presidency, so they could visit Jerusalem. Some sources say Lincoln made this declaration at the Ford Theater prior to being assassinated there.
At a meeting in 1863 with Henry W. Monk, Lincoln told the Canadian churchman: "Restoring the Jews to their national home ... is a noble dream and one shared by many Americans," according to Michael Oren's recent book, “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present.”
Although, there were only 150,000 Jews out of a total U.S. population of 30 million in Lincoln’s time, our 16th president had an interesting relationship with the Jewish people. Lincoln was the first president to allow Jews or any non-Christians to serve as military chaplains.
In January 1863, Lincoln revoked the only incident of official U.S. anti-Semitism, when he countermanded Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's infamous Order No. 11, which expelled Jews from northern Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky. The sale of goods by some Jewish peddlers to Confederate soldiers is what caused Grant to issue the order. In countermanding it, Lincoln wrote: “To condemn a class (of people) is to condemn the good with the bad. I do not like to hear an entire class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.”
Lincoln had many Jewish friends in Springfield. One of them was a neighbor, Julius Hammerslough, who visited Lincoln at the White House, according to an article last year in Christian Zionism.
Perhaps Lincoln’s most valued Jewish friend prior to the presidency was Abraham Jonas, an English Jew who had settled in Quincy. Jonas was among the first to propose Lincoln as the Republican nominee for president in 1860.
Louis Salzenstein, a Jewish storekeeper and livestock trader in Athens, was also a good friend of our 16th president.
Sam Cahnman
Springfield
www.sj-r.com/letters/x1055386097/Letter-Lincoln-had-interesting-ties-to-Jewish-people
Feb. 12, 2011