Henry Wilson and Jewish Americans
Rabbi Issac Wise, allegations of anti-semitism, and a record of standing up for Jewish causes
In 2016 the MetroWest Daily News published a letter-to-the-editor that read “an important part of Henry Wilson’s history was that he was a vicious anti-Semite who blamed the American Civil War on Jewish cotton brokers and supported expulsion of American Jews from this country.”
When I first read this several years ago I was shocked and confused. In my extensive research on Wilson, I had yet to come across any indication that the senator and later vice president held negative views towards Jewish Americans—or any other identity in America beyond slaveholders. Since first reading this accusation, I’ve heard others suggest Wilson was anti-Semitic.
The origin of the allegation stemmed long before 2016. Rabbi Issac Meyer Wise, a Democrat-aligned writer and editor charged most Radical Republican leaders with anti-Semitism during and following the Civil War. Wise published essays that analyzed political issues through a religious lens, though with any religious politico it’s sometimes unclear what comes first, their political identify or their religious reasoning. Beyond politics, Wise had a remarkable and fascinating impact on the history of Judaism in America, being termed the nation's "foremost rabbi" by The New York Times at his death in 1900.
Wise held mixed views about slavery and racism, writing “It is evident that Moses was opposed to slavery,” while in the same piece noting slavery as a “blessing of the negro race.” Like most other men of his day, the rabbi held discriminatory views about Black Americans, referring to them as “savages” and at one point supporting recolonizing freedmen to Africa.
When Henry Wilson was nominated for vice president in 1872, Wise wrote of an anti-Semitic statement Wilson made in 1860, urging his readers to vote against the Republican ticket. Wise was a copperhead during the war and generally supported democrats, so it would have made no sense for him to support Grant and Wilson regardless of his allegations.
In 1943, Rabbi Wise’s allegations were amplified by Bertram W. Korn, who wrote a paper “Isaac Meyer Wise and the Civil War” as part of his larger project American Jewry and the Civil War. Korn reiterated Wise’s allegations against many Radical Republicans and anti-slavery men, including Charles Sumner, William Lloyd Garrison, Theo Parker, Wendall Phillips, and to the least extent Henry Wilson. In a 1952 paper “The Abolitionists and the Jew” by Louis Ruchames for the American Jewish Historical Society, Rucharmes pointed out the flaws of Korn’s analysis. Ruchames wrote, “The primary source of Dr.Korn's views is Rabbi Issac Mayer Wise, whose political and economic conservatism, a sympathy for the platform of the Democratic party, blinded him to most that was laudable in the strivings of the leaders of the anti-slavery movement. Although Dr.Korn acknowledges Rabbi Wise's prejudices, he, nonetheless, accepts with almost no questioning, the latter's facts, opinions conclusions, and adds a few items of his own.”
Henry Wilson’s 1860 quote resurfaced by Wise in 1872 and Korn in 1949, certainly meets the bar of being anti-semitic. In a speech targeting southern congressman Judah Benjamin (who later became the Secretary of State for the Confederate States of America, being the first Jewish cabinet official in North America), Wilson associated him with “jew brokers” and alluded that Benjamin's ‘race’ had “stoned the prophets and crucified the redeemer of the world.” Wilson’s charge that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus was anti-Semitic and false—and he later admitted it.
After being confronted with the remarks years later, Wilson wrote that in his over three decades of public service and speeches, he did not regret any line more than the one in his 1860 speech. Wilson publicly acknowledged his anti-Semitic words and reaffirmed his solid views of equality for all.
Most rabbis accepted Wilson's apology and endorsed the Republican ticket. Rabbi Wise was an outlier in decrying Wilson as anti-Semitic, as most other Jewish Americans viewed Wilson as a champion of their causes.
During the war, Wilson had fought for the inclusion of Jewish chaplains who were at risk of being prohibited from religious service in the military. Korn noted this in his paper, “Wise overlooked Wilson's liberal championship of Jewish chaplains in 1862; Rabbi Felsenthal thought Wilson the hero of the entire chaplaincy controversy.”
In 1859, a year before his anti-Semitic statement towards Representative Benjamin, Wilson said, “I now repeat that, though I am native-born, my country is the world, and my love for man is as broad as the race and as deep as its humanity. As a matter of course, I include native and foreign people, Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile."
Nowhere in his comprehensive three-volume history of the Civil War and slavery does Wilson “blame Jewish cotton brokers” as the letter-to-the-editor author claims. And there is no evidence Wilson supported “the expulsion of American Jews from this country.” Further, it would have been completely contrary to everything he stood for.
Wilson was not a product of his time, but a man ahead of his time, though this does not mean he was perfect, nor erase his mistakes. His 1860 quote was wrong and anti-semitic, and that's why he later condemned it. In sum, the allegations against Wilson, stemming from a single regretted quote, stand against thousands of statements praising equality and a record of championing Jewish causes.