This comprehensive collection of print and manuscript sources offers an illuminating history of one of the New World's few non-Christian communities of European origin. Issues such as race, intermarriage and slavery - overlooked in previous literature - are included and put in context. Wider issues of society, culture and economy are also considered, with the careers of several important Jewish merchants providing an insight into the economic history of the colonial and early republican eras. The sources in this collection come from the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. They include texts translated from Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Hebrew, making them accessible to most scholars for the first time.

A chronology of Jews in America accompanies by pertinent documents.

Details Jewish participation on the Civil War battlefield and throughout the Southern home front In The Jewish Confederates, Robert N. Rosen introduces readers to the community of Southern Jews of the 1860s, revealing the remarkable breadth of Southern Jewry's participation in the war and their commitment to the Confederacy. Intrigued by the apparent irony of their story, Rosen weaves a complex chronicle that outlines how Southern Jews—many of them recently arrived immigrants from Bavaria, Prussia, Hungary, and Russia who had fled European revolutions and anti-Semitic governments—attempted to navigate the fraught landscape of the American Civil War. This chronicle relates the experiences of officers, enlisted men, businessmen, politicians, nurses, rabbis, and doctors. Rosen recounts the careers of important Jewish Confederates; namely, Judah P. Benjamin, a member of Jefferson Davis's cabinet; Col. Abraham C. Myers, quartermaster general of the Confederacy; Maj. Adolph Proskauer of the 125th Alabama; Maj. Alexander Hart of the Louisiana 5th; and Phoebe Levy Pember, the matron of Richmond's Chimborazo Hospital. He narrates the adventures and careers of Jewish officers and profiles the many Jewish soldiers who fought in infantry, cavalry, and artillery units in every major campaign.