Lewis N. Dembitz.
Photo by Klauber, Louisville.
The third and youngest of the three Jews who directly participated in the official part of the work of nominating and electing Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency in 1860, was Lewis Naphtali Dembitz (b. in Zirke, Province of Posen, Prussian-Poland in 1833; d. in Louisville, Ky., 1907), who had been a practicing attorney at Louisville since 1853. He was previously occupied as a journalist and had at a later time written several works on legal and general, as well as on Jewish, subjects. Dembitz took an active interest in Jewish affairs and held various communal positions in local and national bodies. He was considered one of the leaders of Conservative Judaism in America, and is best known as the author of Jewish Services in the Synagogue and Home (1898). At the Convention of 1860 he was a delegate from the city of Louisville, where he resided for more than a half century, and where he held the position of Assistant City Attorney from 1884 to 1888.
The one Jewish delegate to the Convention which re-nominated Mr. Lincoln in 1864 was likewise a native of Germany, while the one Jewish member of the Electoral College which re-elected him was of German parentage. The former was Maier Hirsch (1829–76), a merchant of Salem, Oregon, who was one of the six delegates from that state to the Republican National Convention of 1864. He settled in Oregon in 1852, when he came to the United States from Würtemberg. He settled in New York in 1874, where he died two years later. Maier Hirsch was a brother of Solomon Hirsch, who was United States Minister to Turkey from 1889 to 1892, and of Edward Hirsch, at one time State Treasurer and later a State Senator of Oregon.
The Presidential elector of 1864 was A. J. Dittenhoefer (b. in South Carolina, 1836), who came with his parents to New York when he was four years old, and has resided there continually since. He served as Justice of the Marine (now City) Court, and held several positions of trust and honor in the Republican Party, of which he was one of the earliest members in New York.
Among the personal friends of Lincoln was Abraham Jonas (b. in Exeter, England, 1801; d. in Quincy, Ill., 1864), whose four sons, strangely enough, fought in the Confederate Army. Jonas, who first lived in Kentucky, was a member of the Legislature of that State in 1828–30 and in 1833; and in the last named year he was also chosen Grand Master of Masons of the State of Kentucky. He removed to Illinois in 1838, and there also became Grand Master of the newly organized Masonic Grand Lodge, which was founded in 1839. He was elected a member of the Illinois Legislature in 1842, retiring from his mercantile pursuits on being admitted to the bar in 1843. He served as Postmaster of Quincy from 1849 to 1852. Jonas, with Lincoln, was chosen by the Illinois State Republican Convention, held at Bloomington on May 29, 1856, a Presidential elector on the Fremont ticket. A confidential letter which Lincoln, after his first nomination in 1860 wrote to Jonas, denying that he was affiliated with the American or “Know Nothing” party, is preserved in the authoritative Lincoln biography by Nicolay and Hay. During his last illness, when he knew that the doctors had no hope for his recovery, Jonas’s only wish was to see his son, Charles H., a member of the Twelfth Arkansas Regiment, who was at that time a prisoner of war on Johnson’s Island, Lake Erie. This wish was communicated by telegraph to Lincoln, who issued an order, dated June 2d, 1864, to “Allow Charles H. Jonas, now a prisoner of war at Johnson’s Island, a parole of three weeks to visit his dying father, Abraham Jonas, at Quincy, Ill.” Benjamin F. Jonas (b. in Williamstown, Ky., 1834; d. in New Orleans, 1911), who served in the artillery of Hood’s Corps in the Army of Tennessee, and who, after serving several terms in the Legislature of Louisiana, was elected a United States Senator from that state, serving from 1879 until 1885, was one of the above mentioned four sons of Abraham Jonas who served in the Confederate Army.
The admiration which Jews felt for Lincoln was probably best expressed by the silk flag which City Clerk Abraham Kohn of Chicago sent to the President-elect before his departure for Washington in February, 1861. It was painted in colors, its folds bearing Hebrew characters lettered in black with the third to ninth verses of the first chapter in Joshua, the last verse being: “Have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”
CHAPTER XXV.
PARTICIPATION OF JEWS IN THE CIVIL WAR. JUDAH P. BENJAMIN.