The Forgotten Financiers: How Jewish Immigrants Saved the Union in 1861

In eighteen sixty-one, Abraham Lincoln faced a crisis that had nothing to do with bullets: he was out of money. The Union Treasury was nearly empty. The bond market was flinching. And the war was just beginning. The men who answered were not the names you learned in school. Joseph Seligman arrived in America with one hundred dollars sewn into his coat lining. August Belmont had started as a Rothschild clerk at age fourteen. Together with a network of German-Jewish immigrant bankers, they financed Lincoln's war — selling Union bonds in European markets, lobbying the Rothschilds not to fund the Confederacy, supplying the army's uniforms, and keeping the Union solvent when no one else would. Seven thousand Jewish men served in Lincoln's army. A Jewish naval officer offered Lincoln his entire personal fortune. A Jewish diplomat traveled to London to prevent British recognition of the Confederacy. And in December of eighteen sixty-two, as all of this was happening — General Ulysses S. Grant expelled every Jew from his military district in twenty-four hours. This is the story of what the Jewish community gave to the Civil War. And what the Civil War gave back. 🎬 New episodes every week on Jewish history, documentary style. 📩 Subscribe to never miss an episode. #JewishHistory #AmericanHistory #CivilWar #LincolnHistory #JewishAmerica