Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

by James M. McPherson

its supplies, they monopolized its trade.” Jews were said to be more numerous in Charleston than in Jerusalem; the streets of Wilmington “swarmed” with “unctuous and oleaginous” Jews who bought up the cargoes of blockade runners. War Department clerk John B. Jones fulminated in his diary against “Jew extortioners” who had “injured our case more than the armies of Lincoln. Well, if we gain our independence, instead of being the vassals of the Yankees, we shall find all our wealth in the hands of the Jews.”29 Such diatribes were hardly unique to the Confederacy. As in other times and places, people suffering from causes beyond their comprehension fastened on an identifiable minority as scapegoats. There were Jewish merchants in the South, of course, and some of them speculated in consumer goods. So did a much larger number of southern-born Gentiles. But most merchants—Jewish and Gentile—were as much victims as perpetrators of shortages and inflation. To be sure, many of them sold goods at markups of 50 percent or more. But when inflation was running at 10 or 15 percent a month, they made little if any profit in real terms on much of what they sold.