The Civil War has arguably been the most contested area in American historiography. The guns had barely fallen silent before politicians, polemicists, and historians mustered to refight the military and political battles of the war. Even though its armies lost on the battlefields, the Confederacy won these early intellectual skirmishes. (1) Initially, American Jewish historical writing paid much less attention to the conflict, shying away from it because of its controversial nature. Jewish involvement in the war first received serious attention in the late 1880s and 1890s. These early accounts established the tone and approaches adopted almost uniformly in later interpretations. This article focuses on the period before American Jewish history became a field examined primarily by professionals, exploring how amateur historians crafted a consensual understanding of the meaning and importance of the Civil War for Jews. For the most part, this was popular history written with eyes focused as closely on the present as cast back to examine the past. By investigating American Jewish historical writing of the period up until the centenary of the Civil War, it is possible to delineate the evolution of dominant and durable themes. While these foundational themes remained static, they were flexible, molded to meet changing circumstances. Although the war received limited attention in most works of modern Jewish history, these representations are revealing of the position and self-perception of the community. The omissions from these accounts are equally revealing, highlighting controversial and uncomfortable subjects judged best avoided. These works also reveal the relationship between American Jewish historical writing and the historical mainstream. For much of this period, Jewish representations were closely tethered to the conservative center of Civil War historiography.
