Details
CLEVELAND, Grover. Autograph letter signed ("Grover Cleveland"), as President, to Simon Wolf (1836-1923), Washington, 30 December 1895. 2 pages, 8vo, White House stationery, matted and framed with facsimile of signature page and engraving of Cleveland.
"FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE" FOR AMERICAN JEWS
Cleveland reflects on the condition and status of Jews in America in this acknowledgement of a copy of Simon Wolf's The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen. "Please accept my thanks for a copy of your book," Cleveland writes. "...I hope I may be able at a future time to read the volume carefully, for the slight examination I have already given it, convinces me that it challenges fairness and justice, for a class of our citizens to whom they have not always been accorded."
Wolf's book identified American Jews who fought for both the union and the Confederacy. "My primary purpose," he wrote, "has been to show that the Jewish people throughout the land not only took a share in the struggle which has ended so beneficently as to have brought prosperity to both antagonists and dispelled the cause of discord, but that they took their full share, and it is now conclusively shown that the enlistment of Jewish soldiers, north and south, reached proportions considerably in excess of their ratio to the general population." Cleveland exempted himself from fighting in the war by paying a substitute.
Wolf was an important political ally of President Ulysses Grant, and defended him in 1868 in the controversy over General Order No. 11 that banned Jews from his theater of operations (he claimed a subordinate promulgated it without Grant's knowledge). He served successive Republican administrations as the unofficial ambassador to America's Jewish voters.
"FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE" FOR AMERICAN JEWS
Cleveland reflects on the condition and status of Jews in America in this acknowledgement of a copy of Simon Wolf's The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen. "Please accept my thanks for a copy of your book," Cleveland writes. "...I hope I may be able at a future time to read the volume carefully, for the slight examination I have already given it, convinces me that it challenges fairness and justice, for a class of our citizens to whom they have not always been accorded."
Wolf's book identified American Jews who fought for both the union and the Confederacy. "My primary purpose," he wrote, "has been to show that the Jewish people throughout the land not only took a share in the struggle which has ended so beneficently as to have brought prosperity to both antagonists and dispelled the cause of discord, but that they took their full share, and it is now conclusively shown that the enlistment of Jewish soldiers, north and south, reached proportions considerably in excess of their ratio to the general population." Cleveland exempted himself from fighting in the war by paying a substitute.
Wolf was an important political ally of President Ulysses Grant, and defended him in 1868 in the controversy over General Order No. 11 that banned Jews from his theater of operations (he claimed a subordinate promulgated it without Grant's knowledge). He served successive Republican administrations as the unofficial ambassador to America's Jewish voters.