Prophet in a Time of Priests. Janice Rothschild Blumberg

greatly deteriorated and in Aub’s opinion, he would lose his sight completely unless he left the rabbinate for work in a profession less demanding on his eyes. He had no choice but to resign his position and seek other employment.19

      Because he knew his subjects and spoke extemporaneously without further study, lecturing to the public seemed a viable option not likely to worsen his condition. The lecture circuit, however, required him to be away from home for long periods of time touring the country. He was loathe to leave Sophie because they were trying to start a family and she had already suffered several miscarriages. He considered moving to Chicago, headquarters of his journal, the Jewish Independent, as well as that of his lecture bureau. Although he inquired about renting office space there, he ultimately opted to keep his residence in Peoria, intermittently sojourning with Sophie at her parents’ home in Evansville.20

      In addition to signing onto the lecture circuit, Browne applied for a position in the diplomatic corps, a move that led to his friendship with President Ulysses S. Grant.

      While still in Wisconsin, the summer of 1871, the rabbi had initially written to Grant applying for the chaplaincy at West Point. This seemed odd at the time, for Browne had just received his law degree and had been invited to serve a prestigious congregation. His action becomes somewhat plausible in hindsight, however, as we shall see. Possibly he wanted to make a point rather than obtain a job when he addressed the president:

      Your Excellency:

      I figure upon the full amount of your charity in allowing myself this importunity, emanating wholly from motives selfish in their nature. Having learnt of the vacancy created in the West Point Academy by the resignation of Prof. French, I ventured my application to the Secretary of War for the position of Chaplain to West Point. The press throughout the land dwells largely on the claims of the Episcopalians and Methodists to that office, so much so that President Grant is at a loss to make a choice between them...

      Now I fail to see (I am convinced your Excellency will side with my views) what claims any particular denomination can have upon that office. It appears to me that we, the Jews, have equal rights with them, hence I applied and lay my prayer before your Excellency. In fact it seems to me that the Jews have perhaps more just claims as the Christian clergy, because no Jewish minister has yet been given a single office while the Christian clergy is very well represented in the offices of the U. S. I am the rabbi of Emanuel Temple in this city, duly graduated Rev. A.M., M.D.,LL.B, 26 years of age, and am willing to fill besides the chair of any branch in the academy falling in the line of my professions, ready to undergo the necessary examination. My references are the Revs. Isaac M. Wise and Max Lilienthal of Cincinnati, Ohio, James K. Gutheim of N.Y., Robert Collier of Chicago, J.N. Dudley and D. Graham of Milwaukee. In conclusion I would state that I was Chaplain to our State Senate during the last session.21

      This was the first of many attempts that Browne would make to pique the government’s conscience on its promise of equal opportunity for all. As will be discussed in subsequent chapters, throughout his life he advocated for immigrants—especially Jews—to receive justice and recognition in whatever area he perceived their need and his ability to help.

      Although Browne did not get the appointment at West Point, his letter may have drawn Grant’s attention and thus caused him to remember Browne’s name. In 1875, the rabbi really did need a job and approached Grant for a diplomatic post, either domestic or foreign. He was endorsed by influential friends such as Illinois Senator Richard J. Oglesby, who wrote to the president that Browne was “a gentleman of high scientific and literary attainments now suffering from a disease of the eyes” which necessitated a change of employment, and that he was highly recommended also by Indiana Senator O. P. Morton as well as by “members of the Jewish church.”22

      Wise, having known Grant since before the Civil War, also advised him that Browne’s “prominent talents and learning are appreciated by a large number of our people,” and that the “particular favor... in his time of distressing sickness, if granted, would make a very favorable impression on very many of your zealous friends, and also many of your political opponents.”23

      No mean politician himself, Wise, an avowed Democrat who was considered by many to be the voice of American Jewry, diplomatically flattered the Republican President with a personal expression of “utmost respect for your many virtues as the chief magistrate of our blessed country.” He did not mail the letter, but gave it to Browne to deliver personally. The enterprising job-hunter had used his status as a journalist to obtain an interview with Grant and soon made his appearance at the president’s vacation home in Long Branch, New Jersey.24

      Although already into his second term, Grant still suffered from the effects of his anti-Semitic General Order No. 11 that temporarily expelled all Jews from the Department of the Tennessee during the Civil War. He claimed to have signed the document under pressure and immediately regretted doing it, but even after becoming the nation’s enormously popular national hero he never overcame his inner need to convince Jews that he was not an anti-Semite.25

      Browne, who at the time of the American Civil War was a teenager in faraway Hungary, probably never heard of Order No. 11 until the 1868 presidential campaign when he was living with the Wises in Cincinnati. Wise, although he opposed Grant politically, remained his friend throughout and even refrained from harshly criticizing Grant editorially during the presidential campaigns of 1868 and 1872. As to Order No. 11, Wise declared that he had “long ago forgiven him that blunder.” Wise was convinced that Grant had made sufficient atonement and “had been adequately punished right after having issued it.”26

      Experts have long debated the degree to which Grant was personally responsible for the order, arguing the point most heatedly in the years immediately after the war when Republicans looked to the general as a shoo-in for the White House. Grant himself courageously admitted his mistake and asked forgiveness, and recent historians have concluded that he could “in no wise be held responsible, personally and solely, for the anti-Jewish regulations which he dictated and signed.” Historian Jacob Rader Marcus, while not disputing Grant’s own acknowledgment of guilt, asserted that, although he was “an inept administrator and an egregious failure as a President . . .[he].was no Jew baiter.”27

      In the White House, Grant tried to dispel that reputation by giving more appointments to Jews than had any of his predecessors. While it seems that as president, with influential Jewish supporters such as Washington lobbyist Simon Wolf and New York’s powerful Seligman banking family whom he had known since he was a junior officer in the army and they were small town storekeepers upstate, Grant would have had little need for the good will of an unemployed young rabbi. Apparently that logical conclusion was offset by the fact that Grant understood the power of the press. Browne applied for the meeting in his capacity as journalist, not rabbi. The president probably welcomed his interview as an opportunity to improve his image with readers of Browne’s Jewish Independent. The journal was based in Chicago, home to America’s largest Jewish population outside of New York.28

      The President received Browne cordially. Not surprisingly, he lauded Jews whom he had known, recalling that he had met many in the social settings of Cincinnati and in his father’s home across the river in Covington, Kentucky. The discourse with which he continued was disappointing, but likewise no surprise. It seemed to imply, as philo-Semitic statements often do, deep and frequently unrecognized anti-Semitism. The President told Browne:

      I think the Jew lives longer because he loves his life more. It is certain that the Jew takes no risk of life and limb, while even in the many railroad accidents Jews, though much more given to traveling, are rarely injured. And yet I have found Jewish soldiers among the bravest of the brave. The Jew risks his life only to show his patriotism and then he is fearless. The Jewish soldiers, as stated, I have found wonderfully courageous in our Army and in the Rebel lines as well. But there were army followers among us. It happened one day that a number of complaints reached me and in each case it was a Jew and I gave the order excusing the Jewish traders. You know that during war times these nice distinctions were disregarded. We had no time to handle things with kid gloves. But it was no ill-feeling or want of good-feeling towards the Jews. If such complaints would have been lodged against a dozen men each of whom wore a white cravat, a black broadcloth suit, beaver or gold spectacles, I should probably have