Navigate to News section

Happy Birthday, President Lincoln

Former president appears in forthcoming Nextbook Press book

by
Stephanie Butnick
February 13, 2012
The Lincoln Memorial gets a bath.(Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The Lincoln Memorial gets a bath.(Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Sunday was Abraham Lincoln’s 213th birthday. The 16th president appears in Jonathan Sarna’s forthcoming Nextbook Press book, When General Grant Expelled the Jews, during a meeting in Washington between President Lincoln and delegations of Jews from Cincinatti and Louisville:

Isaac Mayer Wise, who participated in the meeting, wrote a widely circulated account of what transpired. Though he had not previously been one of the president’s acolytes, he was now deeply impressed. Lincoln, he reported, “knows of no distinction between Jew and Gentile.” In addition, he “feels no prejudice against and nationality,” and “by no means will allow that a citizen in any wise be wronged on account of his place of birth or religious confession.” “To condemn a class,” he quoted Lincoln as declaring, thereby turning Grant’s order practically on its head, “is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad, I do not like to hear a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.”

Happy birthday, Mr. President.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.