Letter from the Secretary of War. In Answer to a Resolution of the House of the 5th instant, Tansmitting all the Papers and Testimony Relating to the Claim of Philip Epstein and others

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

(Washington, D.C.

1865)

On the morning of January 24, 1864, the armed steamer Jesup intercepted a schooner, Thomas H. Dawson, which had originated in Richmond, Virginia (then capital of the Confederacy) and crossed into Union territory. Aboard were discovered 256 boxes of tobacco escorted by five Jews: Messers Philip Epstein, M. David, Henry Steen, Julius Louis and Herman Sommers. A facile explanation was that these Southern Jewish merchants were "blockade runners," enemies of the United States engaged in illicit trade. The five Jews claimed that they were "refugees" who had fled the South, that they were deserving of amnesty, and what is more, that they be indemnified for the monetary value of the tobacco (which the U.S. Government had since sold). Bertram Korn has documented that Jews were oftimes unjustly accused of trading in Confederate cotton. See B. W. Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War (1951)