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Lot 109
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Unique President Abraham Lincoln appointment of former Rabbi John C. Jacobi
Unique President Abraham Lincoln appointment of former Rabbi John C. Jacobi
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Lincoln Abraham 1809 - 1865 Unique President Abraham Lincoln appointment of former Rabbi John C. Jacobi, "an Israelite by birth," as "hospital chaplain" - he converted allowing him to better attend to the spiritual needs of 75,000 Jews in NYC and, after the Civil War, to serve as Chaplain to an African American Regiment

Partly Engraved Document Signed "Abraham Lincoln" as President and "Edwin M. Stanton" as Secretary of War, 1 page, 13.25" x 16.75" visible, matted with color-tinted engraved portrait of Lincoln, ornately framed to 28" x 24". Washington, D.C., March 22, 1864. Completed in manuscript. Folds. Light horizontal fold through upper portions of five letters in Lincoln's full signature. Blind-embossed 2"-diameter green seal affixed in upper left. Engraved military vignettes in upper center and across the bottom. In apparent fine condition.


President Lincoln appoints John C. Jacobi as "Hospital Chaplain." On February 8, 1864, President Lincoln had forwarded to the Senate his nomination of six persons "for appointment as hospital chaplains, as submitted by the Secretary of War," including "John C. Jacobi, of New York." On Friday, March 18, 1864, "Mr. [Henry S.] Lane, of Indiana, from the Committee on Military Affairs and the Militia, to whom was referred, the 10th February, the nomination of John C. Jacobi, reported. Whereupon Resolved, That the Senate advise and consent to the appointment of John C. Jacobi, agreeably to the nomination."

From a letter published in The New York Times, May 26, 1860, datelined, Burnett House, Cincinnati, May 21, 1860, in part, "A goodly number of Baptists from East, West and North have assembled here this week to receive reports from the societies under their control, and to arrange the programme for another year.‰... Dilligent efforts are put forth to establish the Church Mission to the Jews in this City upon a firm basis. The Mission is in charge of Rev. JOHN C. JACOBI, an Israelite by birth. A circular, signed by the Provisional Bishop of this diocese, and other clergymen, describes the purpose of the enterprise, calls attention to the spiritual wants of the seventy five thousand Jews resident in New-York, and adds: 'In the providence of God our City has become the home of a vast number of Jewish emigrants from nearly every nation under heaven. Here, then, is the field and the centre of effort for the evangelizing of Israel in our Christian land, and here the point to which the lover of Zion may send his offerings, and in sustaining the Church Mission to the Jews, participate most directly in the special work of bringing home the Jew to the knowledge of the Truth, in the one fold, under the one shepherd.‰..'"

Polish-born Rev. John C. Jacobi (1800-1874) served for a time as a rabbi at Frankfurt am Main. Converted to Christianity in 1821 almost certainly for self preservation, just a few years after the anti-Semitic Hep-Hep pogrom swept across German cities, including Frankfurt. In 1824, however, Jews in Frankfurt received equal rights with non-Jews. Jacobi accompanined Dr. McCaul as an assistant missionary to Jews in his native country.[1] He became a citizen of the United States in 1825.[2][DWS1] He served in Georgia in 1837 as a sergeant in the war with the Creek Indian. At age 62, he enrolled at Albany, New York, and was mustered in as Chaplain on October 14, 1862. He served as Chaplain, 4th New York Cavalry, in the Antietam campaign in late 1862. He was later honorably discharged for disability. Commissioned by President Lincoln as hospital chaplain by the document here offered, Rev. Jacobi served as Chaplain of the Kalorama Hospital (Eruptive Fever General Hospital) on 21st NW, in Kalorama Heights, Washington, D.C., a Union hospital for contagious diseases. Captured Confederate soldiers were also admitted. On March 18, 1864, Rev. Jacobi was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Volunteers Hospital Chaplains Infantry Regiment.

After the Civil War, Rev. Jacobi continued to serve as chaplain of Kalorama Hospital, where most of the patients were African Americans. After Kalorama closed in 1867, Rev. Jacobi requested to be appointed chaplain of a black regiment. William A. Doback and Thomas D. Phillips write in The Black Regulars, 1866-1898 (2001), "The Episcopal priest John C. Jacobi ‰had the opportunity to become acquainted with the characteristics and disposition of this class of men more fully than usually happens to an officer in the army' while ministering to wounded black soldiers in army hospitals during the war." In 1867, President Andrew Johnson appointed Rev. Jacobi to be chaplain of the 9th U.S. Cavalry , a black regiment. He served from March 1867 until his retirement in July 1868.

[1] The Colonial Church Chronicle and Missionary Journal. 1857. (London: Rivingtons, Waterloo Place, 1857), 76.

In June 1859, Jacobi reported to the Connecticut Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church that "I have been laboring in the city of New York, as a Missionary among my brethren according to the flesh‰... Besides visiting my Jewish brethren during the week, for the purpose of conversing with, and explaining the Scriptures to them‰..." Journal of the Seventy-Fifth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Connecticut (Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood and Company, 1859), 54.

See also Journal of the Proceedings of the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, Assembled in a General Convention. 1860. (Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1860), 174; David Max Eichhorn, Evangelizing the American Jew (Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David Publishing, 1978), 57-66, 121, 124, 131.

[2] In November 1824, Rev. Joseph Samuel Frey introduced Jacobi to the board of the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews along with a letter from J. D. Marc that stated, "I beseech you to receive the bearer with brotherly affection, and to render him every assistance possible. His name is John Christian Gottlieb Adolph Jacobi, a native of Gneffkowy [Gniewkowo], Principality of Posen [German Poland]. He was baptized the 7th of July, 1821, at Sekback, a few miles from here by the Rev. Mr. Handwerk, of the Evangelical Church. He is particularly desirous to pursue agricultural employment, in which he hath already been engaged for several months." The Religious Intelligencer (New-Haven, CT), 7 May 1825, 774.

In 1825, the Western Luminary reported, "It appears from the ‰...Third Report of the American Society for meliorating the condition of the Jews,' that 2,750 copies of ‰...Israel's Advocate' are now distributed monthly, among the auxiliaries and individual subscribers; and that the Board have under their care 8 converts from Judaism, two of whom, viz. Dr. Elias Wolf, a young Physician, and Mr. John C. Jacobi, an agriculturalist, have been received within the last year." The Western Luminary (Lexington, KY), 20 July 1825, 30.

Israel's Advocate (1823-1826) was the periodical of the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews (1820-1850s), which had some 200 branches from Maine to Georgia.

According to another source, Jacobi was a missionary to the Jews in New York in 1825-1826 and again from 1850 to 1855, "having spent the years from 1827 to 1849 in the postal service." Louis Meyer, "A Brief Sketch of the History of the Church Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, New York," The Jewish Era (Chicago, IL), 15 January 1904, 15.

[DWS1]In December 2015, a run of Israel's Advocate that likely included the report about Jacobi was sold for $132. See https://auctions.bidsquare.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/1155/lot/402110.

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