(Newspaper). The Crisis.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA)

Thursday, November 21

Columbus, Ohio

1861

On p. 6: "An Israelite's Opinions of American Constitutional Law and the Rights of Conscience"

Isaac Mayer Wise Fires Salvo in Chaplaincy Controversy. The article on page 6 (reprinted from I.M. Wise's The Israelite), refers to the so-called "Chaplaincy Controversy." According to the original Volunteer Bill, regimental chaplains were to be "regularly ordained ministers of some Christian denomination." On July 12, 1861, an Ohio congressman, Clement L. Vallandigham moved an amendment that would have substituted the phrase "religious society" for "Christian denomination." Unfortunately, Vallandigham's fellow House members were not as sensitive as he was to the rights of American Jews and rejected his amendment. At this point, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, editor of the Cincinnati newspaper The Israelite, entered the fray, pointing out that according to American Constitutional Law there must be strict separation of Church and State. See B.W. Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War (1951), pp. 57-58; J.G. Heller, Isaac M. Wise: His Life, Work and Thought (1965), pp. 357-58.