y were retrained to crew the heavy cannon that protected Mobile from Union land and sea threats.
Fifty year-old Abraham Lehman was an enlisted member of Captain Baas’ Company of the 1st Mobile Alabama Volunteers at the time of the siege of Mobile. The regiment was “composed of citizens over 45 years of age,” organized specifically and solely for the defense of Mobile City and County. As a younger man, he may have served as a soldier in France before immigrating to America, but we have not yet found evidence of such.
Dr. Lehman mentions that among the Seder guests, mostly Privates with a few subalterns (ranks above a Private but below a Captain), there was a French Captain from the 22nd Louisiana and a Major from a distinguished South Carolina family. We may never know whether Lehman ever knew the names of the guests or if he forgot them over the passage of time. Fortunately, the details of Dr. Lehman’s account give us clues to who might have been there. For example, a quick check of our database reveals that at least three soldiers in the 22nd Louisiana were in Mobile in April of 1862: Private Samuel Blum, Adjutant Lieutenant Benjamin Oppenheimer and Sergeant Joseph Zimmern. We have not yet determined if these men were Jewish, nor if the other twelve soldiers in our database who served in the unit were Jewish or in Mobile during Passover. We have not yet identified the name of the French Captain, but we do believe that the identity of the man Lehman described as “a ranking major, a native of South Carolina, his family distinguished for able men, all conscientious Israelites” is Major Washington Marks of the 22nd (Consolidated) Louisiana Infantry. The son of Alexander and Esther (Hetty) Hart Marks, born in Columbia and raised in the Jewish traditions and customs of the times in Charleston, South Carolina, was in Mobile that night. Standing six foot tall in an age when most men stood half a foot shorter, with grey eyes, black hair and a dark complexion (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~marksfamily/markspage.htm#wash), he probably cut a figure that no impressionable boy would ever forget.
As the clock wound down in the final weeks of the Confederate States of America in late March of 1865, Federal forces besieged the coastal city of Mobile, Alabama. With 45,000 troops, the Federals outnumbered the 4,000 Confederate defenders at better than ten to one odds. The final Federal assault began in earnest on April 9th – Palm Sunday for the Christians, the day before the start of Pesach for the Israelites, and the official end of the War of the Rebellion and the Confederacy. For those gathered in the home of Abraham Lehman that next night, “the Sedar proceeded uninterrupted.”
Enjoy your Passover, Friends.