1

The Antebellum Cotton Economy

One spring day in 1844, Friedrich Gerstäcker was floating downriver approaching Shreveport, Louisiana, when he looked toward the left bank of the river “and was not a little astonished when I saw that the left bank of the bayou, right at the point where it merged with the Red River, was covered with snow . Or so it appeared.” After a closer examination, however, Gerstäcker “realized that it was cotton that covered almost an acre of land as densely as snow.” As he continued down the Red and into the Mississippi River, he found himself surrounded by vessels carrying even more cotton downriver to New Orleans. “Wherever my eye gazed, I could see the heavily laden flatboats,” Gerstäcker noted, and he also saw steamboats—once per hour, he estimated, and often three or four at a time—that were “capable of loading three or four thousand bales” of cotton. This cotton was destined for New Orleans, where it was then sold and shipped to points across the globe. 1

In the antebellum years, Jewish merchants were on the margins of this booming cotton industry, but three particular developments in this era laid the groundwork for their postbellum success. First, Jewish merchants began to open general and dry goods stores in interior cotton towns. When the traditional cotton factorage system would later break down, these interior general stores would become the most important institutions in the cotton industry. Jewish merchants would thus be in the right place at the right time, facilitating their entry into the cotton industry and their integration into global capitalism. Second, a number of those Jewish merchants accumulated a significant amount of capital during the antebellum years, providing them with the resources to survive the disruption of the Civil War and to enter the postbellum years on sound footing. And third, Jewish merchants began to establish family and ethnic networks that connected partners within firms, brought global investment through New York to the Gulf South, and provided credit to fellow Jewish merchants in the region. These three develop ments were prerequisites that allowed Jewish merchants’ early toehold in the industry to later blossom into a flourishing ethnic economy.

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By the mid-nineteenth century the region’s cotton-propelled economy was rapidly taking market share from the Atlantic Seaboard. Yet it doing so on the backs of slaves—between 1820 and 1860, possibly a million slaves were “sold down the river” via an internal slave trade. Predicated upon slavery, the region’s market share increased dramatically to over half of the nation’s crop by 1840. Aggregate value of real and personal property more than doubled in Louisiana over the 1850s as rural landholders poured more and more of their resources into cotton, favoring immediate profit over long-term diversification. And as more land was cultivated for cotton, the steamboat traffic that Gerstäcker had observed on the Mississippi River increased. Between 1840 and 1860, the number increased from 1,500 to 3,500 steamboats, and the amount of freight shipped increased fourfold, from half a million tons to 2 million tons. The value of that cotton increased as well, from $50 million to almost $2 billion. 2

Figure 1.1. “Cotton Levee in New Orleans.” Image courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62–4928).

But bringing cotton from the fields to market was no easy proposition. For starters, cotton bales were unwieldy. They often weighed 400–500 pounds each, were four to five feet long, and one to three feet wide, and each bale had to be individually wrapped and then tied. In large part because of their size and weight, damage was frequent. Bales were often “skidded,” dragged across the ground as they were being loaded or unloaded into boats, resulting in dirt on the bottom and thus a reduction in quality. Rain could leave the surfaces of a bale “wet-packed,” caked and foul smelling, similarly reducing quality. While selling crops locally could reduce the time in transit and thus minimize the chance of such damage, shipping to cotton markets such as New Orleans increased risk, but more buyers generally meant higher demand and higher prices. Because the slightest bit of damage could be the difference between profit and loss, the simple act of bringing a bale of cotton to market was critically important and by no means an easy task. 3

Figure 1.2. “King Cotton and His Slaves, Greenwood, Mississippi.” Image courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62–36638).

Figure 1.3. “A Cotton Plantation on the Mississippi.” Image courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62–345).

While bringing a bale of cotton to market in good condition was a challenge, so, too, was selling that cotton at the highest price possible. Unaware of the daily fluctuations of cotton prices in an age before the widespread use of the telegraph, interior planters had no way of knowing when the time was right to sell. Cotton prices could change by the minute, often fluctuating 10–15 percent over the course of a month and as much as 30–40 percent over a selling season. But news of those changes could not reach interior planters before the information was out of date. One planter estimated that it took a week for letters to make their way upriver, and another called mail service to Bayou Sara, Louisiana, “extremely irregular.” Thus planters had little idea as to whether they were selling when supply was limited and prices were high or whether they were shipping cotton to a saturated New Orleans market with depressed prices. 4

Lacking the requisite knowledge, expertise, and resources, planters frequently turned to cotton factors to market their cotton and maximize their profits. Unlike planters, factors were generally based in port cities, so they weren’t limited to selling cotton locally. Prices differed by market, and factors often had agents overseas—in the large cotton markets of Liverpool, for example. Southern factors often had outlets for their cotton in Northern markets as well, as large Northern firms often had agents located in port cities in the South. Thus factors gave growers access to markets across the globe that they would not have otherwise had. 5

In addition to finding the right place to sell, factors also had to find the right time to sell. A stockpile of cotton from the previous growing year could depress prices early in the season, while little prior stock could lead to high early-season prices. If the bulk of the cotton harvest came to market mid-season, prices might be low. However, that could mean a smaller late harvest, which could lead to a spike in prices if demand were high. Or, if demand were low, it could lead to a glut of cotton on the market at the end of the season, lowering prices. It was one thing to rely on gossip when estimating the size and timing of the harvest, but it was another to have the resources and information to make a more educated decision about the best time to sell. 6

Sometimes a cotton factor was successful in maximizing profits by choosing the right place and time to sell, but other times he was not. Misreading the market was often the culprit when a factor failed in his task, but so were more nefarious elements. If a factor had cash-flow problems, he might be tempted to sell too soon and before prices had crested, or even more dubious or deceptive business practices might yield a factor more money than was due. In part because planters had so little control over their profits, legal action sometimes followed sales that did not deliver the highest prices of the season. 7

In addition to marketing and selling cotton, a factor’s other primary responsibility was to provision planters with the supplies they needed throughout the year. This might include seeds and planting supplies to produce crops, emergency funds to meet an unexpected expense, staple foodstuffs to feed the planter’s family throughout the year, or luxury goods such as books or wine. By provisioning them with goods and supplies while at the same time selling their crop, a factor had an inordinate impact over the lives of the planters and farmers with whom he worked. 8

The success of the cotton factorage system was possible only because cotton was the security at the center of the South’s extensive credit system. Factors borrowed money from banks in New Orleans, New York, or Europe and used this money to purchase the goods that they would then advance to planters. Factors also advanced to planters the costs of marketing the cotton, including transportation and insurance against water and fire damage, and charges for weighing and warehousing the cotton once it arrived in the port city. If the cotton was to be sold in another city, factors would advance additional charges for shipping, and potentially charges for recompression, which were often necessary for European shipments. Factors advanced these services, and when the cotton was sold, the cost of the items, as well as the factors’ commissions, would be deducted from the proceeds. Factors would then pay their debts to their creditors and then pay the planters whatever profits—if any—remained. Planters would generally be paid in the wintertime, and the cycle would begin again in the spring. 9

This form of credit—security in a crop that was not yet grown and a perpetual cycle of credit and debt—was, in the words of one Northerner visiting Mississippi in 1834, “peculiar.” An 1841 article declared that it was “well known” that, in the cotton trade, “the harvest of one year is, as it were, mortgaged for the expenses of the next.” Such a system, in which money was borrowed against the future crop, was commonplace. “The agriculturalists who create the real wealth of the country are not in daily receipt of money,” noted one observer. “Their produce is ready but once in the year, whereas they buy supplies [on credit] year round.… The whole banking system of the country is based primarily on this bill movement against produce.” 10

Cotton crops, however, were not always profitable enough to repay the debts incurred by the planter over the course of the year. Too much sun mid-season could lead to a withered crop, and too much rain could also doom the crop, as could a late-arriving spring, an early frost, or a crop infestation. “Day by day you can see the vegetation of vast fields becoming thinner and thinner,” one contemporary observed, as the result of a worm infestation. “All efforts to arrest their progress or annihilate them prove unavailing. They seem to spring out of the ground, and fall from the clouds.” 11

When a bad crop year occurred, a planter’s debts would be carried over from one year to the next. But a bad crop year also placed a factor at risk, as reduced income often meant that he could not repay his own bank loans. To protect against risk, some bankers tried to limit their exposure to three-quarters of the expected revenue from the cotton. Factors also generally lent money to planters at interest and charged a commission on goods purchased or sold on behalf of the planter in order to limit their own risk. In this way, both the bankers and factors could make money while limiting their risk, although they were not always successful in doing so. 12

While the factorage system long dominated antebellum mercantile life, the landscape was beginning to shift in the years prior to the Civil War, foreshadowing a major transformation that would reach fruition in the postbellum years and would facilitate Jewish concentration in the industry. In the years prior to the Civil War, factors began to find competition in scores of small general stores that were popping up across the interior—some of which were operated by Jews. As transportation improved and new lands opened for production on the cotton frontier, the number of these towns and stores grew rapidly. In 1840, Louisiana’s number of stores per thousand population ranked second in the nation, and while much of this mercantile activity was centered in New Orleans, one estimate counted almost 600 stores in Louisiana outside of New Orleans. Those numbers only grew over time. 13

Interior river towns became particularly important to the cotton industry in the antebellum years—particularly towns located on rivers that provided access to New Orleans. “The place has gone business mad,” one newspaper correspondent wrote of antebellum Shreveport. “There seem to be more stores than residences.” Antebellum Natchez was also an important interior cotton center, in close proximity to cotton plantations and along the Mississippi River for easy access to New Orleans. Natchez’s river port shipped 50,000 bales of cotton in 1860, and mercantile sales approached $2 million. 14

Bayou Sara, Louisiana, was another interior river town that played an important role in the cotton industry. Located in West Feliciana Parish on the banks of the Mississippi River, Bayou Sara was the largest port in terms of arrivals and departures between Vicksburg and New Orleans, and it was located in some of the most fertile cotton land in the world. It was the transfer point for freight for the Red and Ouachita Rivers, the landing place of the Ohio River coal fleet, and the terminus of the West Feliciana Railroad, which delivered cotton from the interior and acted much like a tributary of the Mississippi. All of this, according to one census report, meant that it was “a commercial center of greater importance than its size or population would seem to indicate.” Few people, the New Orleans Daily Picayune later noted, “have an idea of the immense business done at this [Bayou Sara] point, in the receiving, forwarding and dry goods business.” 15

Bayou Sara’s importance was clear by the beginning of the nineteenth century. “You would be astonished I am sure, if you could spend one week at the Mouth [sic ] of Bayou Sarah [sic ] at this season of the year … to see the quantity of produce that passes daily to New Orleans,” one resident wrote in 1807 to his cousin who was in the “commercial city” of New York. “As the Rivers break up more northwardly,” he wrote, “the Boats come on loaded with every kind of produce that the upper empire affords or that ingenuity can invent, Flour, corn meal, whiskey and Cider, Pork and Beef, live state fed Beaver, Venison and Mutton Hams, great quantities of bacon, Horses in great numbers … and every thing else that the country affords, or that is wanted here.” One resident described how riverboats brought goods to Bayou Sara from St. Louis and New Orleans, and it was warehoused by a local business. “Merchants came by horse and buggy and with large wagons drawn by yokes of oxen, four or five to a wagon, to pick up goods for resale in their communities.” 16

When J. W. Dorr, a journalist from New Orleans, visited Bayou Sara before the war, he found a “thriving and bustling place” that “contains some of the most extensive and heavily stocked stores in Louisiana, outside of New Orleans.” The town had its share of large businesses, as well as “a variety of smaller but apparently prosperous establishments, restaurants, bar-rooms, etc., and all the other aspects of a small city,” including a dentist and an apothecary. At the top of the hill was Bayou Sara’s twin town of St. Francisville, which, Dorr maintained, was “stronger on the ornamental,” but Bayou Sara was “out of sight ahead of her on the practical, for she does all the business and a great deal of business is done, too.” 17

As Bayou Sara grew, it gained a reputation as “a wild, rowdy, riverboat town,” while the surrounding plantations reflected wealthy, Southern genteel society. There were several large homes in the surrounding area, including Afton Villa, “with its thirty-four rooms, large ballroom and banqueting hall, towers, balconies enclosed by stained glass doors opening on a terrace above a sloping lawn beyond which winds a live oak avenue.” Then there was Wakefield, with “rooms thirty or forty feet long,” The Myrtles, “with its ornate iron-railed gallery,” and Rosedown, “gleaming white at the end of its long, deeply umbraged, azelia[sic ]-bordered avenue of grand old oaks.” In 1821, John James Audubon visited the region and noted that “the rich magnolias covered with fragrant blossoms, the holly, the beech, the tall yellow poplars, the hilly ground and even the red clay all excited my admiration.” 18

While towns such as Shreveport, Natchez, and Bayou Sara were on the rise in the antebellum years, the merchants of these towns were beginning to play an increasingly important role in the cotton industry. As proximate farmlands opened to cotton production, the region became friendlier to interior merchants. Peddlers, many of whom were Jews, were often the first merchants to arrive, selling farming supplies and other wares and chasing what little opportunity was available. But as new frontier lands opened for farming, and their scale of business increased, many peddlers made enough money to open storefronts in towns such as Shreveport, Natchez, and Bayou Sara. In Natchez, middle-class merchants gained financial prominence in the 1850s. There were over 100 retail firms in 1858, and the most successful businesses in that era were those that stocked a variety of goods to supply plantations. Some owners of these small general stores, many of whom were Jews, may have been familiar with their clientele and their needs from their days as peddlers, and they would have a decided advantage when general stores ultimately made the cotton factor superfluous. Although these merchants played only a small role in the antebellum cotton industry, they were in the right place at the right time to capitalize on the changes that would soon come. 19

Initially the functions that those shopkeepers fulfilled mirrored those of the factors, though on a smaller scale. Store owners worked primarily with farmers whose crops were generally too small to interest large-scale factors, and their most important function was supplying goods to those living in rural areas. While some stores sold goods on the cash system, others would sell goods on credit in much the same fashion as the factor. Moreover, just as the factor did for larger clients, general stores also handled the sale of the cotton crop of smaller farmers. Store owners would purchase the small crops from a multitude of farmers, providing them the scale necessary to work with larger factors to market the crop. Additionally, because there were no rural state-chartered banks in Louisiana, many of these firms filled this void by also operating rudimentary banking operations. 20

As the Gulf South’s cotton economy grew in the antebellum period, so, too, did the number and strength of general stores, which began to tread on the economic territory of the factors. Not only were these stores, which were usually small, locally owned, and locally managed, numerous, but a fairly significant number of them also achieved success in the antebellum years. Their success provided store owners with a base of capital that would help them survive the war years and thrive in the postbellum years. 21

Successful merchants in Bayou Sara included Swedish native Charles Toorain, a dry goods and grocery proprietor, who arrived around 1849 and, like many others, began his career as a clerk. He was soon engaged to the daughter of his employer and shortly thereafter opened his own business. Although initially the “public don’t seem to have any great confidence in him,” as a credit reporter wrote, this soon changed. His business grew slowly, and although not large, he was “apparently sf. [safe]” for creditors. Toorain purchased his goods and supplies in New York and New Orleans, and by the late 1850s, he “seems to have the confidence of the public.” 22

Toorain was not the only Bayou Sara merchant who capitalized on the growing opportunities in the interior. One of the most prominent businesses in town was Lebret & Hearsey, initially under the direction of Peter and John Lebret, Frenchmen who came “with nothing.” They accumulated wealth, purchasing slaves and a plantation in 1844, and by 1847 were doing a “large … chiefly cash” business on the mercantile side of their operation. By 1851, son-in-law William Hearsey, formerly a clerk, had become a partner, and Lebret & Hearsey made between 75 and 100 bales of cotton per year and purchased in New Orleans, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. It was deemed the “best firm here, no doubt [about] it” in 1852, but trouble appeared by 1855, as they were sued and were “hard pressed, carrying on a plantation, + doing but little as merchants.” By the middle of 1859, they had “retired from commercial [business],” and Hearsey was running for sheriff. 23

Bayou Sara had many other mercantile establishments. Felix Leake bought out the firm of Clauss & Fisher in 1852 and was considered a “good bus. [business] man” who operated a commission and forwarding business. He owned slaves by 1857, and was elected parish sheriff. J. W. Dorr called this firm one of the “principal merchants of the place” during his visit around 1860. Charles Wolflin operated a store in Bayou Sara that sold dry goods, groceries, boots, and shoes and also doubled as a saloon, which helped to bring potential customers into his store. Wolflin was operational by 1851 and kept a “small shop” of dry goods and groceries. He was a “prud. [prudent] + econom’l [economical] man,” who was “[doing] a [small] but apparently a [safe business]” and who also “keeps a large beer saloon.” Not all businessmen, however, were successful. Leonard Schneider ran a grocery store with a tavern and coffeehouse, up the hill in St. Francisville, and although he was “[making] money” and was “a hard worker,” he was also “a hard drinker.” A credit reporter predicted in 1855 that he “will soon die of whiskey,” and within two years, Schneider was dead. 24

Throughout the interior, some stores attracted customers by doubling as precinct polling places or post offices. Such a status was coveted for the amount of foot traffic it drove. Many served as community meeting spaces, where individuals who were dispersed throughout the countryside could come together and share news or gossip. Other stores served liquor, undoubtedly facilitating social interaction but also creating rowdy and often unpleasant gatherings. Nonetheless, a fairly significant number of interior stores achieved success in the antebellum years at the expense of cotton factors, paving the way for a dramatic increase in these stores in the postbellum period. 25

Jews, who largely operated as peddlers and interior store owners, were in the right place at the right time—perfectly positioned to capitalize on the trend. On the eve of the Civil War, approximately 33,000 Jews were scattered throughout the South, and the Gulf South saw a particular concentration of Alsatian and Bavarian Jews—due in large part to chain migration as friends and family members followed some of the early migrants. Many of these Jews became peddlers, a role that was familiar to them from their days in Europe and that also integrated them into the American economy. Jews would place packs on their backs, travel to rural interior areas where there was little competition, and bring goods to far-flung places. This was a nationwide pattern, and as new interior cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and scores of smaller towns opened, Jewish peddlers were also quickly on the scene to provision early settlers. As they became more successful, Jewish peddlers often opened storefronts, and some store owners would then provision other peddlers.

Figure 1.4. “Caricature of Jewish Merchant and Steamboat.” Image courtesy of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio (MSS 601, box 5, folder 1).

This economic niche shaped Jewish settlement patterns across the country, but particularly in the Gulf South, and the timing could not have been better. By the mid-nineteenth century, Jews were acquiring the means necessary to open stores just as the general store model was beginning to challenge the factorage system. By opening interior general stores that purchased cotton from farmers and sold them goods on credit, Jews found early success in the cotton industry that served as a harbinger of their postbellum niche economy. 26

Lehman Brothers provides an excellent example of this phenomenon. Henry Lehman emigrated from rural Bavaria in 1844 at age twenty-one, and after brief stops in New York and Mobile, Alabama, he settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where he was joined in 1847 by his brother Emanuel, and in 1850 by his brother Mayer. In Montgomery, the Lehman brothers opened a store selling merchandise such as crockery, glassware, tools, dry goods, and seeds, and as early as 1850, the partners would “buy cotton,” claimed a Dun recorder. “Cotton was used instead of currency in the South in those days,” recalled Mayer Lehman’s son. “The farmers would come in to town with their cotton and trade it for shirts, shoes, fertilizer … and all the necessities.” This, he maintained, was “how they got started in the cotton business.” The brothers would often extend credit to planters and regularly received payment in cotton rather than currency. 27

In addition to Lehman Brothers, other Montgomery Jewish businesses fit this model. Weil & Kohn, operated by two “shrewd” German Jews, opened a clothing and dry goods store and did a small “retail business principally with that class of farmers who sell them 2 or 3 bales of cotton, + buy from them a sm. [small] quantity” of dry goods and groceries. Additionally, they employed peddlers in the countryside. Jacob Abrahams also conducted a “country trade” and speculated in cotton. “Good today—cotton may take them tomorrow,” warned a credit reporter in 1858. 28

Bayou Sara, which as we have seen had a strong mercantile presence, also had its fair share of Jewish-owned businesses within the cotton economy. While it is difficult to define the term “cotton economy” with precision, I generally use the term to include those firms that loaned money and/or sold plantation supplies. Stores defined as general or dry goods stores, among others, fit this criterion. Nonetheless, in 1860, based on the best data available, somewhere between 35 percent and 45 percent of firms in the cotton economy were operated by Jews, and of the businesses that credit reporters deemed strong, about half of them were Jewish owned. One of the strongest firms in town was Charles Hoffman & Co., owned by Jews, which by 1849 was said to do “a more extensive [business] than any other [merchant] in the [parish].” A partner in Hoffman’s firm, Isaias Meyer, backed I. Meyer & Co., a store operated by a relative, P. Adolphus. Another firm, L. Bach & Co., was considered to be “the largest retailers here” in the mid-1840s. Abram Wolf’s small general store was operational by 1853, doing a very safe business. By 1857 his business was described as a commission and forwarding business, yet on the eve of the Civil War, he had “no means except [a small] country store.” Another Jewish firm was the grocery and provision store of J & C Whiteman, which had opened by around 1850. John Whiteman was a widower who was considered a good businessman, and in addition to his children, he was assisted for a time by W. D. Hatch. Hatch was likely not Jewish, demonstrating that, while most Jewish shopkeepers formed partnerships with fellow Jews, there were exceptions. Soon the firm was doing a profitable dry goods business, purchasing goods principally in St. Louis and Cincinnati, and its proprietors owned slaves. The firm had warehouses to hold either cotton or goods, and J. W. Dorr also included it among the “principal merchants of the place” during his visit. 29

In addition to these firms, two other Jewish firms emerged on the eve of the war that would come to play critically important roles in the town’s postbellum growth. The first firm was that of Julius Freyhan, who was likely born in 1830 and who arrived in America in 1851. Little is known about his early life in America, but he operated a business in Jackson, Louisiana, in 1853, and a Dun recorder noted in that year that he was told Freyhan had moved to Bayou Sara. By 1856 he was in neighboring East Feliciana Parish, having applied to take the oath of citizenship, and he was a resident of West Feliciana Parish by 1860, when he was called a “young man who has been clerking for [several years].” At that point he ran a “[small business] on the cash system,” and one credit reporter believed that he “will not do much.” That credit reporter couldn’t have been more wrong, as Freyhan would soon operate the most successful postbellum business in Bayou Sara, and he would later work with Lehman Brothers at Lane Cotton Mills in New Orleans. 30

Another Jewish merchant who came to town shortly before the war, and who would also play an important role after the war, was Moses Mann. When he first arrived, Mann and his partner Abraham Hirsch were “comparatively strangers” who “live somewhat secluded,” and they operated a “[small] store.” Within a couple of years, however, business was increasing, and Mann owned two slaves. He soon purchased some stores and town property and appeared to be making money. In the postbellum years, Mann would also become one of the town’s most important merchants. 31

Bayou Sara was not the only town in the antebellum Gulf South to see an influx of Jewish businesses. Isaac Brown and Alexander Kuhn were operating a small grocery store in Vicksburg by 1859, and S. Bernheimer & Bro were running a dry goods store in Port Gibson by 1852. Nearly two dozen Jewish-owned businesses were operating in Natchez in the antebellum years, including Aaron Beekman’s dry goods and clothing business. In Baton Rouge, Jacob Farnbacher established a dry goods store in 1860, after having “commenced peddling some years since,” and M. Levy and Gabriel Meyer’s dry goods, etc., shop in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was in business by 1858. Solomon Block and Edward Feibelman’s dry goods store had set down roots in Camden, Arkansas, by 1852, and it also had a presence in Columbia County. 32

But Bayou Sara played a particularly important role in the cotton economy, and because of its significant mercantile presence and its genteel wealth, the town was closely intertwined socially and economically with New Orleans. New Orleanians, wrote the Daily Picayune , “are so intimately allied with those of Bayou Sara, by ties of personal friendship and business connections” and “in the frequency of communication, and the identity of feeling with us,” that it was “almost a fifth district of New Orleans.” 33

While interior towns were gaining in stature, there is no question that New Orleans continued to play a dominant role in America’s cotton trade in the antebellum period. Although its importance was slipping as the Civil War approached, New Orleans was nevertheless strategically situated at the mouth of the Mississippi River, and large quantities of cotton from the fertile cotton lands nearby were shipped downriver for pressing and baling and then were ultimately sold throughout the world. “For commercial purposes,” observed one contemporary, “New Orleans occupies a very superior and commanding situation. It is the natural entrepôt for supplies destined to all parts of the Mississippi Valley, as well as the depot for those products of that salubrious region which seek a market seaward.” The Crescent City’s cotton receipts increased from less than 40,000 bales in 1816 to almost 1 million by 1840, leading one person to declare that “no city of the world has ever advanced as a market of commerce with such gigantic strides as New Orleans.” Over the 1850s, New Orleans’s prosperity increased so much that one newspaper declared that “New Orleans is destined to be the greatest city in the Western Hemisphere.” 34

By most outward appearances, New Orleans was booming in the antebellum years, yet the city’s prosperity masked fundamental flaws that would hinder its long-term development. Convinced of its geographically driven invincibility, the city placed all its eggs in the cotton industry’s basket—largely at the expense of more sustainable industries that could have established a basis for long-term success. Moreover, its infrastructure stagnated without a viable railroad system, and it also did not maintain its waterways—failing, for instance, to remove navigational hazards in the Mississippi River. On top of its notorious history of corruption, as well as its frequent disease outbreaks, New Orleans’s levee system lacked needed upgrades, its docks were falling apart, and the city charged extremely high port fees. Much of this was a testament to its misplaced sense of invincibility. Moreover, the city’s prosperity in the antebellum years also masked underlying financial issues. Louisiana was not encouraging of foreign investment, and New Orleans had gained an international reputation as a risky place to invest long-term capital. As a result, the Crescent City was losing market share. 35

Not surprisingly, although New Orleans remained central to the Gulf South’s cotton industry, there was an increasing push among interior shopkeepers to decrease their dependence on it. Merchants increasingly purchased supplies in cities such as Louisville, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New York, but this was particularly galling to many Southerners, who resented the increasing Northern role in Southern trade. For example, the Vicksburg Daily Whig declared that New York “sends out her long arms to the extreme South; and with avidity rarely equaled, grasps our gains and transfers them to herself—taxing us at every step and depleting us as extensively as possible without actually destroying us.” Although interior merchants may have been torn as to whether to purchase from the North, by avoiding New Orleans they could offer their customers lower prices and thereby generate more business and increased revenues. Pitting loyalty against profits, most storekeepers opted to bypass New Orleans whenever possible. 36

As New Orleans’s centrality to the cotton industry was shrinking, New York’s role was on the rise. After recovering from the Panic of 1837, New York increased its exports by 139 percent and its imports by 97 percent between 1850 and 1857—making it America’s most important port. By the eve of the Civil War, two-thirds of U.S. imports and one-third of exports went through New York. This trade spurred the city’s booming industrial sector, as the amount of capital invested in manufacturing rose by 60 percent over the course of the 1850s. This made New York not only the most important port in the United States but also the most important manufacturing center. 37

In addition to its advantageous geographic location, New York grew in large part because it was “like a spider in the web of the American economy,” argues Sven Beckert, “drawing resources into the metropolis, transforming them, and sending them to places near and far.” This placed New York in the center of Pennsylvania’s iron works, Cuba’s sugar plantations, America’s railroads, and, for our purposes, the South’s cotton plantations. New York’s centrality to the nation’s economy only continued to further enhance the city’s importance. 38

As it was growing as a mercantile center, New York was also becoming a major hub of American Jewish life. As the city’s population grew to over 1 million by 1860, the Jewish presence increased as well. According to one estimate, by 1840 there were about 10,000 Jews in New York, and on the eve of the Civil War, 40,000 Jews lived in the city. Other population estimates vary, but numbers undoubtedly rose significantly during this period. The Jewish mercantile presence was also maturing. In 1853, at least 105 of the city’s “principal” wholesalers were of Jewish firms. That same year, the Merchants’ and Bankers’ New York City Reference Guide listed fourteen “established wholesalers and bankers” in the dry goods business, and that number jumped to forty-one in 1859. 39

By the mid-nineteenth century, the primary source of profits for New York’s mercantile sector was the Southern cotton economy. One observer in the 1850s noted that New York was “virtually an annex of the South, the New York merchants having extensive and very profitable business relations with the merchants south of the Mason and Dixon line. The South was the best customer of New York.” The system was fairly straightforward. New York merchants would purchase cotton from the South, often to send via ships to Liverpool. Those ships would return from Liverpool with British goods that the merchants could then sell to Southern plantation owners, as well as to Northerners and Westerners. In this way, many New York merchants connected Southern plantations to the British economy, realizing economic benefits along the way. 40

In addition to its important role in the country’s mercantile industry, New York in the 1850s was also rapidly becoming the nation’s financial center. The shift from mercantile activity toward banking was natural, as one of the primary roles of merchants was to advance credit—New York merchants were already providing credit for future crops and goods that were not yet sold. Between 1845 and 1860, Northern banks increased in number from 301 to 567, and their capital increased from $88 million to $193 million—all of this while the South’s banks stagnated. 41

While some of this capital was domestic, much of New York banks’ capital came from Britain and Europe. One of the city’s most important bankers, August Belmont, came to New York in 1837 to represent the European banking House of Rothschild, which was Jewish owned. So, too, did George Cabot Ward come to represent London’s Baring Brothers, which was not owned by Jews. These bankers provided their European firms with access to the American market and affected the contours of French, German, and British investments in American markets. 42

While Belmont and Ward represented two of the more prominent firms, they were not alone in connecting New York to international investment. Lazard Frères began in the dry goods business in New Orleans and then San Francisco but soon transitioned into banking, focusing largely on exchange services for the foreign currency market. This activity led them to open a Parisian branch in 1852, and they developed close ties with the French government and the Banque de Paris, en route to becoming one of the most important banking firms in Paris. They also began arbitrage services, later opening a London office to access that financial market, and organized a New York branch of the firm. 43

Despite these connections, there was trouble lurking beneath the surface. First and foremost was the cotton industry’s reliance on slavery. Slave market prices varied based on the cotton market, and as the Gulf South’s cotton economy boomed between 1820 and 1860, the number of slaves increased sevenfold while the amount of cotton increased fortyfold. New York’s dependence on the cotton industry thus made it financially challenging for New York merchants to oppose slavery. One contemporary rhetorically asked what New York would be without slavery and answered by suggesting that “the ships would rot at her docks; grass would grow in Wall Street and Broadway, and the glory of New York, like that of Babylon and Rome, would be numbered with the things of the past.” One merchant noted that slavery was “a great evil, a great wrong,” but its abolition would wreak economic disaster on New York. “There are millions upon millions of dollars due from Southerners to the merchants and mechanics alone, the payment of which would be jeopardized by any rupture between the North and the South.” Slavery, he maintained, was “a matter of business necessity.” Moreover, New York bankers took slaves as collateral, so if slavery were abolished, financiers would have little recourse if plantation owners defaulted. The vast majority of loans in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, for example, utilized human slaves as collateral, so the end of slavery could spell financial disaster for New York’s mercantile firms and banking houses. 44

In addition to the industry’s reliance on slavery, the close relationship between New York and the Southern cotton trade was being challenged by new investment opportunities. Some financiers were turning their attention toward the West, as the gold rush presented a plethora of opportunities, particularly for Jewish firms. The cotton trade also found competition in both manufacturing and New York real estate, which similarly attracted the investment capital of New York bankers and financial elites, offering them a means of diversification with the looming political crisis and threat of war. All of this portended challenges for the South. 45

As New York’s economic importance was on the rise, Southern cotton businesses utilized networks to foster economic connections to the city. A direct line of credit could mean profitability, but how could a small Jewish general store owner in rural Louisiana or Mississippi convince a large New York business to sell them goods on credit, particularly when societal stigmas of Jews bled into the economic sphere? Credit reporters frequently arrived at Jewish businesses only to find owners who were reluctant to open their books to strangers. This lack of information, coupled with the stereotypical Jewish Shylock image, often fostered a lack of trust, which meant that reporters were often hesitant to recommend Jews for credit. One reporter, for example, declared Lazarus and Leon Bloom of Clinton, Louisiana, to be “as reliable as Jews are generally,” and one cautioned that a partner in a firm was “responsible now, but [he] is a Jew; there is no telling how long he will remain so.” A credit reporter also warned that “prudence in large transactions with all Jews should be used.” Thus, if a New York firm were to rely solely on credit reports to decide whether to trust a particular Southern merchant, Jewish merchants would be at a decided disadvantage. 46

But by relying on familial and ethnic ties, Jews could sidestep the impact of these reports and build economic relationships based upon trust, which, as we have seen, J. P. Morgan called “the fundamental basis of business.” Stores were frequently run as family businesses, as partners were often relatives, and clerks the sons of partners. Moreover, partners would also choose spouses for their children with an eye to the economic impact of a particular match. Family connections could stretch across the country and the globe, as partners in the firm would settle in different cities—including New York—to facilitate trade and credit flows between those with whom they shared trust. When family networks weren’t possible, or when a business outgrew them, shared ethnicity between partners still offered a far higher level of trust than a random business interaction. 47

In addition to connecting partners within firms, family and ethnicity also cultivated networks that moved capital and credit on two primary levels. First, ethnic networks brought foreign and domestic capital into the Gulf South. Often a partner would open a branch in New York, where he or she could develop face-to-face relationships with financiers who had global connections, many of whom were Jewish. Family and ethnic connections such as these were not limited to Jews. The firm of Robert Habersham & Son, for example, would sell in the South, while I. Rae Habersham led the New York branch of the firm. In addition to family connections, ties of ethnicity also undergirded networks between Southern and Northern firms. “As far back as 1846,” Julius Weis recalled, his firm “imported some drygoods from Switzerland, for which Lazard Freres [sic ],” operated by fellow Jews to whom he was not related, “had given their acceptance.” 48

Additionally, family and ethnic networks operated at a second level. Once capital reached wholesale and retail firms in the Gulf South, those businesses then utilized ethnic networks to distribute capital and provide credit to other Jewish firms within the local economies. For example, when wholesaler A. Beer & Co. went bankrupt in 1855, approximately two-thirds of the customers who owed it money were fellow Jews. Ethnic credit networks often allowed lenders to be more lenient in allowing a trusted customer extra time to pay. For example, when a yellow fever outbreak decimated Julius Weis’s business and “the payments came due for our goods,” Weis noted that his Jewish creditors “had confidence in me and helped us out,” and he was soon “paid up in full.” 49

Figure 1.5. “Julius Weis.” Image courtesy of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio (PC-4687).

These family and ethnic networks stood at the center of many of the largest and strongest Jewish businesses in the antebellum Gulf South’s cotton industry. For Goldsmith, Haber & Co., family and ethnic networks within and without the firm ran deep, allowing its partners to accumulate capital during the antebellum years and positioning them for success after the war. Lewis Goldsmith emigrated from Bavaria to Mobile, Alabama, in 1836 around the age of twenty-five, where he married Esther Haber, and he also met members of the Forcheimer family, with whom he would later partner. Goldsmith began peddling in the Mobile area, and by 1844 he had opened a wholesale clothing firm that conducted business primarily with Jewish peddlers and rural shopkeepers. By 1846, Goldsmith had opened Goldsmith, Haber & Co. in New Orleans with his brother-in-law Abraham Haber and Haber’s brother Isaac, which began inauspiciously enough. Dun agents reported that it was composed of unknown Jews, though they “seem to understand” the business. Goldsmith, Haber & Co. quickly became successful, and in 1855 the firm moved to a “fine new store in a better location” and was “selling a good many goods.” By 1857, they were doing a “good wholesale business,” supplying other firms with the goods they could acquire in New York. In 1858, a credit reporter considered them to be as good as any firm in the city. 50

As New York was growing in importance over the 1850s, Goldsmith, Haber & Co. sought a direct connection with the New York market. To that end, they sent Isaac Haber to New York to purchase goods for the firm, and he opened Morrison, Haber & Co., together with Lewis Morrison, who was the father-in-law of one of the Habers. The roots of the New York branch dated back to the 1840s, and it had begun under Morrison’s tutelage. The firm frequently bought at auctions and conducted a large clothing business in the South, in California, and elsewhere in the West. By 1855, the firm was a “first-class” clothing house that “stands as well as it ever did.” In 1859 it was doing well, and the New York branch continued to do a general wholesale business, manufacturing and selling where they could, although they had no house abroad. 51

The New York branch’s business was deeply interconnected with the Southern trade. In 1854, the firm had reorganized into two branches—Morrison, Haber & Co. of New York and Goldsmith, Haber & Co. of New Orleans. The New Orleans branch would “issue no paper,” and its purchases were made by Morrison, Haber & Co. of New York, “who give their own paper in payment.” The New York branch’s “trade is mostly South + West,” but in 1855, it reduced its California trade in favor of its Southern trade. By late 1859, the firm added another clerk who was “well acquainted with the southern trade,” and at this point its business was “mostly Southern.” 52

With Northern connections in place that provided access to goods and credit, Goldsmith, Haber & Co. in turn provided those goods on credit to other Jewish-owned firms throughout the region. Drawing on the resources it accessed through Morrison, Haber & Co. of New York, Goldsmith, Haber & Co. then worked with other firms throughout the region, often selling goods to Jewish mercantile firms at wholesale, which would then sell retail to customers throughout the Gulf South. In New Orleans, down the street from Goldsmith, Haber & Co. was a bonnet-and-hat store operated by Lewis Goldsmith’s brother Manuel, together with the brothers Simon and Emanuel Forcheimer; the Goldsmiths and Habers had met the Forcheimer family in Mobile. The “new Jew concern” ran a “small, safe” business in 1851, but after having “lost money in their California operations,” claimed to have failed in 1853 with liabilities of over $90,000. It appears that they settled with their creditors for between ten and twenty cents on the dollar. 53

Upon the failure of Goldsmith, Forcheimer & Bro., Manuel Goldsmith and the Forcheimer brothers went their separate ways, although they still remained tapped into this network. By 1857, and after carrying on business in the name of his brother Lewis, Manuel had opened his own business in New Orleans. On his own, however, Manuel’s “standing [was] not very good,” as he had “little stock” and hardly conducted enough business to justify continuing. His business skills appeared to be lacking as well. “He is said to live fast in the upper part of the town,” wrote one credit reporter, who also noted that Manuel “usually gets down to the store late in the day + leaves early, leaving the [business] principally in the care of his two clerks.” While his business was “fair,” opinions of his firm seem to have been buoyed because of the backing of his brother and his network. 54

While Manuel Goldsmith turned to his brother Lewis to get back on his feet after the bankruptcy, Simon Forcheimer turned to his brother-in-law Louis Meyer. With Meyer as the capitalist, the two opened Forcheimer & Meyer in New Orleans, and by 1857, they were doing a “fair business” and were in “good credit.” The firm also had two interior stores. Meyer had been operating a store in Harrisonburg, Louisiana, since the early 1840s, and by the 1850s, that firm’s principal debts were in New York, although he also purchased in New Orleans, where he resided. With Meyer living in the Crescent City, his brother Moritz operated the Harrisonburg branch for a time. The firm’s other interior store was in Farmersville, Louisiana, and it was under the direction of Alexander Shlenker. 55

Meanwhile, the Goldsmiths and Forcheimers also had business interests in Florida. M. Goldsmith was a silent partner of the Forcheimer & Bro. general store in Milton, Florida, which was operational by the early 1840s. The Forcheimers were considered “safe Jews, who by [industriousness] and attention, have during the last 5 years, made all they have.” With debts in New Orleans, in 1853, they sold out their business to Abraham and Gerson Forcheimer, and within five years the reorganized business was deemed “as good as any house in the South.” 56

The Goldsmith, Haber, Forcheimer network did not stop there. Forcheimer & Bro. of Milton was also connected to M. Goldsmith’s own business in Pensacola, Florida. Goldsmith, Forcheimer & Bro. also had a branch in Mobile, and the firm also appears related to Meyer, Forcheimer & Gutman of Cincinnati, which itself was affiliated with a hat-and-cap shop in New York. 57

While Goldsmith, Haber & Co. equated ethnic networks with trust, not all of its financial relationships with Jewish firms turned out well. The firm sold goods to rural Jewish merchants throughout the region such as H. Levy & Bro. in Bayou Sara. Henry and Gabriel Levy were in business in neighboring East Feliciana Parish and arrived in Bayou Sara by 1852 with “a pretty [large stock] of goods.” The firm purchased in both New Orleans and New York, but they weren’t always prompt with their payments when they owed money to Goldsmith, Haber & Co. In 1853, Goldsmith, Haber & Co.’s New York branch tried to recoup debts, advertising via the New York Herald a $500 reward for Henry Levy if he was captured alive—or $200 if he was recovered dead. In New York, they had “not promptly met their debts,” which “permitted some of their best friends to suffer by their refusing to pay a draft upon them.” 58

Their financial record in New Orleans was not much better. In 1858, a judgment against H. Levy & Bro. in favor of Goldsmith & Haber was sent from New Orleans in the amount of nearly $28,000. Shortly thereafter the Levys “transferred all of their property” to Goldsmith, Haber & Co., which seized the store itself, as well as its inventory, two parcels of riverfront lots, and two slaves. The very next day, however, Gabriel Levy leased the store, the slaves, and one of the parcels of land, apparently now conducting business on behalf of Goldsmith, Haber & Co. The Levy brothers also used the Goldsmith name to buy goods in New York, but despite the assistance from their co-religionists, the firm soon failed, and the brothers left the parish, apparently without paying their debts. 59

Thus the Goldsmith, Haber, and Forcheimer network was extensive. It connected the credit and goods of New York to the Gulf South, and it provided goods and credit to firms throughout the region. With the bonds of family and ethnicity, the members of the firm developed an economic network with those whom they trusted, but despite their success, not everybody trusted them in return. They were in good standing, had “excellent” credit, and “some of our best [business] men [had] great [confidence] in this firm” because they had “ample means” and “pay promptly.” Yet some credit reporters still had reservations, having “not confidence in any of these men,” wrote one reporter, and “I can not feel so confident of them.” 60

One explanation for this lack of trust may have been a lack of honesty in their business dealings. They were said to be “uneducated,” and there were rumors that they were not honest and would “cheat any man if they had a chance,” noted one reporter, and “they have done some dirty tricks that I know of.” But another possible explanation is that trust was lacking because of their Jewishness. Reporters noted that the New York branch was a “wealthy Hebrew House,” whose members were “of the better class of Israelites.” Moreover, they called the New Orleans branch “perfectly [good] (for the tribe),” as it was operated by “good Israelites.” Such language belies a lack of faith in Jews and that the Goldsmiths, Habers, and Forcheimers were exceptions who needed to be closely watched. It was in this environment that the partners of the firm utilized a family and ethnic network to grow their businesses while overcoming any such prejudices. 61

While Lewis Goldsmith stood at the center of an economic network that directly connected the goods and credit of New York to the Gulf South’s interior, so, too, did Henry, Mayer, and Emanuel Lehman. By the 1850s, Lehman Brothers was a growing Montgomery firm that sold supplies on credit to cotton farmers and often took cotton in return. The firm did a “large country trade with regular customers,” was “punctual in all their transactions … good for their contracts,” and the brothers owned a large house, slaves, and real estate and steadily, quickly made money. With a “prosperous business and a very successful warehouse,” Mayer Lehman was also socially well connected—he was friends with the governor of Alabama and an acquaintance of Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederacy. 62

Desirous of growing the business, Lehman Brothers relied on family and ethnic networks to expand. Emanuel Lehman grew the business in the Alabama interior, capitalizing the Richmond, Alabama, dry goods, etc., store of Joseph Tannenbaum & Co. This large and “popular” store sold “the finest kinds only” and was financially successful. It was a “prosperous” business that sold over $50,000 worth of carriages, clothes, and dry goods in 1859, and it was deemed “responsible for their engagements, especially so while [Lehman] continues interested.” Two months before the battle of Fort Sumter, Joseph Tannenbaum & Co. sold out its interests in Richmond and Montgomery, although Meyer Lehman would remain in Montgomery. Lehman Brothers also entered the New Orleans market by sending Henry Lehman to the Crescent City. After he died of yellow fever on a business trip, Mayer took his place and shortly thereafter married into a New Orleans Jewish mercantile family. 63

While the importance of New Orleans was declining and New York’s star was rising, Lehman Brothers wisely sought access to the growing Gotham market. Initially, Emanuel traveled to New York to purchase supplies, negotiate with cotton manufacturers and exporters, and secure capital so they could run an informal banking operation in Montgomery. Emanuel later partnered with Moses Ferst, a twenty-eight-year-old who had been in the cigar business, and they operated their own importing business. With the partners deemed “frugal,” “close,” and “reliable for reasonable credit,” the New York operation grew. By the eve of the Civil War, Lehman & Ferst had “enlarged” the business and had the credit to “cover all their wants.” 64

Because Lehman & Ferst had been created in large part to supply Lehman’s Southern operations and “friends South,” the business was, not surprisingly, reliant upon the Southern trade. It conducted a “brisk + safe Southern bus.,” observed one credit reporter, noting that the firm “sent pretty much all their goods to Montgomery.” Lehman had made money in the South, and continued to visit the South personally “to form new acquaintances + to extend” their business. 65

Lehman Brothers expanded into the New York market via a family network—Emanuel moved to New York while Mayer remained in the South. Establishing face-to-face contact with New York wholesalers and financiers was far more effective than relying solely on credit reports to ingratiate themselves with distant New York firms. Those credit reports were less than stellar, as, despite Lehman Brothers’ success, credit reporters were skeptical because the Lehmans were Jewish. One Alabama credit reporter was sure to note in 1849 that the Lehmans were German Jews, and an 1853 report claimed that although they were Jews, and “as [good] as any,” very “little reliance is here placed in any of the descendants of the tribe.” The credit reporter also observed that “they are in fair [credit] here, but Jews seldom remain + make good citizens.” Shortly thereafter, a credit reporter claimed that the Lehman brothers were “Jews, but though Jews, are [considered] almost as good as ‘white men.’ ” He maintained that they were “considered as [honorable] + trustworthy as it is possible for Jews to be,” and were “an exception to the race, being [considered] honest.” 66

The credit reports on Lehman Brothers support J. P. Morgan’s claim that trust was the fundamental basis of business. Clearly, some credit reporters ignored the Lehman’s wealth and instead focused on their Jewishness, which, they believed, was a mark on their character and undermined their trustworthiness. Yet by utilizing a family network to establish a direct presence in New York, Lehman Brothers mitigated the impact of these prejudices, not only by working directly with Jewish creditors but also by establishing lines of credit with non-Jewish firms as well. 67

Another Southern business that utilized family and ethnic networks was J. W. Seligman & Co. After stops in New York and Lancaster, Penn sylvania, four Seligman brothers set out for Mobile, Alabama, with a small amount of cash and $5,000 in merchandise that had already been paid for. When they arrived in Mobile, they found that they had too little capital to start a business in such a large city, and after searching for a better option in the interior, the brothers decided on Selma, Alabama. Once there, they set up a tent on a vacant lot and took turns peddling in different directions, scouring the surrounding region for additional opportunities. Their Southern operations soon found success, and they accumulated a “very considerable” amount of cash. After deciding that their business model could be successful, they rented a store in Selma, and by 1843 they had also opened stores in the Alabama towns of Greensboro, Eutaw, and Clinton. 68

The Seligmans’ Southern businesses were reliant upon Northern credit and goods, and to that end, two of the brothers traveled directly to New York to negotiate with suppliers and purchase goods. In the middle of 1842, James went to New York to purchase supplies. He paid cash for about half of his purchases, and for the other half he utilized credit. Ultimately, the Seligmans saw the importance of the New York market, and when they built sufficient capital, they decided to move their main operation to New York, where they opened J. Seligman & Bros. and imported goods from Europe. 69

The move from Selma to New York was not the end of the Seligmans’ family network connections. Brothers Jesse and Henry opened a branch in Watertown, New York, and it was there that Jesse Seligman and Ulysses S. Grant struck up a friendship that would last throughout their lives. Jesse and Joseph went west to San Francisco to join the gold rush, and Jesse also purchased merchandise for the company while overseas. In addition, the marriage of Babette Seligman to Max Stettheimer further developed the Seligmans’ network. Stettheimer ran a clothing business in Natchez, Mississippi, and after the marriage, Stettheimer’s relative Jacob joined the Seligman operation in New York. Stettheimer’s connections stretched across the world, as he opened a clothing store in St. Louis, would later become a senior partner in Stettheimer & Bro., a dry goods importer in St. Louis, and he also became a partner in Seligman & Stettheimer of Frankfurt. Additionally, Jesse Seligman married Henriette Hellman, whose brothers Max and Theodore would later grow the Seligman enterprise in New Orleans as Seligman, Hellman & Co. 70

Firms such as Lehman Brothers and J. W. Seligman & Co. figure prominently in the story of antebellum networks that emerged between North and South. They also figure prominently in the traditional narrative of American Jewish success in the late nineteenth century. Yet while these famous examples are easy to recognize, they represent but a handful of the thousands of Jewish businesses scattered throughout the country that followed similar, though less spectacular, trajectories. Although never reaching the upper crust of Jewish society, many of those smaller businesses were extremely successful in their own right, establishing direct connections with New York and then sharing that access with countless other smaller firms throughout the Gulf South. These firms have largely been forgotten, but they played an important role in the Jewish niche economy in the region.

While Goldsmith, Haber & Co. was one lesser-known firm, so, too, were those operated and financed by Isaias Meyer. Meyer was born around 1815 in Heuchelheim, Bavaria, and he arrived in America around the age of fourteen. His early business ventures were in Louisiana, and by the early 1850s he had settled in the thriving interior river port of Bayou Sara. There, he opened his own business and later played an important role in Charles Hoffman & Co., one of the town’s most successful antebellum businesses. By 1853, his business interests had grown to include what would become Meyer, Weis & Co. of Natchez, Mississippi, and to directly access goods and credit in New York, Meyer also opened a wholesale dry goods store in the city. Meyer’s New York store was the only New York dry goods store listed in the 1861 Commercial Agency Record as having branches in either Natchez or Bayou Sara. He also had a presence in New Orleans. 71

Isaias Meyer’s New York wholesale shop served as the lynchpin that connected his Southern business ventures to the goods and credit of New York. In New York, Meyer was “close + shrewd in his dealings” and was “good for his purchases.” By the mid-1850s, he was “buying largely” and was “said to be in [good] standing + [credit].” His firm “made money,” and its “[credit] is [good] with parties who know them.” On the eve of the Civil War, he was “[making] money [very] fast,” considered “first rate,” and he had excellent credit. Meyer was successful and wealthy, with an estimated worth of $150,000. 72

In the 1850s, as we have seen, Natchez offered financial opportunities for general merchants, and Isaias Meyer tapped into these opportuni ties through his financial interest in Meyer, Weis & Co. The roots of this firm emerged in New Orleans in the mid-1840s and was run primarily by Isaac Meyer (not to be confused with Isaias), Joseph Deutsch, and later Julius Weis, who had first arrived in New Orleans as “a poor young man,” via “a sailing vessel, with a party of thirteen other young people from Rhine, Bavaria, Germany.” Weis recalled that, upon arrival, “I did not have a cent. I had to borrow enough to get my baggage off the ship, and found a friend in Isaac Meyer, who was in partnership with a cousin of mine.” 73

While Meyer, Weis & Co.’s New Orleans branch was doing “considerable” business almost from the start, its partners turned their attention upriver to Natchez, where they opened what would become the firm’s antebellum flagship branch. In 1847, one observer remarked of the Natchez branch that its proprietors always had “bags of money” and were “prob. rich.” By the mid-1850s, “business [was] improving + change [was] only for the better,” noted a credit reporter. They had “the confidence of the community” in 1860, had “just completed a most elegant” store, and everything was “flourishing.” 74

The firm had been importing most of its own goods for two decades prior to the Civil War, likely with the aid of Isaias Meyer’s New York wholesale store or its house in New Orleans. But the partners of Meyer, Weis & Co. also had other business ventures in New York that gave them direct access to New York and international markets. Isaac Meyer spent time in Europe, where he purchased goods that were then imported to the New York store, which was under the direction of Joseph Deutsch. The primary business of that New York branch “consists of mostly buying for the Natchez” store, and their firm had the “full [confidence] of Houses who have sold” to them for many years,” and they “generally have ready money.” The ties between their Northern and Southern operations were so strong that one reporter noted at the start of the Civil War that the “dividend they may pay will be based upon the future secession in the [South].” 75

In addition to Meyer, Weis & Co. of Natchez, Isaias Meyer had a second major outlet in Bayou Sara, Louisiana, through Charles Hoffman & Co., a large company about which one journalist wrote that few stores even in New Orleans could “surpass in value of [its] stock.” Hoffman had immigrated to America and had begun as a “poor” peddler, “on foot with a pack,” and he was in business by the late 1840s, by which time his firm was doing the most extensive business in the parish. As it grew, Charles Hoffman & Co. did so by way of its family network—Hoffman partnered with Isaias’s nephew, and he also took on another of Isaias’s nephews, Abraham Meyer. While the initial extent of Isaias Meyer and Charles Hoffman’s business relationship is not clear, Hoffman and he had formed a close partnership by 1855, and Hoffman had joined Isaias Meyer’s dry goods wholesale business in New York. The Bayou Sara branch sold drafts upon its house in New York, purchasing principally in New York while also trading in New Orleans. By the end of 1855 it was considered “the most solvent house in the parish” and “one of the best firms in this section of the country.” 76

Because of his stature in Bayou Sara and his access to the New York market, Isaias Meyer also developed economic relationships with other Bayou Sara businesses, not all of which were operated by Jews. For example, William George Schafer went to New York to meet Meyer in July 1860, traveling north on the Mississippi River and bringing with him his family and $790. He passed Natchez and Vicksburg, and on his journey he saw the Wolflin family, members of which also lived in Bayou Sara. He left his family along the way before arriving in New York nearly three weeks after his journey began. Once in New York, he went to purchase goods for his nephews, but he “was refused Louisiana money by the proprietress” because the “principle [sic ] Banks failed.” While he was unable to use his money for the gifts, he was able to make purchases for his business because of his Bayou Sara connections. Two days after his arrival he “went to the Office of Isaias Meyer,” where he met with Isaias, A. Meyer, and A. Hirsch—of Bayou Sara—and Hirsch introduced him to Meyer & Sondheim, and shortly thereafter he “commenced making purchases.” Over two weeks later he left the city, picking up his family along the way and returning to Bayou Sara via the river by the end of September.

Thus Isaias Meyer built an international network that gave his businesses access to both the European and New York markets. That network was based primarily on familial and ethnic ties, which, as we have seen, were predicated on trust. The primary partners, as well as clerks and subsidiary partners, were relatives and co-religionists, and some had emigrated from the same German towns. But this trust in the firm did not necessarily extend to credit reporters, as some reports were skeptical because the firm was run by Jews. The first “sentence” in an 1847 credit report entry about the business was a single word: “Jews.” One credit reporter noted that they were “good men,” but he also mentioned that “some think them good, others do not, [probably] because they are Jews.” A later credit report cautioned that one “should not think any Jew safe for large amount.” Nevertheless, Isaias Meyer and his partners were considered “among the better class of Israelites,” and their firm was successful. This, no doubt, was in large part due to its direct connection with New York. 77

While Isaias Meyer utilized his New York presence to bring Northern capital, credit, and goods to the South, his firms then shared goods and credit with businesses throughout the region. Meyer, Weis & Co. worked with a multitude of businesses in the Natchez area, and Charles Hoffman & Co. of Bayou Sara also provided goods and credit to local businesses—many of which were operated by fellow Jews, including Jacob Michael’s dry goods store in Bayou Sara. Michael was Jewish and born in Prussia around 1815, and by the mid-1840s, he had opened for business in West Feliciana Parish. His initial business venture was unsuccessful, but by 1849 he had recommenced business and had taken in Caspar Michael, presumably a family member, as a clerk. He conducted an “extensive cash [business],” and he did some trading in New Orleans, and by 1852 his business had succeeded enough for him to purchase real estate. 78

Michael’s fortunes, however, soon soured. He lost $15,000 worth of goods to a fire in 1852, with only $5,000 of that insured. He resumed business, however, after that fire, but with his business mortgaged to Charles Hoffman for about $4,000. His business never really seemed to recover, and he purchased wherever he could get credit. In 1853, that credit was in New York, and the following year he planned to go to New York to make purchases. He also purchased goods from Charles Hoffman & Co., but only months after the purchase, Michael’s business fell victim to Bayou Sara’s great fire of 1855, and this time his property was uninsured. The New Orleans Daily Picayune first reported that “there was a most destructive conflagration at Bayou Sara last night. It is said that the whole town has been destroyed, but as yet we have no particulars.” The initial report was accurate, and several days later the Picayune reported more thoroughly on the “disastrous fire,” “by which the town of Bayou Sara has been laid in ruins and her inhabitants deprived of their all.” Though Bayou Sara did a large business in receiving, forwarding, and dry goods, the newspaper noted that “all of these establishments were entirely consumed with their contents.” Jacob Michael’s business did not survive the fire’s aftermath, having failed by the end of the 1855. A credit reporter noted in 1858 that he proposed paying creditors 10 percent of what he owed them, but they seemed to want more favorable terms. Michael had also been in legal trouble. He was sued by his wife for a “[considerable] sum,” but a credit reporter viewed it as a “swindling transaction, intended to cover up his property.” 79

While some businesses failed, Charles Hoffman & Co. survived and continued to grow. In less than two months, Bayou Sara was “fast being rebuilt in an improved style. Some of the largest and most commodious houses are now going up, and others have been contracted for.” Though Charles Hoffman & Co. had been only partially insured, its losses were “supposed to be not [very] heavy.” The firm had well-established credit networks connecting it to global Jewish firms, and with access to credit, the firm grew rapidly after the fire. By 1858 Hoffman operated two stores and owned two lots, upon one of which was his residence, and he also owned slaves. Heretofore his business had dealt solely in dry goods, but it now expanded its reach into groceries, hardware, and other items. The public, according to the Dun recorder, “has much confidence in this firm + it is regarded as the best House in this vicinity” and was considered the “largest [merchants] in our Parish.” 80

While Charles Hoffman & Co. established trust-based ethnic networks linking it to the goods and credit of New York and extended its ethnic network by extending credit to local Jewish businesses, it was once again not always trusted from the outside. A credit reporter’s first entry for Bayou Sara’s Charles Hoffman & Co. noted that it was a Jewish firm, and a New York credit reporter also noted that Meyer, Hoffman & Co. was run by “Israelites,” and it was a “1st rate Israelite house” at that. Other Jewish-owned Bayou Sara firms were subject to similar assumptions. Jacob Michael was deemed a very “trickish + [probably] [unsafe] Jew.” A. Levy & Co. was said to be run by “the most honest Jew in our town”—clearly implying that the honesty of Jews was hardly a given. 81

For better or worse, Jewish firms trusted one another—particularly when family was involved. This trust stood behind the ethnic networks that linked partners within firms, that brought global merchandise and credit to Southern Jewish firms, and that provided goods and credit to scores of Jewish merchants scattered throughout the interior. These antebellum networks would be critically important in the postbellum years as cotton factors, who had dominated the cotton industry for decades, found new challenges from interior general store merchants. As operators of these stores, some of which had accumulated a significant amount of capital in the antebellum years, Jewish merchants were in the right place at the right time and on the path to postbellum success even before the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in 1861.