Civil War Officers in the AJHS Collections

The American Civil War was fought from April 1861 to April 1865 by an estimated 10,500 Jewish soldiers according to the National Museum of American Jewish History.¹ Within AJHS’s breadth of deeds, morning reports, letters, and newspaper clippings from the period, there exists information on three American Jewish officers of varying rank who have a shared wartime history despite being preserved in separate collections. All three men joined, or were enlisted in, the New York Infantry of the Union Army. These documents allow us to take a microscope to the fascinating details, recollections, and conflicts that form the whole of the Civil War story and underline the contributions that Jewish officers made in the cause for the United States we know today.

Brothers Simon and Newman Pincus were born in Germany in 1843 and 1846, respectively, and were living in New York when the Civil War began.² Simon, being the older of the two, left for Washington, D.C. without his brother in the 66^th Regiment of the New York Infantry in November of 1861 and by December of the following year was engaged in the Battle of Fredericksburg.³ It was in these boggy fields where Simon, just nineteen years old at the time, was wounded in the leg by a stray bullet. Luckily for him, Union medics determined the injury to be a scratch, nothing more, and he was sent back to duty after a short period of recuperation.

Simon Pincus entered the Union Army as a First Corporal (enlisted officer) and left a Second Lieutenant (commissioned officer).⁴ On July 3, 1913, he participated in the 50-year reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg and was pictured in the above magazine clipping. The article details the events, reporting “that is the standard joke of the day– “we all wear gray now”–for age has overtaken them all.”⁵ Simon’s granddaughter, Amy Samuels, eventually identified him as the man on the extreme left. After the war, Lieutenant Pincus went home to New York and started a family. It wasn’t until 1929, some 67 years after his wound at the Battle of Fredericksburg, that a pain in the same leg started bothering him. After a few trips to the doctor and an X-ray, it was discovered that Simon had carried an intact confederate bullet inside that leg for the better part of his life – not just a scratch after all. The bullet was removed and Simon displayed it proudly in a jar on his mantle until his death four years later in 1934.⁶

In command of a separate battalion under the New York Infantry, we find Simon Levy, Lieutenant Colonel of the Enfants Perdus, Independent Battalion, New York Light Infantry.⁷ This is a unique battalion of men as it consisted “mostly of foreigners, not only Germans but many Frenchmen and European Jews”, hence the name “Enfants Perdus” meaning “lost children” in French.⁸ Colonel Simon Levy served alongside Captain Ferdinand Levy, another individual found in the AJHS collections. Their names intersect in a few of our collection materials and reveal that both were in command at the capture of Morris Island, South Carolina on July 10^th, 1863.⁹

The Enfants Perdus were consigned to the Carolinas, focused on capturing islands, forts, ports and harbors on and off the coast. Colonel Simon Levy and Captain Ferdinand Levy fought in the first battle of Fort Wagner on July 10th, 1863, where Union forces were repulsed by the Confederate Army. A second assault followed days later as the Union campaign against Charleston Harbor continued.¹⁰ By late July, Colonel Levy was in command of his troops at Camp Folly Island, South Carolina, just south of the previously sieged Morris Island. On the morning of July 28^th, he wrote up a Morning Report detailing the state of the Independent Battalion, or the 464 men that were present and under his charge. At that moment, 95 soldiers were present for duty, 304 were listed as on special, extra or daily duty, 59 were sick, and 6 were in arrest or confinement.

Morning Report, Consolidated Box P-13, Simon Levy Collection P-454, Folder 1

Colonel Simon Levy maintained his rank from the moment he joined the Enfants Perdus, Independent Battalion, New York Light Infantry until the final days of the war in 1865.¹¹ Captain Ferdinand Levy, despite being lauded as one of the best captains of his company, was court-martialed after the capture of Morris Island for inducing men from other regiments to desert and join his own.¹²

“But not all the friendly testimony in the world could counter the antisemitism of the members of the court-martial, including Major Conyngham, Captains Davis, Hughes, Wallace, Williams, White and Lt. Stearnes. Levy was found guilty and dismissed from the service in disgrace.”

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Sources

1. National Museum of American Jewish Military History. Lesson: Comparing and Contrasting Jewish
   Soldiers on Both Sides of the Civil War.” Lesson Plan. https://nmajmh.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Lesson-Plan-Comparing-and-Contrasting-Jewish-Civil-War-Soldiers.pdf?srsltid=AfmBOooEkx_XjV2ASoJnCShZBe15W_e8r4i1EN6svzW0Mlmku-IeBhfE. ↩︎
2. Newspaper Clipping. Consolidated Box P-18. Simon Pincus Collection P-650. Folder 1. ↩︎
3. “Battle Unit Details.” National Park Service. Accessed May 2026. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UNY0066RI. ↩︎
4. “Soldier Details.” National Park Service. Accessed May 2026. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-soldiers-detail.htm?soldierId=0AD340C3-DC7A-DF11-BF36-B8AC6F5D926A. ↩︎
5. Ibid. Newspaper Clipping. ↩︎
6. Ibid. ↩︎
7. Morning Report. Consolidated Box P-13. Simon Levy Collection. P-454. Folder 1. ↩︎
8. Newspaper Clipping. Consolidated Box P-15. Materials relating to Ferdinand Levy. Herman Herst Collection P-562. Folder 3. ↩︎
9. “Jews In American Wars.” J. George Fredman. Consolidated Box P-15. Herman Herst Collection P-562. Folder 4. ↩︎
10. “First Battle of Fort Wagner.” Wikipedia. Accessed May 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fort_Wagner. ↩︎
11. ”Soldier Details.” National Park Service. Accessed May 2026. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-soldiers-detail.htm?soldierId=390610B3-DC7A-DF11-BF36-B8AC6F5D926A. ↩︎
12. “Captain Levy – The Rest of the Story.” Newspaper Clipping. Consolidated Box P-15. Herman Herst Collection P-562. Folder 3. ↩︎