On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous speech at the dedication of the military cemetery at Gettysburg; a few months later, at the request of the historian George Bancroft, he wrote down the text of the speech so that Bancroft could consult it in composing his history of the United States. Archivists have recently determined that the paper the president used was produced by Philp & Solomons, a Washington-based stationery company. But this is not the only connection between the company’s co-founder Adolphus Simeon Solomons and President Lincoln. Rachel Delia Benaim writes:
Solomons was one of the handful of Jews in Lincoln’s circle of friends and colleagues. (He also had good relationships with Ulysses S. Grant and Chester Arthur.) A practicing Jew from New York City, Solomons was born in 1826 to a British-immigrant father and an American-born mother. In his youth, he served in the New York State National Guard, and he grew up to be a prominent Jewish Republican.
It is believed that Lincoln was the first non-Jewish public figure for whom kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, was recited. In eulogizing Lincoln, Solomons is credited with saying “it was the Israelites’ privilege here, as well as elsewhere, to be the first to offer in their places of worship prayers for the repose of the soul of Mr. Lincoln.”
[Several years after Lincoln’s death], President Grant, who had attempted to expel the Jews from [the area occupied by his army] in 1862 but later expressed remorse for doing so, tried to appoint Solomons as governor of Washington, D.C., [but Solomons declined]. In 1881, Solomons co-founded the American Red Cross with Clara Barton and was appointed by President Arthur to represent the United States at the International Congress of the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland.
Read more on Tablet: http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/218160/why-the-gettysburg-address-was-made-to-last