American army officer (1804?1887)
Alfred Mordecai
(January 3, 1804 ? October 23, 1887) was an American army officer. He contributed to United States' military development through his research and writing, particularly in the area of
artillery
. He was instrumental in the United States' adoption of the
M1857 12-pounder Napoleon
. Mordecai served in a number of diplomatic missions for his country, but resigned at the start of the
Civil War
rather than fight for either side. He was one the first
Jewish Americans
to choose the army as a career.
Early and personal life
[
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]
Mordecai was born in
Warrenton, North Carolina
, the son of
Jacob Mordecai
(1762?1838), who was in turn the son of Moses Mordecai (1707?1781), an
Ashkenazi Jewish
immigrant from
Bonn
. Alfred studied at the
U.S. Military Academy
at
West Point
, where he remained as an assistant professor after graduating
top of his class
.
[2]
Mordecai grew up in an
Orthodox Jewish
home, observing
Shabbat
and
kashrut
. As the only Jew at West Point, however, he was unable to maintain his religious practices and was forced to attend
Presbyterian
chapel every Sunday. Mordecai later became an
agnostic
and never returned to Judaism.
[3]
In 1836 Mordecai married Sara Ann Hays of Philadelphia, a niece of
Rebecca Gratz
.
[3]
They had eight children.
[2]
Sara was a practising Orthodox Jew and an
abolitionist
. In 1839 Mordecai
set free
a slave, Eugenia Hemings, who had once belonged to
Thomas Jefferson
.
[4]
[5]
Mordecai had bought her in 1833, and she worked as his housekeeper and cook.
[4]
Engineering work
[
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]
He was commissioned in the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
and in 1825 he became assistant engineer in the construction of
Fort Monroe
and
Fort Calhoun
. In 1828 he was appointed assistant to the
Chief of Engineers
in Washington, D.C., and in 1833 he was placed in command of the
Washington Arsenal
.
[2]
In 1833, Mordecai joined the
Ordnance Department
. At the instruction of the
Secretary of War
,
Lewis Cass
, he prepared
A Digest of the Laws Relating to the Military Establishment of the United States
. He commanded the
Frankford Arsenal
from 1834 to 1838, after which he was appointed assistant to the
Chief of Ordnance
.
[2]
In 1840, he was a member of a commission sent by the Ordnance Board on a nine-month trip to Europe to visit arsenals and cannon foundries to report on the latest artillery improvements there. In 1841, he wrote
The Ordnance Manual for the Use of Officers of the United States Army
. This was "the first ever ordnance manual that standardized the manufacture of American weaponry with interchangeable parts, an essential step in the advancement of American mass manufacturing".
[3]
A second edition was published in 1850.
[2]
Mordecai became assistant inspector of arsenals in 1842 and was engaged in constructing and experimenting with
ballistic pendulums
and gunpowder, with the idea of measuring
muzzle velocity
.
[6]
His 1845
Report of Experiments on Gunpowder
contains "an immense amount of research experimental material on gunpowder as it behaves in, or with, light and heavy artillery".
[7]
Mordecai was again placed in command of the Washington Arsenal in 1844 and later of the
Watervliet Arsenal
in 1857.
[2]
In 1849 he wrote
Artillery for the United States Land Service
which codified the American system of artillery, containing "complete drawings and descriptions of the different guns, howitzers, and mortars and their carriages that were in the Army's inventory."
[8]
Diplomatic missions
[
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]
In 1853 Mordecai was one of a small group selected by Secretary of War
Jefferson Davis
to travel to Mexico on a secret mission. Under the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
, which ended the
Mexican?American War
, the U.S. government had agreed to indemnify American citizens for losses sustained through military action by the Mexican government. A dentist named George A. Gardiner has claimed almost $500,000 for the loss of a silver mine, which Mordecai proved did not exist. Gardiner was subsequently found guilty of fraud.
[3]
The Delafield Commission in Russia, c. 1855. Left to right: Alfred Mordecai, Lt. Colonel Obrescoff (Russian escort),
Richard Delafield
, and
George B. McClellan
Mordecai was promoted to
major
in 1854.
[9]
In 1855?57 he was sent, along with Major
Richard Delafield
and Captain
George B. McClellan
, as a member of a military commission to act as an observer during the
Crimean War
.
[2]
His report,
Military Commission to Europe, in 1855 and 1856
, was published in 1860.
[10]
Mordecai praised the
Canon obusier de 12
gun-howitzer, which soon afterward was manufactured in the United States as the
M1857 12-pounder Napoleon
.
[11]
[12]
Alexander Rose
notes that Mordecai's report is a "masterpiece of unbiased scholarship" but that he was curiously dismissive of
repeaters
and
breechloaders
. Instead, Mordecai emphasized
marksmanship
:
[9]
What mattered in a rifle, he believed, was its ability to allow a soldier to shoot his target at the longest distance possible and with the bare minimum of ammunition. To Mordecai, marksmanship was all, and in this he was adapting the historical American talent for fine shooting to the scientifically minded Victorian era.
In 1858, Mordecai was sent by President
James Buchanan
as a special diplomatic agent to Mexico.
[13]
Civil War and retirement
[
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]
With the advent of the
Civil War
in 1861, Mordecai was unwilling to fight either against the
Confederacy
or against his son, also called Alfred, who was serving in the
Union Army
. (Alfred Jr. remained in the army and retired in 1904 as a
brigadier general
.
[2]
)
Having been denied a request to be transferred to California, Mordecai resigned his commission on May 5, 1861.
[6]
He retired to private life, "dejected, broken-spirited and depressed".
[3]
Rose notes that "Mordecai grieved for the North's abolitionist 'interference' in affairs below the Mason-Dixon Line, but he had 'no sympathy' with slavery and he was a good and faithful servant of the federal government."
[9]
For this, he was criticized by people on both sides: on the Union side, he was charged (and acquitted) of "secretly selling arms and ordnance to the South", while on the Confederate side he was never reconciled to most of his southern family members.
[3]
Mordecai taught mathematics in Philadelphia until the war ended. After a brief stint in Mexico, where he worked as an assistant engineer for the
Mexican Railway
,
[14]
Mordecai served as secretary and treasurer of the
Pennsylvania Canal Company
from 1867 until his death.
[2]
Legacy
[
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]
Mordecai was one the first
Jewish Americans
to choose the army as a career.
[2]
Stanley L. Falk notes that Mordecai was "an active and outstanding participant in the development of American military technology."
[15]
Falk also suggests that Mordecai's work was "valued for its accuracy, its precise and systematic nature, and its immediate usefulness. It was an example and an inspiration for every other worker in the same field, and Mordecai was respected by all of them for his technical contributions no less than he was loved for his fineness of character, integrity, warmth and gentle humor."
[16]
According to
The Jewish Press
, Mordecai is best known for "introducing scientific methods into the development of pre-Civil War military munitions that contributed to America's becoming a nineteenth century world power."
[3]
He has, however, been largely forgotten, and was not included in
Webster's American Military Biographies
edited by
Robert McHenry
.
[7]
Clarence Dutton
assessed Mordecai's work as follows:
[17]
His memory is entitled in a peculiar degree to the care of army historians, for his work was such as appeals to technical and professional men rather than to the multitude. His contributions came, not in the shape of a few large nuggets, but in a steady stream of gold dust sustained for many years and far outweighing the nuggets in the end. The value of his work consisted in its accuracy, its systematic character, and its immediate utility, and still more in the subtle, potent way in which the spirit of it pervaded almost insensibly the entire corps.
Alexander Rose notes that
[9]
By preserving marksmanship as the quintessential American trait ? a belief adopted by the nascent
NRA
from the 1870s onward ? he can be counted as the spiritual father of such fine-shooting legends as the
Springfield Model 1903
and the
M1 Garand
. It was a proud legacy for this unfairly obscure weaponry wizard.
In 1959,
The Uncommon Soldier
by
Robert D. Abrahams
, a fictionalized biography of Mordecai's life, was published by the
Jewish Publication Society
.
[18]
Publications
[
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]
- A Digest of the Laws Relating to the Military Establishment of the United States
(1833)
- The Ordnance Manual for the Use of Officers of the United States Army
(1841; second edition, 1850)
- Report of Experiments on Gunpowder, made at Washington Arsenal, in 1843 and 1844
(1845)
- Second Report of Experiments on Gunpowder, made at Washington Arsenal, in 1845, '47, and '48
(1849)
- Artillery for the United States Land Service, as devised and arranged by the Ordnance Board
(1859)
- Military commission to Europe in 1855 and 1856
(1860)
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Federal Street Burial Ground"
.
Historical Marker Database
. Retrieved
June 12,
2023
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
Karres, Matthew Steven (1991).
"Mordecai, Alfred"
.
Dictionary of North Carolina Biography
.
University of North Carolina Press
.
Archived
from the original on June 10, 2023
. Retrieved
June 10,
2023
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
Singer, Saul Jay (September 7, 2022).
"Major Alfred Mordecai's Internal Civil War"
.
The Jewish Press
. Retrieved
June 10,
2023
.
- ^
a
b
"Cornelia J. Randolph: Bill of Sale of Eugenia [Hemings Marks] to Alfred Mordecai, 18 June 1833, with Alfred Mordecai's Manumission of Eugenia"
.
Thomas Jefferson Foundation
. Retrieved
June 12,
2023
.
- ^
Hopkins, Callie.
"
"liberated & set free at Mr. Monroe's dying request": Peter Marks' White House Story"
.
White House Historical Association
. Retrieved
June 12,
2023
.
- ^
a
b
"Major Alfred Mordecai Jr"
.
United States Army Ordnance Corps
. Retrieved
June 11,
2023
.
- ^
a
b
Johnson, W. (2000).
"Alfred Mordecai (1804?1887):: An American ordnance and gunpowder researcher of the 1840s: I"
.
International Journal of Impact Engineering
.
24
(8).
doi
:
10.1016/S0734-743X(99)00178-5
. Retrieved
June 11,
2023
.
- ^
Newell, Clayton (2014).
The Regular Army Before the Civil War, 1845?1860
(PDF)
.
United States Army Center of Military History
. p. 43
. Retrieved
June 12,
2023
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Rose, Alexander
(February 16, 2010).
"Alfred Mordecai"
.
American Rifleman
. Retrieved
June 11,
2023
.
- ^
Mordecai, Alfred (1860).
Military Commission to Europe, in 1855 and 1856
(PDF)
. George W. Bowman
. Retrieved
June 12,
2023
.
- ^
Moten, Matthew (2000).
The Delafield Commission and the American Military Profession
.
Texas A&M University Press
. p. 182.
ISBN
9780890969250
. Retrieved
June 12,
2023
.
- ^
Falk, Stanley L. (1964). "How the "Napoleon" Came to America".
Civil War History
.
10
(2): 154.
doi
:
10.1353/cwh.1964.0058
.
S2CID
145110266
.
- ^
Smith, Walter Burges (1986).
America's Diplomats and Consuls of 1776?1865: A Geographic and Biographic Directory of the Foreign Service from the Declaration of Independence to the End of the Civil War
.
Foreign Service Institute
. p. 197
. Retrieved
June 12,
2023
.
- ^
Padgett, James A. (1945). "The Life of Alfred Mordecai as Related by Himself".
North Carolina Historical Review
.
22
(1): 61.
- ^
Falk, Stanley L. (1959). "Divided Loyalties in 1861: The Decision of Major Alfred Mordecai".
Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society
.
48
: 147.
- ^
Levine, Yitzchok (October 31, 2007).
"Alfred Mordecai's Agonizing Decision"
.
The Jewish Press
.
Archived
from the original on June 12, 2023
. Retrieved
June 12,
2023
.
- ^
Dutton, C. E.
"The Ordnance Department"
. United States Artillery Reserve.
Archived
from the original on June 11, 2023
. Retrieved
June 11,
2023
.
- ^
"The Uncommon Soldier: The Story of Alfred Mordecai"
.
Kirkus Reviews
. Retrieved
June 10,
2023
.
External links
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]