A Little-Known Chapter in American History

How a columnist for Horace Greeley’s Tribune helped introduce anti-Semitism into the United States. He signed his columns K.M.—for Karl Marx

In America, the year 1856 was ushered in with very little pomp and few circumstances. Franklin Pierce, the “worst” President according to Emerson and the “best” according to Hawthorne, began rounding out the final year of a lack-luster single term as President of the United States to be succeeded by another “moderate,” the bachelor politician James Buchanan. Perhaps their acts of “moderation” in pursuit of justice did help to bring on the Civil War, but about this the historians are not agreed.

How a columnist for Horace Greeley’s Tribune helped introduce anti-Semitism into the United States. He signed his columns K.M.—for Karl Marx

In America, the year 1856 was ushered in with very little pomp and few circumstances. Franklin Pierce, the “worst” President according to Emerson and the “best” according to Hawthorne, began rounding out the final year of a lack-luster single term as President of the United States to be succeeded by another “moderate,” the bachelor politician James Buchanan. Perhaps their acts of “moderation” in pursuit of justice did help to bring on the Civil War, but about this the historians are not agreed.