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Brandeis

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

The Early Years

Life is what happens to you While you're busy making other plans.

—John Lennon, "Beautiful Boy

Like many American cities today, Louisville, Kentucky, shows some signs of deterioration from declining business. It used to be so different. One hundred and twenty-five years ago, Louisville was a principal commercial and shipping center of the United States. The Ohio River was, and is, a main tributary to the mighty Mississippi. Not surprisingly, it became a major link between the East and the South as well as what was then considered the West. At one point in the Ohio, however, the rock-strewn impediments interrupted the smooth flow of the water. People called it the Falls of Ohio, although in fact it is really little more than white water rapids.

It was here in 1778 that George Rogers Clark established an outpost from which to attack the British and the Indians. In 1780, Thomas Jefferson, the governor of Virginia (of which Kentucky was then part), signed the charter for Louisville—a town named for King Louis XVI of France, who had allied his country with the American revolutionaries against England. Within a short time, Louisville was bustling with business and new people. It had become a natural stopping point for those who had somewhere else to go. Barges and other boats coming down the Ohio had to unload their cargoes and passengers at Louisville in order to reduce the dangers when crossing the rapids.

Because it was both a link to the South and so near wheat and tobacco fields, Louisville also became a center for slave trade. "Jim Crow," in fact, was conceived here—a reference to a white man who played the part of Sambo in a Louisville theater in 1830 and did a rendition of a Negro song and dance that was attributed to "Jim Crow." In a trip to Louisville in 1841, Abraham Lincoln, then a country lawyer, vividly described an event that was commonplace in Louisville and elsewhere in the South: "A gentleman had purchased twelve Negroes in different parts of Kentucky and was taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six together ... strung together precisely like so many fish upon a trout line. In this condition they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood ... and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting then any other ... and yet ... they were the most cheerful ... creatures on board."

Not everyone in Louisville was in favor of slavery. Because of its easy access from the East and its proximity to rich farm land, the town had attracted thousands of foreign immigrants, especially Germans and Irish. Many of these immigrants had fled from religious persecution and governmental oppression in their homelands and, not surprisingly, took a dim view of a practice in which a human being could be treated like a piece of property. For these people there was no more courageous hero than Henry Clay, the Kentucky congressman and statesman who was willing to oppose local interests like slavery in order to preserve the Union. Someone who opposed slavery, then—and especially one who was a German immigrant—could find some like-minded souls in Louisville.

It was quite logical, therefore, for Adolph Brandeis to bring his growing family to Louisville in 1851. Brandeis had first come to America in 1848. He was then twenty-six, a slim young man with large, deep-set eyes and long black hair. His mission was to be a scout of sorts for the Brandeis, Wehle, and Dembitz families. They were all in Prague, then a part of Bohemia (and later Germany), and things were not going well for them there. As Jews they were subject to a growing array of government restrictions on their activities—permits that had to be acquired and prohibitions that had to be observed. Although those restrictions had not prevented the families from prospering—indeed, they were fairly well off—the future looked bleak. There had been an abortive revolution in 1848 (which Adolph had missed because he contracted typhoid fever at the time), and it seemed clear that the reactionary new government would now be more oppressive and certainly less tolerant of Jews than the previous regime. It was time to get out.

America seemed like the place to go, and farming seemed to be the right vocation. After all, stories of America's rich land were legion. Unfortunately, Adolph was the only one in the three families who knew the slightest thing about farming. He had graduated with honors from the Technical School of Prague, where he had taken some courses in agriculture. That was a good enough background for the other men, who were doctors and businessmen, so Adolph was the logical choice to find a farm for them in America.

For Adolph, there were some personal costs in going to America alone. He would have to leave behind his twenty-year-old fiancée, Frederika Dembitz. Though she had had only six months of formal school, Frederika was a well-educated and worldly young woman. She could speak several languages, was familiar with the significant writers of the day, had traveled widely, and was an accomplished pianist. No doubt it was these attributes—as well as her warm personality—that primarily attracted the attentions of Adolph. It was certainly not her appearance. She had a round face, was a little on the heavy side, and was a poor dresser—facts of which she was painfully aware. Adolph himself would candidly admit to outsiders that his betrothed was not the best in looks—but that she had other qualities which made her special.

Before she met Adolph, Frederika had had an unsettling life. Her two-year-old brother fell off a merry-go-round and died when she was eleven, and the next year her mother died suddenly of a stroke. It was a severe blow to the young girl. "Was there ever a child of twelve who felt more deserted?" Frederika later recalled. "I hoped that I might die in a year as my mother had died one year after her own mother." Her father, a doctor, was not very adept at filling young Frederika's emotional void. In fact, he made it worse. He too was distraught by his wife's death. He became irritable and impractical, yelling at Frederika and her other brothers and traveling anywhere and everywhere at almost a moment's notice. Adolph offered Frederika the love and stability that had eluded her for so long.

Adolph sailed for America in the fall of 1848 and arrived in New York. To his great fortune he made contact with a gentleman identified only as his "friend D," a man commissioned by the French banking house of Rothschild to investigate the American condition. With D's credentials, Adolph gained access to people and places that might otherwise have been barred to him. Together the two adventurers traveled far and wide over the settled parts of America east of the Mississippi. Adolph had little trouble meeting people. He was an open and friendly person who found it easy to talk with just about anyone. He also had a spirit that was infectious.

All of these qualities were captured in the letters he sent to Frederika from America. "I already love our new country so much that I rejoice when I can sing its praises," he wrote in January 1849. "... When you look at people and see how they work and struggle to make a fortune, you might think you were living among merely greedy speculators. But this is not true. It is not the actual possession of things but the achievement of getting them that they care for. I have often thought that even the hard work of these people is a kind of patriotism. They wear themselves out to make their country bloom, as though each one of them were commissioned to show the despots of the old world what a free people can do."

Adolph was equally impressed with the contrasts he found in America. On the one hand there were the rolling countrysides filled with trees and fresh streams; on the other hand were the dirt and grime of the crowded cities—especially in Pittsburgh, where the soot from the coal mines covered everything and made it so dark that you had to keep the gas lights on even in the middle of the day.

The people were similarly a study in contrasts. Adolph found them to be courteous and friendly. But he was also overwhelmed by their boorish behavior, especially while eating. "Imagine a very long room set for 200 persons," he wrote Frederika. "The corridors are full of people impatiently waiting for the dinner bell to ring. Finally the welcome sound is heard. Like raging lions they all rush in to get the best places. In a second they are all seated and are greedily pouring down the hot soup, which stands before them. All the rest of the food has already been placed on the table in shining metal dishes.... About thirty very tall Negroes dressed in white linen are standing about the table. At the sound of a small bell, they raise their right hands as to a solemn oath; at a second signal they put their hands on the covers; at a third, they swing the covers high over their heads and all march around the table and carry off the covers. Then everyone falls to and before you can recover from the extraordinary spectacle, the steaming roasts, the dainty pies, and the delicious fruit are gobbled up, and in a few minutes you find yourself deserted and only the unsavory remnants remain." It was all quite an experience.

On the farming front, Adolph had some bad news for the group. It was simply not a good idea. True enough, the farmer could work the land and supply almost all of his own needs. But there was a price to pay for that. First of all, it was extremely hard manual labor—something unfamiliar to the Prague group. And more than that, it was boring, "and this tedium," Adolph wrote, "can become the most deadly poison in family life." A man could "sink to being a mere common beast of burden." No, farming would not be a major plus for people used to more sedentary occupations.

Adolph had an alternative, however. It was something called a grocery. Instead of growing people's food, you would buy it from the farmer and sell it to those who did not have their own farms. Back in Prague, the group was skeptical of this course. Farming had seemed like such a good idea. How could Adolph give it up?

With their skepticism in tow, the group set sail from Hamburg on April 8, 1849. It was no small party. There were twenty people, twenty-seven large chests, two grand pianos, silk dresses, featherbeds, and an assortment of paraphernalia. Adolph met them in New York and took them all to Cincinnati, on the Ohio River, where he had rented a four-story house. There they could sort out everything and decide what they wanted to do.

In time, Adolph took most of them to Madison, Indiana, which was just down the river. Cincinnati already seemed overcrowded. Also, it was experiencing a cholera epidemic. Things seemed more promising and healthier in Madison. Moreover, there was a growing German community there that would ease the transition from the old world to the new. Within weeks, Adolph and other members of the group established a starch factory as well as a grocery and produce store under the name G. & M. Wehle, Brandeis & Company. The starch factory folded within a short time, but the grocery and produce store prospered.

Socially, the group found much to enjoy. Although many of them, especially the women, were still having trouble speaking English, there were no problems at night, when they all gathered around the piano and sang German songs. Drinking liquor added to the merriment, and, all in all, life seemed much improved over the last dark days in Prague.

On September 5, 1849, Adolph and Frederika were married. Within a year they had their first child, a girl whom they named Fanny, after Frederika's mother. But they did not remain content in Madison for long. The town did not grow, and Adolph, with his good business judgment, sensed that it was time to move on. In 1851 they went to Louisville, taking a little house on Center Street.

It was in Louisville that Louis David Brandeis was born on November 13, 1856. By that time his parents had already gone through many changes. To begin with, there were now four children in the family—his sister Amy had arrived in 1852, followed by brother Alfred in 1854. Adolph's new business had also prospered. After dabbling in the wheat-shipping business, Adolph had founded a partnership with Charles W. Crawford, and the firm of Brandeis and Crawford was off to a running start. Within a few years the firm was operating a flour mill, a tobacco factory, an 1100-acre farm, and a steam freighter called the Fanny Brandeis.

All was not peaceful for the Brandeis family, however. Before young Louis was five years old the nation was thrown into the Civil War. Kentucky was in a particularly precarious position. In some respects it was tied to the South; and in other respects it seemed to be a natural part of the North.

Kentucky was a slave state with more than 200,000 black people in bondage. Moreover, the state's economy—and especially business in Louisville—relied heavily on trade with the South. At the same time, Louisville was in the process of industrializing, and its need for slaves was not nearly as great as that of some other states. It was on this basis that the large contingent of abolitionists and other Union supporters argued that the future of the state lay with the North. There were also military factors to consider. The leaders in Kentucky were concerned that an alliance with the South would result almost immediately in an invasion of Union armies—an invasion that the new Confederate government would probably be powerless to stop. Primarily for these last reasons, the governor and legislators resisted pressures to join the Confederacy; but they also made it clear to the North that they would not fight against their brethren in the South.

Lincoln watched developments in Kentucky closely. Because it was a border state that hugged the Ohio River, Kentucky's secession would be damaging to the Union. Indeed, at one point Lincoln is said to have remarked that "he hoped to have God on his side, but he must have Kentucky." Fortunately for Lincoln, pressures were building up for Kentucky to abandon its policy of neutrality and cast its lot with the Union. By September 1861 the Union forces prevailed and the decision was reached to side with the North. Within weeks thousands of Union troops were camped in Louisville, and the city became a natural stopping point for Union armies preparing forays into the South.

Much of the Louisville population was cheered by the presence of Union soldiers. Not surprisingly, many gave whatever material comfort they could to the camping soldiers. Years later, Louis Brandeis would recall that his earliest memories were of his mother's bringing food and coffee to "the men from the North." Louis also remembered his father's moving the family across the river to Indiana when the armies of the Confederate General Braxton Bragg threatened to overrun Louisville in September 1862.

The war had its compensations, though. Adolph suddenly found his fortunes enhanced considerably by lucrative government shipping contracts. The family moved from a house they had on First Street to a large limestone-front house in the exclusive Broadway section of town. Adolph also hired black servants and a black coachman. And then there were the trips. In 1864, while the battles raged on, Adolph took the family for a vacation to Niagara Falls and Newport, Rhode Island. The following summer Frederika and Adolph took the two boys to Canada, Niagara Falls, and Newport again. These trips were times of great activity—sailing, riding, eating with friends, and touring the sights.

In doing these and other things, the family remained extremely close. On the last vacation north, for example, Frederika, Adolph, or one of the brothers would write almost every day to tell the girls back home what was happening and to remind them of how much they were loved. And if a day or more went by without a letter from the girls, concern was expressed as to whether anything was wrong. The lesson was not lost upon young Louis. Years later he would write almost every day to his daughters and his wife when he was away on business trips. The practice continued when his daughters grew up and left home. Their aging father, then a Supreme Court justice, continued to write to them almost every day. And if a day or more went by without word from his "girls," the void would be duly noted in his next letter.

The incessant letter writing was not an empty obligation. It was a way of staying in touch with loved ones, of retaining the warmth and security that Louis always treasured in family life. Even as a teenager he was extremely affectionate with his parents. When his mother was visiting friends in St. Louis with Alfred on her wedding anniversary, for instance, Louis felt impelled to write a note from Louisville:

My dear darling Ma:

As I can't write to you tomorrow morning, I use my time tonight to write a few lines and congratulate my dear Ma on her wedding day, the first one I have not been with you. I hope you are having a splendid time. I know Alfred is. We are all a little sick (home sick but not sick of home) today but otherwise are very well.... Hoping you will soon be back to your

Loving son, Louis

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Excerpted from Brandeis by Lewis J. Paper. Copyright © 1983 Lewis J. Paper. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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