Well, this thread has been well and truly jacked. I may as well pitch in.
"What happened if members of the orthodox community were drafted/conscripted ?"
Probably hired a substitute, which was legal in the north, or bought enough slaves to gain an exemption, which was legal in the south. In the 1860s most American Jews were prosperous enough to do one or the other.
Someone touched on this, but BD and doc, you may not be aware of some of the details of the Jewish Experience in America. Back to colony days, North America has been an exceptionally friendly and welcoming place for Jews. This is certainly in part because of the American fixation on color, white vs. red or black. From the beginning, Jews were 'white enough'.
IMO this is also because initially, fairly small numbers of wealthy, assimilated-looking Sefardim from the Netherlands and Hofjueden from Germany settled in the Atlantic port cities and participated in the Atlantic trade, including the slave trade. These rich merchants got along with their Christian neighbors and peers, to the extent of inter-marrying (the Jewish spouse always converted). This was true north and south, in port cities like New York, Philadelphia and New Orleans.
New Orleans in the mid-19th century was probably the most cosmopolitan city in the United States, north or south. It was unique. No doubt the French and Spanish influences were important. There was a free black militia unit in New Orleans, incredible in a country that was terrified of armed blacks.
Things changed drastically with the arrival in the late 19th century of masses of Polish Jews, my own heritage. Polish Jews were numerous, poor, dirty, noisy, foreign looking, and frequently commies. America was so horrified by their appearance, and other huddled masses of the era, as to slam shut the Golden Door, enacting legislation just before WWI that severely restricted immigration, and never again admitting large numbers of Jewish immigrants. My grandparents were very lucky.
Between the world wars a reactionary anti-semitism developed in the US that had never been seen here before. This was by no means a southern issue, the Ku Klux Klan was stronger in the mid-west than in the south when they marched in their sheets 100,000 strong down Pennsylvania Ave. and President Coolidge addressed them from the White House. Henry Ford published the Protocols and uniformed Brownshirts marched in the streets of Boston, badly frightening my parents, who did not know how their story would turn out. This all changed again with Pearl Harbor. Now anti-semites were the enemy. Comic books and movies (created by whom?) have kept them so. 65 years after the fall of Berlin, Hollywood is still fighting Nazis. I think it is not so much deliberate propaganda, as my parents' generation still fighting their childhood fears.
With the desegregation crisis of the 1950s and 60s, descendents of (mostly) Polish Jews became identified nationally and especially in the south with progressive-left politics. Jews were visible among the Civil Rights protesters. There was a revival of the rags of reactionary anti-semitism in the segregationist south and synagogues were bombed. This was a temporary crisis, and it has passed. You can still find the rags of reactionary anti-semitism on the Stormfront website and in isolated white-supremacist compounds, but it's not particularly a southern problem.
Generally, Jews in the US get along really well with the neighbors, to the point that we are fully assimilating. Nothing keeps us seperate. The rate of inter-marraige is currently over 50%. In another generation or two, only the hard-core Orthodox, who refuse to mix, will be left. My great-grandchildren may know that I was a Jew. They may know where the family name came from, and what it once meant. If they don't change it.
