Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877) as well as military commander during the US Civil War (1861–1865). Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America.
Grant was at the center of one of the most blatant anti-Jewish actions in American history when he issued General Order No. 11 on December 17, 1862. It was an instruction for the expulsion of all Jews in his military district that comprised areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. The order was issued as part of a campaign against a black market in Southern cotton, which Grant thought was being run "mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders".
An extensive trade in cotton persisted between the North and South despite the ongoing civil war. Northern textile mills were dependent on Southern cotton, while the trade with the North was needed for the economic survival of Southern plantation owners. A limited trade was permitted by the US Government, under license by the Treasury and the US Army. However, this system led to extensive opportunities for corruption, with unlicensed traders bribing army officers to allow them to buy Southern cotton without a permit.
Grant was responsible for issuing trade licenses in the Department of Tennessee, an administrative district of the Union Army that comprised the portions of Kentucky and Tennessee west of the Tennessee River, and Union-controlled areas of northern Mississippi. At the same time, he was heavily engaged in prosecuting the campaign to capture the heavily defended Confederate-held city of Vicksburg, Mississippi and was under pressure to deliver results. He resented having to deal with the distraction of the cotton trade and was angered by the endemic corruption of the system which saw "every colonel, captain or quartermaster ... in a secret partnership with some operator in cotton." He became convinced that Jews were mostly responsible for the black market in cotton and issued a number of directives aimed at black marketers.
On November 9, 1862, he sent an order to Major-General Stephen A. Hurlbut directing that he "Refuse all permits to come south of Jackson for the present. The Israelites especially should be kept out." The following day he instructed General Webster to "Give orders to all the conductors on the road that no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad southward from any point. They may go north and be encouraged in it; but they are such an intolerable nuisance that the department must be purged of them." In a letter to General William Tecumseh Sherman, he explained that his policy was occasioned "in consequence of the total disregard and evasion of orders by Jews".
The continuing prevalence of the illegal cotton trade prompted Grant to tighten restrictions further. On December 8, 1862, he issued General Order No. 2 mandating that "cotton-speculators, Jews and other Vagrants having not honest means of support, except trading upon the miseries of their Country ... will leave in twenty-four hours or they will be sent to duty in the trenches." Nine days later, on December 17, 1862, he issued his General Order No. 11 to strengthen his earlier prohibition.
Grant's father Jesse Grant was involved; General James H. Wilson later explained, "There was a mean nasty streak in old Jesse Grant. He was close and greedy. He came down into Tennessee with a Jew trader that he wanted his son to help, and with whom he was going to share the profits. Grant refused to issue a permit and sent the Jew flying, prohibiting Jews from entering the line." Grant, Wilson felt, could not strike back directly at the "lot of relatives who were always trying to use him" and perhaps struck instead at what he maliciously saw as their counterpart — opportunistic traders who were Jewish. Bertram Korn has suggested that the order was part of a consistent pattern. "This was not the first discriminatory order [Grant] had signed [...] he was firmly convinced of the Jews' guilt and was eager to use any means of ridding himself of them."
Text of Grant's General Order No. 11 decreed as follows:
1. The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department [of the Tennessee] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.
2. Post commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.
3. No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.
In a letter of the same date sent to Christopher Parsons Wolcott, the assistant United States Secretary of War, Grant explained his reasoning:
Sir,
I have long since believed that in spite of all the vigilance that can be infused into Post Commanders, that the Specie regulations of the Treasury Dept. have been violated and that mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders. So well satisfied of this have I been at this that I instructed the Commdg Officer at Columbus [Kentucky] to refuse all permits to Jews to come south, and frequently have had them expelled from the Dept. [of the Tennessee]. But they come in with their Carpet sacks in spite of all that can be done to prevent it. The Jews seem to be a privileged class that can travel any where. They will land at any wood yard or landing on the river and make their way through the country. If not permitted to buy Cotton themselves they will act as agents for someone else who will be at a Military post, with a Treasury permit to receive Cotton and pay for it in Treasury notes which the Jew will buy up at an agreed rate, paying gold.
A Jewish cavalry officer in the Union Army, Captain Philip Trounstine, resigned his commission claiming carrying out such an order violated his conscience, and complained of the anti-Jewish taunts brought out by the Order in his fellow soldiers. Captain John C. Kelton, the assistant Adjutant-General of the Department of Missouri, wrote to Grant to note his order included all Jews, rather than focusing on "certain obnoxious individuals," and pointed out the Jews serving in the Union Army.
Hatred of Jews in the Union had been endemic long beforehand, however, with Massachusetts politician and Major General in the Union Army Benjamin Butler claiming he would “suck the blood of every Jew, and …will detain every Jew as long as he can” when he took charge of Union-occupied areas of Louisiana. Northern newspapers frequently attacked Jewish traders for running the Southern blockade with fierce and hateful language though most of the blockade runners by far were not Jewish.
The order went into immediate effect, with Jewish traders and families in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi, and Paducah, Kentucky being forced to leave the territory. Such a sweeping interpretation may not have been intended by Grant; his headquarters expressed no objection to the continued presence of Jewish settlers, as opposed to cotton traders. However, the wording of the order singled out all Jews, irrespective of their occupation, and it was implemented accordingly.
Thirty Jewish families from Paducah Kentucky, who were longtime residents, were forced from their homes. A group of Jewish merchants from Paducah, led by Cesar J. Kaskel, dispatched a telegram to President Abraham Lincoln in which they condemned the order as "the grossest violation of the Constitution and our rights as good citizens under it". The telegram noted it would "place us . . . as outlaws before the world. We respectfully ask your immediate attention to this enormous outrage on all law and humanity ...." Throughout the Union, Jewish groups protested and sent telegrams to Washington, D.C.
The issue attracted significant attention in Congress and from the press. The Democrats condemned the order as part of what they saw as the US Government's systematic violation of civil liberties and introduced a motion of censure against Grant in the Senate, attracting thirty votes in favor against seven opposed. Some newspapers supported Grant's action; the Washington Chronicle criticized Jews as "scavengers ... of commerce". Most, however, were strongly opposed, with the New York Times denouncing the order as "humiliating" and a "revival of the spirit of the medieval ages." Its editorial column called for the "utter reprobation" of Grant's order.
Kaskel led a delegation to Washington, D.C., arriving there on January 3, 1863. In Washington, he conferred with Jewish Republican Adolphus Solomons and a Cincinnati congressman, John A. Gurley. After meeting with Gurley, he went directly to the White House. Lincoln received the delegation and studied Kaskel's copies of General Order No. 11 and the specific order expelling Kaskel from Paducah. The President told General-in-Chief Henry Wager Halleck to have Grant revoke General Order No. 11, which Halleck did in the following message:
A paper purporting to be General Orders, No. 11, issued by you December 17, has been presented here. By its terms, it expells [sic] all Jews from your department. If such an order has been issued, it will be immediately revoked. The order was politically unsustainable and Grant formally revoked it on January 17, 1863.
One of Halleck's staff officers privately explained to Grant that the problem lay with the excessive scope of the order: "Had the word 'peddler' been inserted after Jew I do not suppose any exception would have been taken to the order." According to Halleck, Lincoln had "no objection to [his] expelling traitors and Jew peddlers, which I suppose, was the object of your order; but as in terms proscribing an entire religious class, some of whom are fighting in our ranks, the President deemed it necessary to revoke it."
On January 6, a delegation led by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise of Cincinnati, called on Lincoln to express its gratitude for Lincoln's support. Lincoln expressed surprise Grant issued such a command and said, "to condemn a class is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad." He stated he drew no distinction between Jew and Gentile and would allow no American to be wronged because of his religious affiliation.
After the Civil War, General Order No. 11 became an issue in the presidential election of 1868 in which Grant stood as the Republican candidate. The Democrats raised the order as an issue, with the prominent Jewish Democrat and Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise urging fellow Jews to vote against Grant because of his alleged anti-Semitism. Grant repudiated the controversial order, asserting it had been drafted by a subordinate and he signed the document without reading.
He wrote in reply to a correspondent: I do not pretend to sustain the order. At the time of its publication, I was incensed by a reprimand received from Washington for permitting acts which Jews within my lines were engaged in ... The order was issued and sent without any reflection and without thinking of the Jews as a set or race to themselves, but simply as persons who had successfully ... violated an order.
The episode did not cause much long-term damage to his relationship with the American Jewish community and he won the presidential election, taking the majority of the Jewish vote.
Grant did his best to restore and maintain good relations with the Jewish community. In an effort of reconciliation, 12 years after the order, President Grant and all the members in his Cabinet attended a dedication of the Adas Israel Synagogue in Washington D.C. The dedication ceremony took place in 1874. This was the first time an American President attended a synagogue service.
In addition, Grant sent a donation of $10 to the synagogue in July 1876 (the receipt can be seen in the picture above).
Further reading:
Looking Back: Stuyvesant’s Failed Efforts To Prohibit Jewish Immigration
