General Grant's Infamy (Lincoln to Grant: "kicking the Jews out is wrong.")

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[gobucks]

In 1862, in the heat of the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant initiated one of the most blatant official episodes of anti-Semitism in 19th-century American history. In December of that year, Grant issued his infamous General Order No. 11, which expelled all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi:

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 [the "Department of the Tennessee," an administrative district of the Union Army of occupation composed of Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.

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. No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.

The immediate cause of the expulsion was the raging black market in Southern cotton. Although enemies in war, the North and South remained dependent on each other economically. Northern textile mills needed Southern cotton. The Union Army itself used Southern cotton in its tents and uniforms. Although the Union military command preferred an outright ban on trade, President Lincoln decided to allow limited trade in Southern cotton.

Ulysses S. Grant (Library of Congress photo) To control that trade, Lincoln insisted it be licensed by the Treasury Department and the army. As commander of the Department of the Tennessee, Grant was charged with issuing trade licenses in his area. As cotton prices soared in the North, unlicensed traders bribed Union officers to allow them to buy Southern cotton without a permit. As one exasperated correspondent told the Secretary of War, “Every colonel, captain or quartermaster is in a secret partnership with some operator in cotton; every soldier dreams of adding a bale of cotton to his monthly pay.”

In the fall of 1862, Grant's headquarters were besieged by merchants seeking trade permits. When Grant's own father appeared one day seeking trade licenses for a group of Cincinnati merchants, some of whom were Jews, Grant's frustration overflowed.

A handful of the illegal traders were Jews, although the great majority were not. In the emotional climate of the war zone, ancient prejudices flourished. The terms “Jew,” “profiteer,” “speculator” and “trader” were employed interchangeably. Union commanding General Henry W. Halleck linked “traitors and Jew peddlers.” Grant shared Halleck's mentality, describing “the Israelites” as “an intolerable nuisance.”

In November 1862, convinced that the black market in cotton was organized “mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders,” Grant ordered that “no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad southward [into the Department of the Tennessee] from any point,” nor were they to be granted trade licenses. When illegal trading continued, Grant issued Order No. 11 on December 17, 1862.

Subordinates enforced the order at once in the area surrounding Grant's headquarters in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Some Jewish traders had to trudge 40 miles on foot to evacuate the area. In Paducah, Kentucky, military officials gave the town's 30 Jewish families—all long-term residents, none of them speculators and at least two of them Union Army veterans—24 hours to leave.

A group of Paducah's Jewish merchants, led by Cesar Kaskel, dispatched an indignant telegram to President Lincoln, condemning Grant's order as an “enormous outrage on all laws and humanity, ... the grossest violation of the Constitution and our rights as good citizens under it.” Jewish leaders organized protest rallies in St. Louis, Louisville and Cincinnati, and telegrams reached the White House from the Jewish communities of Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.

Cesar Kaskel arrived in Washington on Jan. 3, 1863, two days after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. There he conferred with influential Jewish Republican Adolphus Solomons, then went with a Cincinnati congressman, John A. Gurley, directly to the White House. Lincoln received them promptly and studied Kaskel's copies of General Order No. 11 and the specific order expelling Kaskel from Paducah. The President told Halleck to have Grant revoke General Order No. 11, which he 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.

Grant revoked the order three days later.

0n January 6, a delegation led by Rabbi Isaac M. Wise of Cincinnati, called on Lincoln to express its gratitude that the order had been rescinded. Lincoln received them cordially expressed surprise that Grant had issued such a command and stated his conviction that “to condemn a class is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad.” He drew no distinction between Jew and Gentile, the president said, and would allow no American to be wronged because of his religious affiliation.

After the war, Grant transcended his anti-Semitic reputation. He carried the Jewish vote in the presidential election of 1868 and named several Jews to high office. But General Order No. 11 remains a blight on the military career of the general who saved the Union.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sources: American Jewish Historical Society and Karp, Abraham, From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress. DC: Library of Congress, 1991.

[DonQ]

The story is true. Grant did issue such an order.

Grant never manifested any other hostility to Jews and it appears that his order was motivated by military considerations: Traveling peddlars (virtually all of them Jewish) had been plying their trade on both sides of the battlelines, and Grant may have been concerned that some of them might be spies.

[Fledermaus]

Grant ain't got nothing on Europe today when it comes to anti-semitism!

[CatoRenasci]

One of my Brother Rats (classmates) at the Virginia Military Institute was a direct descendent of a rabbi who had been Jewish chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia. A number of other Jewish cadets had forebears who had fought for the South, as well as in the Revolutionary War. In those days, Southerners distinguished between 'Yankee Jews' and "Southerners of the Jewish Faith" (as one of my Jewish Brother Rats explained to me).

[#3Fan]

But it was okay for Grant to slaughter white Christian southerners, though, right?

When they shoot first, yeah.

[Jaxter]

And don't forget Judah Benjamin who served as the Confederate's Attorney-General, Secretary of State and Secretary of War.

[jimtorr]

Oh , yes, the Union moved on the Confederate Mississippi River states soon after the war started. All the war on the Union side was played out using General Winfield Scott's strategy, which was to strangle the core Confederacy between the Miss. and the Atlantic.

Grant came to high command and the publics attention by taking two forts in Kentucky in the wars first campaign in the west, and forcing the Confederat armies to evacuate Kentucky, most of Western Tennessee and northern Miss.

Remember, Kentucky never seceded from the Union at all, and only the western half of Tennessee did.

Grant first invested Memphis in his second campaign, in 1862. The Union Navy took New Orleans in spring 1863, I think it was, and closed the Miss. River to theConfederacy. Memphis surrendered in early July 1863, shortly after the battle of Gettysburg.

The only reason the Civil War lasted more than 2.5 years was that it took that long for the Union Army of the Potomac to find a General who knew how to fight a campaign. The war was over in the west in the summer of 1863.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[CatoRenasci]

Of course not.

Closer to home (for me): Sir Moses Ezekiel, 19th century sculptor and painter of some reputation, was a VMI man and fought with the Corps of Cadets in the Battle of New Market, May 15, 1864. In which battle the Corps of Cadets' charge was responsible for the Southern victory. Whe the Cadet Battalion appeared on the field (committed by the Confederate commander as a last resort, with tears in his eyes), the Union officers (especially the Germans-this was XI Corps) thought that based on the cadets' size, unique and complete uniforms, unique flag, and, above all, their precision and coolness under fire, they were facing European regular troops.

[stainlessbanner]

“Every colonel, captain or quartermaster is in a secret partnership with some operator in cotton;"

Carpetbaggers

[stainlessbanner]

So, another reason I like being a member of the party of Lincoln!

Grant is part of the same party. His presidency was plagued with corruption, speculation, overcharging, scamming taxes, and "gift" appointments to his buddies. On the other hand the CSA had J.P. Benjamin, the president's right-hand man.

[gobucks]

I agree. (That's why I added the Lincoln part...to tease people to do that, and thus show that it was countered.)

[4CJ]

Grant is part of the same party. His presidency was plagued with corruption, speculation, overcharging, scamming taxes, and "gift" appointments to his buddies. On the other hand the CSA had J.P. Benjamin, the president's right-hand man.

'An enslaved and servile race you can never make of us ? never! never!'
Judah P. Benjamin, Speech on the US Senate floor, 31 Dec 1860, (Robert N. Rosen, The Jewish Confederates, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000 , p.12)

It seems that Benjamin also challenged Sen. Jefferson Davis to a duel in 1858, but Davis apologized before the duel took place.

[stainlessbanner]

I never knew that about the duel. Interesting!

[ahumblefan]

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Grant slaughtered Irish and German immigrants in his campaign against Lee by repeatedly using his army to make massed assaults upon heavily fortified positions. He lost most of his battles against Lee, yet ultimately won the war due to sheer numbers and his willingness to take casualities.

Grant's loss rate was so severe that his army was repeatedly replinished with hapless draftees. The new drafts caused riots in the North.

In Grant, Lincoln finally found a general who could carry out his "awful arithmitic:" A series of horrific battles causing massive losses on both sides would eventually bring the South to its knees because they would run out of men before the North did. Both Lincoln and Grant purposely "slaughtered" thousands of men on both sides to win a war they thought was moral. Did that make them monsters or men of a stronger breed than our leaders of today? An important question, especially in these times.

[SJackson]

Other than this incident (and Grant contended he didn't read the order he signed), Grant never displayed hostility toward Jews. It's a non event.

Grant was incensed at the permits allowing cotton to be shipped to northern factories, feeling that it was providing support to the enemy, as it was.

Left out of this article is Grant's off and on relationship with his father, and his embarrassment at the fact that his father's firm, a partnership with a Jewish trader, was one of the largest cotton traders. There has been speculation that the order may have been Grant's way of eliminating that embarrassment without having to confront his father directly.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[SJackson]

Grant ain't got nothing on Europe today when it comes to anti-semitism!

Not true. There's nothing in his long record to support that.

[gobucks]

Well, most folks were anti-Jewish (and a lot of other anti-stuff too) if what I read has merit. The intersection Lincoln had with the Jews, on the other hand....this was news to me.

On the other hand, GRANT OWNED SLAVES!!!!???? I must have really received a biased, (though I've known for awhile how incompetently delivered it was) Ohio state government school education!

(Or maybe I was distracted the day of that particular lesson...I must have had ADD then, but I didn't know it, heh, heh. The compassionate drug cops didn't get me...).

(Ahhh, time for some Sugar Smacks!!!)

...now, time to google about Grant's slaves, but now I'm distracted - why wasn't Lincoln the typical anti-semite?....

Whoa, Lincoln was not a Mason; but his attitudes would suggest he was ...

...aha, anti-masonic politics widespread at the time of his nomination

...trouble with local Springfield masons....and a duel that almost was using swords???????


Abraham Lincoln and Freemasonry

...Mary Todd is connected somehow to this duel, and her subsequent landing of the man she would ""not have married"" if she hadn't decided he was "White House timber" ok...news to me (Johnson's History of the American People)

...and, she initially had to fend off Douglas first!!!!!

...Mary Todd is connected somehow to this duel, and her subsequent landing of the man she would ""not have married"" if she hadn't decided he was "White House timber" ok...news to me

...and, she initially had to fend off Douglas first!!!!!

....Oops, Mary Todd, like Grant's wife, had connections from HER side of the family for slaves,

...but seems NOT to have owned slaves once she reached adulthood

...and, in fact, seems to have been active in the underground to some extent

...but, oddly, she's been quoted as saying "if Mr Lincoln should happen to die, his spirit will never find me living outside the boundaries of a slave state"

...but, she dies in Illinois...

... ok, nuff on that, back to Grant....wait, Black Confederates....knew about that, but...

W. E. Williams, awesome black conservative offers this article with a tidbit confirming Grant's slaves (God I love the INTERNET!!!!)

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/00/black_confederates.html

...Now, Grant's "good help is hard to find" - now that sounds like what I have read about attitudes back then....

Anti-something was common back then. That's the problem of today I think - few are anti-anything anymore, and the leftists fill the vacuum and then vacuum the anti-nothings souls....

And kids get screwed while leftists smirk...

[Phil V.]

. . . was it ever published which individual she was referring to? I'm guessing whoever it was, they voted Republican!!

http://www.drudgereport.com/mat28c.htm

[gobucks]

Thanks for that...and it dovetails with what I have been reading...