Reader's Guide

In the middle of the Civil War, on December 17, 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Orders No. 11, which called for the expulsion of “Jews as a class” from the Department of the Tennessee – a vast area stretching from Mississippi to Illinois. The order was revoked almost immediately by President Lincoln, and its direct effects on the country’s small but growing Jewish community were limited. Yet the unprecedented decree had enormous unintended consequences, not just for Grant but for American Jewry. The effects, in fact, continue to reverberate today.

General Orders

The Jewish community in America was relatively small when the Civil War broke out; despite a recent surge in immigration in the mid-19th century, there were still only 150,000 Jews in America, less than 1 percent of the population. Still, that made the Jews the largest non-Christian minority in the country. And during the war, as Jonathan Sarna explains, anti-Semitism reared its head, and Jews as a group came under frequent attack for everything from smuggling to profiteering.

Smuggling was, indeed, a major problem vexing Grant in his war effort against the Confederacy. And some of those smugglers were, in fact, Jewish. But Grant’s order, motivated in large part by his desire to squash the smuggling, implicated all Jews “as a class.” Why is this phrase particularly important?

Sarna suggests that one of the main motivations behind General Orders No. 11 was personal for Grant: His father had gotten involved in a corrupt scheme involving a group of Jewish smugglers, and the enraged general displaced his anger at his father onto Jews, “as a class.” Do you think this had something to do with the order? If, in fact, the animus behind the decree was personal rather than broadly anti-Semitic, does that change your impression of Grant and his actions?

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation just two weeks after Grant’s order. The timing of these two decrees – one freeing blacks, the other expelling Jews – did not go unnoticed; in Memphis, the Daily Bulletin printed the two documents on the same page, one above the other. Jews, Sarna writes, “feared that Jews would replace blacks as the nation’s stigmatized minority.” Do you think those fears were justified at the time?

The total number of Jews who were actually expelled, Sarna writes, seems to be less than a hundred, mostly in small towns in northern Mississippi. Why, then, is this such an important moment in American Jewish history? Do you think that statements comparing Grant to Haman – the villain of the Purim story in the Book of Esther – were overstated?

Revoking the Order

General Orders No. 11 was rescinded within weeks of its issuance, before many Jews had been ordered to move, and before many Americans had even heard about the decree. Nonetheless, it took strenuous efforts on the part of several key players to make sure the order never fully took hold.

Poor communication during wartime meant that Grant’s order was not received by military commanders in a timely fashion, and many who did receive it had questions regarding its implementation, and so it was not widely enforced in the weeks after it was issued. If those commanders had enforced the order – and applied it to Jewish soldiers fighting in the Union army, and Jewish peddlers who sold goods to army camps, who were not exempted – how might that have affected public opinion about it? What if those commanders had made a public stand, as at least one general did, by explicitly refusing to enforce the order at all, rather than asking for clarifications?

Isaac Mayer Wise, a prominent rabbi and newspaper editor in Cincinnati, called the order an “outrage, without a precedent in American history,” and editorialized in his newspaper The Israelite that Jews “as a class…have officially been degraded.” He urged Jews to seek redress, but also cautioned, as Sarna explains, “that too strong a Jewish protest could backfire.” What was Wise afraid might happen if Jews protested the order too loudly? Were his fears well grounded?

A businessman named Cesar Kaskel – a Jewish immigrant in Paducah, Kentucky – was one of the few to be expelled from his home, and Kaskel set out to overturn Grant’s order personally. He spread word about the decree to newspapers and Jewish communal leaders, and traveled to Washington to appeal to President Lincoln directly. Securing a personal meeting with the president, Kaskel asked for his protection for the Jews, which Lincoln offered at once, revoking the order on January 6, 1863. What do you think might have happened if Lincoln had not granted this ordinary citizen a personal audience? How important was Kaskel in overturning the decree, compared to other politicians, newspaper editorialists, and communal leaders?

Presidential campaign

When Grant ran for president in 1868, questions surrounding General Orders No. 11 resurfaced. Newspapers, particularly ones supporting the Republican’s Democratic opponents, editorialized against Grant – even in communities where few Jews lived. But the discussion was most heated within the Jewish community, whose political influence and cohesion reached unprecedented levels during the campaign.

For many Jews, especially in the north – where Grant was a national hero after the war – the 1868 vote posed a difficult quandary: Should they vote for a man who was good for the country, even if they thought he was bad for the Jews? Do you think this question is still relevant in political campaigns today? In what way does this kind of question emerge in modern elections? What are the key “Jewish” issues for a presidential contender in the 21st century?

Grant disavowed General Orders No. 11 in a private note in September 1868, in response to a letter from a leader of B’nai Brith. “I do not sustain that order,” he wrote. “I have no prejudice against any sect or race, but want each individual to be judged by his own merit.” While this letter was not published until after the election, it did have an effect on the election behind the scenes, as influential Jews circulated the letter privately and then made their feelings about Grant known in talks, and letters to newspapers; “it did much to rehabilitate his image in Jewish eyes,” Sarna explains. Why do you think Grant declined to make the letter public until after the election? Do you think it could have backfired if he’d distanced himself from the order too publicly, during the campaign?

In the 1868 campaign, Jews “campaigned as Jews” for the first time, Sarna writes. In other words, while Jews had been politically involved before, in 1868 “more Jews than ever before justified their political loyalties on the basis of their religion.” Not only did the Jewish community feel more specifically bound together, but the notion of a Jewish voting bloc became known to other Americans as well during this time. What has the legacy of this “public display of power” been? Do you think the cohesion of the “Jewish vote” has increased over the past century and a half? Do you think conventional wisdom about the power of the “Jewish vote” is exaggerated today?

If a politician today had a record that included explicitly anti-Semitic statements and actions, do you think he could make a successful run for the White House? If such a candidate made a private apology during the campaign, do you think the Jewish community today would be so quick to forgive him?

In office

In the White House, Grant made great strides to overcome his anti-Jewish reputation. He made explicit outreach to the Jewish community, appointing more Jews than any previous president to government posts. He made foreign policy decisions that were based, in part, on battling anti-Semitism abroad. And in so doing, he made human rights a part of America’s global political concern, in a way that endures today – helping Jews and other persecuted minorities around the world.

While the appointment of Jews to a record number of government posts was seen as a “golden age” for American Jewry, according to Sarna, many of the posts themselves sound relatively minor: Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, a consul in British Columbia, deputy postmaster in Jefferson, Texas. Why was it important that even such minor appointments were made? What message did it send to American Jews – and gentiles?

A few of Grant’s Jewish appointments were more prominent: governor of Washington Territory, superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Arizona territory, consul-general to Romania. “During his administration, Jews won growing acceptance within American life,” Sarna writes. Were high profile appointments a reflection of that growing acceptance, or did the appointments themselves drive the acceptance?

The newly empowered American Jewish community demanded political action in response to anti-Semitism in Russia and Romania during Grant’s administration – and the president responded. “By joining with Grant in appealing to high-minded human rights claims,” Sarna writes, “Jews looked to be shaping an America that explicitly promoted ‘one universal law of humanity.’” How do we continue to feel the effects of this change in American policy today? Is the American Jewish community still at the forefront of political action to promote human rights internationally?

When Grant ran for re-election in 1872, General Orders No. 11 resurfaced as a campaign issue, but this time was quickly defused. Rabbi Wise, not originally a supporter of Grant, admitted that “we have long ago forgiven him that blunder” by 1872; even southern Jews, who had voted against Grant the first time, came around to the Republican side. Do you think the same forgiveness still applies to politicians today, or are we less willing to believe that people can genuinely change their views?

Toward the end of his presidency in 1876, when re-election was no longer an issue, Grant became the first president to attend a synagogue dedication, at Adas Israel in Washington, D.C. He even made a personal donation to the congregation. Why was this visit symbolically important? Would it have been as important if he’d visited a synagogue four years earlier, while he was on the campaign trail, hoping to score Jewish votes?

Legacy

Grant continued to atone for General Orders No. 11, and to reach out to American Jews, even after he left the White House. When he died in 1885, Jews joined the nation in mourning, and a rabbi was among his pallbearers. Yet the decree dogged him and his conscience until his death – and continues to be a blot on his record to this day.

Soon after leaving office, Grant took a trip around the world, and became the first American president to visit Jerusalem. Today, trips to Israel are routine for American politicians seeking high office, but at the time, the Jewish community in Palestine was still relatively small. How significant do you think Grant’s visit to Jerusalem seemed to American Jews at the time?

Sarna writes that General Orders No. 11 “proved difficult for [Grant] to live down; he spent the rest of his life making amends for it.” Do you think much of Grant’s activism – on behalf of American and international Jewry, and human rights – came from his motivation to “make amends” rather than a strong conviction? Does it matter to you what his motivation might have been?

As time progressed after Grant’s death, and his record was reconsidered in retrospect, historians have remembered General Orders No. 11, but not always the years of work he spent working with the Jewish community in its aftermath. Do you think General Orders No. 11 should remain an indelible stain of anti-Semitism on his record – or, in the wake of so many positive moves that followed, should it become a more minor footnote in the history of a man who became a friend to the Jewish community? Can the decree be forgiven?

Grant’s decree motivated the American Jewish community to organize around political issues for the first time. And Grant’s presidency gave American Jews unprecedented power within American politics for the first time. How do we feel the reverberations of these events today?

Reader's guide composed by Wayne Hoffman.

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