General Grant's Order No. 11 and Lincoln's revocation
The only order in United States history expelling Jews as a class. It stood for eighteen days.
On 17 December 1862 Ulysses Grant, commanding the Department of the Tennessee, issued General Order No. 11: "The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department, are hereby expelled from the Department within twenty-four hours." The pretext was cotton smuggling across the lines, in which Jews were far from alone—Grant's own father was in it with partners from Cincinnati.
The order was carried out in Paducah, Kentucky: thirty families were expelled, among them wives of men serving in the Union army. One of them, Cesar Kaskel, travelled to Washington and obtained an audience with Lincoln. Tradition preserves the exchange: "And so the children of Israel were driven from the happy land of Canaan?"—"Yes, and that is why we have come unto Father Abraham's bosom, asking protection." Lincoln ordered the revocation the same day, 4 January 1863—the order had stood eighteen days.
There was a sequel. In the same war Jewish military chaplains were admitted for the first time: the law of 1861 required a chaplain to be "a regularly ordained minister of some Christian denomination", and after a fight it was rewritten. Grant, running for president in 1868, explained the order as the heat of war and was ashamed of it; in office he appointed Jews, protested publicly against the persecutions in Romania, and became the first president to attend a synagogue dedication.
Sources
Documents of the period
- General Order No. 11, Department of the Tennessee, 17 December 1862 — «the Jews, as a class… are hereby expelled within twenty-four hours»
- Revocation order, 4 January 1863 — revoked eighteen days later after Lincoln intervened
Basis: documents and evidence.