Grant and the Jews

In October of 1862, Ulysses S Grant found himself the commander of the Union Department of the Tennessee. Two months later, on December 17th, he issued one of the most controversial orders of the War, which was to become - along with the bogus allegations of alcoholism - one of the ugliest stains on the great soldier's career.

'General Order No. 11' was issued to expel 'Jews as a class' from Grant's Department, with the rationale that persons of Jewish faith had been engaging in cotton smuggling behind Confederate lines. President Lincoln rescinded the Order as soon as he heard of it, after receiving protests from horrified loyal Jews among others. Out of the several hundred-thousand Jews living in the Union states, it is modernly believed that less than one hundred were personally hurt by General Order No. 11. The damage that this blunder would do to Grant's reputation, however, was only beginning.

Some 10,000 Jews were serving in the Union Army; a smaller but substantial number fought for the Confederacy. Many were European immigrants - particularly from Prussia - who had fled to America in the 1840s to escape anti-Semitic regulations and popular hatred. Outraged and frightened at Grant's Order, some American Jews feared that their problems had followed them across the Atlantic. Some Jewish communities labelled Grant another 'Haman', that infamous Biblical villain who plotted to destroy all the Jews of Persia.

Grant was condemned by large sections of the Jewish-American community for the rest of the War, and afterwards. He publically apologized in 1868, and expressed regret and embarrassment at his order for the rest of his life. Both Jewish and gentile reactions to his apologies varied greatly, but by the end of his second term in the White House most were convinced that his repentence was sincere. General Order No. 11 was issued in the heat of the moment, and was fuelled by ignorance, not malice.

Grant held two presidencies, from 1869-1877. He presided over America during the peak of the Reconstruction Era, doing his best to live up to his campaign slogan - 'let us have peace'. He is credited with combating the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and standing up for the newly-won liberties of African-Americans. Indeed, in a post-war America, a rising power in an era of Western Enlightenment, Grant strove to encourage both religious and racial harmony in the nation.

Grant made a conspicuous effort to win the support and the trust of the Jewish community, not before, but during his first term. He appointed more Jews to positions of governmental authority than any president before him or a long time afterwards, and courted the friendship of many prominent Jewish rabbis and thinkers. During his second term, he displayed great concern at the plight of Jews living in both Russia and Romania, where they were subjected to vicious bouts of anti-Semitic violence.

Though there is no reliable source to back it up, legend claims that Grant even started to eat kosher during the last few years of his life. Many prominent Jewish-Americans expressed their good wishes during his battle with throat cancer, and the condolences to his mourning family when he lost that battle in July of 1885. Jewish communities across America and the world mourned for him and honored his memory in their worship services.

Even one of Grant's pallbearers, E. B. M. Browne, was not only a Jew, but an influential rabbi. With Grant's burial taking place over the Jewish Shabbat, Browne felt it was not right to ride to the funeral in a train. As a result, he famously traveled to the funeral on foot, securing for himself a place in Jewish-American folklore for his refusal to break the Shabbat.

Grant was a sincere and honest man in a nation recovering from total war and entering into a new phase of avarice and grotesque political corruption - indeed, it was his loyalty to those beneath him, rather than any personal vices, that led his presidencies to become infamous for their corruption. He was also hard on himself for his personal failings. In few areas of his life was this better revealed than his sincere and sensitive - even obsessive - efforts to court the forgiveness of the Jewish-American community.

 

It is estimated that 10,000 Jewish men served in the Union Army, and a similar, slightly smaller number in the Confederate Army.  Both armies had at least one volunteer company made up solely of Jewish personnel, and during the War Lincoln pass a law allowing rabbis to serve as military chaplains.