Original      handwritten
    poem                           

    Emma Lazarus was a young Jewish girl living in New York City in the   
early 1800's.  She penned the poem, "New Colossus".
                                                                

                      General Grant's Infamy

        The Civil War hero expelled Jews from three states until Lincoln made him rescind the order. Reprinted with permission of the American Jewish Historical Society from "Chapters in American History."

           In 1862, in the heat of the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant initiated the most blatant official episode 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.  (Background) 
          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.                To control that trade, Lincoln insisted the Treasury Department and the Army license it. 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 was pressured by his superiors to capture heavily defended Vicksburg, which would allow the Union to control the entire Mississippi River and cut the Confederacy in half. Grant resented having to divert his personal attention from capturing Vicksburg to controlling the cotton trade--and especially the corruption it was causing. Merchants seeking trade permits besieged his headquarters.         
          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 boiled over. (The Jewish Connection) A handful of the corrupt traders were Jews, although the great majority was 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] from any point," nor were they to be granted trade licenses. When illegal trading continued, on December 17th Grant issued Order No. 11: "The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department... are hereby expelled from [Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi] within 24 hours."
          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.
           (Fighting the Order ) 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 January 3, 1863. Two days earlier, the Emancipation Proclamation had gone into effect. Kaskel conferred with influential Jewish Republican Adolphus Solomons and then went with Cincinnati Congressman John A. Gurley directly to the White House. Lincoln received them promptly, studied Kaskel's copies of General Order No. 11 and the specific order expelling Kaskel from Paducah, and commanded Halleck to order Grant to revoke General Order No. 11. Grant complied three days later.
           On January 6th, a delegation led by Rabbi Isaac M. Wise of Cincinnati called on Lincoln to express its gratitude that Grant's order had been rescinded. Lincoln received the delegation 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 explained his actions by saying that he had signed the order, which had been prepared by a subordinate, without reading it. Grant carried the Jewish vote in the Presidential election of 1868 and named several Jews to high office. However, General Order No. 11 remains a blight on the military career of the general who saved the Union.
                                         

                                         Lincoln's Jews

By Zev Roth

         When Cesar Kaskel first saw the notice, he likely rubbed his eyes. In a daze, he probably ran home to his family. One look at him and his wife would have realized that there was something dreadfully wrong.
       "Why, what is it? What happened?" she surely asked. And then he told her about the order for every Jew to leave his home within twenty- four hours.
          "Leave? Why? What have we done?" she may have asked, bewildered. And he may have answered: "Do they ever say why when they throw Jews out of their homes? I just never thought it would happen in America."   
           Whatever the precise words of their conversation, Kaskel informed his spouse about General Ulysses S. Grant's General Order 11, signed on December 17, 1862. As Military Governor of newly conquered Civil War territory, he had issued the order in Holly Springs, Mississippi, mandating the total expulsion of "the Jews, as a class" from an area corresponding with what is today Northern Mississippi, Kentucky and Western Tennessee within "twenty four hours," without trial or hearing
           In Paducah, Kentucky, many families were expelled. They could not believe they were being forced from their homes in so abrupt a manner.
           A certain Mr. Silverman from Chicago, visiting the town, unfortunately came to share the fate of his local brethren, who on December 17, denied even rail transportation for their exodus, were forced to travel all the way to Memphis by foot. For his efforts to use some contacts to get a desperate telegram through to General Grant, Mr. Silverman was promptly thrown into a Holly Springs prison.
           For his part, Cesar Kaskel tried to contact the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. He wrote an urgent telegram to the White House, protesting "this inhuman order, the carrying out of which would be the grossest violation of the Constitution and our rights as citizens under it, which will place us...as outlaws before the whole world." 
          As it happened, his letter was the second to find its way to Lincoln's desk concerning the Jewish people. A few days earlier, a missive had arrived from one B. Behrend, the father of a religious Jewish soldier in the Union army. Behrend wrote to request Lincoln's assistance in allowing his son to observe the Jewish Sabbath. He asked Lincoln, "as your namesake Abraham", for his help in this matter. "This will be exactly lawful, as the Constitution of the United States ordains it, and at the same time be exactly according of the teachings of the Bible, as recorded in Leviticus XIX, 18: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
          Kaskel realized, due to the desperation of the situation, that he had to make a trip to Washington. With the help of Congressman Gurley of Ohio, he secured an appointment to see President Lincoln. Together, they were quickly admitted to Lincoln's office on the second floor of the White House.
          It quickly became apparent that Lincoln knew little or nothing about the Jewish expulsion. Kaskel, however, had brought documentation along, and provided a first-person account of Jews being evicted from their homes. After carefully listening, Lincoln asked,
           "And so the children of Israel were driven from the happy land of Canaan?" Kaskel said,
            "Yes, and that is why we have come unto Father Abraham's bosom, asking for protection." Lincoln replied
              "And this protection they shall have at once." He then ordered that General Order 11 immediately be revoked.
             Historians debate whether Ulysses S. Grant was the one responsible for the expulsion, or whether he had merely carried out the wishes of an anti-Semitic higher government official. What is clear, however, is that Lincoln was very sympathetic to the plight of the Jewish Americans affected by the order. Perhaps, in part, because of a letter from a Sabbath-observant soldier's father.

 AM ECHAD RESOURCES
Zev Roth is an author living in Israel. His most recent book is "The Monsey-Kiryat Sefer Express: True Tales from Two Cities" (Targum Press, 200)

                      
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