{"id":6687,"date":"2024-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2024\/01\/01\/general-orders-no-11\/"},"modified":"2024-01-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T00:00:00","slug":"general-orders-no-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2024\/01\/01\/general-orders-no-11\/","title":{"rendered":"General Orders No. 11"},"content":{"rendered":"

General Orders No. 11 \u201cThe<\/strong> Jews, as a class <\/strong><\/i>. . . are hereby expelled.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a case of history being, typically, historical. A time of crisis, even war. Economic uncertainty making matters worse, threatening perhaps the fate of the nation. People needing to blame someone smaller, weaker, and unable to defend themselves. Like the Jews.<\/p>\n

Hence, General Orders No. 11: \u201cThe Jews, as a class,<\/i> violating every regulation of trade . . . are hereby expelled from the department. Within 24 hours from the receipt of this order by post commanders, they will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and anyone 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.\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\n

When and where was this order expelling the Jews, \u201c<\/i>this class of people\u201d<\/i>? Czarist Russia? Medieval Spain? Early Nazi Germany?<\/p>\n

No. The United States of America, in the middle of the nineteenth century\u20141862, to be precise. And the man who issued \u201cwhat is today considered to be the most anti-Semitic military proclamation ever enacted in United States history\u201d2<\/sup> was Major General Ulysses S. Grant, who went on to become the commanding general of the United States Army, acting United States secretary of war, and the eighteenth president of the United States of America.<\/p>\n

How could something like this happen in, of all places, the United States, only 71 years after the ratification of the Bill of Rights? But, more important, what can we now, more than 230 years after ratification, learn from this unfortunate incident?<\/p>\n

The Black Flag<\/strong><\/p>\n

For most Americans north of the Mason-Dixon line or west of the Mississippi River, the Civil War is about as far from their consciousness as is the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, in the late fifth century B.C. Yet it ravaged the nation, with effects still felt today. Few now comprehend the hatred it stoked on both sides; a hatred perhaps best expressed by Confederate General Stonewall Jackson\u2019s infamous black flag statement, in which he said to Colonel J. E. B. Stuart that we might have \u201cto show no quarter to the enemy. No more than the redskins showed your troopers. The black flag, sir.\u201d 3<\/sup> It meant, basically, take no prisoners alive. Fortunately, things never got that bad.<\/p>\n

But things still got bad enough. One of the worst battles in American history was at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in July 1863, with an estimated 7,100 dead. Americans killing Americans. Before the carnage of the war ended, the estimated dead on both sides was about 620,000, making it by far the deadliest war in American history. It takes a lot of hate to kill that many of your own countrymen.<\/p>\n

The Cotton Situation<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was in this context, and against this foreboding background, that Ulysses S. Grant, then a major general in the Union army, comes into play. In 1862 the war itself had not been going well in general for the Union or, in particular, for General Grant. He found himself under heavy criticism for his failure, so far at least, to take the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which was crucial to the Union\u2019s war effort. Deep in enemy territory, \u201cringed by danger,\u201d4<\/sup> and isolated from General William Tecumseh Sherman\u2019s army, which was up farther north and unable to help, Grant and his men sorely lacked supplies and reinforcements. Worse, wrote Seth Reid Clare,\u201cGrant found himself plagued by Confederate cavalry led by Nathan Bedford Forrest and Earl Van Dorn, who perpetually harassed Grant\u2019s troops without ever making themselves available for all-out combat.\u201d5<\/sup><\/p>\n

What brought issues to a head, however, was the cotton situation. With his army deep in Confederate cotton country, Grant had to deal with northern speculators, corrupt Union army officers, and (as he and others saw it), \u201cJews,\u201d all of whom were trying to take advantage of the astounding surge in cotton prices, which had risen from 10 cents a bale to $2.00 because of the war. With the Union\u2019s dire need of cotton, unscrupulous traders from the North were able to get around strict regulations about the purchase of Southern cotton (which put money in the enemy\u2019s coffers) and made great profit selling it to the Union army. Grant harbored deep animosity toward war profiteers of any kind. But, because some of these profiteers were Jewish\u2014a tiny minority, actually\u2014the Jews, often immigrants heavy laden with accents, were the easiest to stigmatize.<\/p>\n

Thus, on December 17, 1862, Grant issued the General Orders No. 11, which meant the expulsion of the Jews \u201cas a class\u201d from much of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky \u2014even if the vast majority of that \u201cclass\u201d were not involved in cotton speculation at all. Despite protests from his own ranks, and being warned that Washington would countermand it, Grant insisted that the order be issued and enforced.<\/p>\n

And it was enforced, at least in part. Jews living in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Grant\u2019s main supply depot, were immediately rounded up and forced out, some having to travel 40 miles on foot. Soon after the order, a Confederate army raided the area, breaking Union communication lines, and so many local Jews were spared.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuckily,\u201d wrote a Grant biographer, Ron Chernow, \u201cduring the brief time Grant\u2019s obnoxious directive was in effect, it was weakly enforced. The sole exception came in Paducah, Kentucky, where thirty Jewish families received notice to leave the city within twenty-four hours. These shell-shocked Jews hastily collected their belongings, shuttered their homes and shops, and boarded an Ohio River steamer.\u201d6<\/sup><\/p>\n

Shell-shocked Jews told to leave right away, shuttering their homes and shops, and then deported? Switch out \u201cOhio River steamer\u201d for the Deutsche Reichsbahn, and one would think they were reading about the Holocaust, not about a military order issued within the United States itself.<\/p>\n

Regrets and Redemption<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though most Jews would consider Grant\u2019s order irresponsible and wrong, compared to what they could have faced, and often did in Europe, what happened here was small potatoes. And the outrage against the order, both by Jews and non-Jews, was swift and fierce. In the U.S. Senate a resolution calling the order \u201ctyrannical, usurping and unjust\u201d7<\/sup> was presented but not passed. Many thought it better to let President Lincoln handle it, which he did, immediately directing General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck to make Grant revoke the order. Grant complied.<\/p>\n

For years afterward, Ulysses Grant seemed to regret General Orders No. 11. He issued an apology, of sorts, in an 1868 letter to Jewish Congressman Isaac N. Morris that was later published in newspapers nationwide: \u201cI do not pretend to sustain the order,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe order was made and sent out, without any reflection, and without thinking of the Jews as a sect or race to themselves, but simply as persons who had successfully . . . violated an order.\u201d Grant also stressed, \u201cI have no prejudice against sect or race, but want each individual to be judged by his own merit. General Orders No. 11 does not sustain this statement, I admit, but then I do not sustain that order.\u201d8<\/sup> In his famous two-\u00advolume autobiography, The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant<\/i>, he never mentioned it, his silence being interpreted as shame.<\/p>\n

Fascinatingly enough, one of his first acts as president was to appoint a Jew, Simon Wolf, as the recorder of deeds. Grant went on to put more Jews to government positions than any other president had so far, and also responded forcefully to the Russian expulsion of Jews from its border\u2014an act for which, politics being politics, brought him some scorn. He also became the first American president to attend the dedication of a synagogue, Washington\u2019s Adas Israel.<\/p>\n

In an article titled \u201cThe Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant,\u201d Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University wrote: \u201cThe Grant years had brought American Jews heightened visibility and new levels of respect. More Jews served in public office than ever before. . . . During his administration, American Jews moved from outsider to insider status, and from weakness to strength. After having abruptly expelled Jews in 1862, Grant as president significantly empowered them\u2014insisting, over the objections of those who propounded narrower visions of America, that the country could embrace people of different races, religions, and creeds.\u201d9<\/sup><\/p>\n

Whatever his motives, Grant, it seems, learned from his mistake.<\/p>\n

The Prevailing Cultural Prejudice<\/strong><\/p>\n

Besides the obvious lesson here, about how in times of crisis human rights are always threatened, even despite protections like the long-ratified Bill of Rights\u2014something else is worth considering. Perhaps the scariest aspect of what was deemed \u201cthe most anti-Semitic military proclamation ever enacted in United States history\u201d is that it was not enacted by an overt anti-Semite. Little indicated that General Grant was anti-Semitic, at least any more than anyone else at that time. He was simply caught up in the tensions of the moment, and based on the prevailing cultural prejudice\u2014what could be called a \u201csloppy\u201d anti-Semitism\u2014Grant responded in ways that were, obviously, wrong.<\/p>\n

Almost everyone has heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment. In a simulated prison, role-playing \u201cguards\u201d (male students recruited through a newspaper ad) became so cruel to \u201cprisoners,\u201d and so quickly, that the experiment had to be called off. Though the study has been criticized, who needs an experiment to know the potential of human evil? Many Holocaust perpetrators were not overt anti-Semites either. Caught up in the prevailing prejudices of the times, they did things that, in different circumstances, would have horrified them.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, who hasn\u2019t, under pressure, done what they otherwise wouldn\u2019t do? This problem becomes bigger when those under that pressure have power, as did Major General Grant. Good people can do bad things, especially in an environment that either subtly or overtly allows, sanctions, or encourages it. What the story of Ulysses S. Grant and General Orders No. 11 shows, then, is that no one is secure from these cultural prejudices, no matter how egregious; and, if pushed hard enough, anyone can succumb to them, often to the detriment of those at their mercy.<\/p>\n

Clifford Goldstein is a former editor of Liberty<\/i> magazine and the current editor of Bible study lessons for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He has an M.A. in Ancient Northwest Semitic Languages from Johns Hopkins University and is the author of more than 20 books, the most recent being God, Godel, and Grace <\/i>(Review and Herald) and Graffiti in the Holy of Holies<\/i> (Pacific Press).<\/p>\n

1 General Orders No. 11. Headquarters, 13th Army Corps, Department of the Tennessee: Oxford, Miss., Dec. 17, 1862.<\/p>\n

2 Seth Reid Clare, \u201cGeneral Grant\u2019s Order 11: Causes and Context.\u201d Chrestomathy: Annual Review of Undergraduate Research <\/i>11 (2012): 34.<\/p>\n

3 S. C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson<\/i> (New York: Scribner, 2015).<\/p>\n

4 Ron Chernow, Grant <\/i>(New York: Penguin Press, 2017), Kindle Edition, p. 232.<\/p>\n

5 Gwynne, Rebel Yell<\/i>, <\/i>p. 25.<\/p>\n

6 Chernow, Grant<\/i>, pp. 235, 236.<\/p>\n

7 Seth Kaller, \u201cGrant\u2019s Infamous General Order 11 Expelling Jews\u2014and Lincoln\u2019s Revocation of it,\u201d retrieved from sethkaller.com.<\/p>\n

8 Quoted in \u201cUlysses S. Grant and General Orders No. 11,\u201d retrieved from the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site section of www.nps.gov.<\/p>\n

9 Jonathan D. Sarna, \u201cThe Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant,\u201d retrieved from www.reformjudaism.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

General Orders No. 11 \u201cThe Jews, as a class . . . are hereby expelled.\u201d It\u2019s a case of history being, typically, historical. A time of crisis, even war. Economic uncertainty making matters worse, threatening perhaps the fate of the nation. People needing to blame someone smaller, weaker, and unable to defend themselves. Like the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[357],"tags":[189],"class_list":["post-6687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-january-february-2024","tag-january-february-2024"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}