When General Grant Expelled the Jews

by Jonathan D. Sarna

  Contemporary readers, recalling the prominent role Jews played in the civil rights movement of the twentieth century, may be surprised by the public support Jews gave to the anti-Black, openly racist Democratic Party in the wake of the Civil War. In the nineteenth century, however, Jews were divided regionally and politically; no one ideology defined them. Just as they resembled their neighbors in their attitudes toward slavery before the Civil War, so they resembled them in the war’s immediate aftermath. What distinguished the 1868 election was that more Jews than ever before justified their political loyalties on the basis of their religion. They campaigned as Jews.

  America had never before witnessed such a public display of power on the part of Jews. Back in 1840, some American Jews had cautiously arranged public meetings in support of fellow Jews persecuted in Da-mascus. In 1858–59, they more enthusiastically joined a worldwide and ultimately unsuccessful campaign for the release of Edgardo Mortara, a six-year-old Italian Jewish boy who had been secretly baptized as an infant by his nursemaid in Bologna, and as a consequence was torn from his home and handed over to the Catholic Church. Domestically during the Civil War, Jews campaigned successfully, if largely behind the scenes, to broaden the military chaplaincy law, which initially restricted chaplains to those who were regularly ordained ministers “of some Christian denomination,” so that non-Christians, Jews in particular, could also minister to troops. Most important of all, of course, American Jews succeeded during the Civil War in having General Orders No. 11 revoked. But these and other short-lived political engagements paled in comparison to the many attempts in 1868 to bring Jewish power to bear on an American presidential campaign. The question was whether group politics of this sort was appropriate.44

  In the wake of their political emancipation in Europe, many Western and Central European Jews came to eschew the exercise of Jewish power through group politics of any sort. Sephardic leaders in London as late as 1819 went so far as to threaten excommunication to anyone who even voted in an election, much less took sides on a political question. Even after they received their rights as a group, often in the form of special legislation such as a “Jew Bill,” Jews were expected to exercise those rights, if at all, solely as individuals. The last thing they wanted to do was to stir up old antisemitic canards about how they formed a state within a state, caring more about their fellow Jews than about their country. So as to protect their rights as individuals, they learned to piously insist that they no longer voted on the basis of any interests that they shared with fellow Jews.45c

  In America, where the Constitution treated them as equals and never mentioned the word “Jew” at all, immigrant Jews tended to follow these same carefully nurtured political habits. These were elaborated in four unwritten rules that came to define “proper” Jewish political behavior. The wisdom of these rules was likely reinforced in Jewish minds when they observed how viciously the Know-Nothing Party attacked Catholic political involvements in the 1850s, threatening to limit Catholic immigration and naturalization. Prudently, Jews forswore such involvements, binding themselves to the most straitlaced standards of group politics:

  1. Jews may not band together in separate political clubs.

  2. Rabbis or lay leaders have no right to advise the community on how to vote.

  3. Jewish agencies must not use their influence to promote Jewish aspirants to political office.

  4. Jews may not support a candidate just because he happens to be Jewish.46

  To avoid breaking these rules, the Jews of Memphis, in publicly opposing Grant, went out of their way to underscore that they were not motivated by “any political or party purpose.”47 But saying so did not make it so. Oftentimes, the Jews who forswore group politics the most loudly actually spent a great deal of time promoting Jewish political interests behind the scenes. To them and their descendants, well into the twentieth century, Jewish politics, the raw exercise of Jewish power, was akin to sexual intercourse: practiced openly, it was embarrassing and shameful; done discreetly, behind closed doors, it was natural and legitimate.48

  This explains why two of the most widely publicized critiques of American Jewish political activity in 1868 were written by two of the most politically active American Jews. Simon Wolf, who interceded with politicians regularly on behalf of Jewish interests, insisted that Jewish group interests simply did not exist. “We are not Jews in any political sense,” he declared. “Accursed will be the day when Jews as a class commit the unpardonable crime of becoming sectarian in their politics.” Taking his position to its logical extreme, he proclaimed, utterly unpersuasively, that Jews “are not Jews except to God; we are to the country what Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones or Mr. Brown are—citizens.”49

  Samuel Myer Isaacs, who played a central role in Jewish political affairs as a founder of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, delivered the same message through his well-respected New York newspaper, the Jewish Messenger. “Judaism has nothing in common with partisan politics,” he wrote in an article that the New York Times, among others, reprinted approvingly. He urged Jews “to give no countenance to any movement calculated to involve the Hebrews as a body in any political contest” and opposed both Jewish public meetings against Grant and the establishment of pro-Grant Jewish political clubs. Revealingly, he described this as the position of “sensible Jews” and “the better class of Israelites.” He associated overt displays of Jewish political power, at least by implication, with the tawdry activities of lower-class voters.50

  The more vexing question in 1868—and no less relevant today—was the question of multiple loyalties. Those who injected General Orders No. 11 into the presidential campaign plainly sought to appeal to Jewish voters on the basis of their special interests. But was it legitimate for Jews to base their vote on such considerations? Or, in selecting a presidential candidate, should they—and Americans generally—cast aside all special interests and consider only the national interest? More to the point, should General Orders No. 11 singlehandedly determine how Jews vote, or ought they, as responsible citizens and voters, to weigh up the totality of issues facing the country before making up their minds?

  Rabbi Liebman Adler (illustration credit ill.20)

  Two of America’s most distinguished Reform rabbis debated this very question through the newspapers. Liebman Adler, the rabbi of Chicago’s oldest synagogue, often known by its initials, K.A.M., argued against voting on the basis of Jewish interests and in favor of what he considered broad American interests. Proud as he was of being a Jew, he explained, “it is different when I take a ballot in order to exercise my rights as a citizen. Then I am not a Jew, but I feel and act as a citizen of the republic.” On Election Day, he insisted, “I do not ask what pleases the Israelites. I consult the welfare of the country.” So much did his responsibilities as a citizen outweigh those of being a Jew that he provocatively declared he would vote even for the party of Haman (which is just what the Republican Party was in the eyes of many Jewish Democrats) if he believed that it would do the most for the welfare of the country and the advancement of human rights:

  If that party in whose hands I believe the welfare of the country, so far as the advancement of human rights was concerned, was the safest, were to place a Haman at the helm of state, and if the opposite party, whose nonexistence I believe would be better for humanity and my country, were to place Messiah at their head, make Moses the Chief Justice, and call the Patriarchs to the Cabinet, I should say, “Prosper under Haman, my fatherland, and here you have my vote, even if all the Jew in me mourns.”

  For Rabbi Adler, the principles of the Republican Party, particularly the promise that “all men of all races should be equal,” trumped other considerations. Must Jews like himself set aside their principles and change their vote, he asked, “since Grant has insulted us?” Answering his own question, he declared forthrightly that “if Grant is the best man for the Americans, he is the best man for us Israelites, despite General Order No. 11.”51

&n
bsp; Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise could not have disagreed more. “If wrong is wrong, he who defends it is wicked,” Wise acidly wrote in condemning those who advocated Grant’s election. “Men of principle and character … have the solemn duty to speak, to resent indecencies, to plead their cause, and to stand up firmly and decidedly for their rights and their principles.” In reply to those, like Adler, who raised the specter of multiple loyalties, he insisted that identities, in real life, could not so easily be compartmentalized:

  We have been trying quite seriously to make of our humble self two Isaac M. Wises—the one who is a citizen of the State of Ohio, and the other who is a Jew; but we failed and we failed decidedly; we could not destroy our identity nor could we double it. In consequence of this exertion and this failure, we have come to the conclusion, that it is a piece of sophistry to suggest that one should be the one-half of himself.

  Wise concluded that responsible voters needed to weigh up their responsibilities as Jews and as citizens at one and the same time: “We bring both the Jew and the citizen to the public forum and to the synagogue, before our God and our country.” Defending his focus on General Orders No. 11, he insisted that “civil and religious liberty is a sacred boon which must be protected against each and every aggression … we must speak and act according to the very dictates of conscience and conviction.”52

  No final decision ever resolved this debate. It rises anew, like the phoenix, every time some Jewish issue (most recently support for Israel) intrudes into a presidential campaign. The same intensity, many of the same arguments, and only differences in detail distinguish the debates in Grant’s day from those in our own. Then as now, the tensions inherent in the term “American Jew”—embracing responsibilities to country and to fellow Jews—heighten the challenge of casting a presidential ballot. Nor are Jews alone in facing this dilemma. Parallel tensions face members of almost every ethnic, religious, and special interest group. Weighing up competing claims, establishing priorities among one’s principles and concerns, and reaching a decision about whom to support can make voting an excruciatingly difficult if deeply self-revealing process.

  In 1868, many pundits expected that after weighing and balancing all of these different factors the majority of American Jews would vote against Ulysses S. Grant and in favor of Horatio Seymour. Self-interest, a cardinal principle of America’s individualistic ethos, seemed to demand no less. A journalist from the South who visited a national B’nai B’rith convention in late July 1868 reported that 90 percent of those in attendance “are heart and soul opposed to Grant.” The correspondent of the London Jewish Chronicle, that same month, informed his readers that American Jews were “uniting to defeat the election of General Grant because he ventured to insult their brethren and their faith.” By October, when many neutral observers were predicting that Grant would win the election, based on state and local election victories by Republicans in eight states, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, noticing the significance of Jewish votes in several key states, still offered the Democrats a ray of hope: “The Israelites in the States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and Indiana,” it declared, “have it entirely in their own power to secure the election of Seymour and Blair and the defeat of Grant and Colfax.” The St. Louis Times and Washington National Intelligencer agreed. Exaggerating the number of “Hebrew voters” by a factor of almost ten (“there are four or five hundred thousand Hebrew voters in the United States”), the newspapers predicted that “the Hebrew vote of the United States will certainly effect the overthrow of the dominant [Republican] party.”53

  Precisely such predictions, even if wildly exaggerated, had already moved Ulysses S. Grant to act. In response to a letter from an influential B’nai B’rith leader and lawyer, Adolph Moses of Illinois, a Confederate veteran, Grant on September 14 dispatched a private letter to their mutual friend, former congressman Isaac Newton Morris, in which he unequivocally distanced himself from General Orders No. 11 and forswore prejudice. The confidential letter was not published at the time. Grant, according to Simon Wolf, did not want the public to believe that “he was catering for the good wishes and possible votes of American citizens of the Jewish faith”—that, apparently, was acceptable for him to do in private but not in public. Still, leading Jews undoubtedly saw the letter. After reading it, Moses, probably at the urging of Grant’s staff, composed a long letter of his own that appeared on the front page of the New York Times (October 13, 1868) and in other newspapers, just as the election entered its home stretch. “I have … corresponded with Gen. Grant,” Moses announced dramatically, and Grant had made “a reparation.” Though Moses had earlier criticized Grant in print, he reported that having reviewed the question anew, he would now follow his “political inclinations” without reference to the “side issue” of Grant’s order. “The best interests of our country,” he proclaimed, “are subserved by the election of Gen. Grant, and I have no diffidence to declare it to the community.”54

  Just ten days later, a published letter in the New York Herald (October 23, 1868) from another wavering Jewish Republican, David Eckstein, a bookkeeper in Cincinnati, revealed that he actually had spoken to Grant for nearly two hours and was likewise now satisfied with the general’s response. Indeed, Grant’s explanations concerning General Orders No. 11 were, in Eckstein’s optimistic view, “sufficient to remove and obliterate every vestige of objection against him on the part of every fair-minded and reasonable Israelite.” He urged Jews to offer “hearty support” both to Grant and to “the party which put the General in nomination.”55

  What impact these and other last-minute endorsements made on Jewish voters is impossible to know. What really mattered were the results of the November 3 election, and when they were tallied, Grant emerged the winner by a healthy margin of 309,584 votes and 134 electoral votes. Except perhaps in New York, where Grant lost by precisely 10,000 votes and fraud was suspected, the Jewish vote could not have made much difference anywhere. Ohio and Pennsylvania, two states where Jewish voters were supposed to help the Democrats, both went Republican by comfortable margins. The vote in Indiana was closer, but the Jewish vote in that state was too small to make a difference. The more than 500,000 African American votes cast, especially in the South, most of which naturally went to Grant, made much more of a difference in the totals and may actually have swung the election in Grant’s favor.56

  Contemporaries disagreed as to how Jews finally voted. The Cleveland Daily Herald argued that Jews “were not deceived” by the campaign against Grant, “and very little attention was paid by them to the clamor.” The New York Times, by contrast, estimated that “nearly the entire body of voting Israelites” voted against Grant.57 All that we know for certain is that a young Jewish student at Yale University named Louis Ehrich, later a prominent collector and dealer of art, agonized over the question of how to cast his first presidential ballot. In the end, he voted Democratic. “My nation is too dear to me,” he explained in his diary, “to allow me to respect one who injured it.”58

  A fitting epilogue to the tumultuous battle for the Jewish vote appeared in newspapers across the country during the final week of November. With the election behind him, Ulysses S. Grant permitted his private letter to Isaac Newton Morris concerning General Orders No. 11 to be handed over to the press. It told Jews just what they wanted to hear from the president-elect: “I do not pretend to sustain the Order.” While Grant’s self-serving explanation—“The order was issued and sent without any reflection and without thinking of the Jews as a sect or race”—did not actually bear close scrutiny, Jews were thrilled with the general’s forthright, unambiguous, and appropriately italicized concluding declaration: “I have no prejudice against sect or race, but want each individual to be judged by his own merit. Order No. 11 does not sustain this statement, I admit, but then I do not sustain that order. It never would have been issued if it had not been telegraphed the moment it was penned, and without reflection.”59

  After months of bitter intern
ecine political battling, Jews cheerfully united in praise of Grant’s “noble and generous” letter, and understandably so. By declaring that “I do not sustain that order,” Grant confessed misdeed and allied with values that, in the Civil War’s wake, liberal Americans cherished above all others: freedom for all, malice toward none. Prejudice toward Jews, the president-elect had come to understand, was as unacceptable as prejudice toward Blacks. In atoning, his letter articulated a higher vision for Americans: “I … want each individual to be judged by his own merit.”

  Isaac Mayer Wise, who was the first to receive and publish Grant’s letter, felt sure that it “would be read with pleasure by all of our readers.” B’nai B’rith leader Benjamin F. Peixotto, who admitted to voting against Grant, rejoiced to the New York Times at how the letter “exonerates Gen. Grant from the imputation of prejudice and intolerance against the Jews, so long believed to be one of his characteristics.” The Occident, now edited by Mayer Sulzberger, a future Pennsylvania judge, perceptively viewed the letter as “a guide for those who so easily fall into [Grant’s] errors, but are so far from imitating his virtues.”60

  What the Times characterized as this “frank and manly confession” lifted the taint of “Haman” from upon Grant’s shoulders. It did much to rehabilitate his image in Jewish eyes, restored Jews’ confidence in the country’s ideals, and added to the spirit of buoyant optimism that characterized American Jewish life as a whole at this time. Across the United States in the late 1860s, Jews were building magnificent synagogues and temples and looking forward with eager anticipation to a glorious “new era” characterized by liberalism, universalism, and interreligious cooperation. In calling for individuals to be judged according to their own merit, Grant’s letter provided reassurance that he shared many of these same lofty goals.61