c The issue became an episode in a much larger debate in American Jewish life over the Jewish Sabbath, how to observe it, and whether it should be transferred to Sunday. Reform rabbis who cast off many proscriptions of Jewish law made fun of Browne, observing that even by walking such a long distance and carrying an umbrella, he was violating Jewish Sabbath restrictions. Orthodox rabbis, by contrast, presented Browne with a gold medal bearing the inscription Boruch mekadesh HaShabos—“blessed be he who sanctifies the Sabbath.” American Israelite (August 14, 1885); Janice Rothschild Blumberg, “Voices for Justice: Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild in Atlanta (1946–1973) and Edward B. M. Browne in New York (1881–1889),” online at http://spinner.cofc.edu/~jwst/pages/Blumberg,%20Janice%20-%20VOICES%20FOR%20JUSTICE%20++.pdf?referrer=webcluster& (accessed July 5, 2010).
CHRONOLOGY
1492 Jews of Spain are expelled by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Any who remain are required to convert to Christianity and subject to the Inquisition, which seeks out and executes crypto-Jews.
Christopher Columbus sets out on a voyage funded by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, seeking a shorter route to India. He alights upon North America instead.
1630 The Netherlands capture Pernambuco, Brazil, from the Portuguese and invites Jewish settlement. A significant Jewish community develops in Recife.
1654 Portugal recaptures Brazil and expels Jews and Protestants. While most Jews return to the Netherlands, a boatload of twenty-three Jews, mostly of Iberian descent, sails into New Amsterdam.
1655 Jews win the right to settle in New Amsterdam and establish a Jewish community.
1678 Jewish cemetery set up in Newport, Rhode Island.
1730 New York Jews build North America’s first synagogue, Shearith Israel, on Mill Street.
1763 Newport Jews dedicate Yeshuat Israel Synagogue. Later known as the Touro Synagogue, it is the only surviving colonial synagogue structure.
1776 The Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence. The War of Independence follows.
1788 Ratification of the United States Constitution permits Jews to hold federal office.
1790 George Washington visits Newport and, in response to an address from its Jews, describes religious liberty as an inherent natural right. He declares that the government of the United States offers “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
December 15, 1791 The Bill of Rights, which comprises the first ten amendments to the Constitution, is ratified. The First Amendment forbids Congress from making any laws “respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
April 27, 1822 Hiram Ulysses Grant is born to Jesse Root Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant in Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio.
May 29, 1839 Grant enters the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He is registered incorrectly as Ulysses Simpson Grant and uses that name going forward.
1840 Prominent Syrian Jews are falsely accused of the ritual murder of an Italian monk in Damascus; American Jews lobby for the U.S. government to intercede on their behalf.
September 30, 1843 Having graduated from West Point in the middle of his class (twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine), Grant reports for duty at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri.
1843 Establishment of the Jewish fraternal organization B’nai B’rith, which aims to preserve Jewish life on the basis of the covenantal ties linking Jews to one another.
April 25, 1846 Mexico declares war on the United States after Zachary Taylor’s army, in which Grant is serving, crosses disputed territory.
May 30, 1848 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo marks the end of the Mexican War.
August 22, 1848 Grant marries Julia Dent in St. Louis, Missouri.
November 1848 Grant is assigned to a barracks in Sackets Harbor, New York. In nearby Watertown, New York, he meets and befriends Jesse and Henry Seligman at their dry goods store.
1853 Isaac Leeser, America’s foremost traditional Jewish religious leader and the editor of The Occident, completes his translation of the Bible into English. It is the first complete Anglo-Jewish translation of the Bible.
1854 Isaac Mayer Wise, who immigrated to the United States in 1846, assumes a rabbinical pulpit in Cincinnati, promising to shape an American form of Judaism. He begins to publish the Israelite (later American Israelite) newspaper.
April 11, 1854 Grant resigns from the army.
Summer 1854 Grant settles on the Dent family farm in Missouri.
1858 Cesar Kaskel emigrates from Prussia to America, settling in Paducah, Kentucky.
1858–59 American Jews join Jews worldwide in campaigning for the release of Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish boy who had been secretly baptized by a Catholic maid and then seized by the Catholic Church.
1859 Board of Delegates of American Israelites founded “to keep a watchful eye on all occurrences at home and abroad” and to collect statistics. It represents less than a fifth of America’s synagogues.
February 1, 1860 Rabbi Morris J. Raphall becomes the first Jewish clergyman to offer a prayer at the opening of a session of Congress.
Spring 1860 Grant moves to Galena, Illinois, where he works in his father’s dry goods store.
December 20, 1860 South Carolina secedes from the United States following the election of Abraham Lincoln; ten additional Southern states secede over the next six months.
March 4, 1861 Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated president of the United States.
April 12, 1861 Southern forces open fire on the Union fortifications at Fort Sumter, igniting what will become the Civil War.
May 4, 1861 Grant becomes commanding officer at Camp Yates, Springfield, Illinois.
July 31, 1861 Ulysses S. Grant nominated by Abraham Lincoln as brigadier general. The Senate confirms the appointment on August 5.
September 6, 1861 Grant and the Union army occupy Paducah, Kentucky.
September 17, 1861 Judah P. Benjamin named acting secretary of war of the Confederate States of America; he was subsequently confirmed in that position and in 1862 was named secretary of state.
February 1862 Grant’s forces capture Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee, opening the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers to the Union army; Grant promoted to major general.
June 6, 1862 Union forces capture Memphis, Tennessee. Grant establishes his military headquarters there on June 23.
July 17, 1862 Military chaplaincy law amended. Instead of restricting chaplains to ministers of “some Christian denomination,” the chaplaincy is now opened up to ministers of “some religious denomination,” including rabbis.
July 26, 1862 Grant orders the commander of the District of Mississippi to examine the baggage of all south-bound speculators, especially Jews.
October 25, 1862 Grant assumes command over the Department of the Tennessee, extending from Cairo, Illinois, to northern Mississippi, bounded by the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers.
November 9–10, 1862 As he prepares to move south, Grant restricts permits for Jews to enter the Department of the Tennessee.
November 29, 1862 Grant establishes headquarters at Holly Springs, Mississippi.
December 8, 1862 Colonel John Van Deusen Du Bois orders “All Cotton-Speculators [and] Jews” to leave Holly Springs, Mississippi. Grant overturns the order.
December 17, 1862 Grant issues General Orders No. 11, expelling all Jews from the territory under his command.
December 20, 1862 Confederate general Earl Van Dorn attacks Grant’s forces at Holly Springs, cutting rail and telegraph lines and destroying supplies.
December 28, 1862 Pursuant to Grant’s General Orders No. 11, all Jews are expelled from Paducah, Kentucky. Cesar Kaskel and others respond by sending an urgent telegram to President Lincoln.
December 30, 1862 The story of the expulsion of the Jews appears in several newspapers.
December 31, 1862 General in Chief Henry Halleck reads Kaskel’s telegram.
January 1, 1863 Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipati
on Proclamation, freeing all Confederate-held slaves.
January 3, 1863 Kaskel arrives in Washington, D.C. Accompanied by ousted Cincinnati congressman John Addison Gurley, he successfully appeals to Lincoln to countermand Grant’s order.
January 4, 1863 On Lincoln’s instruction, Halleck orders Grant to revoke the order.
January 5, 1863 Senator Lazarus Powell of Kentucky proposes a resolution in the Senate denouncing General Orders No. 11.
January 6, 1863 On Halleck’s instruction, Grant revokes General Orders No. 11.
January 7, 1863 Representative George H. Pendleton of Ohio proposes a resolution in the House of Representatives denouncing General Orders No. 11.
A delegation of Jewish leaders including Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise meets with President Lincoln to thank him for revoking the order. Lincoln reiterates that he “knows of no distinction between Jew and Gentile” and declares that he does “not like to hear a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.”
January 9, 1863 U.S. Senate tables a resolution rebuking Grant for General Orders No. 11.
July 4, 1863 Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrenders to Grant’s forces, ending a seven-week siege. The victory gives the Union control over the entire Mississippi River and splits the Confederacy in two.
February 11, 1864 A delegation from the National Reform Association approaches Lincoln seeking his support for a constitutional amendment that would make America an explicitly Christian country.
March 9, 1864 Grant, a national hero, is promoted to the rank of lieutenant general, previously held by George Washington. He is assigned to command the armies of the United States.
November 8, 1864 Abraham Lincoln elected to a second term as president.
April 9, 1865 Robert E. Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
April 14, 1865 Abraham Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth and dies the next day.
1866 Grant moves to Washington, D.C., and is appointed general of the armies of the United States.
May 21, 1868 Grant wins the Republican nomination for the presidency.
May 26, 1868 Impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson ends; he is acquitted by one vote.
May 29, 1868 Grant accepts the nomination for president of the United States.
July 9, 1868 Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil.
July 1868 Reports circulate that large numbers of Jews are planning to vote against Grant on account of General Orders No. 11.
September 14, 1868 In a private letter to former Illinois congressman Isaac Newton Morris, Grant disavows General Orders No. 11. Morris shares the letter with B’nai B’rith leader Adolph Moses.
October 13, 1868 Adolph Moses declares his support for Grant in a letter published in the New York Times.
November 3, 1868 Grant is elected president of the United States.
November 27–30, 1868 Newspapers publish and celebrate Grant’s letter declaring that he did not sustain General Orders No. 11, was free of prejudice, and wanted “each individual to be judged by his own merit.”
March 4, 1869 Grant is inaugurated as the eighteenth president of the United States.
April 17, 1869 Grant nominates Simon Wolf to the position of recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia; in this capacity he also advises Grant on Jewish matters.
April 20, 1869 Rabbi Haim Zvi Sneersohn visits Grant in the White House, blesses him, and calls for the replacement of America’s consul to Jerusalem, Victor Beauboucher, as well as for support of the Jews in the Holy Land.
1869 Some two thousand Jews are expelled from the Bessarabian frontier, in accordance with an 1825 Russian law that forbids Jews from living near Russia’s borders. American Jews ask Grant to intercede on behalf of their coreligionists and he agrees to do so. The expulsion order is revoked.
September 24, 1869 “Black Friday” spells the end of an audacious effort by Jay Gould and James Fisk to corner the market in gold. Since Grant hinted to his friends the Seligmans that they should disassociate themselves from Gould, they emerge unscathed.
January 10, 1870 Grant appoints Wolf’s friend Edward S. Salomon governor of the Washington Territory.
February 3, 1870 Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which guarantees voting rights to citizens of all races.
June 1870 Reports of massacres of Jews in Romania reach the American public; American Jews campaign for a U.S. consul to Romania who can help ease the situation.
June 29, 1870 Grant’s nomination of Benjamin F. Peixotto as consul to Romania approved by the Senate.
January 12, 1871 Grant’s appointment of Dr. Herman Bendell, a Jew, as superintendent of Indian affairs for the Arizona Territory is approved by the Senate, notwithstanding the government’s stated policy of “Christianization” for Native Americans.
January 1872 Salomon tenders his resignation after having been caught embezzling funds.
November 4, 1872 Grant wins reelection, carrying thirty-one of thirty-seven states.
July 8, 1873 Founding conference, in Cincinnati, of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, an umbrella organization of synagogues dedicated to preserving Judaism and encouraging Jewish education (today known as the Union for Reform Judaism).
September 30, 1875 Grant, in an address to the Army of the Tennessee reunion in Des Moines, champions church-state separation and nonsectarian public education.
October 3, 1875 Opening of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the first successful rabbinical seminary in America.
June 9, 1876 Grant attends dedication of Adas Israel, an Orthodox synagogue in Washington, D.C., becoming the first American president to attend a synagogue dedication.
July 12, 1876 Grant meets his former antagonist Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise when welcoming leaders of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations at the White House.
March 5, 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes inaugurated following a disputed election; Grant leaves the White House.
May 17, 1877 Grant, with his wife and son, embarks on a world tour.
June 13, 1877 Wealthy Jewish banker Joseph Seligman, a friend of Grant’s, is excluded from the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York, on account of his religion, sparking a national outcry.
February 11–17, 1878 Grant and party tour the Holy Land; he is the first American president ever to visit there.
December 16, 1879 Grant completes his world tour in Philadelphia; he settles in New York and becomes an investment banker.
March 13, 1881 Assassination of Tsar Alexander II sparks an orgy of anti-Jewish violence in Russia and stimulates Jewish immigration to the United States.
May 17, 1881 President Garfield appoints Frederick Douglass to the position of recorder of deeds.
February 1, 1882 Public meeting in support of Russia’s persecuted Jews, endorsed by Grant.
April 13, 1885 Grant, suffering from cancer, receives the well wishes of “the Rabbis of New York and adjacent States.”
July 23, 1885 Grant is pronounced dead at 8:08 a.m. Jews join in national mourning.
August 8, 1885 Grant is entombed in New York; Rabbi Edward Benjamin Morris Browne is among the pallbearers. Since it is the Jewish Sabbath, he walks the seven-and-a-half-mile route from City Hall to the place of entombment.
January 2, 1887 Jewish Theological Seminary opens in New York to serve “Jews of America faithful to Mosaic law and ancestral tradition.” Over time it becomes the training ground for Conservative rabbis.
March 8, 1897 Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary incorporated in New York, the first advanced Talmudic academy in the United States. Now part of Yeshiva University, it trains Orthodox rabbis.
April 27, 1897 Grant’s Tomb is opened in New York’s Riverside Park. Jews participate in the “Grant parade” that marks the occasion, and Rabbi Joseph Silverman in advance of the event delivers a stirring sermon on “Let Us Have Peace.”
1906 President Theodore Roosevelt appoints Oscar S. Stra
us to the position of secretary of commerce and labor, making him the first Jew to hold a cabinet position.
1912 Henrietta Szold founds Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.
1916 Louis Brandeis, the “people’s lawyer” and, since 1914, the leader of the Zionist movement, becomes America’s first Jewish Supreme Court justice.
1924 Johnson-Reed Act passes. It goes into effect the next year, significantly limiting immigration to the United States and privileging immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. Average Jewish immigration to the United States plummets from almost 100,000 per year to just over 8,000.
1925 Jewish population in America reaches approximately 4 million out of 115 million, or 3.5 percent of the U.S. population.
NOTES
Abbreviations and Short Titles
AJA American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio
AJA American Jewish Archives (Journal)
AJHS American Jewish Historical Society, New York
EJ Encyclopaedia Judaica (1972, 2007)
OR The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901; online at http://digital.library.cornell.edu/m/moawar/waro.html
PAJHS Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society
PUSG The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon, 31 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967–2009; online at http://digital.library.msstate.edu/collections/index.php?CISOROOT=/usgrant
Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War. Bertram Wallace Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War. New York: Atheneum, 1970.
McFeely, Grant. William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981.
Panitz, Simon Wolf. Esther L. Panitz, Simon Wolf: Private Conscience and Public Image. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1987.
Smith, Grant. Jean Edward Smith, Grant. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Wolf, Presidents I Have Known. Simon Wolf, The Presidents I Have Known from 1860–1918. Washington, D.C.: Press of Byron S. Adams, 1918.
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