When General Grant Expelled the Jews

by Jonathan D. Sarna

  32. Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters: Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Selected Letters, 1839–1865 (New York: Library of America, 1990), 266–67; Grant to Salmon P. Chase (July 31, 1862), reprinted in ibid., 1010–11.

  33. PUSG 6, p. 238; 7, p. 52n; 6, p. 283 (and note); 6, pp. 393–94.

  34. PUSG 7, pp. 8–9. In 1868, Du Bois claimed that his “order was revoked by Gen Grant and I was relieved from command on account of it.” Du Bois to Editor of the Morning Chronicle, Washington, D.C. (September 29, 1868), typescript in Civil War Documents, Jacob R. Marcus Papers, AJA.

  35. Lee M. Friedman, “Something Additional on General Grant’s Order Number 11,” PAJHS 40 (December 1950): 184–86; Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, 140–43; Israelite 9 (February 6, 1863), 244; PUSG 7, p. 51n (“no orders authorizing or encouraging General Orders No. 11 have been found”); see Louis I. Newman, “David Eckstein,” ms. 99 8/10, AJA, for the claim that Eckstein had seen the telegram to Grant; and for Rosewater’s rebuttal, see Omaha Bee (July 27, 1885), 4; American Israelite (August 7, 1885), 4.

  36. Eli Evans, “The War Between Jewish Brothers in America,” in Jews and the Civil War, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 43–45; Israelite 15, no. 22 (December 4, 1868): 4; Hamagid 7 (February 12, 1863): 84; U. S. Grant to C. P. Wolcott (December 17, 1862) in PUSG 7, pp. 56–57; Cadwallader, Three Years with Grant, 22–23.

  37. Much of our knowledge of this scheme comes from Jesse R. Grant’s unsuccessful lawsuit against the Macks, reported in Cincinnati papers on May 17, 1864, and re-printed with minor differences in Matthew Carey Jr., comp., The Democratic Speaker’s Hand-book: Containing Every Thing Necessary for the Defense of the National Democracy in the Upcoming Presidential Campaign, and for the Assault of the Radical Enemies of the Country and Its Constitution, comp. Matthew Carey Jr. (Cincinnati: Miami Print and Publishing Company, 1868), 42–43 (available online at http://www.archive.org/details/democraticspeak00firgoog) and in New York Daily Tribune (September 19, 1872) (copy in AJA). Journalist Sylvanus Cadwallader, who was present when Jesse R. Grant visited, left an account in his manuscript memoirs, “Forty Years with Grant,” 47–49, found in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois, which kindly provided me with a scan; most of the text is quoted in Earl Schenck Miers, The Web of Victory (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), 54–57, and in Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, 277–78 (who dismissed the account). Another eyewitness, General James Harrison Wilson, provided a similar account (and a similar psychological explanation) in a late-nineteenth-century interview quoted in McFeely, Grant, 123–24. PUSG 7, p. 53, reviews other evidence; see also John Simon, “That Obnoxious Order,” in Jews and the Civil War: A Reader, eds. Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 357–58; and, for background on Henry Mack, Michael W. Rich, “Henry Mack: An Important Figure in Nineteenth-Century American Jewish History,” AJA 47 (1995): 261–79. Frankland, “Kronikals of the Times,” 104, excoriates “David Mack” for misdeeds in Memphis and claims that he was in league with Jesse Grant.

  38. Frederick D. Grant to Isaac Markens (December 8, 1907) in Isaac Markens, Abraham Lincoln and the Jews (New York: printed for the author, 1909), 16.

  39. Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant, 107.

  40. Hamagid 7 (February 12, 1863): 84, 131–32 (translation mine).

  3. The Election of 1868

  1. On Wolf, see Panitz, Simon Wolf, and John C. Livingston, “Wolf, Simon,” http://www.anb.org/articles/08/08–01694.html; American National Biography Online, February 2000 (accessed December 7, 2009).

  2. Simon Wolf, Selected Addresses and Papers of Simon Wolf (Cincinnati: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1926), 281.

  3. The History of Tuscarawas, County, Ohio… (Chicago: Warner, Beers & Co., 1884), 378, online at http://www.heritagepursuit.com/Tuscarawas/TuscarawasChapIX.htm.

  4. Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, quote is from p. 6; see Abigail Green, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 134.

  5. Ibid., 12; Wolf’s letter was reprinted in The Occident 20 (February–March 1863): 496–97.

  6. Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 10–11; Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, 169–71.

  7. Grant’s ascent may be traced through John Y. Simon’s “Ulysses S. Grant Chronology,” available online at http://library.msstate.edu/usgrant/chronology.asp (accessed December 8, 2009).

  8. Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 64.

  9. Ibid.

  10. New York Herald (April 13, 1841), 2; see Jonathan D. Sarna, Jacksonian Jew: The Two Worlds of Mordecai Noah (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981), 101; William Prendergast, The Catholic Voter in American Politics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1999), 37–41; Charles P. Connor, “Archbishop Hughes and Midcentury Politics, 1844–1860,” U.S. Catholic Historian 3 (Fall–Winter 1983): 167–77.

  11. William Pencak, Jews and Gentiles in Early America, 1654–1800 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 16–17, 133–34, 240–45.

  12. Wolf, Selected Addresses and Papers, 104–5. When Wolf changed his mind and supported Grant, these words were used against him; see New York Evening Express as reprinted in Daily Arkansas Gazette (August 23, 1868), issue 218, col. E.

  13. Israelite (February 28, 1868), 4; also reprinted in Daily Arkansas Gazette (March 8, 1868), col. B.

  14. “General Grant and the Jews,” Flemingsburg Democrat (March 6, 1868), online at http://alpha3.jtsa.edu:8997/aleph_images/naj/077_1868_0319_01a.pdf.

  15. New York World (March 24, 1868) as quoted in Ph. Von Bort, General Grant and the Jews (New York: National News Company, 1868), 5; Daily Memphis Avalanche (March 10, 1868), 4; St. Louis Dispatch, as reprinted in the Savannah Daily News and Herald (March 24, 1868), col. B. Also see Chicago Times (September 18, 1868) and Joakim Isaacs, “Candidate Grant and the Jews,” AJA 17 (1965):6, which takes the story at face value.

  16. McFeely, Grant, 273.

  17. Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant, ed. John Y. Simon (New York: Putnam, 1975), 171 (quoted); McFeely, Grant, 276–77; Martin E. Mantell, Johnson, Grant and the Politics of Reconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 97–100.

  18. A facsimile of the statement may be found online at http://faculty.css.edu/mkelsey/usgrant/facs.html. Printed texts contain minor errors that I have corrected based on this original.

  19. A. E. Frankland, “Kronikals of the Times—Memphis, 1862,” AJA 9 (October 1957):104.

  20. Von Bort, General Grant and the Jews, 16. The pamphlet is signed “A Jew,” and the otherwise unknown “Ph. Von Bort” is apparently a pseudonym.

  21. Mantell, Johnson, Grant and the Politics of Reconstruction, 113–28; more generally on the 1868 campaign, see John Hope Franklin, “Election of 1868,” in History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Fred L. Israel, 4 vols. (New York: Chelsea House, 1971), 2:1247–1300, and Charles H. Coleman, The Election of 1868: The Democratic Effort to Regain Control (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933).

  22. The Democratic Speaker’s Hand-book: Containing Every Thing Necessary for the Defense of the National Democracy in the Upcoming Presidential Campaign, and for the Assault of the Radical Enemies of the Country and Its Constitution, comp. Matthew Carey Jr. (Cincinnati: Miami Printing and Publishing Company, 1868), available online at http://www.archive.org/details/democraticspeak00firgoog), iii, 5; David Quigley, Second Founding: New York City, Reconstruction and the Making of American Democracy (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 44.

  23. John A. Rawlins to Lewis N. Dembitz (May 6, 1868), published as “Gen. Grant and the Jews,” New York Times (June 22, 1868), 5; Boston Daily Advertiser (June 23, 1868), issue 149, col. F; Cincinnati Daily Gazette (June 20, 1868), 2. On Rawlins and Dembitz, see American National Biography.

  24. Adam Ba
deau to Simon Wolf (April 22, 1868), Simon Wolf Papers, AJHS, N.Y.; the letter is reprinted with slight punctuation changes in Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 65–66.

  25. Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 63, 69, 70; Panitz, Simon Wolf, 34.

  26. George S. Hellman, The Story of the Seligmans (typescript, Jacob R. Marcus Papers, box 476, AJA), I, 121a; Linton Wells, The House of Seligman (typescript, Collection 475, box 2, AJA), I, 132; Ross L. Muir and Carl J. White, Over the Long Term: The Story of J. & W. Seligman & Co. (New York: J. & W. Seligman, 1964), 38, 39, 42, 57.

  27. New York Times (June 12, 1868), 5.

  28. Joseph Medill to Elihu B. Washburne (June 16, 1868), Washburne Mss., Library of Congress, as reprinted in Isaacs, “Candidate Grant and the Jews,” 9–10; PUSG 19, p. 20.

  29. Isaacs, “Candidate Grant and the Jews,” 9–10; U. S. Grant to I. N. Morris (September 14, 1868), PUSG 19, pp. 37–39; see also pp. 17–21 and 26–27.

  30. Irving Katz, “Belmont, August,” American National Biography Online, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04–00092.html (accessed December 27, 2009); David Black, The King of Fifth Avenue: The Fortunes of August Belmont (New York: Dial Press, 1981), esp. 292–93.

  31. The Democratic Speaker’s Hand-book, 28–31, 34–35, 42–43; see also 380, 383.

  32. The story (“Why Grant Dislikes the Jews”) was published, among other places, in the Israelite (June 12, 1868), 2; Daily Arkansas Gazette (June 10, 1868), issue 155, col. B, and the Salt Lake Daily Telegraph (June 17, 1868), issue 298, col. A. Rosenthal’s rejoinder (“Grant and the Jews—A Falsehood Exposed”) was reprinted in the Daily Cleveland Herald (June 5, 1868), issue 135, col. C, and The Daily Miners’ Register (June 13, 1868), issue 275, col. D.

  33. The Charleston Courier (July 28, 1868), col. D.

  34. La Crosse Daily Democrat (August 19, 1868), as quoted in Isaacs, “Candidate Grant and the Jews,” 9.

  35. Notes concerning the Corinth Caucasian I:1 (July 9, 1868), which recalled General Orders No. 11 in its very first issue, may be found in Bertram W. Korn Papers, box 6, AJA.

  36. New York Democratic Platform as quoted in James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 560; The Lives of Horatio Seymour and Frank P. Blair: Campaign Edition (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Bros., 1868), 52, 61. The volume is available online at http://ia311303.us.archive.org/3/items/livesofhoratiose00phil/livesofhoratiose00phil.pdf.

  37. The Lives of Horatio Seymour and Frank P. Blair, 90.

  38. The cartoon and an accompanying commentary may be found online at http://blackhistory.harpweek.com/7Illustrations/Reconstruction/ThisIsAWhiteMansGov.htm. Although most Irish allied with the Democrats, both parties actually engaged in ethnic appeals to them; see Coleman, Election of 1868, 302–4. Colfax’s former ties to the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing Party were trumpeted by Democrats in a bid for Irish votes; see The Democratic Speaker’s Hand-book, 44–45, 368.

  39. The letter originally appeared in the Boston Transcript (August 6, 1868) and was reprinted in Little Rock’s Morning Republican (August 22, 1868), Milwaukee Daily Sentinel (September 10, 1868), and “all over the United States”; see Wolf’s Presidents I Have Known, 67–70.

  40. Boston Daily Advertiser (August 18, 1868), issue 42, col. B.

  41. London Jewish Chronicle (September 25, 1868), 2. Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, 134, notes that Ezekiel’s life was threatened after his letter appeared; Hebrew Leader (September 11, 1868), 4. On Moses Ezekiel, see Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), 123–24.

  42. “General Grant and the Jews,” [Washington, D.C.] Daily National Intelligencer (July 25, 1868), issue 17,445, col. G; see Judy G. Ringel, Children of Israel: The Story of Temple Israel, Memphis, Tennessee: 1854–2004 (Memphis: Temple Israel Books, 2004), 15. For Nashville, see Fedora S. Frank, “Nashville Jewry During the Civil War,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 39 (1980): 321–22; both gatherings were noticed in The Democratic Speaker’s Hand-book, 380, 383.

  43. Steven Hertzberg, Strangers Within the Gate City: The Jews of Atlanta (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1978), 156. For St. Louis, see Adolph Moses’s criticism of their meeting in New York Times (October 13, 1858), 1; for Los Angeles, see Max Vorspan and Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Los Angeles (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1970), 47–48, and Norton B. Stern, “Los Angeles Jewish Voters During Grant’s First Presidential Race,” Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 13 (1981): 179–85.

  44. See, generally, Jonathan D. Sarna and David G. Dalin, Religion and State in the American Jewish Experience (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997); and Bertram W. Korn, The American Reaction to the Mortara Case, 1858–1859 (Cincinnati: AJA, 1957).

  45. Moses Gaster, History of the Ancient Synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews (London: n.p., 1901), 88; Kinship and Consent: The Jewish Political Tradition and Its Contemporary Uses, ed. Daniel J. Elazar (Ramat Gan, Israel: Turtledove, 1981), esp. 273–75.

  46. Naomi W. Cohen, Encounter with Emancipation: The German Jews in the United States, 1830–1914 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984), 129–58, esp. 129–30.

  47. “General Grant and the Jews,” [Washington, D.C.] Daily National Intelligencer (July 25, 1868), issue 17,445, col. G.

  48. Cohen, Encounter with Emancipation, 129–58; for a parallel discussion concerning the attitudes toward politics of the great Jewish leader Louis Marshall, see David G. Dalin, “Louis Marshall, the Jewish Vote, and the Republican Party,” Jewish Political Studies Review 4 (September 1992): 55–84.

  49. Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 67–70.

  50. Jewish Messenger (June 5, 1868); New York Times (June 14, September 10, October 13, 1868); Daily Cleveland Herald (June 11, 1868).

  51. Liebman Adler, “Grant and the Israelites, Views of Our Intelligent Hebrews,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel (August 7, 1868), issue 187, col. D. The article originally appeared in the Illinois Staatszeitung and was also reprinted in the Missouri Democrat. Isaacs, “Candidate Grant and the Jews,” 12–13, did not realize that the article was by Liebman Adler. On Adler, see Joan Weil Saltzstein, ed., Liebman Adler: His Life Through His Letters (privately published, 1975), esp. 92.

  52. “The General Grant Question,” Israelite (June 26, 1868), 4, available online at http://www.americanjewisharchives.org/wise/attachment/3472/TIS-1868-06-26-001.pdf (accessed January 4, 2010).

  53. The Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly (July 28, 1868), col. D; London Jewish Chronicle (July 24, 1868); Cleveland Plain Dealer (October 20, 1868). Also quoted and rebutted in Daily Cleveland Herald (October 21, 1868), issue 241, col. B, and St. Louis Times as quoted in [Washington, D.C.] Daily National Intelligencer (October 24, 1868), issue 17,523, col. B.

  54. New York Times (October 13, November 29, 1868); Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 66; Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, 135–36; PUSG 19, pp. 37–39. Congressman Morris explained to Isaac M. Wise that publication of the letter “during the pendency of the election would have cast suspicion on the motive which prompted it,” Israelite (November 27, 1868), 4.

  55. New York Herald (October 23, 1868); Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, 137; Louis I. Newman, “David Eckstein,” ms. 99 8/10, AJA; PUSG 19, pp. 25–27. The documents used by Newman suggest that Eckstein hoped for some “advantage” as reward for his efforts on Grant’s behalf. On Eckstein, see American Israelite (March 15, 1878), 4, and Louis I. Newman, “Eckstein, David,” Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, 1941), 3:622.

  56. Coleman, Election of 1868, 384; Mantell, Johnson, Grant and the Politics of Reconstruction, 143–49; Franklin, “Election of 1868,” 2:1265–66, 1300.

  57. Cleveland Herald (December 2, 1869); New York Times (November 30, 1868), 4.

  58. “Diary of Louis Ehrich,” April 6, 1868, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, as quoted in Jonathan D. Sar
na, “A Jewish Student in Nineteenth-Century America: The Diary of Louis Ehrich—Yale ’69,” in Jews in New Haven, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna (New Haven, Conn.: Jewish Historical Society of New Haven, 1978), 75.

  59. The letter was first published in the Israelite (November 27, 1868), 4, and I have used that text, complete with its original italicization. The New York Times (November 30, 1868) deleted the italics; see also The Occident 26 (December 1868): 440, and Grant’s original text, without italics, in PUSG 19, p. 37.

  60. Israelite (November 27, 1868), 4; New York Times (December 13, 1868), 3; The Occident 26 (December 1868): 440.

  61. New York Times (November 30, 1868), 4; Sarna, American Judaism, 124–25.

  4. “To Prove Impartiality Towards Israelites”

  1. Brooks D. Simpson, The Reconstruction Presidents (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 133.

  2. Grant’s first inaugural address (March 4, 1869) may be found online at http://bartleby.com/124/pres33.html.

  3. Heather Cox Richardson, “North and West of Reconstruction: Studies in Political Economy,” in Reconstructions: New Perspectives on the Post-Bellum United States, ed. Thomas J. Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 66–90, esp. 69; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 257.

  4. Harry S. Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the American Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006), 147; Morton Borden, Jews, Turks and Infidels (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 58–74; Naomi W. Cohen, Jews in Christian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 65–72. Jim Allison, “The NRA and the Christian Amendment,” http://candst.tripod.com/nra.htm (accessed February 1, 2010), reproduces the basic documents; see also The Occident 22 (January 1865): 433–45.