(Newspaper). The New York Times. Contains on p. 4: “General Grant and the Jews”

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

January 18th

New York

1863

On December 11th, 1862, in what has come to be regarded as perhaps the most blatant anti-Semitic action of 19th-century America, General Ulysses S. Grant issued Order No. 11 expelling all Jews from the administrative area of Tennessee, an area which included the states of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi. Grant’s Order was in response to allegations that Jews were the main black-market traders in Southern cotton. Jews were given only 24 hours to leave their homes as a result of the Order. Efforts to overturn Grant’s order began immediately, with both Jews and non-Jews appealing to President Abraham Lincoln, urging that Grant’s decree be rescinded. Public rallies protesting the expulsion were held in Cincinnati, St. Louis and Louisville. The order was only in effect for a little over two weeks before it was rescinded by Lincoln. Nevertheless, public discussion of this affair continued unabated for quite some time. This editorial, strongly supporting the Jews and excoriating Grant, appeared in The New York Times on January 18th, 1863. The Times attacked the order first for its “atrocious disregard” for the rules of English grammar and only then proclaimed that “All swindlers are not Jews. All Jews are not swindlers,” before proceeding to declare that the war had brought out in many a gentile “degrees of rascality… that might put the most accomplished Shylocks to the blush.” Finally, on a practical note, the newspaper pointed out that Grant’s order, could have chilled relationships with certain powerful European Jews, mentioning the Rothschilds and their financial dynasty by name. See J. D. Sarna, When General Grant Expelled the Jews (2012) p. 24.