When the Jews Were Expelled from the Department of Tennessee
with a huge shout out to my cousin Chase, who directed me to this information
Tool: Crowdsourcing research
I woke up to an Instagram message from my fabulous cousin Chase, who pointed me toward a post about the time that Ulysses S. Grant expelled all the Jews from the Department of Tennessee (parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi under his command during the Civil War). It’s turned into a big, fruitful, and equally horrifying and charming research rabbit hole. Here are my initial findings.
The Story:
Cotton was to the Civil War what Russian oil has become to the war in Ukraine: both a source of economic leverage against the opposing force and a necessary commodity that the Union couldn’t completely do without. After initially disallowing all exports of cotton from the South, Lincoln conceded its necessity and allowed exports from Southern territories controlled by the Union in what Salmon P. Chase phrased as a policy “to let commerce follow the flag” (Ash 506). This trade attracted speculators, some—but certainly not the preponderance—of whom were Jewish. Press reports of the time describe the general lawlessness and corruption of the trade as these speculators rushed in, creating a significant issue for Grant in the Department of Tennessee.
According to a letter to his sister in mid-December 1862, Grant was disconsolate and despairing. This was, in some part, because he’d learned that his own father had formed a cotton speculating partnership with a group of Jewish merchants and had come down river to get a trading license from his son (Ash 510). Disgusted by the general lawlessness of the speculators, carrying as he did the cultural biases against Jews that were common in that (and many) eras, and discouraged to see his own father fall pray to the temptations of speculation, Grant issues a hasty decree to expel all the Jews from his area of control:
Head Quarters 13th Army Corps,
Department of the Tennessee,
Oxford, Miss. Dec. 17, 1862.
I.. The Jews, as a class, violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department, and also Department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department.
II.. Within twenty-four 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 any one 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 Head Quarters.
III.. No permits will be given these people to visit Head Quarters for the purpose of making personal application for trade permits.
By Order of Maj. Genl. U.S. Grant
It should be noted that this marks the only time Jews have been expelled from any part of the United States, and that many of those affected by this order had emigrated after being expelled from Prussia and other nations.
For the most part, this order was ignored beyond the immediate area of Mississippi where Grant’s command was housed. Some refused to follow it because they thought it was wrong, but more simply never heard of it or didn’t understand that it had any impact beyond the traders in Oxford, Mississippi. The one exception to this was in Paducah, Kentucky. The reasons that the Provost Marshall, L.J. Wardell, in Paducah was more willing to enforce this order than most others is complex, and I’ll probably explore it in the book, but it’s too convoluted to go into here. Suffice it to say that it was very tied to the social and political issues common in border regions during the war, and to the ways in which trade from these regions was tightly controlled by the Union.
Wardell ordered the thirty Jewish families living in Paducah, many of whom had been there for several generations, to leave within 24 hours or be imprisoned. Led by Cesar Kaskel, the Jews fled by riverboat toward DC (518). Kaskel, first by telegraph and then in person, asked President Lincoln to rescind the order. Lincoln was so shocked to hear of it that before he would do so, he insisted on having it confirmed—but once it was confirmed, he immediately rescinded it, stating “to condemn a class is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad.”
Lest we get too comfortable in the reassurance of that, in the weeks that followed assured General-in-Chief of the Army, Henry W. Halleck, write to Grant that the president had “no objection to your expelling traders & Jew pedlars, which I suppose was the object of your order” (520). (My mother can remember a friend’s grandmother in Hinton, WV, who referred to her as the “granddaughter of the Jew pedlar,” though certainly our family arrived after the Civil War and was never involved in cotton speculation.)
Two artifacts from my research this morning stuck out. The first is this political cartoon criticizing then President Grant’s fight to stop the Czar’s deportation of Jews from Russia:
It bears noting that during his presidency, Grant actually took significant action to demonstrate his commitment to being inclusive of American Jews. Writing for the Museum of Jewish People, Ushi Derman notes:
Four years later, in 1869, Grant became the 18th president of the United States, and turned from an anti-Semite to one of the most pro-Jewish presidents ever. He was the first president to inaugurate a new synagogue, he appointed the largest number of Jews in governmental positions and fought against the deportations of Jews in Russia by the Czar — only seven years after issuing General Order No. 11.
But my most favorite artifact from this search has been the Megillat Lincoln, a Purim Sheni scroll for the 13th of Tevet commemorating the revocation of Ulysses S. Grant’s General Order No 11 (1862). Below is a favorite passage, but I’d like to suggest some sort of wonderful, yearly celebration (perhaps a Jewgrass festival?) where we gather and celebrate the end of our excile from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
6:4 And now, the Returner of children to their borders, just as You returned the Jews of Tennessee and Mississippi and Kentucky from their exile to their land, thus return us to our land and let us rejoice in our borders.
Next year in Paducah!
Works Cited:
Ash, Stephen V. “Civil War Exodus: The Jews and Grant’s General Orders No. 11.” The Historian, vol. 44, no. 4, Wiley, 1982, pp. 505–23, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24446261.
Mayer, Isaac Gantwerk. “מְגִלַּת לִינְקוֹן: Megillat Lincoln, a Purim Sheni Scroll for the 13th of Tevet Commemorating the Revocation of Ulysses S. Grant's General Order № 11 (1862, 2020) • The Open Siddur Project ✍ פְּרוֺיֶּקט הַסִּדּוּר הַפָּתוּחַ.” The Open Siddur Project ✍ פְּרוֺיֶּקט הַסִּדּוּר הַפָּתוּחַ, The Open Siddur Project, 16 Dec. 2021, https://opensiddur.org/readings-and-sourcetexts/festival-and-fast-day-readings/jewish/purim-sheni-readings/megillat-lincoln-a-purim-sheni-megillah-in-commemoration-of-the-revocation-of-general-order-number-11/.
Ushi Derman, Beit Hatfutsot - The Museum of the Jewish People. “A Miserable Hanukkah in Kentucky: When Jews Were Almost Expelled from the American South.” Haaretz.com, Haaretz, 24 Apr. 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/MAGAZINE-when-jews-were-almost-expelled-from-the-american-south-1.5629057.
Loving these posts & would definitely come to the Jewgrass festival!