GRANT WANTED TO EXPEL JEWS IN SOUTH, BUT LINCOLN SAID NO

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STEVE AFTERGOOD, SECRECY NEWS - In a remarkable episode from the Civil
War that is not as widely known as it might be, General Ulysses S. Grant
issued Order No. 11 on December 17, 1862 expelling all Jews from
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, where his forces had taken the
field.

Equally remarkable, President Lincoln did not say he would "stand by"
his generals or that "we must give the military the tools it needs" to
accomplish its mission.  Instead, he rescinded the order.

A century-old account of General Grant's short-lived ban on Jews has
recently been published online.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln repeatedly suspended habeas
corpus and authorized other serious infringements on civil liberties.
But there are some things that are not done in America, it appears, even
when the survival of the nation is at stake.  This was one of them.

General Grant's action was not entirely irrational and prejudice-driven.
An estimated 25,000 of the nation's 150,000 Jews lived in the South and
were loyal to the Confederacy, according to a 2005 Library of Congress
exhibition.  And some Jewish merchants would "roam through the country
contrary to government regulations," Grant complained.

"The President has no objection to your expelling traitors and Jew
peddlers which I suppose was the object of your order," wrote Gen. Henry
Halleck to Gen. Grant, somewhat inelegantly.  "But as it in terms
proscribed an entire religious class, some of whom are fighting in our
ranks, the President deems it necessary to revoke it."

The story received only cursory, two-sentence treatment in the
preeminent Lincoln biography ("Lincoln") by David Herbert Donald. . .

And Grant himself did not mention Order No. 11 in his Memoirs.  He
deliberately omitted it, his son explained in a 1907 letter, because
"that was a matter long past and best not referred to."

To the contrary, however, this principled exercise of restraint by the
President in time of war seems well worth remembering and pondering
today, when basic civil liberties are again in dispute. (At his
confirmation hearing, Attorney General-nominee Michael Mukasey was
unable or unwilling to categorically reject the possibility of
indefinite detention of an American citizen without trial.)

The most detailed account of the origins and aftermath of General
Grant's Order No. 11 expelling the Jews from the areas under his control
seems to be a 1909 book entitled "Abraham Lincoln and the Jews,"
self-published by author Isaac Markens (pp. 10-17). hat book, long out
of print, was recently digitized and published by Google Books and is
now freely available here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=-OxMjGRkFXwC&printsec=titlepage

PS: In 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant was an honored guest at the
dedication of Adas Israel, which is now the largest Conservative
synagogue in Washington, DC.

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