General Order No. 11 (1862)

11 was a Union Army order issued by Major-General Ulysses S. Grant on December 17, 1862, during the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War.

Grant issued the order in an effort to reduce corruption among Union Army personnel and stop the illicit trade in Southern-produced cotton, which he perceived as being run "mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders".

Union Army commanders in the South were responsible for administering the trade licenses and trying to control the black market in Southern cotton, in addition to their regular military duties.

At Holly Springs, Mississippi, the supply depot of Grant's troops, Jews were rounded up and forced to leave the city on foot.

On December 20, 1862, three days after Grant's order, Confederate States Army troops led by Major-General Earl Van Dorn raided Holly Springs, preventing the potential expulsion of further Jews.

Although delayed by Van Dorn's raid, Grant's order was fully implemented in Paducah, Kentucky, where thirty Jewish families were forcibly expelled from the city.

Jewish community leaders protested, and there was an outcry from members of the United States Congress and media outlets to the order; President Abraham Lincoln responded by countermanding it on January 4, 1863.

On November 2, 1862, Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant, launched an aggressive Civil War campaign to take the Confederate citadel of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

[9] On December 20, Confederate General Earl Van Dorn raided Union supply station at Holly Springs destroying "shops, depots, and warehouses.

In early November, Grant initiated a labor camp system where former refugee slaves would pick cotton, shipped north, to aid the Union War effort.

[14] While Grant's Army marched deeper into the Confederate South, enemy territory,[15] as far as Oxford, Mississippi, northern traders followed, to profiteer in the cotton trade, driven by the North's "consuming need" for the highly sought after product, used to make Union tents.

He perceived it as having endemic corruption: the highly lucrative trade resulted in a system where "every colonel, captain or quartermaster ... [was] in a secret partnership with some operator in cotton.

"[22] The following day he instructed Colonel Joseph Dana Webster: "Give orders to all the conductors on the [rail]road that no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad southward from any point.

"[22] In a letter to General William Tecumseh Sherman, Grant wrote that his policy was occasioned "in consequence of the total disregard and evasion of orders by Jews.

On December 5, Grant told Sherman that "in consequence of the total disregard and evasion of orders by the Jews my policy is to exclude them so far as practicable from the Dept.

2, mandating that "cotton-speculators, Jews and other Vagrants having not honest means of support, except trading upon the miseries of their Country ... will leave in twenty-four hours or they will be sent to duty in the trenches.

Union communication lines were broken for weeks, that resulted in many other Jews being spared from potential removal, and delayed full enforcement of Grant's order.

Jewish families in Paducah were forced to collect their personal belongings, shutter their homes and shops, and board a steamer on the Ohio River.

[38] A group of Jewish merchants who were expelled from Paducah, Kentucky, led by Cesar Kaskel, sent a telegram to President Abraham Lincoln in which they condemned Grant's General Order No.

[32]One Jewish officer, Captain Philip Trounstine, of the Ohio cavalry, stationed in Moscow, Tennessee, resigned in protest, and Captain John C. Kelton, the assistant adjutant-general of the Department of Missouri, wrote to Grant to note his order included all Jews, rather than focusing on "certain obnoxious individuals", and noted that many Jews served in the Union Army.

On January 6, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise of Cincinnati, leader of the Reform movement, led a delegation that met with Lincoln to express gratitude for his support.

[47] Grant has been estimated to have appointed more than fifty Jewish people to federal office including consuls, district attorneys, and deputy postmasters.

"[22] In 1981, historian William S. McFeely said: "Grant was fed up with the cotton speculators and the greedy suppliers of goods to his armies, but rather than attack the entire voracious horde, which included an astonishing number of entrepreneurs---Among them Charles A. Dana and Roscoe Conkling, for example---Grant singled out the Jews.

In addition to his own and Sherman's aborted attempts to take Vicksburg, on December 17, Grant issued an order that would stain his reputation forever.

In one of the most blatant examples of state-sponsored anti-Semitism in American history, Grant expelled all members of the Jewish faith from the Department of the Tennessee.

Brands said: "Grant shared the penchant for stereotyping Jews common to the age in America, and he may well have concluded that whatever loss they suffered by being treated as a group was a burden they would have to bear.

"[52] In 2016, historian Ronald C. White said: "Although non-Jews participated widely in illegal trading, the military newspaper in Corinth called Jews "sharks" feeding upon soldiers."

"[20] In 2017, historian Ron Chernow said: "Whatever the exact sequence of events, Grant must have felt wounded by the situation, for he had railed at traders only to discover his father in cahoots with them.

"[26] In 2017, historian Charles W. Calhoun said: "The question dated from late 1862, when Grant had issued an order expelling "Jews, as a class", from the area of his command in Mississippi for violating trade restrictions.

"[53] In 2018, historian Paul Kahan said: "Offended by the swarm of speculators and traders who profited from the war, Grant issued his infamous General Order No.