On This Day

[Julian2]

1862.

 

Major-General Ulysses S. Grant issued:

 

General Order No. 11:

 

(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 [of the Tennessee] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.

(ii) Post commanders will see to it 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 headquarters.

(iii) No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.

[Flashermac]

 Grant was also a slave owner, and though he freed his only slave when he moved to Illinois (where no black folks were allowed to live, free or slave), he did not press his wife to free hers. She cotinued to own them all through the Civil War. 

[StoneSoup]

As a fellow alumni of General Grant's alma mater, I will add the postscript (quoted from Wikipedia):

 

Following protests from Jewish community leaders and an outcry by members of Congress and the press, it was revoked a few weeks later by order of President Abraham Lincoln. Grant later claimed it had been drafted by a subordinate and that he had signed it without reading.

 

Grant drank so heavily, that I would find his claim credible.

 

Cheers!

SS

[TroyinEwa/Perv]

Grant later claimed it had been drafted by a subordinate and that he had signed it without reading.

 

That was his excuse? If that was used in a court of law, the person making the excuse would be laughed at and found guilty immediately. Very sad that an elected President can only come up with that as a defense.

[Julian2]

How many of them haven't?

 

A sort of a reverse Nuremberg defence. (People weren't obeying my orders).

I suppose we could call it the Yamashita defence?

[Flashermac]

As a fellow alumni of General Grant's alma mater, I will add the postscript (quoted from Wikipedia):

 

Following protests from Jewish community leaders and an outcry by members of Congress and the press, it was revoked a few weeks later by order of President Abraham Lincoln. Grant later claimed it had been drafted by a subordinate and that he had signed it without reading.

 

Grant drank so heavily, that I would find his claim credible.

 

Cheers!

SS

West Point? I hope you stood higher in your class than Uncle Sam Grunt did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flashermac]

How many of them haven't?

 

A sort of a reverse Nuremberg defence. (People weren't obeying my orders).

I suppose we could call it the Yamashita defence?

 

Grant received the surrender of Fort Donelson in February 1862 from his close friend Simon B. Buckner, now a Confederate. When Grant's boozing had forced him to resign from the Army in California in the 1850s, Buckner had loaned him the money to get his family back east. Buckner thus expected a gentleman's terms in return (i.e. parole rather than prison). Instead, Grant demanded an "unconditional surrender". Grant wrote in his memoirs that he had given Buckner a wallet full of greenbacks to take care of him as a prisoner of war, which Buckner gratefully accepted. However, Buckner wrote in his own memoirs that he had refused the money, throwing it back and Grant and more or less calling him an ungrateful SOB.

 

After all, Grant did become a politician after the war and was writing as one.

 

Basically, Grant proved in the war that he could win when he had a tremendous advantage in numbers. That may not sound like much, but he was the only Union general who could do so. The other got whipped handily even when the odds were in their favour. When Lee soundly beat Grant in 1864 and Grant refused to retreat anyway, the way his predecessors had, Lee turned to his colleagues and said the war was lost. When Grant finally broke through in April 1865, he had an advantage of 6 to 1 in men. There was no stopping him.