When General Grant Expelled the Jews by Jonathan Sarna (review)

In this deeply researched and nicely written slender volume, Jonathan Sarna reviews Ulysses S. Grant's career from the time that he ordered all Jews out of his Tennessee military district in December 1862 through the end of his life and beyond. Most American Jews were shocked by Grant's blatantly discriminatory act, which was the first time in American history that any official government policy banned Jews as a class. Leading Jews were riled up, protests were organized, and President Abraham Lincoln countermanded the order. After that time Grant tried and, according to Sarna, succeeded, in making amends for this terribly misguided decision. When General Grant Expelled the Jews details, to a greater extent than any book before has, how much Grant changed after the war ended and how many Jews ultimately recognized the man as a friend and great humanitarian.

Grant was sorry for his 1862 decision to rid his military command area of Jews. After being elected president in 1868, but before he took office, he allowed a letter that he had written to be released to the press indicating his remorse over having expelled the Jews. "The order was issued and sent," he wrote, "without thinking of the Jews as a sect or race" (77). For the rest of his life, Sarna tells us, Grant showed his concern for the rights of all peoples, blacks and whites, religious observers, agnostics, and atheists alike, and as president he even attempted to help Rumanian Jews who were being brutalized.

During his years as president, Grant became "a friend of human rights causes generally, especially those involving Jews" (104). He refused to support a proposed constitutional amendment making the United States a Christian country and was steadfast in his belief that church and state should not be entwined. He opposed tying religion to public schools and would not sanction financial aid to parochial schools. Grant had several Jewish friends and, in fact, offered the position of Secretary of the Treasury to the banker Joseph Seligman, who turned it down. He was also the first president to keep close an informal advisor, Simon Wolf, to brief him on issues of concern to Jews. Wolf would later boast that he was responsible for more than fifty appointments that the president made. Grant, Sarna tells us, made Jews "insiders"; earlier they had not had such favorable public recognition in this country. Never before had so many Jews been so close to power in the United States. It was, as Sarna writes, a "golden age" for them and it ended when Grant left the White House (121). After the former president died in 1885, synagogues throughout the nation (perhaps not in the South) said kaddish for him. When Grant's Tomb opened in New York City's Riverside Park in 1897, Jews marched in the parade to celebrate that event.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Ulysses S. Grant was revered as one of the finest American presidents and certainly the best one between Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Subsequently he fell from grace, and historians excoriated his administration for excessive corruption and ineffectiveness. At the present time Grant's accomplishments and values are being reexamined by historians who see his more virtuous accomplishments. Sarna is one of the historians contributing to the resurrection.