Abraham Lincoln Centre, Settlement House of Chicago, and All Souls Unitarian Church.

The ministers in the West had organized themselves as the Western Unitarian Conference in 1852. As time went on, the Western Conference ministers felt they weren't getting enough support from the American Unitarian Association in Boston, and they decided to do more on their own. They appointed Jenkin Lloyd Jones (1843-1918) as secretary. In that role, Rev. Jones became the Western voice of Unitarianism in the American Unitarian Association in 1876. He founded a weekly magazine called Unity to get people to work together to improve human life. A religious yet non-Christian publication, Unity's masthead proclaimed the principles of "Freedom, Fellowship and Character."

Led by Rev. Jones, the Western Unitarians pushed the boundaries of being a Unitarian. They rejected statements of doctrine—"official" Unitarian belief—that would limit a minister or member's beliefs about the nature of God, the Divine, or Jesus Christ. Jenkin Lloyd Jones served on the boards of dozens of social service agencies. He helped organize an American Congress of Liberal Religion, an alliance of liberal Jews, Unitarians, Universalists, and Ethical Culturalists.

Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones began his innovative ministry in Chicago with the founding of All Souls Unitarian Church on the city's South Side in 1882. Jones's inaugural sermon in June of 1885 was entitled "The Ideal Church," which called for an institution to be based on unbounded intellectual freedom, nonsectarian fellowship, and humanitarian outreach. In 1886, after four years of meeting in rented halls, the congregation built and moved into a permanent building named "The Abraham Lincoln Centre" (ALC). 

"We wanted a name that would radiate benignity, humility, a Christ-like patience, in short, a saint of the new order, a martyr of the new day, and such a name we believe 'Abraham Lincoln' to be. So we dare Christen this centre of helpfulness, this home of kindness, this academy of life—The Abraham Lincoln Centre."                                                                                           — Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones.

Rev. Jones hired his nephew, Frank Lloyd Wright, as the project's chief designer from 1898 until 1903 (at 31 to 36 years old). It was Wright's first sizeable public commission. The final building plans were designed by architect Joseph Silsbee at 700 East Oakwood Boulevard at the southeast corner of Langley Avenue in Chicago.

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The Unity Publishing Company and Abraham Lincoln Centre in Chicago, during the early 1900s, were intertwined parts of a vibrant progressive and spiritual movement known as the Unity School of Christianity. Founded in 1889 by Myrtle Fillmore and Charles Fillmore, the movement emphasized practical Christianity, focusing on personal growth, healing, and positive thinking.

The American Unitarian Association relaxed its statement of doctrine. By 1890, many Western Unitarian ministers felt the official statement was liberal enough for them, and tension between the West and New England began to lessen. When the Western Unitarian Conference replaced Jones' Unity magazine with another publication, Jones was deeply hurt. He remained a Unitarian minister but convinced his congregation, All Souls, to become non-sectarian. The congregation removed the word "Unitarian" from their name and returned $4,000 ($115,500 today) that Unitarian groups had donated to build a new church. Some other Unitarian congregations, many led by women ministers he had mentored, chose new names without the word "Unitarian"—such as "Unity Church" and "All Souls"—to support Jones.

The All Souls Church became the leading Centre of liberal Unitarian religious and civic life in Chicago at the turn of the century. All Souls Church was a prominent example of a new kind of urban ministry known as an institutional church because of its emphasis on social and educational programs. Jones wished to create a unique building to express his church's nonsectarian values. He sought a design that would depart from conventional church architecture in both program and symbolism. 

Wright collaborated on the project with architect Dwight H. Perkins. Designs for the building in those years recall the tall office buildings of Adler and Sullivan. Yet Jones's letters reveal that he was an assiduous critic of his nephew's ideas, which he wanted to be simplified for economic and ideological reasons. When he and Wright disagreed on the Centre's exterior form, he turned to Perkins, who revised the design according to Jones's wishes. In 1902, Wright turned the project over to Dwight Perkins and wrote on the blueprints "bldg. completed over the protest of the architect." Perkins saw the project through to completion in 1905. 

The Abraham Lincoln Centre included apartments for Jones and other resident teachers, a nine-hundred-seat hall for Sunday services and other programs, a gymnasium, a library, lectures on literature and religion, classes in German and French, art rooms and spaces for socializing and amusement. 

The Abraham Lincoln Centre, 1913.

Rev. Jones invited leaders from various faiths to be charter members to serve on the Abraham Lincoln Centre's Board of Directors. Rev. Jones included Christians of multiple denominations, Jews, and members from groups as diverse as the Salvation Army and the Ethical Culture Society, asking them to join the Centre's programs. 

When and Why the Democratic and Republican Parties Switched Platforms. President Lincoln's Philosophies were Actually Democratic.

As a settlement house, services included a public library, gymnasium, literature and religion lectures, and German and French classes. Thyra Edwards, an African American journalist and civil rights activist, lived and worked as a social worker at the Centre. She later traveled the world, reporting on labor and social conditions and her treatment as an African American abroad. Edwards openly supported the Communist Party and fundraised for the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

The Abraham Lincoln Centre reveals formal and spatial ideas that Wright explored in his subsequent Larkin Building and Unity Temple. The Centre was thus a pivotal project in Wright's emergence as an architect of public buildings. This property is listed in the Illinois Preservation Services Division's Historic and Architectural Resources Geographic Information Systems database of historic sites and structures.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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The following are the names of the subscribers to the $100,000 ($3,000,000 today) fund for the building of the Abraham Lincoln Centre in sums of from $100 to $10,000 up to February 6, 1902:

A. H. Hanson.

A. L. Thomas.

Alfred L. Baker.

B. J. Arnold.

B. Loewenthal. 

C. B. Trego. 

C. H. Hastings.

C. J. Buckingham. 

C. L. Peckham.

C. W. Greenfield.

Charles A. Stevens. 

Charles Hutchinson.

Charles L. Raymond.

Charles Netcher.

Confirmation Class Alumni.

D. M. Lord. 

Dr. G. F. Shears.

Dr. W. K. Jaques.

Dwight Perkins.

E. D. Hulbert. 

Edward E. Ayer. 

Edward F. Swift. 

Edward Morris.

Evan Lloyd.

G. F. Swift.

H. Botsford.

H. C. Lytton.

H. J. Thayer.

H. S. Hyman.

Ira Morris. 

J. B. Greenhut. 

J. C. Pfeiffer.

J. E. Otis.

J. N. Moulding. 

J. Rosenbaum.

James Wood.

John A. Roche. 

John G. Shedd.

Joy Morton. 

Julius Rosenwald. 

L. A. Carton.

L. A. Swift.

L. J. Lamson.

L. M. Smith.

Leon Mandel.

M. Rosenbaum. 

Merritt W. Pinckney. 

Miss Jessie Colvin.

Miss Katharine Colvin.

Mrs. Adaline Kent. 

Mrs. R. W. Sears. 

N. B. Higbie.

N. W. Eisendrath. 

N. W. Hacker.

Nelson Morris.

Ralph Sollitt. 

S. W. Lamson.

Silas H. Strawn.

Sumner Sollitt. 

Victor Falkenau.

W. F. Burrows. 

W. H. Colvin.

W. R. Linn.

Warren McArthur.

William Kent.

Women of All Souls Church. 

Abraham Lincoln – Friend of the Jewish People.

The name Abraham Lincoln is known to millions, not just in the United States, as one of America's greatest presidents. He is famous for maintaining the American Union and freeing negro slaves. Less known is that he also championed the rights of Jewish Americans, even when it was difficult and unfashionable to do so.

Replica of the 34-star silk flag presented to Abraham Lincoln by his friend, Abraham Kohn (1819-1871) of Chicago, on Lincoln's departure for Washington D.C. in 1860 as President-elect.

The inscription is from Joshua 1:9.

".הֲלוֹא צִוִּיתִיךָ חֲזַק וֶאֱמָץ, אַל-תַּעֲרֹץ וְאַל-תֵּחָת: כִּי עִמְּךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, בְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר תֵּלֵךְ" 

"Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not affrighted, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."

Abraham Kohn

President Lincoln's actions to assist the Jewish people, his most notable and public manifestation, was Lincoln's cancellation of a general order by Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant. On December 17, 1862 (the 26th of Kislev, 5623 in the Hebrew calendar), General Grant issued General Orders 11 expelling "Jews as a class," which stretched from northern Mississippi to the southern tip of Illinois and from the Mississippi to the Tennessee Rivers. It was the first day of Hanukkah. At the time, Hanukkah was not the major holiday it is now. But Grant's order, if carried out, meant that entire families would be uprooted during the holiday and beyond and exiled from their communities.

A long-time anti-Semite, Grant had come to think of Jews as speculators and war profiteers. The fact that thousands of Jews were heroically serving in the Union Army at the time seemingly did nothing to change his anti-Jewish hatred. Lincoln immediately canceled Grant's order upon learning of the order. 

Ha-Magid Newspaper (The Storyteller), published in Lyck, East Prussia (today, the City of Elk in northeastern Poland), specialized in the news of Jews around the world, such as the following story of February 19, 1863:

Text from the February 19, 1863 edition of Ha-Magid.

Translation: The ruler Abraham Lincoln, head of government of the Lands of the North (president [transliterated]) in America, during a recent visit of the learned rabbis, Messrs. Wise and Lilienthal from Cincinnati, and attorney (advocate) Martin Bijur from Louisville, who had come to vent their spleen upon General Grant, and ask him to reverse the evil decree issued by the general upon all the Jews in the territory of Tennessee, told them in the course of conversation, after promising to reverse the decree, that he (the president) sprang from the belly of Judah, and his forefathers were Jews; and these emissaries indeed report that the facial features of the president are evidence of his descent from the loins of the Hebrews.

Lincoln regularly quoted the Bible in letters, speeches, and ordinary conversation. But unlike many American Christians of his time, Lincoln did not focus primarily on the Christian parts of his Bible and seemed remarkably comfortable with the Torah. Also, unlike many 19th-century American Christians, Lincoln had many Jewish friends, the first of which was Julius Hammerslough (1832-1908). Hammerslough was a young store owner in Springfield, Illinois. When Lincoln was elected to the Illinois State Legislature in 1834, he met Hammerslough, and at a time when Jews were viewed with suspicion, Lincoln treated Hammerslough as an equal.

Julius Hammerslough

Julius, an owner of the Hammerslough Brothers Clothing Company, with locations in New York, Illinois, and Missouri, enjoyed amicable relations with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. Mr. Hammerslough witnessed Lincoln's first inauguration and was a frequent guest at the White House. President Lincoln invariably asked Mr. Hammerslough, "How are the boys?" referring to the Hammerslough Brothers in Springfield. Julius accompanied Lincoln's remains from Chicago to Springfield as one of a committee of citizens of Lincoln's old home chosen for that purpose. He also provided the plumes for the funeral car used in Springfield. Hammerslough took a very active part in the project for the erection of the Lincoln Monument in Springfield, being appointed by the national monument committee special agent to bring the subject to the notice of the Jews.

Abraham Jonas

Another of Lincoln's closest friends was Abraham Jonas, the first permanent Jewish resident in Quincy, Illinois. Jonas was a merchant, a politician, a member of the Illinois and Kentucky state legislatures, a leading lawyer, and a Freemason who supported and encouraged Lincoln for most of his life. Although Abraham Lincoln was no longer in the Illinois General Assembly, Jonas likely met Lincoln during his service in the legislature in Springfield. Jonas ran for the Illinois Senate in 1844 but was defeated by the Democratic candidate. But his loyalty to the Whig party earned him the position of the postmaster of Quincy, Illinois, in 1849, serving until 1853. Lincoln and Jonas remained dear friends during this time. When the Whig party died, Jonas and Lincoln joined the new anti-slavery Republican Party after its establishment in 1854. On November 1, 1854, Lincoln was accused of attending a Know-Nothing Party meeting but was vouched by Jonas, with whom he was actually with. Jonas arranged the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debate in Quincy and aided Lincoln in his candidacy. His law partner Henry Asbury suggested Lincoln's candidacy in front of a group of local Republicans. Asbury's suggestion was greeted by silence until Jonas agreed that it would be a good idea. Joans played a primary role in Lincoln's first Presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in May of 1860, at the "Wigwam" in Chicago. Jonas was the only person Lincoln ever referred to as "one of my most valued friends."

As the Civil War (1861-1865) started, Lincoln recruited military and civilian leaders to help lead the fight. He openly appointed Jewish faith members, never disparaging them for their religion, as many of his contemporaries constantly did. In addition to Jewish military officers, Lincoln also appointed dozens of Jews to be quartermasters, overseeing housing, supplies, transportation, and clothing for the troops. When Jews began lobbying Congress to allow Jewish chaplains in the army, Lincoln supported their cause, eventually seeing the passage of an 1862 law changing the requirements for becoming a military chaplain and allowing non-Christians in the post for the first time in history.

Rabbi Jacob Frankel

Lincoln signed Rabbi Jacob (Jakob) Frankel's (1808-1887) commission on September 18, 1862. Frankel was assigned to a hospital in Philadelphia in response to a request from the Board of Ministers of the Hebrew Congregations of that city. The appeal followed the deaths of two Jewish soldiers there without their being afforded the attention of clergy of their faith. Rabbi Frankel (1808-1887), nicknamed the "Sweet Singer of Israel," was the cantor of Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia. Throughout the Civil War, some 7,000 Jews served with the Northern forces against the Confederates, whose chaplaincy law required only that one be a "minister of religion." The total Jewish population of the North and South was approximately 250,000. Frankel continued to serve Rodeph Shalom (today the oldest active Ashkenazi synagogue in the United States) as a cantor. In contrast, he served in the military in the Army of the Potomac. No Rabbi is known to have applied for or received an application for chaplain, or, at least, no document or record of such application or commission has survived the destruction of large portions of the official documents and papers of the Confederacy.

On April 14, 1865, President and Mrs. Lincoln were attending the play, "Our American Cousin," a comedy, at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C., when Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, an enraged and unbalanced actor. Later, Mrs. Lincoln said Abraham had told her that he hoped one day they would travel to Palestine (a part of the Islamic-run Ottoman Empire (1517-1917) today's Israel) together, just a few minutes before Booth showed up.

A 34-Star Civil War Flag - Visual Aid

Among the millions who mourned the 16th President, many Jewish congregations held special services and composed prayers for their beloved President. In Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln was buried on May 4, 1865, his old friend Julius Hammerslough closed his store and displayed a portrait of Lincoln with a declaration that captured what so many felt: "Millions bless thy name."

Detail from "Lincoln," an oil painting by George Peter Alexander Healy in 1869.

In addition to monuments to Abraham Lincoln in the United States, a street in central Jerusalem is named for Abraham Lincoln, a fitting tribute to the Jewish people's gratitude to a President who championed and defended America's Jews.

ADDITIONAL READING

"Abraham Lincoln and the Jews," by Isaac Markens. Published in 1909. 

     Courtesy of my Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal™

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

#JewishThemed #JewishLife

The Lincoln Family Bible.

Lincoln did not have much of a religious life of his own to speak of. His stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln, would tell Lincoln’s biographer and law partner William Henry Herndon that “Abe had no particular religion” as a youth, and “didn’t think of that question at that time, if he ever did,” or at least “never talked about it.” It was not from ignorance. The young Lincoln “would hear sermons preached, come home, take the children out, get on a tree stump or log, and almost repeat it word for word,” and do it so convincingly that he could make “the other children, as well as the men, quit their work” to listen to him. But it was all pure mimicry. 

NOTE: "After the Little Pigeon Church (Pigeon Creek [Baptist] Church was founded on June 8, 1816, the year that Thomas Lincoln and his family moved from Kentucky and settled on Little Pigeon Creek in what was then Warwick County, Indiana Territory.) was built Abraham was given a job which required his attendance whenever the church was open. On June 12, 1823, Thomas Lincoln became one of the trustees of the church, along with Reuben Grigsby and William Barker. This put Thomas in a position to recommend someone to take care of the meetinghouse, keep it clean, and provide firewood and candles. Abraham who was fourteen years old at that time was employed as sexton[1]. How long Abraham served as sexton we do not know. His father continued as trustee for several years." —Lincoln's Youth, Indiana Years Seven to Twenty-one, 1816-1830, by Louis A. Warren.

I wouldn't call being a church custodian whose job required them to be present at church during services as "attending church." Abe, a church trustee's son, was employed for sexton services. There is no definitive proof of Abe participating as a parishioner.

Once Lincoln struck out on his own, he not only showed no interest in religion but an actual aversion to it. During his brief years as clerk and storekeeper in New Salem, Illinois, Lincoln preferred the reading of the most famous anti-religious skeptics of the day, Voltaire, Paine, etc., and wrote a short essay which was so scandalous in its contempt for religion that his neighbors morally compelled Mr. Lincoln to burn his essay book, on account of its infamy.

The Bible is an Oxford University Press edition of the King James Bible. Published in 1853, it has 1280 pages and measures approximately 6 inches long by 4 inches wide, and 1.75 inches thick, and is bound in burgundy red velvet with gilt edges. The back flyleaf of the Bible bears the seal of the Supreme Court of the United States along with a record of the 1861 inauguration. The Bible is not a rare edition. Lincoln owning this Bible makes it a priceless, one-of-a-kind Bible.

Abraham Lincoln reached Washington, D.C. for his inauguration in 1861. His belongings, including his Bible, had yet to arrive. William Thomas Carroll, the clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court, fetched a Bible that he kept for official use. This became the Lincoln Bible. Although the Bible remained with Carroll for a time, the Lincolns acquired it at an unknown time. The Bible later remained with the Lincoln family up until 1928, at which point Mary Eunice Harlan, the widow of Robert Todd Lincoln, donated it to the Library of Congress. When the Bible was donated, it contained markers at the 31st chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy and the fourth chapter of the Book of Hosea. Barack Obama chose this Bible for his inaugurations in 2009 and 2013. The Bible was on display at the Library of Congress from February to May of 2009 in a celebration of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth. The Bible was used to swear in Carla Hayden as the 14th Librarian of Congress on September 14, 2016. Donald Trump was sworn in on this Bible topped by, what he claimed, was his childhood Bible at his inauguration on January 20, 2017.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] Sexton: Church custodian charged with keeping the church and parish buildings prepared for meetings, caring for church equipment, and performing related minor duties such as ringing the bell and digging graves.

Jane Addams' Hull House tried to save Chicago's only "Devil Baby," born in 1913.

Jane Addams' Hull House was a place of refuge for new immigrants. It was built in 1856 by Charles Hull, and it served many new immigrant arrivals to Chicago and grew to a campus of 13 buildings by the mid-1910s. Jane Addams tried her best to help those adjusting to life in America by providing food, shelter, English language, and trade classes.

Visual Aid.
Not the Real 'Devil Baby.'

In 1913, as the story is told, an Italian woman and her husband abandoned their 'devil baby' on the doorstep of the Hull House. Hull House quickly became besieged in about six weeks with visitors and telephone inquiries. As the news got out, hundreds of people would flock to Hull-House to see the devil baby for themselves. The story got so out of hand that in 1916, the Atlantic news magazine even sent a journalist out to cover the story. Adams always denied the existence that this child was the Devil.

The Hull House was claimed to be haunted well before Addams bought it in September of 1889. It was a poor house from 1860 to around the late 1880s. Many people died on campus, including the wife of Charles Hull. She's thought to be one of the many spirits still roaming the halls of the main building. Jane often commented on the spirits, but she seemed amused but not frightened.

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WOMEN'S MEMORIES TRANSMUTING THE PAST

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE STORY OF THE DEVIL BABY

Quite as it would be hard for anyone of us to select the summer in which he ceased to live that life, so ardent in childhood and early youth, when all the actual happenings are in the future, so it must be difficult for old people to tell at what period they began to regard the present chiefly as a prolongation of the past. There is no doubt that such instinctive shiftings and reversals have taken place for many old people who, under Memory's control, are living much more in the past than in the ephemeral present.

It is most fortunate, therefore, that in some subtle fashion, these old people, reviewing the long road they have traveled, can transmute their own untoward (unexpected) experiences into what seems to make even the most wretched life acceptable. 

This may possibly be due to an instinct of self-preservation, which checks the devastating bitterness that would result did they recall over and over again the sordid detail of events long past; it is even possible that those people who were not able thus to inhibit their bitterness have died earlier, for as one old man recently reminded me, "It is a true word that worry can kill a cat."

This permanent and elemental memory function was graphically demonstrated at Hull House for several weeks when we were reported to be harboring within its walls a so-called "Devil Baby."

The knowledge of his existence burst upon the residents of Hull-House one day when three Italian women, with an excited rush through the door, demanded that he be shown to them. No amount of denial convinced them that he was not there, for they knew exactly what he was like with his cloven hoofs, his pointed ears, and diminutive tail; the Devil Baby had, moreover, been able to speak as soon as he was born and was most shockingly profane. 

The three women were but the forerunners of a veritable multitude; for six weeks, from every part of the city and suburbs, the streams of visitors to this mythical baby poured in all day long and so far into the night that the regular activities of the settlement were swamped.

Visual Aid. Not the Real 'Devil Baby.'

The Italian version, with a hundred variations: 

A devoutly Catholic woman hung a picture of the Virgin Mary on the wall, but her atheist husband tore it down. He stated that he would rather have the Devil himself in residence in the home rather than that picture on the wall. Several months later, his wife gave birth to a deformed child – hooves, claw hands, a tail, pointed ears, and, yes, horns on his head. She died from shock at first sight of her baby!

As soon as the Devil Baby was born, he ran around shaking a claw, in deep reproach, at his father, who finally caught him. Trembling in fear, he brought the baby to the Hull House. Despite the baby's shocking appearance, the residents there wished to save his soul, so they took him to the church to be baptized. 

They laid him down to prepare the baptismal fountain but found the empty shawl he was wrapped in. The Devil Baby fleed from the proximity of the holy water and was witnessed leaping from one pew to another on the backs of the pew benches.

The Jewish version, again with many variations:
When he found out she was pregnant, the father of six daughters told his wife that "he would rather have a devil in the family than another girl." Upon the baby's birth, he was a real devil child with pointed ears and a tail. Save for a red automobile which occasionally figured in the story, and a stray cigar which, in some versions, the newborn child had snatched from his father's lips, the tale might have been fashioned a thousand years ago.

Although the visitors to the Devil Baby included persons of every degree of prosperity and education, even physicians and trained nurses, who assured us of their scientific interest, the story constantly demonstrated the power of an old wives' tale among thousands of men and women in modern society who are living in the corner of their own, their vision fixed, their intelligence held by some iron chain of silent habit. To such primitive people, the metaphor is still the very "stuff of life," or rather, no other form of statement reaches them; the tremendous tonnage of current writing for them has no existence. It was in keeping with their simple habits that the reputed presence of the Devil Baby should not reach the newspapers until the fifth week of his sojourn at Hull-House after thousands of people had already been informed of his whereabouts by the old method of passing news from mouth to mouth. 

For six weeks, as I went about the house, I would hear a voice at the telephone repeating for the hundredth time that day, "No, there is no such baby"; "No, we never had it here"; "No, he couldn't have seen it for fifty cents"; "We didn't send it anywhere, because we never had it"; "I don't mean to say that your sister-in-law lied, but there must be some mistake"; "There is no use getting up an excursion from Milwaukee, for there isn't any Devil Baby at Hull-House"; "We can't give reduced rates, because we are not exhibiting anything"; and so on and on. As I came near the front door, I would catch snatches of arguments that were often acrimonious: "Why do you let so many people believe it if it isn't here ?" "We have taken three lines of cars to come, and we have as much right to see it as anybody else"; "This is a pretty big place; of course, you could hide it easy enough." "What are you saying that for? Are you going to raise the price of admission?"

We had doubtless struck a case of what the psychologists call the "contagion of emotion" added to that "æsthetic sociability" which impels any one of us to drag the entire household to the window when a procession comes into the street or a rainbow appears in the sky. The Devil Baby, of course, was worth many processions and rainbows, and I will confess that, as the empty show went on day after day, I quite revolted against such a vapid manifestation of even an admirable human trait. However, there was always one exception; whenever I heard the old women's high, eager voices, I was irresistibly interested and left anything I might be doing to listen to them. As I came down the stairs, long before I could hear what they were saying, implicit in their solemn and portentous old voices came the admonition:

"Wilt thou reject the past big with deep warnings?"

It was a grave and genuine matter with the old women, this story so ancient and yet so contemporaneous, and they flocked to Hull-House from every direction; those I had known for many years, others I had never known and some whom I had supposed to be long dead. But they were all alive and eager; something in the story or its mysterious sequences had aroused one of those active forces in human nature that do not take orders but insist only upon giving them. We had abruptly come in contact with a living and self-assertive human quality!

During the weeks of excitement, the old women seemed to have come into their own, and perhaps the most significant result of the incident was their reaction to the story upon them. It stirred their minds and memories as, with a magic touch, it loosened their tongues and revealed the inner life and thoughts of those who are so often inarticulate. They are accustomed to sitting at home and hearing the younger members of the family speak of affairs entirely outside their own experiences, sometimes in a language they do not understand, and at best in quick glancing phrases which they cannot follow; "More than half the time I can't tell what they are talking about," is an oft-repeated complaint. The story of the Devil Baby evidently put into their hands the sort of material they were accustomed to dealing with. They had long used such tales in their unremitting efforts at family discipline ever since they had frightened their first children into awed silence by stories of bugaboo men who prowled in the darkness.

These old women enjoyed a moment of triumph as if they had made good at last and had come into a region of sanctions and punishments they understood. Years of living taught them that recrimination with grown-up children and grandchildren is worse than useless, punishments are impossible, and domestic instruction is best given through tales and metaphors. 

As the old women talked with the new volubility which the story of the Devil Baby had released in them, going back into their long memories and urging its credibility upon me, the story seemed to condense that mystical wisdom which becomes deposited in the hearts of men by unnoticed innumerable experiences. 

Perhaps my many conversations with these aged visitors crystallized thoughts and impressions I had been receiving through years, or the tale itself may have ignited a fire, as it were, whose light illumined some of my darkest memories of neglected and uncomfortable old age, of old peasant women who had ruthlessly probed into the ugly depths of human nature in themselves and others. Many of them who came to see the Devil Baby had been forced to face tragic experiences. The powers of brutality and horror had had full scope in their lives, and for years they had had acquaintance with disaster and death. Such old women do not shirk life's misery by feeble idealism, for they are long past the make-believe stage. They relate without flinching the most hideous experiences: "My face has had this queer twist for nearly sixty years; I was ten when it got that way, the night after I saw my father do my mother with his knife." "Yes, I had fourteen children; only two grew to be men, and both were killed in the same explosion. I was never sure they brought home the right bodies." But even the most hideous sorrows which the old women related had apparently subsided into the paler emotion of ineffectual regret after Memory had long done her work upon them; the old people seemed, in some unaccountable way, to lose all bitterness and resentment against life, or rather to be so completely without it that they must have lost it long since.

None of them had a word of blame for undutiful children or heedless grandchildren because apparently the petty and transitory had fallen away from their austere old age, the fires were burnt out, resentments, hatreds, and even cherished sorrows had become actually unintelligible. 

Perhaps those women, because they had come to expect nothing more from life and had perforce ceased grasping and striving, had obtained, if not renunciation, that quiet endurance that allows the spirit's wounds to heal. Through their stored-up habit of acquiescence, they offered a fleeting glimpse of the translucent wisdom so often embodied in the old but so difficult to portray. It is doubtless what Michael Angelo had in mind when he made the Sybils old, what Dante meant by the phrase "those who had learned of life," and the age-worn minstrel who turned into song a Memory which was more that of history and tradition than his own. 

In contrast to the visitors to the Devil Baby who spoke only such words of groping wisdom as they were able, were other old women who, although they had already reconciled themselves too much misery, were still enduring more: "You might say it's a disgrace to have your son beat you up for the sake of a bit of money you've earned by scrubbing your own man is different — but I haven't the heart to blame the boy for doing what he's seen all his life, his father forever went wild when the drink was in him and struck me to the very day of his death. The ugliness was born in the boy as the marks of the Devil were born in the poor child upstairs." 

Some of these old women had struggled for weary years with poverty and much childbearing, had known what it was to be bullied and beaten by their husbands, neglected and ignored by their prosperous children, and burdened by the support of the imbecile and the shiftless ones. They had literally gone "Deep written all their days with care."

One old woman actually came from the poorhouse, having heard of the Devil Baby "through a lady from Polk Street visiting an old friend who has a bed in our ward." t was no slight achievement for the penniless and crippled old inmate to make her escape. She had asked "a young barkeep in a saloon across the road" to lend her ten cents, offering as security the fact that she was an old acquaintance at Hull House who could not be refused so slight a loan. She marveled at some length over the young man's goodness, for she had not had a dime to spend for a drink for the last six months, and he and the conductor had been obliged to lift her into the streetcar by main strength. She was naturally much elated over the achievement of her escape. To be sure, from the men's side, they were always walking off in the summer and taking to the road, living like tramps they did, in a way no one from the woman's side would demean herself to do; but to have left in a streetcar like a lady, with money to pay her own fare, was quite a different matter, although she was indeed "clean wore out" by the effort. However, it was clear that she would consider herself well repaid by the sight of the Devil Baby and that not only the inmates of her own ward but those in every other ward in the house would be made to "sit up" when she got back; it would liven them all up a bit, and she hazarded the guess that she would have to tell them about that baby at least a dozen times a day. 

As she cheerfully rambled on, we weakly postponed telling her there was no Devil Baby, first that she might have a cup of tea and rest, and then through a sheer desire to withhold a blow from a poor old body that had received so many throughout a long, hard life.

As I recall those unreal weeks, it was in her presence that I found myself for the first time vaguely wishing that I could administer comfort by the simple device of not asserting too dogmatically that the Devil Baby had never been at Hull-House. Our guest recalled with great pride that her grandmother had possessed second sight, that her mother had heard the Banshee three times and that she had heard it once. All this gave her a specific proprietary interest in the Devil Baby, and I suspected she cherished a secret hope that when she should lay her eyes upon him, she inherited gifts might be able to reveal the meaning of the strange portent. At the least, he would afford proof that her family-long faith in such matters was justified. Her misshapen hands lying on her lap fairly trembled with eagerness. 

It may have been because I was still smarting under the recollection of the disappointment we had so wantonly inflicted upon our visitor from the poorhouse that the very next day, I found myself almost agreeing with her whole-hearted acceptance of the past as of much more important than the mere present; at least for half an hour the past seemed also endowed for me with a profound and more ardent life. 

This impression was received in connection with an old woman, sturdy in her convictions. However, long since bedridden, who had doggedly refused to believe that there was no Devil Baby at Hull-House, unless "herself" told her so. Because of her mounting irritation with the envoys who one and all came back to her to report, "they say it ain't there/' it seemed well that I should go promptly before, "she fashed herself into the grave." As I walked along the street. Even as I went up the ramshackle outside stairway of the rear cottage and through the dark corridor to the "second floor back" where she lay in her untidy bed, I was assailed by a veritable temptation to give her a complete description of the Devil Baby, which by this time I knew so accurately (for with a hundred variations to select from I could have made a monstrous infant almost worthy of his name), and also to refrain from putting too much stress on the fact that he had never been really and truly at Hull-House. 

I found my mind hastily marshaling arguments for not disturbing her belief in the story, which had evidently brought her a vivid interest long denied her. She lived alone with her young grandson, who went to work every morning at seven o'clock and save for the short visits made by the visiting nurse and by kind neighbors, her long day was monotonous and undisturbed. But the story of a Devil Baby, with his existence officially corroborated as it were, would give her a lodestone that would attract the neighbors far and wide and exalt her once more into the social importance she had had twenty-four years before when I had first known her. She was then the proprietor of the most prosperous second-hand store on the street full of them, her shiftless, drinking husband and her jolly, good-natured sons doing precisely what she told them to do. This, however, was long past, for "owing to the drink," in her own graphic phrase, "the old man, the boys, and the business, too, were cleanly gone," and there was "nobody left but little Tom and me and nothing for us to live on.'

I remember how well she used to tell a story when I once tried to collect some folklore for Mr. Yeats to prove that an Irish peasant does not lose faith in the little people or his knowledge of Gaelic phrases simply because he is living in a city. She had at that time told me a fantastic tale concerning a red cloak worn by an old woman to a freshly dug grave. The story of the Devil Baby would give her material worthy of her powers, but of course, she must be able to believe it with all her heart. She could live only a few months at the very best, I argued to myself; why not give her this vivid interest and, through it, awake those earliest recollections of that long-accumulated folklore with its magic power to transfigure and eclipse the sordid and unsatisfactory surroundings in which life is actually spent? I solemnly assured myself that the imagination of old age needs to be fed and probably has quite as imperious a claim as that of youth, which levies upon us so remorselessly with its "I want a fairy story, but I don't like you to begin by saying that it isn't true." Impatiently I found myself challenging the educators who had given us no pedagogical instructions for the treatment of old age. However, they had fairly overinformed us about using the fairy tale with children.

The little room was stuffed with a magpie collection, the usual odds and ends which compose an old woman's treasures, augmented in this case by various articles which a second-hand store, even of the most flourishing sort, could not sell. In the picturesque confusion, if anywhere in Chicago, an urbanized group of the little people might dwell; they would undoubtedly find the traditional atmosphere they strictly require, marveling faith and unalloyed reverence. At any rate, an eager old woman aroused to her utmost capacity of wonder and credulity was the very soil, prepared to a nicety, for planting the seed thought of the Devil Baby. If the object of my errand had been an hour's reading to a sick woman, it would have been accounted to me for philanthropic righteousness, and if the chosen task had lifted her mind from her bodily discomforts and harassing thoughts so that she forgot them all for one fleeting moment, how pleased I should have been with the success of my effort. But here I was with a story at my tongue's end, stupidly hesitating to give it validity, although the very words were on my lips. I was still arguing the case with myself when I stood on the threshold of her room and caught the indomitable gleam of her eye, fairly daring me to deny the existence of the Devil Baby, her limp dropsical body so responding to her overpowering excitement that for the moment she looked alert in her defiance and positively menacing.

But, as in the case of many another weak soul, the decision was taken out of my hands. My very hesitation was enough, for nothing is more specific than that the bearer of a magical tale never stands dawdling on the doorstep. Slowly the gleam died out of the expectant old eyes, and the erect shoulders sagged and pulled forward. I saw only too plainly that the poor old woman had accepted one more disappointment in life already overflowing with them. She was violently thrown back into all the limitations of her personal experience and surroundings. That more meaningful life she had anticipated so eagerly was as suddenly shut away from her as if a door had been slammed in her face. 

I never encountered that particular temptation again, though she was no more pitiful than many of the aged visitors whom the Devil Baby brought to Hull House. But, perhaps due to this experience, I gradually lost the impression that the old people were longing for a second chance at life, to live it all over again and to live more fully and wisely. I became more reconciled to the fact that many had little opportunity for meditation or bodily rest but must keep working with their toil-worn hands, despite weariness or faintness of heart. 

The vivid interest of so many old women in the story of the Devil Baby may have been unconscious, although powerful, testimony that tragic experiences gradually become dressed in such trappings so that their spent agony may prove of some use to a world that learns at the hardest; and that the strivings and sufferings of men and women long since dead, their emotions no longer connected with flesh and blood, are thus transmuted into legendary wisdom. The young are forced to heed the warning in such a tale, although, for the most part, it is easy for them to disregard the words of the aged. That the old women who came to visit the Devil Baby believed that the story would secure them a hearing at home was evident, and as they prepared themselves with every detail of it, their old faces shone with timid satisfaction. Their features, worn and scarred by harsh living, as effigies built into the floor of an old church become dim and defaced by rough-shod feet, grew poignant and solemn. Amid their double bewilderment, both that the younger generation was walking in such strange paths and that no one would listen to them, for one moment, there flickered up the last hope of a disappointing life that it may at least serve as a warning while affording material for an exciting narrative.

Sometimes in talking to a woman who was "but a hair's breadth this side of the darkness," I realized that old age has its own expression for the mystic renunciation of the world. Their impatience with all non-essentials and the craving to be free from hampering bonds and soft conditions recalled Tolstoy's last impetuous journey. I was once more grateful to his genius for making evident another unintelligible impulse of bewildered humanity. 

Often, during a conversation, one of these touching old women would quietly express a longing for death, as if it were a natural fulfillment of an inmost desire, with sincerity and anticipation so genuine that I would feel abashed in her presence, ashamed to "cling to this strange thing that shines in the sunlight and to be sick with love for it." Such impressions were, in their essence, transitory. But one result from the hypothetical visit of the Devil Baby to Hull-House will, I think, remain: a realization of the sifting and reconciling power inherent in Memory itself. The old women, with much to aggravate and little to soften the habitual bodily discomforts of old age, exhibited an emotional serenity so vast and so reassuring that I found myself perpetually speculating upon how soon the fleeting and petty emotions which now seem unduly essential to us might be thus transmuted; at what moment we might expect the inconsistencies and perplexities of life to be brought under this appeasing Memory with its ultimate power to increase the elements of beauty and significance and to reduce, if not to eliminate, all sense of resentment.

FREE BOOK: The Long Road of Woman's Memory by Jane Aadams, pub:1916.

Jane Addams' idea for the book "The Long Road of Woman's Memory" was to do for old women, what she did for the community's youth in her book, "Youth of the City Streets."

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, in Wilmette, Illinois.

Father Edward Joseph Vattmann (1840-1919) was a retired U.S. Army Chaplain (Major) who lived at 1733 Lake Avenue in Wilmette. Active in local affairs, he was a familiar and well-loved figure around the village. His close friend, Theodore Roosevelt, was known to pay a visit to him at that house on occasion. During World War I, Father Vattmann came out of retirement to serve at Fort Sheridan in Highwood, Illinois.

When the news came to Wilmette that World War I had ended, Father Vattmann put on his full dress uniform, arranged for a band, and went across the street to St. Joseph School, where he insisted that all the students should be let out of class and assembled in the schoolyard. Each child was given a small American flag to wave in celebration of the Armistice, while the music played. For Ed Schuett, who was a seven-year-old at St. Joseph School, the memory was still fresh over 70 years later. "It was one of the happiest occasions that I can ever remember. It was so exhilarating."

Father Vattmann died the following year. His house still stands on Lake Avenue. A small park in Wilmette is named for him, and a large catholic monument stands guard over Father Vattmann's grave at the Fort Sheridan Cemetery on Sheridan Road in Fort Sheridan, Illinois.

But the most poignant reminder of this local legend can be found in a small grove of trees in Gillson Park across from the Lakeview Center. On November 11, 1921, Wilmette Post № 46 of the American Legion dedicated a planting of thirteen trees to commemorate the Wilmette men who died in World War I. The original trees have all been replaced now, but the grove is still there, and so is the small boulder to which is affixed a bronze marker. Twelve of the names on the marker are those of young men who died in the war. The thirteenth name, included as a tribute of esteem and affection by his fellow citizens, is that of Rev. Edward J. Vattmann.

Edward Joseph Vattmann is buried at the Fort Sheridan Cemetery in Highwood, Illinois.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

During the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant Began Expelling Southern Jews - Until President Lincoln Stepped In.

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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By 1860, there were an estimated 200,000 Jewish people in the United States (est. 34,000 Jews, about 2% of 1.72 million, in Illinois), up from 15,000 in 1840. That dramatic rise was the result of poverty and discrimination in Germany and Central Europe, where Jewish people were often excluded from trade, prevented from marrying, and subject to pogroms (organized massacres) and other violence.

The United States offered the promise of economic and social freedom. However, Jewish immigrants were not always welcomed into their new communities, especially in the North. New Jewish enclaves in American cities were viewed with suspicion by those who recognized neither their language nor their religion. Once the Civil War broke out, things got even worse.

In the North, popular newspapers disparaged Jews as secessionists and rebels and blamed them for destroying the national credit. And though some Jews occupied high-ranking roles within the Confederacy, anti-Semitism was widespread in the South as well.

As soon as the war began, illegal trade and smuggling between the North and South started. Though the Union blockaded Southern ports, goods still made their way over the border, and profiteers continued their trade illicitly, especially as the price of cotton rose due to the embargo. Not only did illicit trading flout Union rules, but it threatened the war effort itself.

When cotton came from Confederate territory, there was always the danger that it would be paid for in supplies or munitions. The black market was everywhere, and it frustrated both governments. And there was a seemingly perfect scapegoat: Jews, who had been stereotyped in the press as avaricious and opportunistic.

This restriction drove cotton prices from 10¢ per pound ($2.80 today) in 1860 to 68¢ per pound ($19 today) just two years later.

Ulysses Grant and his family arrived in Galena, Illinois, in the spring of 1860 after a 15-year military career that ended in 1854. In 1861, at the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant left Galena to join the U.S. Army, ending his seven-year hiatus from the military. He was commissioned as Colonel of the 21st Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment and was promoted to progressively significant commands of Union forces. 

General [Hiram] Ulysses S. Grant, one of the Union Army's most influential officials, was infuriated by the cotton smuggling that damaged the Union's ability to squeeze the South economically. The Civil War created a huge cotton market for uniforms needed on both sides. In his eyes, the perpetrators were all Jews. This wasn't borne out by evidence—though Jewish people were active as peddlers, merchants, and traders, and some undoubtedly made money speculating on cotton, they would only make up a minuscule percentage of black marketeers.

In August of 1862, Ulysses became the commander of the Army of the Tennessee. As Grant was preparing the Union Army to take Vicksburg, Mississippi, he commanded his men to examine the baggage of all speculators, giving "special attention" to Jews. In November, he told his subordinates to refuse to let Jews receive permits to travel south of Jackson, Mississippi, or travel southward on the railroads.

For Grant, prejudice against Jews mingled with personal animosity. He began his crackdown after discovering his father, Jesse R. Grant, and his two Jewish partners, Henry and Abraham Mack, were involved in a scheme to get a legal cotton trading permit in Cincinnati, Ohio.

THE BACKSTORY OF ULYSSES S. GRANT, HIS FATHER JESSE, AND JEWS.

During the Civil War, Jesse Root Grant (1794-1873) resided in Covington, Kentucky, which remained neutral during the war. Jesse's son Simpson died of tuberculosis in September of 1861. His son Ulysses brought his children to stay with Jesse, believing they would be safer there.

Jesse followed the continuing successes of Ulysses as he advanced in rank and assumed command of major campaigns. When controversial stories appeared in newspapers about the heavy casualties suffered under Generals Prentiss and McClernand at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee under the command of Ulysses, Jesse defended his son and responded with numerous editorials in rebuttal in various Cincinnati newspapers in such a manner as to suggest he was speaking for his son the General. Jesse also wrote a heated letter to Governor Tod of Ohio, blaming the "five thousand cowards" who threw down their arms and fled for the high casualties that occurred at the battle. Jesse's letters became so frequent that General Grant, who had much distrust for newspapers and their coverage of the war, had to step in and forbid him from writing to the newspapers.

 

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In a letter to his father, Ulysses wrote, "My worst enemy could do me no more injury than you are doing."

As the war caused the price of cotton to escalate, it invited many speculators, moving about in the midst of a major and prolonged military campaign against Vicksburg, Mississippi, causing many problems for the Union Army.  Traveling from Ohio, they arrived unexpectedly at General Grant's headquarters in northern Mississippi while he was busy with commanding a major campaign. 

Grant had already received reports from William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), the United States Secretary of War, and other Jewish merchants who were "highly visible" in the trading that was occurring by both northern and southern interests, often without permits. 

In December of 1862, Jesse and the Mack brothers struck a deal. Jesse signed a contract promising to use his influence with his son to obtain a special permit that would allow the Macks to trade with the Confederacy. The Macks, in return, promised to provide the money and to share one-fourth of their profits from the trade with Jesse. Jesse wrote to and visited Ulysses in an effort to fulfill his part of the bargain. One of the Macks also reportedly visited the general. Jesse arrived at Grant's headquarters in northern Mississippi while he was busy commanding a major campaign. 

When Grant refused to sign a permit, the Macks withdrew from the agreement. Jesse responded by suing them for breach of contract. The Cincinnati courts ruled in favor of the defendants.

By the time Jesse and his two partners arrived with a request for permits to operate, they were immediately rebuffed by Ulysses, angered for presuming on the Army and his patience. 

 

The incident had been indicative of the problem with cotton speculators, in general, who often collaborated with Union Officers, much to the frustration of General Grant. It's believed that Jesse's arrival with two prominent Jewish cotton speculators is largely what led Grant in 1862 to issue General Order №.11, expelling all Jews from his district. Jesse and the Mack Bros. were instructed to leave the district on the next train going north. 

This incident proved to be an embarrassment for Grant, which once again placed his father and himself on opposing sides of a serious issue.

On December 17, 1862, Grant went even further. That's when he issued an official order expelling Jews from the Department of the Tennessee, a massive administrative division under his command that included parts of Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee. He called the Jews "a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders" and gave them 24 hours to get out.

The order targeted Jews as a group, singling them out based on their religion. And though news of the order was hindered by Confederate raids and was not well-enforced, it slowly trickled out to Jews in and beyond the affected area.

News of the order horrified Jewish Americans. Among them were the approximately 30 Jewish merchants of Paducah, all of whom were expelled from the city along with their wives and children. Two of the men being banished were former Union soldiers.


On December 17, 1862, as the Civil War entered its second winter, General Ulysses S. Grant issued the most anti-Jewish order in American history. The letter was short, but its meaning was clear—and devastating. "You are hereby ordered to leave the city of Paducah, Kentucky, within twenty-four hours." General Order №.11 decreed as follows:

• 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 Tennessee] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.
• Post commanders will see to it that this class of people will be furnished passes and required to leave. Anyone returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs to send them out as prisoners unless furnished with a permit from headquarters.
• No passes will be given to these people to visit headquarters to make personal applications for trade permits.

In a letter of the same date sent to Christopher Wolcott, the United States Assistant Secretary of War, Grant explained his reasoning:

Sir,
I have long since believed that in spite of all the vigilance that can be infused into Post Commanders, that the Specie (money in the form of coins rather than paper notes) regulations of the Treasury Department, have been violated, and that mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders. So well satisfied of this have I been at this that I instructed the Commanding Officer at Columbus [Kentucky] to refuse all permits to Jews to come south, and frequently have had them expelled from the Department [of the Tennessee]. But they come in with their carpet sacks in spite of all that can be done to prevent it. The Jews seem to be a privileged class that can travel any where. They will land at any wood yard or landing on the river and make their way through the country. If not permitted to buy cotton themselves they will act as agents for someone else who will be at a Military post, with a Treasury permit to receive cotton and pay for it in Treasury notes which the Jew will buy up at an agreed rate, paying gold.

There is but one way that I know of to reach this case. That is for Government to buy all the Cotton at a fixed rate and send it to Cairo [Illinois] St. Louis [Missouri] or some other point to be sold. Then all traders, they are a curse to the Army, might be expelled.

Less than 72 hours after the order was issued, Grant's forces at Holly Springs, Mississippi, were raided, knocking out rail and telegraph lines and disrupting major lines of communication for weeks. As a result, news of Grant's orders spread slowly and did not reach company commanders and army headquarters in Washington in a timely fashion. Many Jews who might otherwise have been banished were spared.

A copy of General Grant's orders finally reached Paducah, Kentucky—a city occupied by Grant's forces—11 days after it was issued.

On December 29, Cesar J. Kaskel, a staunch union supporter, as well as all the other known Jews in Paducah, were handed papers ordering them "to leave the city of Paducah, Kentucky, within twenty-four hours." Kaskel couldn't believe it. He had emigrated to the United States after leaving Prussia, where he was discriminated against and financially ruined because he was Jewish. Now, the Union Army was telling him he was expelled from his new home and business for the same reason. 

As they prepared to abandon their homes, Kaskel and several other Jews dashed off a telegram to President Abraham Lincoln describing their plight.

Cesar J. Kaskel was a Jew who was, with other Jews in Paducah, Kentucky, rounded up and shipped to Cincinnati, Ohio, by General U.S. Grant under General Order Number Eleven.

As they prepared to abandon their homes, Kaskel and several other Jews dashed off a telegram to President Abraham Lincoln describing their plight.

Paducah, Kentucky, December 29, 1862.
Hon. Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States. 

General Order №.11 issued by General Grant at Oxford, Mississippi, December the 17th, commands all post commanders to expel all Jews without distinction within twenty-four hours from his entire Department. The undersigned good and loyal citizens of the United States and residents of this town, for many years engaged in legitimate business as merchants, feel greatly insulted and outraged by this inhuman order; the carrying out of which would be the grossest violation of the Constitution and our rights as good citizens under it and would place us, besides a large number of other Jewish families of this town, as outlaws before the world. We respectfully ask your immediate attention to this enormous outrage on all law and humanity and pray for your effectual and immediate interposition. We would especially refer you to the post commander and post adjutant as to our loyalty, and to all respectable citizens of this community as to our standing as citizens and merchants. We respectfully ask for immediate instructions to be sent to the Commander of this Post.

D. WOLFF & BROTHERS.
C.F. KASKEL
J.W. KASKEL

Though the 1862 orders were aimed at cotton speculators, they gave all Jews—speculators or not—just 24 hours to leave their homes, businesses, and lives behind. It was the culmination of a wave of anti-Semitism that swept through the United States in the year before the Civil War (1861-1865), and a decision that would haunt Grant for the rest of his life.

After their forced departure, Kaskel went to Washington to protest the order in person. He approached Congressman John A. Gurley of Ohio, who agreed to accompany him to the White House. The men hurried to President Lincoln.

But though an increasing number of people were learning of Grant's orders in the South, the breakdown in communications meant that Lincoln had not previously heard about his general's decision to expel Jewish people from the Department of the Tennessee. 

Lincoln, in all likelihood, never saw that telegram. He was busy preparing to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He was so shocked by the order that he immediately asked his staff for confirmation, which was confirmed as accurate.

Lincoln did instantly instruct the general-in-chief of the Army, Henry Halleck, to countermand General Orders №.11. Two days later, several urgent telegrams went out from Grant's headquarters in obedience to that demand: "By direction of the General in Chief of the Army at Washington," they read, "the General Order from these Head Quarters expelling Jews from this Department is hereby revoked."

News of the order continued to spread, and though some editorials sided with Grant, most condemned its targeting of Jews. "Men cannot be condemned and punished as a class, without gross violence to our free institutions," wrote the New York Times a month after the order. But even that editorial spread anti-Semitic tropes about Jews, comparing them to Shylocks[1] and complaining about the potentially destructive power of wealthy Jews. Grant's order helped stir up an ugly undertone of American life that isolated and damaged Jews who had come to the United States in search of elusive equality.

In a follow-up meeting with Jewish leaders, Lincoln reaffirmed that he knew "of no distinction between Jew and Gentile." "To condemn a class," he emphatically declared, "is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad. I do not like to hear a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners." In short order, attention returned to the battlefield, where Grant's victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi, within a year, elevated him to the status of a national hero.

The discriminatory order was quickly squelched, but the general never forgot it. In fact, he spent a lifetime trying to atone for it. When he ran for President in 1868, he confessed that the order "was issued and sent without reflection and thinking." In office, he named more Jews to public office than ever before. He promoted the human rights of Jewish people abroad, protesting pogroms in Romania and sending a Jewish diplomat to object.

During his administration, Jews moved from outsider to insider status in the United States and from weakness to strength. But though Grant did what he could to atone for his discriminatory order, he doubtless contributed to the anti-Semitism of the 19th century.

Read about "The Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant" by Jonathan D. Sarna.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] Shylock is a character in William Shakespeare's play "The Merchant of Venice" (circa 1600). A Venetian Jewish moneylender, Shylock is the play's principal antagonist. His defeat and conversion to Christianity form the climax of the story.