General Grant

[Ellsworth avenger]

Anti-semitism arrived in the US with the German Jewish population that saturated the dry-goods market all across the country,the non jewish european immigrants brought their bigotry with them, and infected Americans, starting at the time of the civil war. As in most things fear of the unknown, and differant, displayed it's ugly head.

 

[ole]

I've believed that the order as written wasn't written by Grant. Given that the prejudice at the time usually labled all profiteers and traders as Jews, my take is that he didn't mean the nationality or religion of the profiteer, but that they were all labeled as Jews. He'd have called his own father a Jew if he didn't know better.

Taken one way, it was certainly tacky. Taken another way, it was quite innocent. Grant quickly retracted it it when Lincoln objected to the wording. Red herring.

Ole

 

[ole]

Because Grant never gave up. That's why he's my favorite general.

Mine, too, Lincoln. Without that war, Grant would have been a retail salesman in a leather-goods store. But circumstances came up wherein his particular skill was needed. And his particular skill was to never give up. It did happen that he had some other skills that were valuable to the army, but the one about never turning back happened to be the biggest one.

A few of the others was instilling discipline in the wild men of the west, taking care of them, earning their trust and devotion by taking care of them, and instinctively knowing what was going on where he couldn't see. I'll bet he was a master at 3-dimensional tic-tac-toe ... a spacial concept I've given up on. But he could see and anticipate what most people couldn't.

"Lick 'em tomorrow, though," says most of it.

Ole

 

[RobertP]

I've believed that the order as written wasn't written by Grant. Given that the prejudice at the time usually labled all profiteers and traders as Jews, my take is that he didn't mean the nationality or religion of the profiteer, but that they were all labeled as Jews. He'd have called his own father a Jew if he didn't know better.

Taken one way, it was certainly tacky. Taken another way, it was quite innocent. Grant quickly retracted it it when Lincoln objected to the wording. Red herring.

Ole

Anti-semitism certainly wasn't universal at the time. As an example, Judah Benjamin was a US Senator from Louisiana before the war, became the CSA's first Attorney General, then acting Sec. of War, and Sec. of State.

This from an exchange with the uber Radical Ben Wade challenging his anti-semitic views:


'He was a noted advocate of the interests of the South, and his most famous exchange on the Senate floor was related to his religion and the issue of slavery: abolitionist and future Radical Republican Benjamin Wade of Ohio referred to him as "a Hebrew with Egyptian Principles."[3] The future Confederate replied that, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain."[4]'

Touche'

 

[ole]

You may have missed my point, Robert. I didn't say that there was widespread anti-semitism. I did say that peddlers and traders and possibly sutlers were called Jews. Hence, jew him down; to haggle. No anti-semitism in that. Certainly not PC, but that's a recent invention.