General Order No. 11 (1862)

General Order No. 11 was a controversial Union Army order issued by Major-General Ulysses S. Grant on December 17, 1862 during the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. The order expelled all Jews from Grant's military district, comprising areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. 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".^[1] During the war, the Lincoln administration had authorized licensed traders to do business with the Union Army, which created a market for unlicensed ones. 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 by 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. Grant claimed during his 1868 presidential campaign that he had not issued the order due to any antisemitism but as a way to address a problem that "certain Jews had caused".^[2] Historians and Grant biographers have generally been critical of the order.