Three weeks before President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Union General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Orders Number 11. The order expelled Jews as a Class from General Ulysses S. Grant's war zone, which included parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois and Mississippi.
Grant believed Jewish residents were smuggling goods from the south. There was active smuggling in the war zone at the time, but it was not limited to Jewish residents. Grant's own father, in fact, was involved in a cotton smuggling scheme.
