By any other name…
General Order Number Eleven was short. Three items were wrapped into one edict. It read:
- 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 within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.
- Post commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.
- No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.
In short, “no Jews allowed,” effective nearly immediately.
But the “Department” wasn’t a section of Nazi-controlled Europe or Inquisition-era Spain. The edict wasn’t issued by Adolf Hitler. It was issued by Ulysses S. Grant, who would later be President of the United States. The year was 1862, and the “Department” was the “Department of Tennessee,” an area consisting of western Tennessee, western Kentucky, and northern Mississippi.
Read the whole sordid story at “General Order Number Eleven.”
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As we wince at realization that Twain was right that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1925 that Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was published (Volume One; the second volume followed the next year). Part autobiography and part political philosophy– an announcement of his hatred of what he believed to be the world’s twin evils: Communism and Judaism– Mein Kampf was begun as dictation while Hitler was imprisoned for what he considered the “political crime” of his failed 1923 Munich Putsch. It sold 228,000 copies between 1925 and 1932, and one million copies in 1933, Hitler’s first year in office.
