blog # 13

Henry E. Palmer, The Lawrence Raid Kansas Historical Collections 6 (1900): 317, at 322-323.

The year was 1863, during the Civil war.  Grant was practicing something called hard war.  Before 1863, the war was considered a “soft war,” where opposing sides thought the war wasn’t going to last for a long time.  That is, until Grant came to power.  Hard war is when the opposing sides will continue to attack a fallen side until there was no possible way for them to come back and fight anymore.  In 1863, there were these people called cloth sellers, who were predominantly Jewish.  At this time, smuggling was illegal and these cloth sellers smuggled cloth to the north so that they could make profits during the war.  Therefore, they were basically working for the black Market.  Grant’s father tried to make a deal with these cloth sellers so that he could maybe turn a profit.  Grant found out about this and got upset that his father was breaking the law and sent out an order to evict all JEWISH residents from four counties in Missouri: Independence, Hickman Hills, Pleasant Hill, and Harrisonville.  Grant made the mistake to associate all Jewish people with these cloth sellers.  This is the first time in American history that a specific group of people were target and forced to move out.  When Lincoln hears about this, he takes away this order and the people are allowed to move back in.  But basically, after this the Jews forgive him for this and it shows that there ARE people in the world who have a heart big enough to forgive.