Grant

by Ron Chernow

“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 by Post Commanders, they will see that all of this class of people are furnished with passes and required to leave.”47 It was the most sweeping anti-Semitic action undertaken in American history.

Grant drafted a speech “on the backs of envelopes and the stray scraps of paper at hand in his room.”74 It was a historic plea for public education and the need to save the nation’s classrooms from religious interference.

“while loving the home State, they should love the country more. Hard sectional feelings should give way to brotherly love for the whole American family.”78 In his

“to establish and forever maintain free public schools adequate to the education of all the children . . . irrespective of sex, color, birthplace, or religions; forbidding the teaching in said schools of religious, atheistic, or pagan tenets; and prohibiting the granting of any school-funds, or school-taxes . . . in aid . . . of any religious sect or denomination.”