A Ulysses Grant story that is new to me

This is a weird story that I've never heard about before. Presumably because it was a minor incident by any measure, though dumb enough that one has to wonder if Gen. Grant was drinking when he wrote the declaration in question.

Janet Marlin wrote about it in The Exodus From Paducah, 1862 04/04/2012, a review of a book by Jonathan Sarna, 'When General Grant Expelled the Jews,’ (2012):

There are good reasons that the document known as General Orders No. 11 has remained only a footnote to Civil War history. Argument endures about what Grant meant, how much damage his order inflicted and how significant this act of explicit anti-Semitism really was. But the incontrovertible part of the story is that the perception of profiteering in Paducah, Ky., and his tendency to use the words “profiteer” and “Jew” interchangeably, provoked a written outburst from Grant, commander of the Territory of the Department of the Tennessee, which included Paducah.

On Dec. 17, 1862, Grant issued the order that read: “The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from this department within 24 hours from the receipt of this order.” While this mandate conformed to Grant’s pattern of associating Jews with illicit business activities, the exact reasons for his action are anything but clear. What is clear is that on Jan. 4, 1863, one week from the day (Dec. 28, 1862) on which Paducah’s Jews were actually expelled, President Abraham Lincoln ordered Grant to revoke the controversial edict.

And she writes this about the real-world effects, or lack thereof, of this bizarre order that was theoretically in force for a week:

What tangible damage did the expulsion do? Very little, as far as Mr. Sarna, chief historian at the National Museum of American Jewish History and the co-editor of “Jews and the Civil War: A Reader” can tell. He can provide no individual accounts of families fleeing the order, no more than four affidavits about the expulsion and no reports of physical hardship beyond those who claimed they had been jailed briefly, treated roughly or forbidden from changing out of wet clothes. It is not the magnitude of the incident that makes it so enduring, ugly or willfully ignored.

Haaretz just published a sensationalist story about this: Ushi Derman and Beit Hatfutsot, A Miserable Hanukkah in Kentucky: When Jews Were Almost Expelled From the American South 12/19/2017. The reader can judge how well this reflects the story as related by Janet Marlin, relying on Jonathan Sarna. After describing the alleged effects of the order in more ominous terms, he writes:

Four years later, in 1869, Grant became the 18th president of the United States, and turned from an anti-Semite to one of the most pro-Jewish presidents ever. He was the first president to inaugurate a new synagogue, he appointed the largest number of Jews in governmental positions and fought against the deportations of Jews in Russia by the Czar — only seven years after issuing General Order No. 11.

General Orders #11 is the kind of story neo-Confederates pick up and wildly distort. Although Derman and Hatfutsot seem to be more focused on telling a catchy story than on any ideological mischief.