their economic survival. The U.S. Government permitted limited trade, licensed by the Treasury and the U.S. Army. Corruption flourished as unlicensed traders bribed Army officers to allow them to buy Southern cotton without a permit. Jewish traders were among those involved in the cotton trade; some merchants had been active in the cotton business for generations in the South; others were more recent immigrants to the North. Grant received contradictory information from Washington. The Treasury Department wanted to restore trade with the South, while the War Department believed profiteering from the sale of cotton aided the Confederacy and prolonged the war. Traders were allowed permits as long as the traders did not cross into Confederate held territory. Grant found this difficult to enforce, while he tried to stop cotton traders, including Jewish traders, from moving south with his army. The practice of cotton smuggling infuriated Grant. Criticism of Jewish traders spread throughout the Union Army, although non-Jewish traders' involvement with illicit trade was rampant. Jewish traders were singled out and called "sharks" who fed upon soldiers. As part of his command, Grant was responsible for issuing trade licenses in the Department of Tennessee, an administrative district of the Union Army that comprised the portions of Kentucky and Tennessee west of the Tennessee River, and Union-controlled areas of northern Mississippi. Grant resented having to deal with the distraction of the cotton trade. He perceived it as having endemic corruption: the highly lucrative trade resulted in a system where "every colonel, captain or quartermaster ... [was] in a secret partnership with some operator in cotton." He issued a number of directives aimed at black marketeers. Escalating hostility On November 9, 1862, Grant sent an order to Major-General Stephen A. Hurlbut: "Refuse all permits to come south of Jackson for the present. The Israelites especially should be kept out." The following day he instructed Colonel Joseph Dana Webster: "Give orders to all the conductors on the [rail]road that no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad southward from any point. They may go north and be encouraged in it; but they are such an intolerable nuisance that the department must be purged of them." In a letter to General William Tecumseh Sherman, Grant wrote that his policy was occasioned "in consequence of the total disregard and evasion of orders by Jews." Grant explained his anti-Jewish policy to the War Department.