Grant said that Treasury Department regulations were violated: "mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders". In reference to Jewish traders Grant said: "they come in with their carpet sacks in spite of all that can be done to prevent it. The Jews seem to be a privileged class that can travel anywhere. They will land at any wood yard or landing on the river and make their way through the country. If not permitted to buy cotton themselves they will act as agents for someone else who will be at a military post with a Treasury permit to receive cotton and pay for it in Treasury notes, which the Jew will buy up at an agreed rate, paying gold." Grant proposed that the federal government "to buy all the cotton at a fixed rate and send it to Cairo, St. Louis or some other point to be sold. Then all traders---they are a curse to the Army---might be expelled." Grant and the cotton trade took on a more personal tone when his father Jesse Grant, and the Mack brothers, Jewish clothing contractors, visited Grant at his Southern base of Oxford. Jesse and Grant got along well with each other for a couple of days. Grant also treated his Jewish guests respectfully. The Mack brothers needed cotton to make Union army uniforms. Jesse Grant had been promised by Mack brothers to receive a quarter of the profits, after Jesse had gotten his son Grant to bestow permits to buy cotton, and then be shipped to New York. When Grant found out about the business agreement between Jesse and the Mack brothers, Grant was livid. Grant abruptly sent Jesse and the Mack brothers packing north on the next train. Grant may have felt betrayed to find out his own father was involved in the cotton trade that he despised. At the start of December 1862, Grant focused on Jewish traders as the primary cause of smuggling. On December 5, Grant told Sherman that "in consequence of the total disregard and evasion of orders by the Jews my policy is to exclude them so far as practicable from the Dept." Grant tightened restrictions to try to reduce the illegal trade. On December 8, 1862, he issued General Order No. 2, mandating that "cotton-speculators, Jews and other Vagrants having not honest means of support, except trading upon the miseries of their Country … will