On February 2, 2026, Candace Owens told her audience that Jews “had everything to do with the Civil War in America.” She claimed that Jews created a “false dialectic” of the war by framing it as a conflict between the North and the South. She further alleged that General Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews from military districts because Jews were murdering non-Jewish children in secret lodge rituals. These claims are false and represent a recycling of one of the oldest and most discredited conspiracy theories in Western history.
Demographics alone disprove the claim. At the time of the Civil War, the Jewish population of the United States numbered roughly 150,000, about 0.5 percent of the national population. It is logistically and statistically impossible for such a small minority to orchestrate a national war involving millions of people, multiple governments, and five years of conflict.
Jews fought in the war; they did not direct it. Like other Americans, Jews served on both sides of the conflict. An estimated 10,000 Jewish soldiers fought in the Civil War, the majority for the Union. Jews were not the financiers of the Union war effort. While some Jewish banking firms, such as J. & W. Seligman & Co., assisted the Union Treasury, the principal architect and financier of Union war finance was Jay Cooke, an Episcopalian who organized the massive sale of federal war bonds to the general public.
The Confederacy was also not financed by Jews. The Confederate war effort relied heavily on figures such as George Alfred Trenholm and Charles Kuhn Prioleau, neither of whom was Jewish. Jews did not invent the “North vs. South” framing. The war is described that way because 11 Southern states formally seceded from the United States and created the Confederate States of America. The framing comes directly from the actions of the seceding states themselves.
Grant’s General Order No. 11 was about alleged smuggling, not ritual murder. General Ulysses S. Grant did issue General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from certain military districts, though he quickly rescinded it at President Lincoln’s request. The order stemmed from Grant’s belief that Jewish traders were involved in illegal cotton trading with the Confederacy. The order had nothing to do with accusations of ritual murder, which were never alleged by Grant and have no basis.
Smuggling was widespread. Many Northerners, the minority of whom were Jewish, engaged in or attempted to engage in black-market cotton trading. Grant’s fixation on Jews appears to have been influenced by a personal scandal involving his father, Jesse Grant, who attempted to secure a trading permit for the Jewish Mack brothers. A Civil War correspondent observed in 1862: “Every colonel, captain or quartermaster is in a secret partnership with some operator in cotton; every soldier dreams of adding a bale of cotton to his monthly pay.”
Grant later regretted the order and, as president, appointed more Jews to office than any previous president. He also became the first U.S. president to attend the dedication of a synagogue, behavior wholly incompatible with the claim that he believed Jews engaged in ritual murder. In 1868, Grant stated: “I do not pretend to sustain the order. The order was made and sent out, without any reflection, and without thinking of the Jews as a sect or race to themselves. I have no prejudice against sect or race, but want each individual to be judged by his own merit. General Orders No. 11 does not sustain this statement, I admit, but then I do not sustain that order.”
Jewish soldiers were never expelled from the army. Even while General Order No. 11 was in effect, it did not apply to Jewish soldiers. Jewish officers such as Lt. Col. Edward S. Salomon, a hero of the Battle of Gettysburg, continued to serve honorably. Salomon was later promoted to brigadier general and Grant appointed him governor of Washington Territory, further disproving claims of ritual murder theories or institutional exclusion.
Candace Owens is recycling one of the oldest and most discredited theories in Western history: the claim that Jews secretly orchestrate wars behind the scenes. This narrative predates the Civil War by centuries and has been used repeatedly to deflect responsibility from governments, generals, and ideologies onto a convenient scapegoat. Owens adds nothing new: no evidence, no primary sources, no original analysis, only a washed-out, lazy conspiracy that collapses under basic scrutiny. Her willingness to promote such claims reveals a pattern of historical ignorance and ideological extremism that prioritizes sensationalism over truth.
