Antisemitism in the United States has existed since the colonial era, evolving from early religious and state-based discrimination to systemic social and economic exclusion in the 19th and 20th centuries. While the American experience often differed from the endemic violence of European antisemitism, Jewish Americans faced significant periods of hostility, including official government actions during the American Civil War and widespread social discrimination.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, antisemitism in the U.S. peaked alongside the rise of nativism and racial theory. This era saw the implementation of restrictive quotas in higher education, exclusion from private clubs and housing, and the propagation of antisemitic tropes by prominent figures such as Henry Ford and Father Coughlin. Although antisemitic sentiment generally declined following World War II and the Holocaust, the 21st century has seen a documented resurgence in antisemitic rhetoric and hate crimes.

Historiography Historians continue to study and debate the extent of antisemitism in American history and how American antisemitism has similarities and distinctions with its European counterpart.

Historian Reena Sigman Friedman notes similarities between the form and substance of European and American antisemitism, and has stated "[t]hough antisemitism appeared in a number of forms during and after the American Civil War, it was amplified by the introduction of race theory in the United States, often linked to nativism, xenophobia and anti-urban sentiment, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries." Hasia Diner provides a similar perspective, stating, "by the 1870s in Europe and the United States, the argument shifts to the Jews as defective. Not Judaism as defective, but the Jew as a particular social type who had defective mental and moral abilities."

John Higham noted certain distinctions between European and American antisemitism, suggesting that in the United States "no decisive event, no deep crisis, no powerful social movement, no great individual is associated primarily with, or significant chiefly because of anti-Semitism." Historian David A. Gerber stated that antisemitism "has been a distinctly minor feature of the nation's historical development" because historians such as Higham have previously "taken little interest it." Historian Britt Tevis recognized this trend, noting "Handlin and Higham's ideas (especially Higham's) remain influential, and many American Jewish historians continue to present antisemitism as largely insignificant, momentary, primarily social."Tevis (2021), p. 257. Tevis questions this trend, noting that "a major component of this argument is the claim that, unlike in Europe, anti-Semitism in the United States has been an insignificant force—fleeting and more or less harmless. For the most part.... [r]elatedly, they've argued that neither the law nor the state has played a role in perpetuating anti-Jewish sentiments. My research challenges these long held ideas by revealing the ways in which the state condoned and sometimes promoted anti-Jewish animus."

Historian Britt Tevis argues that, "Handlin and Higham's ideas (especially Higham's) remain influential, and many American Jewish historians continue to present antisemitism as largely insignificant, momentary, primarily social."Tevis 2021, p. 257. Krefetz (1985) asserts that antisemitism in the 1980s seems "rooted less in religion or contempt and more rooted in envy, jealousy and fear" of Jewish affluence, and the hidden power of "Jewish money". Historically, antisemitic attitudes and rhetoric have tended to increase whenever the United States has faced a serious economic crisis,Goldberg, Michelle. Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. pp. 186–187. as well as during moments of political and social uncertainty and fear.

Before 1800

Jewish settlers made up a small percentage of the population in the colonial and federal periods. At the time of the Revolution, one in a thousand Americans were Jewish—about 2,500 people. Most were in families of businessmen based in the port cities of Newport, New York City, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Savannah. They prospered as well-connected traders handling imports and exports inside Britain's Atlantic empire. Nevertheless, antisemitism remained pervasive and state-based beginning at least as early as the mid-1600s, when in 1654, the Governor of New Amsterdam referred to the Jewish people as a "repugnant" and a "deceitful race," and sought to have them expelled from New Amsterdam.

The colonial governments often imposed citizenship restrictions against the Jewish settlers, as they sometimes did with Catholics, Lutherans, and Quakers. The harassment of Jews by both individuals and governments was typically less violent than in Europe, but was nevertheless frequent and systemic. Business agreements between Christian and Jewish settlers gradually became a relatively accepted practice, although fees and inequitable practices disfavoring the Jewish settlers were common. Intermarriage was not prohibited and occasionally occurred. The majority of Jewish settlers supported the Patriot cause in the Revolution.

19th century

Throughout most of the 18th and 19th centuries, antisemitism in America was common, though not typically to the extent that was endemic in Europe during the same period. Jews were viewed as a race in America as early as 1654, when the Governor of New Amsterdam referred to them as a "deceitful race" in his efforts to expel the Jews from New Amsterdam.

Civil War

On December 17, 1862, Major General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11 expelling Jews from areas under his control in western Tennessee: The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled ... within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.

Grant later issued an order "that no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the road southward." His aide, Colonel John V. DuBois, ordered "all cotton speculators, Jews, and all vagabonds with no honest means of support", to leave the district. "The Israelites especially should be kept out ... they are such an intolerable nuisance."

This order was rescinded by President Lincoln but not until it had been enforced in a number of towns. According to Jerome Chanes, Lincoln's revocation of Grant's order was based primarily on "constitutional strictures against ... the federal government singling out any group for special treatment." Chanes characterizes General Order No. 11 as "unique in the history of the United States" because it was the only overtly antisemitic official action of the United States government. Grant apologized when he ran for president in 1868, and as president, 1869–1877, he was quite friendly toward Jews.

Late 19th century According to historians Ronald J. Jensen and Stuart Knee, by the 1870s Russian-American relations were strained by the mistreatment of American Jewish visitors in Russia. President Grant quickly responded to American Jewish requests for action to protect visitors. By the 1880s, the outbreak of antisemitic pogroms in Russia and consequent mass emigration of Jews to New York made relations worse. After 1880, escalating pogroms alienated both elite opinion and public opinion in the United States. In 1903, the Kishinev pogrom killed 47 Jews, injured 400, and left 10,000 homeless and dependent on relief. American Jews began large-scale organized financial help and assisted in emigration from Russia. More violence in Russia led in 1911 to the United States repealing an 1832 commercial treaty.

Late 19th-century antisemitic media The late 19th century in the United States saw a rise in antisemitic media that reflected and amplified public anxieties about Jewish immigration and economic influence. One notable example is an 1892 caricature "Their New Jerusalem" published in Judge magazine, which portrays Jewish immigrants and established Jewish businessmen as threats to American economic stability and cultural values. The central figure, a wealthy Jewish man carrying a scroll labeled "Perseverance and Industry," stands amid a bustling New York street dominated by Jewish-owned businesses, while established American families are depicted heading westward in apparent flight. This image serves as a vivid illustration of how antisemitic tropes, such as Jewish economic dominance and cultural displacement, permeated late 19th-century American society. Americans, who were influenced by European antisemitic tropes and stereotypes, such as the greedy "moneylender" as such tropes were widely visible in Europe, as seen in books such as the Gentile Tales and Blood Libel. Such depictions shaped societal attitudes, fueling nativist and exclusionary sentiments during a period of significant immigration.

Immigration from Eastern Europe

Between 1881 and 1920, approximately 3 million Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe immigrated to America, many of them fleeing pogroms and the difficult economic conditions which were widespread in much of Eastern Europe during this time. Jews, along with many Eastern and Southern European immigrants, came to work the country's growing mines and factories. Many Americans distrusted these Jewish immigrants.

Between 1900 and 1924, approximately 1.75 million Jews immigrated to America's shores, the bulk from Eastern Europe. Whereas before 1900, American Jews never amounted even to 1 percent of America's total population, by 1930 Jews formed about 3.5 percent. This dramatic increase, combined with the upward mobility of some Jews, contributed to a resurgence of antisemitism.

As the European immigration swelled the Jewish population of the United States, there developed a growing sense of Jews as different. Indeed, the United States government's Census Bureau classified Jews as their own race, Hebrews, and a 1909 effort led by Simon Wolf to remove Hebrew as a race through a Congressional bill failed. Jerome Chanes attributes this perception on the fact that Jews were concentrated in a small number of occupations: they were perceived as being mostly clothing manufacturers, shopkeepers and department store owners. He notes that so-called "German Jews" (who in reality came not just from Germany but from Austria-Hungary and other countries as well) found themselves increasingly segregated by a widespread social antisemitism that became even more prevalent in the twentieth century and which persists in vestigial form even today.

Populism

In the middle of the 19th century, a number of German Jewish immigrants founded investment banking firms which later became mainstays of the industry. Most prominent Jewish banks in the United States were big city investment banks, rather than local commercial banks. Although Jews played only a minor role in the nation's small town banks, system, the prominence of Jewish investment bankers such as the Rothschild family in Europe, and Jacob Schiff, of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York City, made the claims of antisemites believable to some.

Another focus of antisemitic fear was the allegation that Jews were at the center of an international conspiracy to fix the currency and thus the economy to a single gold standard.

One example of allegations of Jewish control of finances during the 1890s is Mary Elizabeth Lease, a leading Populist from Kansas, who said, "the government, at the bid of Wall Street, repudiated its contracts with the people... in the interest of Shylock."Alan J. Singer, "The Devil and Mary Lease" History News Network (Nov 22, 2020) online