Ulysses S. Grant vs Robert E. Lee on Slavery

Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant Meet

On April 9, 1865, two men sat down together in the parlor of Wilmer McLean’s house at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. The older of the two, impeccably dressed in his finest uniform, was Robert E. Lee, general-in-chief of the Confederate States of America.

His opposite number, attired in the mud-spattered uniform of a private soldier with only the shoulder straps of a Lt. General to denote his rank, was Ulysses S. Grant, the supreme commander over all the armies of the United States. At that moment, the two were arguably the most important individuals on the entire North American continent.

Lee was there to offer, and Grant was there to receive, the surrender of the Confederacy’s most important fighting force, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Although conflict in the nation’s Civil War would continue elsewhere for a few more weeks, the surrender at Appomattox marked the final failure of the Confederacy’s attempt to establish itself as a separate nation founded on the “cornerstone” of African slavery, as its Vice President Alexander Stephens put it.

From the moment Lee and Grant affixed their signatures to the surrender document, the issue of American slavery was forever settled. Henceforth, the United States would truly be, in principle if not entirely in practice, the land of the free.

Ironies in the Attitudes of Lee and Grant Toward Slavery

For four harrowing years, Robert E. Lee had fought fiercely to defend slavery and Ulysses S. Grant just as fiercely to destroy it. But there was a surprising twist in the personal beliefs of the two commanders regarding the South’s “peculiar institution.”

Both men had been slave owners. Yet it was Lee, the Confederate, who proclaimed his personal belief that slavery ran counter to the laws of God and should eventually be abolished, while Grant, the victorious representative of the supposedly anti-slavery North, never voiced any moral objections to it.

In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country.

Robert E. Lee in 1856

Still, when it came to the actions each took toward the slaves under his authority, Grant’s behavior was that of a committed abolitionist, while Lee worked hard to hold onto his slaves as long as he could.

Grant Did Not Consider Himself an Abolitionist

In his biography, Grant, historian Ron Chernow describes the young Ulysses as having grown up in “an ardent abolitionist household.” Grant’s father, Jesse, did indeed have strong anti-slavery convictions. When, in 1848, Grant married Julia Dent, the daughter of a man who owned thirty slaves, Jesse was so incensed that his son was joining “a tribe of slaveholders” that he refused to attend the wedding.

On the surface at least, the son seemed to have inherited few of the father’s abolitionist sentiments. Before the Civil War, Grant never expressed any personal moral objections to slavery. His only concern was with the threat the institution posed to the unity and survival of the nation. That concern led him to vote in the 1856 presidential election for the pro-slavery Democratic candidate, James Buchanan, rather than for the anti-slavery Republican, John C. Fremont. In His Memoirs Grant explained his reasoning this way:

It was evident to my mind that the election of a Republican President in 1856 meant the secession of all the Slave States, and rebellion. Under these circumstances I preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or postpone secession, to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of which no man could foretell. With a Democrat elected by the unanimous vote of the Slave States, there could be no pretext for secession for four years.

In an 1863 letter to his home state congressman, Elihu Washburne, Grant summed up his pre-war attitude: “I never was an Abolitionist,” he said, “not even what could be called anti-slavery.”

I never was an Abolitionist, not even what could be called anti-slavery

Ulysses S. Grant in 1863

And yet in his dealings with both free and enslaved African Americans, Grant showed himself to be uncomfortable with the slave system.

Lacking Money, Grant Relied on His Slave-Holding Father-In-Law

In 1854 Grant was a Captain in the U. S. Army stationed in California. Separated by more than a thousand miles from Julia and his children, the desperately lonely officer decided to resign his commission so that he could go back to Missouri to be with his family. But with the loss of his Army salary, Grant soon found himself in deep and seemingly perpetual financial difficulty.

Between 1854 and 1859 the Grant family lived mostly at White Haven, the Missouri farm owned by Julia’s father, Col. Frederick Dent. Not only did Grant supervise the plantation’s slaves, he also purchased a slave of his own from the Dents (probably at a nominal price) to help work the 80-acre section of White Haven that Col. Dent had given the Grants as a wedding gift.

Grant Treated Both Slaves and Free Blacks With Dignity

As a farm manager, Grant acquired a reputation among his neighbors for being far too generous in his treatment of African-American workers. He treated the plantation’s slaves with dignity, refusing to beat them to force them to work. In fact, he would often roll up his sleeves and work right alongside them. He also paid the free blacks he hired the same wages a white worker would get. Other farm owners complained that Grant was “spoiling” the blacks.

Col. Dent had turned over four slaves to Julia when she married Grant, although he never formally transferred ownership to her. One of the Dent family slaves, Mary Robinson, later recalled hearing Grant declare that “he wanted to give his wife’s slaves their freedom as soon as possible.” He was unable to do so because the slaves were still legally the property of Col. Dent.

He wanted to give his wife’s slaves their freedom as soon as possible.

Dent family slave, Mary Robinson

Grant Freed His Only Slave Instead of Selling Him

During the White Haven years, Grant worked not only at farming but also at several other occupations, including selling firewood on street corners in St. Louis. But he never made enough to live on and pay off his debts. His finances eventually reached such a low state that two days before Christmas in 1857, he pawned his watch for $22 to buy presents for his family.

Yet in March of 1859 Grant appeared before the Circuit Court in St. Louis to set free the only slave he ever personally owned. Grant’s deed of emancipation read as follows:

Know all persons by these presents that I, Ulysses S. Grant, of the City and County of St. Louis, in the State of Missouri, for divers good and valuable considerations me hereunto moving, do hereby emancipate and set free from slavery my negro man William, sometimes called William Jones, of mulatto complexion, aged about thirty-five years, and about five feet, seven inches in height, and being the same slave purchased by me of Frederick Dent. And I do hereby manumit, emancipate and set free said William from slavery forever.

In testimony whereof I hereto set my hand and seal at St. Louis this 29th day of March, A. D. 1859.

Grant left no record of why he chose to free William Jones instead of selling him. At that time the sale of a slave like Jones could have brought Grant anywhere from $1000 to $1500 ($28,000 to $42,000 today) in badly needed cash. We can only infer that even though he didn’t think of himself as an abolitionist, neither was he comfortable with being personally involved in the slave system.

Grant Fought to Abolish Slavery to Save the Nation

By 1863 Grant, now recognized as the Union’s foremost general, understood that if the nation was to be saved, slavery had to be destroyed once and for all. In the same letter to Elihu Washburne in which he declared that he had never been against slavery, he went on to say:

I try to judge fairly and honestly and it became patent to my mind early in the rebellion that the North & South could never live at peace with each other except as one Nation, and that without slavery. As anxious as I am to see peace reestablished I would not therefore be willing to see any settlement until this question is forever settled.

After the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln asked Grant to work toward recruiting newly freed slaves, as well as free blacks, into the army. This was, at that time, an unprecedented move, considered unworkable by many in the North. But Grant assured the president that he was all for the project. In August of 1863, the same month as his letter to Washburne, Grant wrote to Lincoln saying:

I have given the subject of arming the negro my hearty support. This, with the emancipation of the negro, is the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy…

By arming the negro we have added a powerful ally. They will make good soldiers and taking them from the enemy [will] weaken him in the same proportion they strengthen us. I am therefore most decidedly in favor of pushing this policy to the enlistment of a force sufficient to hold all the South falling into our hands and to aid in capturing more.

Although Grant was enthusiastic about welcoming freed slaves into the Union army, it still appears that his motivation was not any moral objection to slavery, but the prospect that these new recruits would help to win the war. At this point, although he was personally uncomfortable with slaveholding, and as a soldier would fight hard to free as many slaves as possible, Grant was still no abolitionist.

The Civil War Changed Grant’s Attitude Toward Slavery

During the war years Grant’s commitment to abolishing slavery seems to have been based more on utility than morality – slavery needed to be destroyed in order that the nation might live. But by the time he looked back on the war several years after it ended, his thinking had changed.

In June of 1878, when Grant was touring Europe after serving two terms as President, he met with Prince Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of the German Empire. New York Herald reporter John Russell Young, who accompanied Grant on his trip, recorded the conversation. When Bismark ventured the opinion that the North had fought the Civil War primarily to save the Union, Grant corrected him.

“Not only save the Union, but destroy slavery,” answered the General.

“I suppose, however, the Union was the real sentiment, the dominant sentiment,” said the prince.

“In the beginning, yes,” said the General; “but as soon as slavery fired upon the flag it was felt, we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.”

It was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.— Ulysses S. Grant in 1878

Unlike his earlier lack of moral clarity concerning slavery, it’s clear that by the time of his conversation with Bismark, Grant’s attitude toward keeping human beings in bondage had evolved. Long after he successfully concluded a war fought to destroy slavery, Ulysses S. Grant had finally become a true abolitionist.

Further Reading

For an in-depth perspective on the attitude of Robert E. Lee concerning slavery as an institution, and his actions toward the enslaved people under his control, please read:

Robert E. Lee vs Ulysses S. Grant: Unexpected Views on Slavery

© 2018 Ronald E Franklin