# US Grant
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 22, 1999, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507 "1999-06-22T19:31:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 22, 1999, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507/1 "1999-06-22T19:31:00Z")
Did General Ulysses S. Grant ever own slaves? I heard that Bill Cosby’s wife made a comment about that when discussing racism.
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 22, 1999, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507/2 "1999-06-22T19:59:00Z")
Apparently so! A quick search using Google! came up with the following:
site: [http://saints.css.edu/mkelsey/facts.html](http://saints.css.edu/mkelsey/facts.html)
> [@](#):
>
> On August 28, 1848, Grant married Julia Dent from St. Louis, whose family held slaves. Grant himself owned a slave named William Jones, acquired from his father-in-law. At a time when he could
> have desperately used the money from the sale of Jones, Grant signed a document that gave him his freedom.
Pretty magnanimous of him. So yes, U.S. Grant did own a slave, but it doesn’t look like he owned him for long, nor did he make use of the privileges of ownership either. What exactly was the comment Mrs. Cosby made?
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Cave Diem! Carpe Canem!
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 22, 1999, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507/3 "1999-06-22T20:05:00Z")
His wife did. Grant himself actually owned one for a while between 1858-9. Here’s an interesting link regarding Grant and slavery: [http://www.mscomm.com/~ulysses/page160.html](http://www.mscomm.com/~ulysses/page160.html)
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“I wept because I had no shoes, then I met a man with no feet. So I took his shoes” - Dave Barry
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 22, 1999, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507/4 "1999-06-22T22:14:00Z")
## In Guns of the South (which is, yes, a science fiction book, but the author is a history professor), there’s a reference to Lee freeing his slaves before Grant. It’s all made up in that Lee is alive to do so at a point in the book at which he was already dead in real life, but I understood the reference to Grant’s slaves to be true, in light of the author’s background. It’s not something I learned in US History in high school.
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–Rowan
Shopping is still cheaper than therapy. --my Aunt Franny
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 22, 1999, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507/5 "1999-06-22T22:33:00Z")
Rowan, I don’t know if I understand your post correctly. I realize that _Guns of the South_ is a sci-fi novel, however I can’t resist the urge to point out what happened in “real life.” Robert E. Lee was opposed to slavery and in fact had freed his slaves long before the Civil War began. I don’t know the exact year, but it’s quite possible that Lee freed his slaves before Grant freed his. However, Lee was a slaveowner for a longer period of time than Grant was.
On a side note, Lee was also opposed to secession, but couldn’t bring himself to fight against his home state of VA. Truly, he had some moral dilemas.
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 22, 1999, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507/6 "1999-06-22T22:56:00Z")
Maybe Lee freed his own slaves, but he didn’t have any problems enslaving free blacks when his army invaded Pennsylvania. I don’t have the written source, but it was mentioned in Ken Burns’ _The Civil War_ documentary.
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“I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way…”
–Jessica Rabbit, **Who Framed Roger Rabbit**
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 23, 1999, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507/7 "1999-06-23T02:23:00Z")
Quote from Strainger \>\>
Rowan, I don’t know if I understand your post correctly. I realize that Guns of the South is a sci-fi novel, however I can’t resist the
urge to point out what happened in “real life.” Robert E. Lee was opposed to slavery and in fact had freed his slaves long before the
Civil War began. I don’t know the exact year, but it’s quite possible that Lee freed his slaves before Grant freed his. However, Lee
was a slaveowner for a longer period of time than Grant was.
```
On a side note, Lee was also opposed to secession, but couldn't bring himself to fight against his home state of VA. Truly, he had
some moral dilemas.<<
```
## My only point, admittedly not well-made, was that there was a reference in the book to the fact that Grant had slaves, and I doubted that Turtledove (finally remembered the author’s name) would have included this detail had it not been historically accurate.
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–Rowan
Shopping is still cheaper than therapy. --my Aunt Franny
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 23, 1999, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507/8 "1999-06-23T11:44:00Z")
Olentzero:
This was some time ago, when the murder of the Cosby son was in the newspapers. She was indirectly quoted about racism being prevalent in the US, and the story said she mentioned US Grant was a slave owner.
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 23, 1999, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507/9 "1999-06-23T22:55:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> My only point, admittedly not well-made, was that there was a reference in the book to the fact that Grant had slaves, and I doubted that Turtledove (finally remembered the author’s name) would have included this detail had it not been historically accurate.
Actually, Harry Turtledove went to great lengths to make his book as historically accurate as possible up to the point where he split off into alternate history. For example, _all_ of the Confederate characters, not just the famous ones like Lee and Forrest, were actual historical people.
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 25, 1999, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-grant/1507/10 "1999-06-25T19:52:00Z")
‘Guns of the South’ is one of my favorite books. I can’t recall the point at which Lee claims this, though.
If he does, however, I believe Turtledove got it wrong. Lee didn’t free all of his slaves (inherited through his father-in-law) until sometime around the end of the war. He was dictated to by the man’s will inside a certain time limit, though as he was busy fighting the Union, he got to it a little late.
Grant freed the one he had before the war started.
Lee’s past history with slavery, is, IMO, much more interesting than Grant’s. It’s very contradicting - he wasn’t a simple man by any means, and probably a bit less moralistically towering than Turtledove portrays him.