I would, if you have no objection. Let's start with...oh, with this item here:
"It was not just Southern generals who owned slaves but northern generals owned them as well. General Ulysses Grant's slaves had to await the Thirteenth Amendment for freedom. When asked why he didn't free his slaves earlier, General Grant said, "Good help is so hard to come by these days.""
I'd like to know how this was possible. Grant was living in Illinois prior to the rebellion and slavery wasn't allowed there. His wife and in-laws were from Missouri, a slave state, but slavery was ended there by amendment to the state constitution in January 1865. How could Grant have owned any slaves in December 1865 when neither he nor his wife were living anywhere where he legally could?
"I'd like to know how this was possible."
Here's your answer:
Union General Ulysses S. Grant was a slaveholder of record. He refused to give up his slaves until the passage of the 13th Amendment. The Grant’s wife Julia confirms having slaves through 1863 as she wrote in her Personal Memoirs, that:
"Eliza, Dan, Julia, and John belonged to me up to the time of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. When I visited the General during the war, I nearly always had Julia with me a nurse. She came near being captured at Holly Springs"
One of Grant’s slave’s name was William Jones. In 1858, while attempting to make a go in civilian life as a farmer near St. Louis, Missouri, Ulysses S. Grant bought the slave, William Jones, from his brother-in-law. Grant's also became the owner of record of his wife’s inheritance of four slaves, but as was the case at the time, women could not actually own slaves, so they were under the control of Grant. No record has been found of these slaves having been freed prior to emancipation in Missouri in 1865.
http://www.scv674.org/SH-3.htm