General Grant owned slaves” (and he did, by virtue of marriage— ie. his wife’s family slaves) as it is to claim General Lee owned slaves (he did— they were Mary Custis Lee’s inherited slaves from her father George Washington Parke Custis.
Not the case. Grant personally owned a slave given to him by Fredrick Dent, his father in law. Grant freed the man after about a year.
Mary Custis did not inherit the slaves her father owned. In the Custis will, the slaves remained the property of the estate. The will required the slaves to be freed once the debts and legacies of the estate were paid, but not longer than 5 years after Custis death. Lee was one of four executors to the Custis will.
There is some evidence, sketchy at best, that Lee may have owned some slaves inherited from his mother’s estate in 1822. Lee’s son said his father freed the last of them in 1838.
Glad we cleared that up. Point being that neither man owned many slaves... certainly not on the level of those invested in large numbers. This is a point clearly considered by the whacko revisionists who want to tear down monuments. It has gone way beyond... ‘slaveholder’ all the way to Columbus, Stephen Foster and.. finally Abe Lincoln’s statuary (several times). This is an... erasure of history and whom will they replace them with? Stalin? No, not their hero, or Lenin? No way— inasmuch as the Lenin-Stalinist State enslaved millions and murdered even more.
One never hears communists talk about their enslavement of people. Never.