I have my doubts that Forrest said that. He was a great general but Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were probably the best.
An interesting fact which few people know is Lee and Grant both acquired slaves from their wives when they married. Robert E. Lee freed his. Grant kept his and didn’t free them when the war ended. He only did so with the 13th amendment. I guess you have heard of Lee and Grant.
Grant only ever owned one slave personally. He freed him in 1859, at a time when he could probably have sold him for $400+, possibly quite a bit more, at a time when this was a year’s average income in the USA, and when Grant was desparately in need of money. Perhaps $30,000 in today’s terms.
Julia Grant had several slaves to whom she may or may not have held title. Some contend her father retained legal ownership and merely directed them to work for her. The records aren’t clear.
What is clear is that the 13th Amendment didn’t free them. They were freed by Missouri state action on January 1, 1865 almost a year before the 13th was declared ratified on December 18. The 13th freed slaves only in KY (about 50k, if I remember right) and <200 in DE. All other slaves in Union states had been previously freed by state action.
I make no claim Grant was ever a strong anti-slavery man, he himself said he never had been. Which to my mind just makes his walking away from a year’s income to free a man even more admirable.
Meanwhile, Lee, who had custody if not exactly ownership of slaves freed in his father-in-law’s will in 1857, kept them, arguably in conflict with the terms of the will, in slavery for more than five years. When several ran away, he had them tracked down, dragged back and flogged, while he stood by and personally supervised.
http://radgeek.com/gt/2005/01/03/robert-e-lee-owned-slaves-and-defended-slavery/
His often vaunted opposition to slavery was along the lines of “It’s an evil, but a necessary evil, which may take thousands of years to pass away, in God’s good time.” This philosophical opinion was, of course, a great comfort to the enslaved and abused.
He was strongly opposed to abolition. This combination sounds, to a reasonable person, more like being in favor of slavery than against it, much like the politicians who are personally opposed to abortion but won’t consider doing anything at all to rein it in.
Lee: “Still I fear he (the abolitionist) will persevere in his evil Course. Is it not strange that the descendants of those pilgrim fathers who Crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom of opinion, have always proved themselves intolerant of the Spiritual liberty of others?
I find it truly amazing that Lee is here concerned about the “spiritual liberty” of the slaveowner, rather than the spiritual and physical liberty of the slave. How exactly parallel to the “pro-choice” person today who says, “If you’re opposed to abortion, don’t get one. But don’t force your opinion on others.”
Here’s some more info on whether Julia and therefore US Grant ever held legal title to “her” slaves.
http://www.yandtblog.com/?p=298
One interesting point. Apparently all the Dent family slaves, including those “belonging” to Julia, freed themselves by walking away sometime during or before 1864. There was no doubt a lot of this “informal emancipation” during the latter war years. The government and military were less than enthusiastic about enforcing laws against runaway slaves, so they tended in practice to become dead letters.