I Pledge allegiance to the Confederate Flag

Dixienews.com ^ | December 24, 2001 | Lake E. High, Jr.

[Non-Sequitur]

Grant's wife, not her father, owned the slaves. And they were not freed until after the war, six months after to be exact.

Your evidence supporting this claim, please?

[Ditto]

Did Grant's Family Own Slaves?

No. Grant's father, Jesse Root Grant, was an abolitionist Whig who detested slavery. In 1868 Jesse wrote, "I was never technically known as a abolitionist," but his actions said otherwise. When he was a young tanner, Jesse's boss was Owen Brown, the father of antislavery zealot, John Brown. The father of Grant's best boyhood friend, Daniel Ammen, was one of the more noteworthy abolitionists in the Ohio town where Grant grew up. It is interesting that during the Civil war, Julia and her four children spent considerable time with her father-in-law at his Covington, Kentucky home. Julia disliked Jesse, but remained in Covington in order to be closer to Grant, who was operating in Tennessee. Julia had at least one of her slaves with her on these occasions. How Jesse reacted to this situation is unknown, but he could not have been pleased with this arrangement.

 

Did Grant's Wife Own Slaves?

Yes, for periods in her life, Julia Dent Grant owned four slaves, Eliza, Dan, Julia and John. Whether she held title to them or her father retained ownership is still unclear. As a teenager, her personal slave was "black Julia." When she married Grant, she went north to various army posts, and had to do without her "servants," as she euphemistically called her slaves. For the first 4 years of her marriage, her slaves remained in Missouri. From 1853-1863, Julia continued to use four slaves, whom she mentions specifically in her Memoirs. They were all house "servants," and took turns attending to Grant's children, cooking and cleaning.

In a March 12, 1859 letter to his father, Grant made it plain that Julia was unable to do without her chattel. He wrote, "Julia and the children are well. They will not make a visit to Kentucky now. .. with four children she could not go without a servant and she was afraid that landing so often as she would have to do in free states, she might have some trouble." Yet Grant told Mary Robinson, one of the Dent slaves, that if he was the owner of White Haven, he would give freedom to all the family slaves.

When the Grant family moved to Galena, Illinois in 1860, Julia reluctantly left her property in Missouri and had to make do with one paid servant, Maggie Cavanaugh. Incredibly, Julia brought along one of her slaves on all of her visits to Grant's headquarters during the civil war. When Julia was with Grant, their youngest son, Jesse, was in the charge of "black Julia," the slave that Julia had used since her girlhood.

With the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Julia's four slaves were set free. It is claimed in the footnotes of her Memoirs that they were not freed until December, 1865, with the passage of the Thirteenth amendment, but this doesn't concur with other primary sources of the period and Missouri's slaves were freed in January, 1865. Grant himself noted that on a visit to White Haven in 1863, Julia's slaves had already scattered and were no longer on the plantation. On extended visits to Petersburg, in 1864, Julia brought along a hired German girl to tend to 6 year old Jesse.

Did Grant Own a Slave?

Yes. For a brief period in 1858-9, Grant was the owner of a 35 year old mulatto man named William Jones. The details surrounding the ownership of Jones are still murky. We do know that Grant wrote to his father on March 21, 1858, "I have now three Negro men, two hired by the year and one of Mr. Dent's." On October 1, 1858 Grant wrote again to his father: "Mr. Dent thinks I had better take the boy he has given Julia along with me, and let him learn the farrier's business. He is a very smart, active boy, capable of making anything, but this matter I will leave entirely to you. I can leave him here and get about three dollars per month for him now, and more as he gets older."

Grant freed William Jones on March 29, 1859, though he could have sold him for approximately $1,000. At this time Grant was in significant financial straits and heavily in debt, but was unwilling to sell another human being under the hammer.

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Now if you want based on this information to damn Grant for slave holding, have at it. But then what are you going to with people like Jeff Davis who owned hundreds of slaves and never freed one of them by choice.

I also leave you with this;

"The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true." - U.S. Grant, in his Memoirs, 1885.

Source: http://www.mscomm.com/~ulysses/page160.html

[Leesylvanian]

Now now, let's not let the truth get in the way of these Northerners feeling superior to we poor Southerners.

[Ditto]

Now now, let's not let the truth get in the way of these Northerners feeling superior to we poor Southerners.

A little sensitive, are we? You ought to do something about that inferiority complex.

[Leesylvanian]

Any loyal American is going to see those words, and it's going to grate on them, perhaps subliminally.

No, what's going to grate on loyal Americans are rectalians like you who don't understand that the United States has something called freedom of expression and freedom of thought, whereby not all people have to conform to your narrow-minded, twisted, worldview. Just because somebody has a political belief that differs from your's doesn't warrant your questioning their loyalty. If you can't accept a difference of opinion, get out of this country that my ancestors have fought and died to liberate and defend.

[Aurelius]

"The only reason he wasn't tried for treason was due to the magnaminity of the victors."

He wasn't tried for treason because the smarter among the Yankee lawyers knew that the case could not be made.

[Leesylvanian]

Hey, I heard there's this book called Mein Kampf by some guy called Holter or something like that, in which he says the Jews are to blame for all our problems. Must be true, its a published book. I suppose you believe every word of it, don't you?

If this book you have says that the Robert E. Lee helped form the Klan, then I have some real estate you may be interested in...

[Leesylvanian]

You must keep in mind that Ditto learned his "history" at the Walt Disney Institute. The North was all pious and in no way profited from the slave trade. All Southerners are fork-tongued serpents who only enslaved Africans in order to abuse them and become filthy rich. Also, America started with Plymouth Rock, there was no Jamestown, the Pilgrims came here for religious freedom and not financial profit, etc. etc.

[Aurelius]

"Lincoln is the man who saved this country from a gang of corrupt cotton barons who made their wealth by enslaving other humans.

That is an opinion which you are certainly entitled to hold. It is not a fact. Can you distinguish between fact and opinion?

[Leesylvanian]

Ahh, hello, Ditto. No, there's no inferiority complex here, only bewilderment and a gentle shaking of the head when trying to ingest and make sense of the usual bilge and claptrap. Have a good day and a merry holiday season.

[Aurelius]

"...to the majority of people it sybolizes slavery and oppression and elitism and big money made off the backs of others."

That statement may be true. It also may be true that that majority is in error, in its knowledge of history and in how it sees that flag.

[Ditto]

"You must keep in mind that Ditto learned his "history" at the Walt Disney Institute."

LOL. Maybe, but 'Disney' seems to be better sourced than any of the neo-con revisionist garbage you have been posting.

[Ditto]

All Southerners are fork-tongued serpents who only enslaved Africans in order to abuse them and become filthy rich.

I never said 'all Southerners' and you know it. It was the 5% who owned most of the slaves. That 5% did get 'filthy rich' off the misery of other humans and they also lead this country to Civil war.

[Leesylvanian]

Uh, what is neo-con revisionist garbage, and where have I been posting it? And, tongue-firmly-in-cheekly, what is your source for referring to my posts as such?

[Leesylvanian]

I never said 'all Southerners' and you know it. It was the 5% who owned most of the slaves.

That's right, it was only 5% who owned most of the slaves (does that include the numerous black and American Indian slave owners?) and duped the other 95% of the poor gullible rabble into joining the army in order to wage war just to keep them rich!

Touchy touchy about the quotes there, aren't we? I seem to recall a thread a while ago in which you put words in to my "mouth" and accused me of being a racist, and then didn't have the cojones to apologize. I didn't attribute words to you and you get all upset. Seems like you may have some sort of unwarranted superiority complex.

[Leesylvanian]

Ditto and his cohorts cannot distinguish fact from their Disney-history. They live in a delusional paradise where anyone who disagrees is inundated with endless cut-and-paste claptrap that does nothing to bolster their arguments and only serves to waste JimRob's bandwidth and the cash operating resources donated by the members of this forum. Then one of them will question your loyalty. If I wasn't borderline "obsessive-compulsive" about certain aspects of politics and history I wouldn't waste my time with them.

[Leesylvanian]

Don't take this as an attack, but how do you feel about those Americans that say the U.S. flag is no better than the Confederate flag because it flew over slavery much longer than its CSA counterpart, or is waved by the Klan, or flies over the IRS building, or flies over the Feds that killed those at Waco and Ruby Ridge?

My opinion is that people can have those opinions if they want, but that doesn't mean that all other people have to kow-tow to their ignorance and possible prejudice.

[Aurelius]

Believe me, I understand the compulsive aspect. I planned to be doing other things by now - like going to my health club.

I would like, for my own understanding, to find some objective, authoritative sources on the economic issues. Specifically to be able to evaluate the effects of the tariff and how great or small a burden it was on the South. The second economic issue is the degree of economic threat which the North felt from the existence of a Confederacy with a free trade policy.

Any suggestions.

[Leesylvanian]

My first reaction to your request for reading material would be: just do it like some of our opponents, make it up! When arguing a point just cut-and-paste anything that mentions the terms "civil war" or "slavery," no matter how unrelated it is to the original point of contention, and don't worry about wasting JimRob's bandwidth.

But as I pull my tongue from my cheek my second thought has to be for you to send a request to dixiepatriot and a few of the others (4conservativejustices, etc.) who keep up on the current literature better than I do (I simply haven't had the time in the past few years to sit and read...I'm looking forward to a time when I can).

Also, you may want to read some of the books mentioned by WhiskeyPapa. I say that because what he cuts-and-pastes usually means the exact opposite of what he thinks it means. I guess he's been marinating too long, hence the screenname.