Dixie's dilemma

At the beginning of the school year, Dixie Outfitters T-shirts were all the rage at Cherokee High School. Girls seemed partial to one featuring the Confederate battle flag in the shape of a rose. Boys often wore styles that discreetly but unmistakably displayed Dixie Outfitters' rebel emblem logo.
But now the most popular Dixie Outfitters shirt at the school doesn't feature a flag at all. It says: ''Jesus and the Confederate Battle Flag: Banned From Our Schools But Forever in Our Hearts.'' It became an instant favorite after school officials prohibited shirts featuring the battle flag in response to complaints from two African-American families who found them intimidating and offensive.

The ban is stirring old passions about Confederate symbols and their place in Southern history in this increasingly suburban high school, 40 miles northwest of Atlanta. Similar disputes over the flag are being played out more frequently in school systems -- and courtrooms -- across the South and elsewhere, as a new generation's fashion choices raise questions about where historical pride ends and racial insult begins.

Schools in states from Michigan to Alabama have banned the popular Dixie Outfitters shirts just as they might gang colors or miniskirts, saying they are disruptive to the school environment. The rebel flag's modern association with white supremacists makes it a flashpoint for racial confrontation, school officials say.
''This isn't an attempt to refute Southern heritage,'' said Mike McGowan, a Cherokee County schools spokesman. ''This is an issue of a disruption of the learning environment in one of our schools.''

Walter C. Butler Jr., president of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, said it is unreasonable to ask African Americans not to react to someone wearing the rebel flag. ''To ask black people to respect a flag that was flown by people who wanted to totally subjugate and dehumanize you -- that is totally unthinkable,'' he said.
But the prohibitions against flag-themed clothing have prompted angry students, parents, Confederate-heritage groups and even the American Civil Liberties Union to respond with protests and lawsuits that argue that students' First Amendment rights are being trampled in the name of political correctness.
''This is our heritage. Nobody should be upset with these shirts,'' said Ree Simpson, a senior soccer player at Cherokee who says she owns eight Confederate-themed shirts. ''During Hispanic Heritage Month, we had to go through having a kid on the intercom every day talking about their history. Do you think they allow that during Confederate History Month?''

Simpson said no one complains when African-American students wear clothes made by FUBU, a black-owned company whose acronym means ''For Us By Us.'' Worse, she says, school officials have nothing to say when black students make the biting crack that the acronym also means ''farmers used to beat us.'' Similarly, she says, people assume that members of the school's growing Latino population mean no harm when they wear T-shirts bearing the Mexican flag.
Simpson believes the rebel flag should be viewed the same way. The days when the banner was a symbol of racial hatred and oppression are long gone, she contends. Far from being an expression of hate, she says, her affection for the flag simply reflects Southern pride. ''I'm a country girl. I can't help it. I love the South,'' she said. ''If people want to call me a redneck, let them.''

It is a sentiment that is apparently widely shared at Cherokee, and beyond. The day after Cherokee Principal Bill Sebring announced the T-shirt ban on the school's intercom this fall, more than 100 students were either sent home or told to change clothes when they defiantly wore the shirts to school. In the weeks that followed, angry parents and Confederate heritage groups organized flag-waving protests outside the school and at several school board meetings.

''All hell broke loose,'' said Tom Roach, an attorney for the Cherokee County school system. When principals banned the shirts at other county high schools in the past, he said, ''there was no public outcry. No complaints. No problems.''

But the Confederate flag was a particularly hot topic in Georgia this year. Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes was upset in his re-election bid in part because he successfully pushed for redesign of the Georgia state flag, which was formerly dominated by the Confederate battle emblem. On the new state banner, the emblem is reduced to a small icon. During the campaign, Barnes' opponent, Sonny Perdue, called for a referendum on the new flag, a position that analysts say helped make him the state's first elected Republican governor since Reconstruction.

Elsewhere in the South, civil rights groups have mobilized to remove the banner in recent years. Activists had it removed from atop the South Carolina statehouse and from other public places, saying it is an insult to African Americans and others who view it as a symbol of bigotry and state-sanctioned injustice. But that campaign has stirred a resentful backlash from groups that view it as an attack on their heritage.

''We're not in a battle just for that flag, we're in a battle to determine whether our Southern heritage and culture survives,'' said Dan Coleman, public relations director for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, one of the groups that joined the protests at Cherokee High School.

The battle over Confederate-themed clothing has made its way to the courts, which generally have sided with school dress codes that prevent items that officials deem disruptive.

In a 1969 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District that school officials could not prohibit students from wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, but only because the court found that the armbands were not disturbing the school atmosphere.

By contrast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit earlier this year revived a lawsuit by two Kentucky students suspended for wearing shirts featuring the Confederate flag. The court said the reasons for the suspension were vague and remanded the case to a lower court, where it was dismissed after the school district settled with the students.

Also, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit earlier this fall sided with a Washington, N.J., student who challenged his school's ban on a T-shirt displaying the word ''redneck.'' The student was suspended from Warren Hills Regional High School for wearing the shirt, which school officials said violated their ban on clothing that portrays racial stereotypes. The school's vice principal said he took ''redneck'' to mean a violent, bigoted person.
But the court overturned the ban, saying the shirt was not proven to be disruptive. School officials, noting the school has a history of racial tensions, have promised to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

''Since last year, we have gotten well over 200 complaints about the banning of Confederate symbols in schools,'' said Kirk Lyons, lead counsel for the Southern Legal Resource Center, a North Carolina-based public-interest law firm that works to protect Confederate heritage and is in discussions with some families at Cherokee High School. He said the center is litigating six lawsuits and that dozens of others challenging Confederate clothing bans have been filed across the country.

As the controversy grows, Confederate-themed clothing has become more popular than ever. The owner of Georgia-based Dixie Outfitters says the firm sold 1 million T-shirts last year through the company's Web site and department stores across the South. Most of the shirts depict Southern scenes and symbols, often with the Confederate emblem.

''This is not your typical, in-your-face redneck type of shirt,'' said Dewey Barber, the firm's owner. ''They are espousing the Southern way of life. We're proud of our heritage down here.''

Barber said he is ''troubled'' that his shirts are frequently banned by school officials who view them as offensive. ''You can have an Iraqi flag in school. You can have the Russian flag. You can have every flag but the Confederate flag. It is puzzling and disturbing,'' he said.

[Torie] Ban all message clothing at secondary public schools. It is a distraction from the essential purpose of the place. Better yet, have uniforms.

I attended Catholic schools intermittently until I reached high-school age. Some Catholic schools, particularly those in Louisiana, required uniforms as a condition of attendance. As private educators, they could do this. Boys wore all khaki with white crew-neck T-shirts (so the teachers could see that they had them on); girls wore white blouses and knee-socks, with dark blue skirts, beanies, and bandannas.

The reasoning was that wearing uniforms had a leveling effect, which would reduce snobbery and resentment while encouraging students to pay attention to the person instead of the wrapper, and to eliminate the distractions, as you say, of fashionability and the chance for display. I personally found it an agreeably level-headed approach to education.

I never felt particularly put-upon by differently-dressing high-school classmates, however, or by the lack of a dress code in the Northern Catholic schools and public schools I attended. Students 40 years ago still didn't display that much variety in cost and quality in what they wore.

Yeah, war is hell. I know the South suffered greatly....

Your expression of concern is underwhelming. Thanks for caring.

Cutting to the chase,

But it doesn't help for white Southerners to rally around the flag of a defunct political cause that in the modern era cannot be associated with anything other than slavery and/or secessionism.

Yes it can. It was. Still is. You just don't get it, but you propose to make that our problem. See our problem with you?

You reap what you sow.

...There it is. Now, tell it to the Jews.

For many years slave-owning white Southerners inflicted great harm on their slaves.

Yeah, and they were about 20% of the white population. Bet you didn't know that. Bet even more you flat don't care, you've got your answers, and you think you've got the nation by the ya-ya. Well, guess what, boy......tail gonna wag the dog. Yessir, tail gonna wag the dog.

Why are these Confederate flag wearing yahoos....

Thank you for your concern, your magnanimity is showing.

.....so sensitive about what happened to their great-great grand daddies, but so insensitive to what happened to the slaves?

No, that isn't it, is it? You aren't concerned about the slaves! Don't try to sell us that one! Your concerns are a little closer to home, and it shows.

It's time to let go of the past, and think about what kind of society to build for the future.

Time for who to let go of what past, or rather, whose past? Speak for yourself. And what's this "we" stuff -- you got a tapeworm?

How about this for a deal: white Southerners agree to not use that flag as a rallying point or symbol of Southerness and black Americans drop this reparations nonsense.

But we're talking to you. What are you going to put on the table? Nothing? Kinda thought so, Yankee.

U.S. Grant's wife, 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.

True, early in the war. But the Dent family slaves were all freed in January or February of 1863 and the trips Julia Grant made to army headquarters at Petersburgh were accompanied by a hired girl.

By contrast, in 1858, Robert E. Lee wrote, "There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil."

Lee's letter was written in 1856, not 1858, and was in praise of message by President Pierce against those in the North who would interfere with 'domestic institutions of the South', i.e. slavery. Taken as a whole it is not any sort of ringing denunciation of slavery, on the contrary Lee saw it as a benefit. " The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially," Lee wrote, "The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things.

Nine years later, Lee's views on slavery hadn't changed much at all:
"Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country, I would deprecate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both." -- Robert Lee, January 1865.

U.S. Grant, fought to save the Union and tolerated slavery in his own family and had one of the four family slaves in his own Union Headquarters. Robert E. Lee, fought to defend his native State from attack and personally detested slavery.

Both, as you say, tolerated slavery in their family - Lee freed the slaves of his father-in-law's estate in December 1862, only weeks before the Dent family did. Yet Lee fought for four years for a government that was founded on the belief that slavery was worth a war, and Grant fought for four years for a government that eventually dedicated its effort in part to the end of slavery. Go figure.

He specifically exempted those areas when he wrote the proclamation. For some reason he didn't want to "free" the slaves in Confederate areas where he actually did have military and governmental control, so he excluded them: "which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued."

Any general text on the war will tell you that President Lincoln issued the EP to cover only areas in actual rebellion against the lawful government. His thought his war powers as president only extended so far.

President Lincoln was a strong proponent of the 13th amendment for the same reason. His presidential proclamation might not have force in time of peace.

It should also be noted that as soon as the so-called seceded states issued their revolutionary documents in 1860-61, it was urged upon President Lincoln to seize the slaves of the rebels, as the rebels had vacated their rights as American citizens by their acts of rebellion and treason.

President Lincoln eschewed strong measures for as long as he could. He wrote:

"I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, no loss any how or any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have them without the measure.

And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth.

I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the Nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."

4/4/64

Walt

Slavery was evil; secession was illegal and treasonous. What would Jesus do? Wear a Confederate flag T-shirt?

Your view of History is rather simplistic.

Let's flesh it out.

Lawrence Keitt, speaking in the South Carolina secession convention, said, "Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it."

--From the Confederate Constitution:

Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."

Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government."

--From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:"The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves." (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)

--From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: "No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country." (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)

Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition." [Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]

On the formation of black regiments in the Confederate army, by promising the troops their freedom: Howell Cobb, former general in Lee's army, and prominent pre-war Georgia politician: "If slaves will make good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]

A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." [North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]

Robert M.T. Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?"

Alfred P. Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell: "If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule -- it is a question of political and social existence." [Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear, pp. 141-142.]

"The nullifiers it appears, endeavor to shelter themselves under a distinction between a delegation and a surrender of powers. But if the powers be attributes of sovereignty & nationality & the grant of them be perpetual, as is necessarily implied, where not otherwise expressed, sovereignty & nationality are effectually transferred by it, and the dispute about the name, is but a battle of words. The practical result is not indeed left to argument or inference. The words of the Constitution are explicit that the Constitution & laws of the U. S. shall be supreme over the Constitution and laws of the several States; supreme in their exposition and execution as well as in their authority. Without a supremacy in those respects it would be like a scabbard in the hands of a soldier without a sword in it.

The imagination itself is startled at the idea of twenty four independent expounders of a rule that cannot exist, but in a meaning and operation, the same for all."

- James Madison

"South Carolina...cannot get out of this Union until she conquers this government. The revenues must and will be collected at her ports, and any resistance on her part will lead to war. At the close of that war we can tell with certainty whether she is in or out of the Union. While this government endures there can be no disunion...If the overt act on the part of South Carolina takes place on or after the 4th of March, 1861, then the duty of executing the laws will devolve upon Mr. Lincoln. The laws of the United States must be executed-- the President has no discretionary power on the subject -- his duty is emphatically pronounced in the Constitution. Mr. Lincoln will perform that duty. Disunion by armed force is treason, and treason must and will be put down at all hazards. The Union is not, and cannot be dissolved until this government is overthrown by the traitors who have raised the disunion flag. Can they overthrow it? We think not."

Illinois State Journal, November 14, 1860

The cause of the war WAS slavery and secession IS outside the law.

Walt

If the South Carolina militia had not fired on Ft. Sumter, Congress would have had no legal authorization for declaring war.

Congress never declared war. There was no one to declare war on.

There was only a "gigantic nest of traitors", as it was called then.

Congressional action was not needed for action in any case. The Militia Act of 1792 allows the president to respond to treason and rebellion while Congress is not in session.

According to the Militia Act of May 2, 1792, as amended Feb 28, 1795, Sec. 2:

"And it be further enacted, That whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia of such state to suppress such combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed. And if the militia of a state, where such combinations may happen, shall refuse, or be insufficient to suppress the same, it shall be lawful for the President, if the legislatures of the United States be not in session, to call forth and employ such numbers of the militia of any other state or states most convenient thereto, as may be necessary, and the use of militia, so to be called forth, may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the ensuing session."

You'll note it says nothing about a state having passed an ordnance of secession to be a bar to federal action.

The Supreme Court cited the act in its ruling on the Prize Cases in 1862.

Walt

The imposition of high tariff rates by the Federal government would not have been perceived by the South as ruinous.

Explain please. At the time the north invaded the south, the south was funding some 75% of the federal treasury which was being spent in the north as "industrial development." You don't call that ruinous?

Complete nonsense. Lies.

Almost 95% of the tariff revenues were collected in northern ports. More revenue was collected in Philadelphia in 1859 than in all southern ports put together. And tariff revenue was 99% of federal income.

Common sense will also tell you that 1/4 of the people were not providing 3/4 of the revenue.

But lies are the currency of the "southern heritage".

Consider:

1) "One of the major reasons the south pulled out of the union was because of unfair tarriffs placed on them by the north."

Well, the Feds never placed tariffs on Southern exports, as is commonly asserted in Secessionist myth. Tariffs on Southern imports caused the friction. Could these have damaged the South to the extent that secession and civil war were justified? South Carolina, Texas and Jeff Davis' own State of Mississippi failed to mention tariffs once in the official and closely-reasoned declarations of the causes of secession they published in association with their Acts of Secession. Georgia's declaration of the causes of secession did mention the tariff irritant in passing --- but briefly and only in the context of an ancient wrong that had ultimately been righted by political compromise acceptable to the South. Similarly, the speeches of Secessionist leaders made in late 1860 and early 1861 show almost total concentration on slavery issues, with little or no substantive discussion of current tariff issues. In any case, before the ACW, the rate of Federal taxation was tiny by today's standards. The total revenues of the Federal government in 1860 amounted to a mere $56,054,000, and that included tariff revenue, proceeds from the sale of public lands, whiskey taxes and miscellaneous receipts. The population of the whole US in 1860 was 33,443,321. Thus, total Federal taxation per year was less than $2 per person. Even if the 9,103,332 people in the soon-to-secede Southern states paid all of the Federal taxation in 1860 (which they did not), their per capita cost would still have been less than $7 for the entire year. From these inconsequential sums, another Secessionist myth has been created and sustained for 140 years --- but people do not go to war over pocket change.

2) "Any goods ship …… out of the south from the north were subject to these tarriffs."

As noted above, this is another persistent neo-Secessionist myth. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 5 of the US Constitution states unequivocally that "No tax or duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State." Accordingly, not a single shipment of cotton or any other goods out of Southern ports after the US Constitution was adopted was ever put under tariff UNTIL THE CONFEDERACY DID SO BY AUTHORITY OF AN AMENDED CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISION ALLOWING THE CONFEDERATE CONGRESS TO LEVY TARIFFS ON EXPORTS. In short, only the Confederacy ever charged tariffs on Southern cotton.

3) "Slavery was but one small paving stone one the road that lead to the Civil War."

Seven states from the Deep South started the war. The four of the seven that published declarations of the causes of their secession spent the majority of their ink on frictions over slavery. None even mentioned the phrase "states' rights". South Carolina, Texas and Jeff Davis' own State of Mississippi failed entirely to mention tariffs. Georgia's declaration mentioned the tariff irritant in passing --- but briefly and only in the context of an ancient wrong that had ultimately been righted by political compromise acceptable to the South. Similarly, the speeches of Secessionist leaders made in late 1860 and early 1861 show almost total concentration on slavery issues, with little or no substantive discussion of current tariff issues. Accordingly, it is clear that non-slavery issues have been vastly overemphasized by post-war writers attempting to minimize the pro-slavery motivations of Secessionists at the outbreak of war."

-- from the AOL ACW forum.

It's all lies from you, PP Mama.

Walt

Your view of History is rather simplistic......Polybius to maro

Let's flesh it out. Lawrence Keitt, speaking in the South Carolina secession convention, said, "Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. ........Whiskey Papa

As usual, Walt, you take on the persona of an 1850's and 1860's era politician and refight the political battles that the fire-eaters on both sides fought in Congress and in State Conventions.

I again maintain my position that the average soldier in the Civil War and in any war usually fights for other reasons.

World War One was a particularly senseles war. Historians can go back and write entire books on whether the main cause for this or that belligerent joining was Alsace-Lorraine which in turn was the result of the Franco-Prussian War which was in turn the fault of Napoleon III's arrogance or Bismarck's intrigues or whether it was the neutrality of Belgium or the German High Seas Fleet's threat to the Royal Navy or whether it was the inflexibilty of mobilization schedules and France's or Germany's refusal or inability to stop Western Front mobilization over an Eastern Front causus belli or etc., etc., etc.

The bottom line is that when Johnny went marching off to war "Over There", Johnny was paying scant attention to any of these issues.

Johnny was marching off to war simply because Uncle Sam said that his Country needed Johnny and wanted Johnny to fight.

So it was with Johnny Doughboy. So it was with German Fritz. So it was with British Tommy. So it was with Billy Yank and Johnny Reb.

In these wars, it was the politicians and fire-eaters who demonized their counterparts on the other side. For the most part, the young men that had to bleed and die on the field of battle respected their foe and gave each other due military honor and credit for fighting for what they believed was right.

I again maintain my position that the average soldier in the Civil War and in any war usually fights for other reasons.

Well, here's why one fought:

"... a North Carolina mountaineer wrote to governor Zebulon Vance a letter that expressed the non-slave holder's view perfectly. Believing that some able-bodied men ought to stay at home to preserve order, this man set forth his feelings: "We have but little interest in the value of slaves, but there is one matter in this connection about which we have a very deep interest. We are opposed to Negro equality. To prevent this we are willing to spare the last man, down to the point where women and children begin to suffer for food and clothing; when these begin to suffer and die, rather than see them equalized with an inferior race we will die with them. Everything, even life itself, stands pledged to to the cause; but that our greatest strength may be employed to the best advantage and the struggle prolonged let us not sacrifice at once the object for which we are fighting."

-- "The Coming Fury" p. 202-203 by Bruce Catton.

Oh, don't forget this:

"Though I protest against the false and degrading standard to which Northern orators and statesmen have reduced the measure of patriotism, which is to be expected from a free and enlightened people, and in the name of the non-slaveholders of the South, fling back the insolent charge that they are only bound to their country by the consideration of its "loaves and fishes," and would be found derelict in honor and principle, and public virtue, in proportion as they were needy in circumstances, I think it but easy to show that the interest of the poorest non-slaveholder among us is to make common cause with, and die in the last trenches, in defence of the slave property of his more favored neighbor."

-- DeBows Review, 1861.

Or this:

"If it is right to preclude or abolish Slavery in a territory, why should it be allowed to remain in the States? The one is not at all more unconstitutional than the other, according to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. And when it is considered that the Northern States will soon have the power to make that Court what they please, and that the Constitution has never been any barrier whatever to their exercise of power, what check can there be in the unrestrained councils of the North to emancipation?"

-- Robert B. Rhett

The record shows amply that the average southern white absolutely abhored the idea of black equality.

Walt

You have missed this passage, which appears to contradict yours:

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.

Mrs. Grant may have brought a Black servant on her visits to her husband. I don't know if the servant was paid or not, but it seems likely that the servant would be free to leave on his or her own free will. According to the quotation, by 1863, those who were most willing to leave the plantation were gone. It's unlikely that a servant who remained would be held against her will. References to Mrs. Grant bringing a slave on every visit to her husband, then, would be misleading.

I don't know Mrs. Grant's personal circumstances, whether or how much she paid her help in the last years of the war, or what their wishes were in the matter, but it's possible that, like many slaveowners and slaves, the Grant household was caught up in the gray area produced after slavery was abolished and before wome slaves slaves were able or willing to stand on their own. Condemn Mrs. Grant if you like, but her offense was the same as that of hundreds of thousands of slaveowners. The argument that slaveholders didn't turn out elderly servants to fend for themselves, which has been used in defense of slavery, whether generally true or not, would appear to apply here.

The spurious opposition between Lee and Grant doesn't hold up. Lee was never strongly enough opposed to slavery to advocate actions against it, in his time or for years to come. And Grant never accepted slavery enough to fight for it or to work for its continuance.

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