[Iwo Jima]

You are mistaken about the ownership of slaves by General Grant. According to the book "The South Was Right," page 27, there is something called "The Gray Book" which documents that Grant owned slaves throughout the war and up until the 13th Amendment was passed. In fact, Grant is credited with originating the phrase "good help is hard to find" as his excuse for not freeing his slaves sooner.

We must remember that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to states "in rebellion." Therefore, the rights of Yankees to own slaves and the fact of slave ownership existed in the North far longer than in the South, just as the origins of slave ownership originated in the North far earlier than in the South.

[x]

African laborers were first brought to Jamestown in 1619. It's not likely that "Northerners" had slaves much earlier than that. It took some time to clarify that Black workers were "slaves" and not indentured servants. The first law mentioning slaves apparently did come out of Massachusetts, but it's not clear that the reality of slavery and slave ownership "originated in the North far earlier than in the South." In any case, it wouldn't have been original to either region, but an adaption of what had been done in the Caribbean and in Spanish colonies.

Your Grant quote has certainly been making the rounds of the Internet, but always without any source given. It looks like the attribution of a cheap modern one-liner to Grant. "The Gray Book" was a short collection of essays in defense of the Confederacy published by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 1935. It doesn't look like it was a serious study of historical records, but if anyone has the book, it would be interesting to see if they footnote the quotation and give a reference to some earlier document, or if it's just part of the folklore of the day. A lot of these polemical books just draw off the last generation of argumentative or propagandistic books and don't look at the existing records from the Civil War period.

The other quotation ("If I had known, etc.) comes from a "Democratic Speakers' Handbook" by one Matthew Carey, Jr. It was published when Grant was running for President in 1868. Given the partisan passions of the day it's not a reliable source. Historians haven't found earlier or more authoritative references for the quotation, and it contradicts what Grant said on other quotations, so it looks a lot like a fabrication.

[Non-Sequitur]

You are mistaken about the ownership of slaves by General Grant. According to the book "The South Was Right," page 27, there is something called "The Gray Book" which documents that Grant owned slaves throughout the war and up until the 13th Amendment was passed.

There is also something called the Missouri Constitution and other things called 'biographies' where it is shown that the Kennedy boys are wrong.

Facts first. 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, it appears that he was a gift from Grant's father-in-law since Grant himself hadn't the money to buy a slave. There is a leter that Grant wrote to his father on March 21, 1858, in which he says, "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." Regardless of how Grant came to own Jones, Grant freed him 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.

As for Mrs. Grant, for periods in her life, Julia Dent Grant had the use of four slaves, Eliza, Dan, Julia and John. Whether she held title to them or her father retained ownership is unclear, but it is more likely that her father retained title. Had she owned the slaves then under the laws of the time her property would have been transferred to her husband, and Grant showed his feeling toward slave ownership. Regardless, with the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Julia's four slaves were set free by the Dent family. 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. Why would she have done that if she still had her slaves?

There are other southron types who claim Grant owned slaves for a period of years after the war. You, at least, only claim he owned them until December 1865. Even that claim would be impossible. As of January 1865 every state in the North except Kentucky and Delaware had amended their state Constitutions to end slavery. Grant didn't live anywhere where slave ownership was legal. How could he have continued to own them?

The quote 'Good help is hard to find" that is attributed to Grant is complete and utter bullsh*t. I have yet to find that anywhere in his writings and nobody has been able to tell me when he is supposed to have said it or to whom. I doubt you will have any better luck.