Preaching water and drinking wine

[L Verge]

First, Grant did not become Commanding General until 1864, and I think we might want to consider that he was fighting to save the Union first (his military duty) and worry about the slavery issue second. His wife was caught in the middle between her recognized lifestyle and giving that up.

In the anecdote, please note that no mention is made of his military servant being either black or white. We know that Grant freed his one known slave in 1859. He was also known for incorporating displaced blacks into the war effort, so this servant may well have been one of those that he was helping -- or it could have been a white man.

Lastly, here's something interesting from a blog named Exploring the Past:

Did Ulysses S. Grant Own Slaves During the Civil War?
By Nick Sacco on June 29, 2015

Over the past few days I’ve observed at least three postings on social media perpetuating an old, hackneyed claim about Ulysses S. Grant that has resurfaced in force. The reasons for its resurgence should be obvious to most readers, but it will suffice to argue here that a heightened uncertainty about the appropriate place for Confederate iconography in U.S. society has mobilized some Confederate apologists into a fighting position on the front lines of history. Their claim about Grant goes a little like this:

U.S. Grant had several slaves who were only freed after the 13th amendment in December of 1865. When asked why he didn’t free his slaves earlier, Grant stated that “Good help is so hard to come by these days.”

As Abraham Lincoln argued in 1862, “don’t trust everything you read on the internet,” and this claim is patently false despite its seemingly wide acceptance online. Here’s why.

Prior to the Civil War Grant lived with his wife Julia and their four children in St. Louis, Missouri, at his father-in-law’s White Haven estate from 1854 until 1859. At some point during this experience Grant obtained a slave named William Jones. The sole document we have confirming Grant’s ownership of Jones is a manumission paper freeing Jones on March 29, 1859, written in Grant’s own hand:

William Jones Manumission

William Jones Manumission Transcribed How, when, and why Grant obtained a slave are all unknown, although Grant’s mentioning of Frederick Dent suggests that he most likely purchased Jones from his Father-in-law (Grant also had a brother-in-law named Frederick Dent who was serving with the U.S. Army in the western frontier at this time. The brother-in-law could have sold Jones to Grant, but these circumstances suggest that it was unlikely). Grant never mentions Jones in any correspondence or in his Personal Memoirs, so we don’t know his thoughts on this matter. What happened to William Jones after his emancipation is also a mystery lost to history.

There are literally no other pieces of historical evidence to suggest that Grant ever owned slaves at any point after 1859. The quote about Grant not being able to find any good labor is a complete fabrication and you will not find it in his edited papers or any newspapers from the time. It’s simply not true.

That is pretty much the heart of the matter regarding Grant’s alleged ownership of slaves during the war, but I believe there is one more piece of evidence that can further advance us towards a conclusive answer.

Grant’s wife Julia grew up in a household that benefited from slave labor. My friend and colleague Bob Pollock details Julia’s relationship to the enslaved people at White Haven in this fine essay, which I will not repeat here. For our purposes we just need to know that Julia’s father was running into serious financial troubles and struggling to maintain ownership of White Haven by the time of the Civil War. Grant, writing from a camp in Corinth, Mississippi, on May 16, 1862, received word of these struggles and mentioned to Julia that:

Your father sent Emma [Julia’s sister] a bill of sale for the negroes he gave her. To avoid a possibility of any of them being sold he ought to do the same with all the balance. I would not give anything for you to have any of them as it is not probable we will ever live in a slave state again but would not like to see them sold under the hammer.

Grant expresses concern about Frederick Dent’s slaves being confiscated and possibly broken up to be sold at a slave auction to pay off debts. He suggests that Dent write a bill of sale to Emma for all of his slaves instead of the four he originally sold to her. And, importantly, Grant states his intention not to invest any of his own money in his father-in-law’s slaves because the likelihood of his family moving back to a slave state is slim to none. Through this letter it’s apparent that by 1862, Grant–regardless of his own views about slavery at that point in the war–had no intention of investing any funds to become a slaveholder again.

Given this evidence, why is it claimed that he owned slaves until December 1865? By arguing that Grant didn’t care about slavery’s demise and that he even owned slaves himself during the war, the people who buy this narrative are trying to spread the idea that slavery had little to do with the pretext or context of the Civil War. The claim has little merit, however, because regardless of Grant’s personal views towards slavery at the outbreak of the Civil War, he played no role in the political debates over secession or slavery that precipitated the conflict.

I don't think that any of us can psychoanalyze what made any of our forefathers do anything! One's culture and thoughts are often hard to determine and even harder to change.