Grant Grant frees his slave

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If memory serves me rightly, 'Jules' took leave of Julia at a train station with no hint she was going to take advantage of her newfound freedom under the Emancipation Proclamation. I will see if I can find more on this, but my understanding is that it was unexpected.
I have found an excellent article related to the two Julia's which I may have shared on a previous thread. I've read the nurse Jules took her leave from Julia in Jackson, Mississippi, but this article states it was in Louisville, I'm assuming Kentucky, as she was travelling to be with her son Fred who was lying ill in Missouri. Apparently, Jules was afraid that she could become enslaved again in Missouri, so it appears at that point she was acting as a paid servant and not a slave. Here is an extract with a link to the rest of the article. Well worth a read.

"After their fortunate escape to Oxford, the Grants and Jule returned to Holly Springs, where they welcomed the New Year. Jule had reason to rejoice on that Day of Jubilee. According to Julia, Jule was no longer a slave. “Eliza, Dan, Julia, and John belonged to me up to the time of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation,” Julia Grant noted in her memoirs. Technically, because the proclamation did not free slaves in areas under Union control, Jule and the others might have remained in bondage even after that date, but a slave attached to Grant and his army of liberators would have been manifestly untenable after New Year’s Day 1863.

Even after that date, Jule continued her service to Julia, most likely as a paid servant, as Julia lived with Grant in Memphis and then in Vicksburg. By the end of November 1863, Julia was with Grant in Tennessee, comforting wounded soldiers in his camp hospital. It is almost certain that Jule was with her in Nashville in January when Julia learned by telegram that her oldest son, Fred, was gravely ill in St. Louis. Julia and Jule and young Jesse quickly embarked on what proved to be their final journey together. “At Louisville, my nurse (a girl raised at my home) left me,” Julia later recalled. “I suppose she feared losing her freedom if she returned to Missouri.” We know nothing of Jule’s life once she left Julia, except for one tiny but satisfying fact. In her memoirs, after describing Jule’s disappearance, Julia wrote, “However, she married soon afterwards.”

The tale of the two Julias reveals the complexity of the Civil War’s social landscape in a way that the traditional image of brother fighting brother does not. One Julia was a slave owner and the wife of the general who defeated a slave nation. The other Julia was her slave for 37 years. The two women grew up side by side, but in two entirely different worlds. They traveled together nearly 5,000 miles, risking their freedom and their lives. They saw death, disease and destruction up close, yet they did not experience the same war. Julia Grant’s war destroyed a way of life she had loved, but her husband’s victories led to one she loved even more. By all accounts, no woman has ever enjoyed being First Lady more than Julia Grant. Jule’s Civil War was a wrenching but ultimately liberating journey from slavery to freedom. She risked more than her traveling companion during the war. We do not know much about Jule, but we know she had fierce determination. Once given her freedom, she refused to risk losing it."


 
Thank you so much @archieclement . I appreciate the point you are making, that the issue remains an unknown and can only be speculated about. The speculation could include numerous options, none of which will ever be proven. It's been an interesting exercise in considering what those options might be, but I think accepting to agree to disagree on the possibilities, as neither can be proven right or wrong, is a good place to leave it now. If any further evidence comes to light hopefully someone will share it here.
Its not entirely impossible it will never be proven......the whole point of mentioning for valuable consideration is to say something was indeed given, otherwise there was no need to even say it.....

Perhaps somewhere another account by either the giver/receiver/or witness will detail what it was........But like many things from over 150 years ago, it is more then likely lost to history.......
 
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nor does it conclusively show he didn't as its also used in contracts and bills of sale......again based on the available evidence to try to draw any definitive conclusion is simply speculation......
Bills of Sale always list the amount exchanged. Contracts always list the terms. The manumission document does not list any money.

This discussion and the info I found convinces me that the Grant biographers have it right. The evidence shows that Grant simply freed his only slave, at a time when his own finances were shaky. He and his family certainly could have used the money from selling Jones.
 
I think Archie's interpretation is probably correct. The abolitionists became aware that Jones wanted to be free and was capable of surviving as a free man. Dent needed the money and Grant was the necessary go between. Freeing a slave nonetheless, was a very public act. For a guy who had built a Whig log cabin, to free a slave, and then move to Illinois, and get his wife to go to Galena with him, is probably good evidence that there was more anti-slavery sentiment than he acknowledged.
 
Dent had a lot of slaves. Unless the plantation made money Dent would have to rent out the slaves or sell them.
My guess is that went Grant found out how much debt Dent was carrying, his negative views of slavery grew.
 
Missouri was something Grant had to accept. But when his mother-in-law died and the 1857 down turn spread through Missouri, I think the idea of eventually having to cave-in to his father's plans could no longer be rejected.
 
What are you suggesting here? That Dent owned Jones? Then why would he need Grant to get involved? Dent could have freed him himself.
Because Dent was not willing to do it himself. And he also knew the abolitionists were willing to pay. This conflict was probably one of the reasons that caused Grant to leave White Haven and move St. Louis.
A log cabin was a Whig symbol by the 1840's. Grant also went to courthouse and publicly freed a slave.
Then he moved out of the state and when to the heart of western free soil territory.
 
What's interesting:
What percentage of people owned slaves?
A very, very small percentage, practically nobody and anyone who sez different is slandering the South vs. slavery had its tentacles everywhere.

It this discussion we switch roles: who had legal title to these human beings becomes all important, while the rest of the people, even if they benefited from slave labor directly, weren't really that involved.
 
I think Archie's interpretation is probably correct. The abolitionists became aware that Jones wanted to be free and was capable of surviving as a free man. Dent needed the money and Grant was the necessary go between.
I don't think @archieclement mentioned abolitionists. In fact I don't think any article I have read even suggests the possibility. Another interesting speculation. There is no indication money changed hands as @DanSBHawk suggests, and there was no need for Grant to be a go between as he was the owner of the slave and not Dent. If anything, money had possibly already changed hands between Grant and Dent for the purchase of William Jones, or Jones was used as some other form of 'collateral'. Either way, his freedom required the signature of Ulysses S. Grant which Ulysses S. Grant provided. Regardless of his motivations, he did what many other slave owners at that time, prior to the CW, probably refused to do. He granted an enslaved man his freedom.
 
If that seems funny to you why would it to anyone else? They were being polite in not mentioning the obvious to you; that Overseer was a paid profession in itself. Grant was not that. His career at that point was farmer, not Overseer. Unless one owned a lot of slaves they didn't need to hire an overseer to begin with.

But we don't miss what you're attempting to sell: that if the mighty Grant himself was once an overseer it's just another example that folks North and South were "equally" culpable for and involved in slavery. The hope, once again, is therefore to sell that the war wasn't over slavery which in turn means the Confederacy was fighting for something more honorable than that. oops.
Overseer was a paid position? Only on the larger plantations...

Small scale owners such as Grant who owned 5 or less slaves simply fulfiled the role themselves...In slightly larger ones, the overseer was often simply a slave promoted to the position. Who wouldn't be paid other then perhaps getting a better cabin and a little more freedom or better treatment as a perk.

Yes that Grant was the acting overseer is rather obvious, as they admitted, so why pretend otherwise?
 
Overseer was a paid position?

Yes, always. Black overseers too. Even slave overseers, as you point out, were compensated in some way.

Yes that Grant was the acting overseer is rather obvious... why pretend otherwise?

No pretending. Grant was not in any way a slave overseer, however clever you supposed that idea would be.

We all know what a Slave Overseer was and what they did. Did you really have any hope that we'd buy the image of Grant with a whip in his hand and a shotgun under his arm, riding a high horse over a work gang of shackled slaves in the field? *

Sigh, Grant was a farmer. By any period record you can find he will be listed as a farmer. As you yourself pointed out, overseers were not necessary on smaller plantations, so of course there was no need of an overseer on Grant's farm. Grant simply managed his farm, apparently working alongside his slave as with any other farm hand. And after one season he frees that slave. Not the actions of an overseer.



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*Not that we miss what you are attempting to project. Consistent and transparent. It seems that Confederate apologists will pick up on any mere desperate scrap of an idea if it can be used to suggest that the Unions were as involved in slavery as was the slave South leading up to the Civil War. If sold, that idea then supports the post-war ideology that the war wasn't about slavery because the whole Country was "equally involved in slavery" at that late date.
 
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Yes, always. Black overseers too. Even slave overseers, as you point out, were compensated in some way.



No pretending. Grant was not in any way a slave overseer, however clever you supposed that idea would be.

We all know what a Slave Overseer was and what they did. Did you really have any hope that we'd buy the image of Grant with a whip in his hand and a shotgun under his arm, riding a high horse over a work gang of shackled slaves in the field? *

Sigh, Grant was a farmer. By any period record you can find he will be listed as a farmer. As you yourself pointed out, overseers were not necessary on smaller plantations, so of course there was no need of an overseer on Grant's farm. Grant simply managed his farm, apparently working alongside his slave as with any other farm hand. And after one season he frees that slave. Not the actions of an overseer.



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*Not that we miss what you are attempting to project. Consistent and transparent. It seems that Confederate apologists will pick up on any mere desperate scrap of an idea if it can be used to suggest that the Unions were as involved in slavery as was the slave South leading up to the Civil War. If sold, that idea then supports the post-war ideology that the war wasn't about slavery because the whole Country was "equally involved in slavery" at that late date.
Noted you disagree with the NPS staff, I will go with what they told me. And they indeed acknowledged he was in fact the acting overseer, and they also agreed he wasnt paid. I have no idea of what your personal image is, however I never suggested "the image of Grant with a whip in his hand and a shotgun under his arm, riding a high horse over a work gang of shackled slaves in the field? "

Not sure why you continually resort to such dramatic nonsense* that others have never said at all, but if you cant stay in the realm of reality of what I actually said, please refrain from replying....as not sure how I'm supposed to address delusional nonsense of yours othen then as delusional nonsense.

*-Noted my GGGF owned slaves as well, worked besides them as well, and did enforce the rules on his farm, never have seen any reference of him as "the image of J.R. with a whip in his hand and a shotgun under his arm, riding a high horse over a work gang of shackled slaves in the field?" a rather dramatic imagination that has nothing to with what we do know of him however, nor changes his role as an owner at all........I suppose your unaware most slaves weren't shackled while working in the field as well.......or that is was the owner or lessee who set the rules for his slave while under their ownership or control, which was in fact Grant.

While managing Whitehaven, the enforcement of Whitehaven rules also would fall to the manager when the owner is away, the NPS staff had no difficulty in realizing that.

Nor at any point have I resorted to simply calling you disingenuous names such as "Confederate apologists" simply because you disagree with me, which is rather nonsense and unwarranted.....Again if you cant abide by forum rules of being respectful, or at least extend the same courtesies to me i have to you, dont reply. As I am neither a confederate, nor apologizing for anything in the OP, which is actually Grant who I was unaware he is now somehow a "confederate"

Actually I simply view a slave owner as a slave owner, as its in fact what they were, whether one claimed allegiance to the Union or CS doesn't change their status as slave owner one iota...... to suggest it does would seem the rather partisan nonsense.
 
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Rather simple eeric, if talking about Grant and his involvement with slavery, we know he owned a slave, we know he also leased slaves, we know he also used slaves from his wife and father in law for 12 years.......that would be his involvement...... Wouldn't the actual extent be the point of anyone's involvement?

I agree it would be simpler if the standard didnt change thread to thread.
 
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Rather simple eeric, if talking about Grant and his involvement with slavery, we know he owned a slave, we know he also leased slaves, we know he also used slaves from his wife and father in law for 12 years.......that would be his involvement...... Wouldn't the actual extent be the point of anyone's involvement?

I agree it would be simpler if the standard didnt change thread to thread.

I am not following some of your logic but apart from that, hasnt this been hashed out, and I still respectfully don't get your point
 
I am not following some of your logic but apart from that, hasnt this been hashed out, and I still respectfully don't get your point
Fine but I'm not getting your point......when some seem to refer to a 12 yr involvement disingenuously as less then one......not seeing how its been hashed out at all, so not seeing what your not getting.
 
...the NPS staff, I will go with what they told me. And they indeed acknowledged he was in fact the acting overseer...

In other words, the NPS staff simply acknowledged your idea that "Grant was an acting overseer." That's what experienced history staffers do: they "acknowledge" statements that they themselves wouldn't come up with. That's because each alternative response would have a downside: (a) to agree, which staffers can't do if something is so clearly "fast and loose", (b) to disagree, which is just something staffers avoid when dealing with patrons, or (c) to laugh after the patron leaves, which is disrespectful. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.
 
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Rather simple eeric, if talking about Grant and his involvement with slavery, we know he owned a slave, we know he also leased slaves, we know he also used slaves from his wife and father in law for 12 years.......that would be his involvement...... Wouldn't the actual extent be the point of anyone's involvement?
"Involvement" is the most ambiguous, meaningless statement anyone could make about the institution of slavery.

If "involvement" is now the criteria, than virtually every southerner of the period is responsible for the slave-owners rebellion.
 
"Involvement" is the most ambiguous, meaningless statement anyone could make about the institution of slavery.

If "involvement" is now the criteria, than virtually every southerner of the period is responsible for the slave-owners rebellion.
Perhaps to you......and yes theres threads here that argue slaveowning isnt simply owning a slave, but that anyone in a household with slaves should be counted as involved or as slaveowners as they benefited......

Obviously Grant was in a household and around slaves after marrying Julia who had the use of 4, also at periods Grant also lived with and benefited from Frederick's as well, seems well involved to me, besides his personally owning and leasing others. Dont really see how anyone would view it as being uninvolved or a "ambigious" involvement
 
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