My Dearest Julia

This book from the Library of America is a compilation of letters Ulysses S. Grant wrote to Julia Dent Grant, his fiance and then wife while he was away either in the Mexican War or the Civil War. As the noted biographer Ron Chernow writes in his Introduction, “Grant’s wartime letters are concise and economical as befit a busy man with little leisure for rambling commentary. Nevertheless, each letter contains some arresting nugget of information or unexpected glimpse into Grant’s thinking.” [p. xv]

While some of the letters can be good sources of information on what Grant saw in each conflict, another aspect concerns an issue that is sometimes controversial: Grant’s relationship to slavery. Grant’s father was an abolitionist, but Grant married Julia Grant, the daughter of a slaveholder who had the use of four of her father’s enslaved people. Julia saw nothing wrong with slavery. Grant, after their marriage and his resignation from the US Army, briefly owned one man, William Jones, whom he freed in 1859, at a time when Grant desperately needed money and could have sold Jones. These letters give us a glimpse of Grant communicating with Julia regarding some enslaved people and slavery in general.

For example, in a letter dated May 1, 1861, written from Springfield, Illinois, Grant wrote, “Missouri will be a great state ultimately but she is set back now for years. It will end in more rapid advancement however for she will be left a free state. Negroes are stampeding already and those who do not will be carried further South so that the destiny of the state, in that respect, may now be considered settled by fate and not political parties.” [p .88] In a May 6, 1861 letter from Camp Yates, Grant wrote, “The worst to be apprehended is from negro revolts. Such would be deeply deplorable and I have no doubt but a Northern army would hasten South to suppress anything of the kind.” [p. 89]

In a letter dated May 10, 1861 fro Wish-ton-Wish, which was a house Julia’s brother Lewis owned on the Dent plantation, Grant wrote, “Soon your father & Lewis Sheets will be left to themselves at the mercy of Mary [Mary Robinson, one of the enslaved people on the plantation] and the rest of the darkeys.” [p. 90] In the same letter he wrote, “Old Man Rush is still living at White Haven. Does not make enough to pay his rent. White paid $150.00 on his interest. That and the rent of our house in town and the hire of the negroes I expect helps your father very much. He requires them all. He still has Brooks idyling [sic] about. Old Bob, Bon, the Mules Dun colt and now another colt are still roaming at large.” [pp. 91-92] It’s unknown from the book who “Brooks,” “Old Bob,” and “Bon” are, or if they are names for animals.

Grant wrote a letter on March 29, 1862 from “Savanna” [sic], which is probably Savannah, Tennessee, in which he said, “When I was ordered to remain behind it was the cause of much astonishment among the troops of my command and also disappointment. When I was again ordered to join the they showed, I believe, heartfelt joy. Knowing that for some reason I was relieved of the most important part of my command the papers began to surmize [sic] the cause, and the Abolition press, the New York Tribune particularly, was willing to hear no solution not unfavorable to me.” [p. 107] This is the same letter in which he wrote, “I am pulling no wires, as political Generals do, to advance myself.”

At Camp near Corinth, Mississippi on May 16, 1862, Grant wrote to Julia, “Your father sent Emma 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.” [pp. 111-112] On June 12, 1862 he wrote, “In my mind there is no question but that this war could be ended at once if the whole Southern people could express their unbiased feeling untramelled [sic] by leaders. The feeling is kept up however by crying out Abolitionest [sic] against us and this is unfortunately sustained by the acts of a very few among us.–There has been instances of negro stealing, persons going to the houses of farmers who have remained at home, being inclined to Union sentiments, and before their eyes perswaid [sic] their blacks to mount up behind them and go off. Of course I can trace such conduct to no individual but believe the guilty parties have never hear the whistle of a single bullet nor intentionally never will.” [pp. 115-116]

What do these brief glimpses tell us about Grant and his view of slavery? The message I get is Grant is no abolitionist, that he has sympathy for the enslaved people, but he is going to work within the system and not upset the institution of slavery on his own. In fact, he will support it against rebellion from the enslaved people. It’s fair to ask, though, how much Julia’s attitude affected his own, and how much he took her feelings into account in his writings to her. I think it’s instructive that there is no mention of slavery or enslaved people in the letters in this book after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Grant began to have destruction of slavery as part of his job, which he accepted, and he stopped writing about slavery and enslaved people in his letters to his proslavery wife, perhaps to spare her feelings or perhaps to keep from igniting an anger in her against the government? We don’t know. This is merely a small peek into Grant, and we can make no definitive conclusions based on these letters. We also have to keep in mind Julia’s viewpoint and Grant’s awareness of Julia’s viewpoint and feelings. This history stuff can be pretty complicated, eh?

I enjoyed reading this book for Grant’s humor and for the glimpses it gives into the love between Grant and Julia as well as its glimpses into Grant’s personality and military thinking. It’s a valuable source for all students of the war.