Interesting tidbit. Too bad it’s upside down.
Robert E. Lee’s viewpoint on slavery was fairly moderate for the times. He thought that they were better off here in America as slaves than free in Africa. Yet he and his wife helped to relocate free blacks to Liberia. He viewed slavery as “God’s will” if he thought of it at all, and the slaves that he had contact with were of the man-servant or Man’s man variety.
He kept his personal slave, Rev. William Mack Lee throughout the war and when William was freed, he chose to stay with REL.
US Grant, on the other hand owned no slaves, except for William Jones, whom he acquired from his father-in-law in order to manumit. Grant married Julia Dent, whose family were slave owners and Grant worked as an overseer to his Father in law’s business for a time.
Actually the William Mack Lee story was pretty evidently a hoax concocted in 1918 between an old man who was cadging for money and a newspaper man who knew how a good story when he heard it and was unable or unwilling to actually investigate it.
The fact is that not a single trace of WIlliam Mack Lee can be found attached to Lee. He isn't mentioned in any of Lee's letters, nor is he mentioned by anyone else. Douglas Southall Freeman's 4-volume 1935 biography of Lee says that he had two servants during the war: Meredith, his cook, and Perry, his body servant. These he mentions frequently in letters back to his family. Of William Mack Lee, however, not a word. Reading his pamphlet, you come to this passage, which I think illustrates what was really going on:
Still limping from a yankee bullet, an old darkey, with a grizzled beard and an honest face, hobbled into the office of the World-News at a busy hour yesterday.I give him full credit for spinning a good story and knowing his audience, even if it was all BS."Kin you white folks gimme a little money fur my church?" he asked, doffing his tattered as he bowed.
Typewriters tickled their hurried denial.
The aged negro cocked his head on one side. "What, I ain't gwine ter turn away Ole Marse Robert's n***** is yer? You didn't know dat I was Gen. Robert Lee's cook all through de wah, did yer?" Every reporter in the office considered that introduction sufficient, and listened for half an hour to William Mack Lee, who followed General Robert E. Lee as body guard and cook throughout the Civil War. When the negro lifted his bent and broken figure from a chair to take his leave every man in the office reached into his pocket, for a contribution.