Even with Robert E. Lee supporting his one slave acquired through an inheritance in retirement – the slave was too old to work – and U.S. Grant owning several slaves, people (Yankees) still insist the War of Northern Aggression was all about slavery. You've got that backwards. Lee managed over 60 slaves left to his wife by her father, and didn't free them until December 1862. Grant owned a single slave in his life and freed him in 1859 before moving to Illinois.
And this Yankee has known for many years that the War of the Southern Rebellion wasn't about slavery. At least, not from the Northern side.
You've got that backwards. Lee managed over 60 slaves left to his wife by her father, and didn't free them until December 1862. Grant owned a single slave in his life and freed him in 1859 before moving to Illinois.
From 1853-1863, Julia continued to use four slaves, whom she mentions specifically in her Memoirs. At the time, what the wife owned was the property of her husband.
What I have been able to find on Robert E. Lee concerning Lee’s management of – not ownership – of slaves:
Robert E. Lee vigorously opposed slavery and as early as 1856 made this statement: "There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil." Lee also knew that the use of slaves was coming to an end. Cyrus McCormick’s 1831 invention of the mule-drawn mechanical reaper sounded the death knell for the use of slave labor. Before the Civil War began, 250,000 slaves had already been freed.
Robert E. Lee did not own slaves, but many Union generals did.
When his father-in-law died, Lee took over the management of the plantation his wife had inherited and immediately began freeing the slaves. By the time Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, every slave in Lee’s charge had been freed. Notably, some Union generals didn’t free their slaves until the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.
I know, a minor technicality.