Did the documentary ding ole USG any for owning/renting slaves or did it just kinda gloss over or outright omit it? Maybe blamed it on his wife? That didn't work for Adam in the garden of Eden.
Apparently he let the one slave he had go free instead of selling him. Lee didn’t have slaves either, his wife’s family did.
Don’t recall it being mentioned.
Not surprised. It does not fit the narrative of trying to make a guy from the 19th century a hero to a 21st century audience. IIRC, Grant owned one black man for a brief period before the Civil war and freed him. I don't think anyone knows the particulars of whether Grant bought the man himself or was given him by someone else, perhaps his father in law.
Grant's father was an abolitionist but Grant himself was ambivalent enough on the issue to marry into a slave holding family. Grant's wife had a few slaves which he worked/rented when he attempted to be a farmer which he failed at. They don't really know if she actually owned them herself or if her father was letting her "borrow" them while keeping ownership himself out of concern that Grant might free them or talk his wife into doing so. After the failed farming deal, Grant went to work for his father in law at his plantation where they of course worked slaves which I don't think were freed until after the war.
I don't hold any of that against Grant himself. It was a different time. Just don't care for the hypocritical and downright fictional portrayal of the big players of that era by what passes for history now days.
