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Setting protestors’ motivations for toppling him and Grant’s admirable work aside the he “briefly owned one slave” argument is problematic. Most slave owners owned <20. Many of the women in my book owned 1 or 2. Small scale slaveowners were the rule not exception. https://twitter.com/adamserwer/status/1274302914622885888
It’s equally problematic to pretend like all of the Union men who served were the “good guys.” There were men in the Union army who owned slaves. Others didn’t own slaves but definitely weren’t fighting for black freedom.
Some Union men stole black people and sold them to new owners. Others stole what little food and property enslaved people had. Still more sexually assaulted black and white women (see Crystal Feimster’s work) as they travelled through the South.
This fear about Grant’s statue being toppled is tied to this “the Union forces were the good guys” idea. Many were. But not all of them. Some people need to disabuse themselves of the idea that Union forces were a monolithic group that collectively fought for black emancipation.
OWNING ONE SLAVE, EVEN “BRIEFLY,” IS ONE TOO MANY.
