General Grant and His Family

As this print made shortly after the Civil War demonstrates, Ulysses S. Grant, Julia Grant, and their children Fred, Buck, Nellie, and Jesse had achieved a remarkable level of fame before they even entered the White House. But some members of their household remained invisible. Raised on a farm outside of St. Louis, Missouri, that was worked by about thirty enslaved people, Julia Boggs Dent received a chilly welcome when she married into the staunchly abolitionist Grant family. A formerly enslaved woman who worked for the family later recalled that the general “wanted to give his wife’s slaves their freedom as soon as he was able.”