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["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

 On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 9:38 PM,  <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com> wrote:

> Once a slave was freed by a Writ of Manumission, he could not be attached.
> Facing losing the slave with no compensation, Grant freed him.  He could not
> have done this with any other possession, not land or equipment or 
> livestock.
>
> Very different from the rest of his property,

At this far remove we can hardly know why Grant did what he did. It's
possible that even when he did it, _he_ was unsure of all his motives.
Sure, it's fun to speculate but once a person sets out a case that's
about as far as it can go without further evidence.

It's hard to bear in mind that social assumptions in the mid-19th
century were entirely different from what they are now, but any of us
can vouch that social assumptions have changed over our individual
lifetimes. We don't have many documents that recount every day life
from that era (though more, certainly, than from earlier eras).

Marie