"Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character."

"I worked side-by-side in the fields with the slaves on my farm."

"Both my wife and I inherited slaves. The plantation that we lived in before the Civil War is now Arlington National Cemetery."

"I graduated 2nd in my class at West Point and never had a single demerit during my entire undergraduate career. My eldest son graduated 1st in his class."

"I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of.... Secession is nothing but revolution."

(Fort Mason, Texas, to his son Rooney Lee, 29 January 1861)

"There are but two parties now, Traitors & Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter."

(Letter to his father, Jessie Grant, 21 April 1861)

"[I counseled] often and early in the war that the slaves should be emancipated, that it was the only way to remove a weakness at home and to get sympathy abroad, and to divide our enemies."

(Statement to William Allan, 10 March 1868)

"I never was an Abolitionest.... but I try to judge farely & honestly and it become patent to my mind early in the rebellion that the North & South could never live at peace with each other except as one nation, and that without Slavery."

(Letter to Elihu B. Washburne, 30 August 1863)