‘Soldier of Destiny’ Review: A Mystery to Himself

In 1857, three years before Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency, two idle military men destined to face each other in the Civil War could be found managing the property—including enslaved human beings—of their respective fathers-in-law. By 1863 they would be managing vast armies fighting over the fate of the nation.

One was Robert E. Lee, the aristocratic Virginian. The other—though he tilled far less land with far fewer slaves—was Ulysses S. Grant, the quintessential Northerner. Grant would manumit his one enslaved servant, William Jones, in 1859. But the father of his wife, Julia, continued to own 30 human beings, some of whom had labored in the fields alongside Ulysses or at home for Julia. One—a black woman we know only as “Jule”—nursed the couple’s children.