As the correspondence wore on, Lee treated Grant to a frosty lecture on the right of southern slave owners to reclaim black soldiers who had been their slaves, and his stilted language revealed something about his bad faith in defending this abhorrent practice: “The constitutional relations and obligations of the Confederate government to the owners of this species of property, are the same as those so frequently and so long recognized as appertaining to the government of the United States, with reference to the same class of persons, by virtue of its organic law.”
