White Haven is the St. Louis home where Ulysses S. Grant lived from 1854 until 1859. After Grant graduated from West Point, he was stationed at the Jefferson Barracks in St, Louis, where there is a Civil War museum today. He was invited to visit Frederick Dent’s home in the city. Frederick had been a classmate of Grant. There he met Frederick’s sister Julia Dent. Within four months they were secretly engaged. Unfortunately, Grant was transferred away from St. Louis to fight in the Mexican War. He was not to come back for four years. After the war, Ulysses and Julia were married.
For the next several years, Grant was serving in various locations which created strains of the married couple. In 1854, Grant resigned his commission and moved back to St. Louis. He lived on his father-in-law’s property, eventually moving into the primary building on the property, White Haven. Grant moved to Illinois shortly before the Civil War. After the war ended, he bought White Haven as his principal home, but his duties as the commanding general of the United States and later as president, kept him away from St. Louis for twelve years. The couple did go back to White Haven at least six times while Ulysses was the president. After Grant left the presidency, he moved to New York City instead of St. Louis.
Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site includes the family home, several outbuildings, a visitors’ center, and a museum. The park is free and there is adequate free parking for visitors. It is located at 7400 Grant Road St. Louis, MO 63123. When you are driving to White Haven you may see sighs directing you to Grant’s Farm. This is not part of the National Park. It is an attraction owned by Anheuser-Busch.
The home was built around 1812.
When you arrive, go the visitors’ center for an orientation and to ask the Rangers any questions you might have. The are several scheduled activities that you might want to participate in, although these are not offered every day. Here is a calendar.
Grant arrived at White Haven in August of 1854. Two of his sons were playing on the porch. They did not know who he was. An enslaved Black woman did, and she notified Julia. Julia ran out and embraced her husband on the path in front of the porch. The Grant’s did not own White Haven, the Dent’s still did, but Julia and her children stayed there while Grant was away on the West Coast.
Julia’s father Frederick had given her sixty uncleared acres. She also was given three slaves to help with domestic work. Lewis Dent offered the Grant’s his house, which was one and a half miles south of White Haven, allowing Ulysses to not be under the constant watchful eyes of his father-in-law. That spring he planted his crops and cut and sold wood.
In 1856, the Grants started to design and build a five room log cabin in the land which Julia’s father had given her. When they finished the cabin, the Grant’s named it “Hardscrabble.” Julia Grant later recalled the naming; “The little house looked so unattractive that we facetiously decided to call it Hardscrabble.” That house is on the Grant Farm nearby.
That same year, the Republican Party ran its first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont. Fremont was an army officer while Grant was serving, and Grant apparently did not like him. He told a friend that he would vote against his.
Grant’s father, Jesse, was increasingly dissatisfied with his son’s evolving political views. He objected to Grant’s consorting with Missouri slave owners, his use of three slaves and his turn to the Democratic Party.
Most students of the Civil War are familiar with the appearance of White Haven. People always ask why it is White Haven instead of Green Haven, since the unusual green color attracts attention. The paint was Paris Green and Ulysses and Julia decided on that color after they took possession of the property.
The house is an attractive building which show too neighbors the importance that the Dent family had as landowners and slave-owners.
While this was Grant’s home for half a decade, the National Park Service tells the story of people outside the Grant family like the majority of the people living here, enslaved African Americans.
The steps that lead up to the front door were there when Grant lived in the house. The front porch is where Ulysses proposed to Julia.
Grant’s father was firmly against slavery, but when he married Julia Dent, he married into a slave-owning family. Grant became a slave-owner himself for several months in 1859. He enslaved a man named Jones. He freed William Jones before the Civil War, but his views on slavery were ambivalent. “I never was an abolitionist,” Grant told Elihu Washburne “not even what could be called anti-slavery…” However, Grant manumitted Jones in 1859 writing:
“I Ulysses S Grant of the City and County of St. Louis in the State of Missouri, for diverse good and valuable considerations me hereunto moving, do hereby emancipate and set free from Slavery my negro man William, sometimes called William Jones(Jones)of Mullatto complexion, aged about thirty-five years, and about five feet seven inches in height and being the same slave purchased by me of Frederick Dent-And I do hereby manumit, emancipate & set free said William from slavery forever.”
By 1863, Grant saw slavery as being the issue that had torn the nation apart:
“I try to judge fairly and honestly, and it became patent in my mind early in the rebellion that the North and South could never live at peace with each other except as one nation, and that without slavery. As anxious as I am to see peace established, I would not therefore be willing to see any settlement until the question is forever settled.”
Frederick Dent, Julia’s father, owned thirty slaves. While Grant was not the enslaved peoples owner, he was helped by their forced labor. He also supervised the enslaved laborers work for the Dent family.
After Fort Sumter was fired on, Grant wrote to his father; “In all this I can see but the doom of slavery.”
The house itself has interpretive signs. If you have ever been to Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois in which it looks like Lincoln is still living there, Grant’s home does not. There are several areas which have been arranged to have an 1850s feel, but others are modern interpretation.
Below is the house’s parlor room. James Longstreet, who was also stationed at the Jefferson Barracks, may have visited them here.
Here is one example:
Inside the house a copy of Frank Leslie’s Illustrate covering the Dred Scott case. The case was heard at the lower level in St. Louis.
Note the wall paper. When the National Park Service took over White Haven thirty years ago, there were several pieces of Grant’s wall paper. They made a reproduction and hung it up in the dining room.
Interpretive signs also look at the impact of Grant’s occupation on his marriage. Ulysses and Julia had a close relationship, but they spent months apart while he was in the army.
Exhibits also show the rise to prominence of Julia. She was a socialite in St. Louis, but very few people east of the Mississippi had ever heard of her. As her husband began to become better known, beginning in 1862, attention began to turn to Julia. She responded by increasing the amount of money she spent on clothing and accoutrements.
There is reproduction of a dress Julia would wear that was made by a local Girl Scout Troop.
In the sitting room, a checker board set up by the fire. Checkers was played by Ulysses with his children. This was an area for privacy for the family,
Neither Julia nor Ulysses ever got the message that Reading Is Dead.
The house often has reminders that the Grant family helped reinforce the servile status of Blacks living at White Haven.
Here is the “slave door” to White Haven. This was the entrance used by slaves to enter the house.
There are several outbuildings on the property. In the warm months, slaves cooked for the family in the summer kitchen which was detached from the house. The laundry was also not done in the main house since it would add to the heat in July and August.
The outbuildings were very important to the Dents and Grants. There was a chicken house which had fresh chicken for the family and also produced chicken that could be sold.
The chicken house is on the right in the photo below. In the middle is the ice house. Before electric appliances, well-to-do families would build an ice house which was underground. Laborers cut ice out of local ponds and then deposited the ice in the ice house to keep it cold. The ice was used to provide cooling in the icebox where food was stored.
By 1858, the Grants had concluded that farming would not support their growing family. The Grants moved away from the rural landscape they had occupied the last four years and moved into the city. Ulysses started working in a real estate firm where he collected rents from tenants. He was not successful at that either. He would move to Illinois right before the war started.
When Grant became a commanding general during the war, even though he had owned a slave he endorsed Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the use of African Americans as soldiers.
The Grants’ had four children at White Haven. While his financial projects failed, he was very involved in raising his three sons and his daughter.
Here is the chicken house.
During the war, Ulysses Grant saw the arming of Black men as a way to make them citizens.
While White Haven is today part of St. Louis, in the 1850s it was a rural community.
The back of the house with the stone summer kitchen.
The National Park Service’s interpretive signs contain good documentation on the life of the slaves at White Haven.
The Grants had given up trying to live in St. Louis before the Civil War, but after the war ended they were trying to get back to White Haven as a place the family could be together. Ulysses found out in January of 1865 that White Haven was going to be sold to pay back taxes. Grant decided to purchase it. Grant seemed to have hoped that he would spend several months per year at the farm. Unfortunately, he stayed on commanding the army during the first three years of Reconstruction and then was elected president.
We enjoyed looking at the landscaped grounds at the house. Unfortunately after Grant the family sold the house and the property was divided. If you go to White Haven today you will not see any farming going on.
Inside the barn at White Haven, the National Park Service has a museum devoted to the Grants. Much of it focuses on them as a civilian couple and their children. One thing that affected me were memorials from Ulysses’ funeral in New York in 1885.
The Grants loved to read to their small children.
The museum has exhibits on slavery, antisemitism, and the allegation that Grant was a drunkard.
The museum depicts Ulysses as a supporter of laws to protect the rights of African Americans and Chinese immigrants.
A exhibit does display Julia Dent Grant’s self-delusional approach to slavery.
Ulysses S. Grant also guided the Klan Act through Congress. This was designed to counteract the growth of the Klan by using the army to fight against it.
During the war, Grant had issued an order expelling Jews from the area under his control. Lincoln superseded this order. During his political career, the charge of Antisemitism was raised against him.
There are also other exhibits on Grant as a political candidate.
After we had seen White Haven, we returned to the visitors’ center to purchase gifts at the shop. There are also modern restrooms there.
Note: All color photos of buildings in this post were taken by Patrick Young except as noted.
Here is a guided tour of White Haven:
Sources:
U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth by Joan Waugh published by University of North Carolina Press (2009)
American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Ronald C. White published by Random House (2016)
The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition by Ulysses S. Grant published by Harvard University Press (2017)
The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (MRS. ULYSSES S. GRANT) Edited by John Y. Simon published by Southern Illinois University Press (2020)
Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction by Fergus M. Bordewich published by Knopf (2023)
When General Grant Expelled the Jews by Jonathan Sarna published by Schocken Books (2012)
Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822–1865 by Brooks Simpson published by Zenith Press (2000)
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