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by MARTY JOHNSON
\nTHE HILL<\/p>\n
Protesters in San Francisco on Friday toppled the statue of former President Grant, who led the Union Army during the Civil War,\u00a0in Golden Gate Park.<\/p>\n
San Francisco police said that\u00a0approximately 400 people gathered around 8 p.m. to take down the statue, though no arrests were made, according to NBC Bay Area.<\/p>\n
Also torn down in the park on Friday were the statues of St. Junipero Serra and Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”<\/p>\n
Friday was Juneteenth, a national celebration\u00a0commemorating the last\u00a0slaves being freed in Texas on June 19, 1865 \u2014 nearly two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.<\/p>\n
While Grant is widely celebrated as being one of the leading forces\u00a0who helped the Union win the Civil War, bringing\u00a0an end\u00a0to\u00a0slavery in the U.S., some historians have pointed to his complicated relationship with slavery.<\/p>\n
“Grant did in fact own a man named William Jones for about a year on the eve of the Civil War,” Sean Kane, interpretations and programs specialist at\u00a0the American Civil War Museum,\u00a0said in an article<\/a>. “In 1859, Grant either bought or was given the 35-year-old Jones, who was in Grant\u2019s service until he freed him before the start of the War.”<\/p>\n Kane also noted that Grant married into a slaveholding family that owned dozens of slaves.<\/p>\n After Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, Grant wrote his father, an abolitionist, saying, \u201cMy inclination is to whip the rebellion into submission, preserving all Constitutional rights. If it cannot be whipped any other way than through a war against slavery, let it come to that legitimately. If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go.\u201d<\/p>\n Many on Twitter pushed back against the toppling of Grant’s statue in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\nADVERTISEMENT<\/div>\n<\/div>\n