Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (16 page)

Julia had not been long in residence when General Rawlins called to pay his respects. After the usual pleasantries, Rawlins said, “I wonder if you would have a word with the general on my behalf.”

Julia had to laugh. “General, if he won’t take your advice regarding a military matter, he’s hardly likely to accept the same suggestions from me. In fact, that’s more likely to prove to him that his original judgment was sound.”

“This is too important not to make the attempt.” Rawlins fairly crackled with agitation. “General Rosecrans ought to be relieved of duty.”

He went on to describe the general’s offenses, including an address he had recently published that had upset his officers, but as Julia listened, nodding, her heart filled with dismay. She liked General William Starke Rosecrans because he was handsome and brave, and because she knew Ulys liked him. To appease Rawlins, however, and in fond remembrance of his late wife, Emily, she agreed to bring his concerns to her husband.

Ulys hated to linger at the table, so as soon as he sat down to his noon lunch, she quickly passed along his assistant adjutant general’s concerns. “Rosecrans is a brave and loyal soldier with the best of military training, the kind of man we can’t spare,” Ulys replied. “He’s a fine fellow—a bit excited at present, but he’ll soon come around all right.”

Later, after Julia returned from visiting the soldiers on the sick list, five other officers called on her, echoing Rawlins’s entreaties about General Rosecrans.

“I’m reluctant to part with him,” Ulys admitted after Julia shared his officers’ confidences. “I know what it’s like to face this sort of criticism.”

“Not quite this sort,” Julia countered. “
You
never merited a word of the criticism spoken against you.”

Ulys thanked her for the compliment, kissed her cheek, and returned to his office, his brow furrowed.

Not twenty minutes later, he returned to her sitting room, smiling broadly. “This is good news, very good news,” he said, holding up a telegram. “Rosecrans is promoted and ordered to take command of the Army of the Cumberland. Now we can part on cordial terms.”

Ulys’s officers were pleased that all had been resolved to their satisfaction—and despite Julia’s protests that she had played no part in it, they thanked her profusely for advocating their cause so persuasively. In the days that followed, she realized that she had unwittingly become the favorite intercessor for anyone with a difficult case to plead before the general.

•   •   •

From Jackson, Julia, Jesse, and Jule accompanied Ulys and his army to La Grange, Tennessee, following the line of the Mississippi Central Railroad. A week later, Ulys’s cavalry captured Holly Springs, Mississippi, where, to minimize the risk of long munition and supply lines in enemy territory, he decided to establish a depot.

Ulys had gone ahead with his army, and Julia’s escort was delayed several days, so by the time her little household arrived in Holly Springs, Ulys had already moved on. He wrote to tell her that he greatly regretted not meeting her, and he promised she could join him in Oxford as soon as the railroad was repaired.

Holly Springs bustled with activity despite the cold, which had frozen the muddy roads into hard, furrowed avenues where wagon wheels had passed during an icy rainstorm the night before. “Will you see it for me?” Julia asked Jule as they rode along. Jule dutifully described the signs of Ulys’s preparations for the anticipated thrust toward Vicksburg—a long train of boxcars loaded with clothing and rations ready to be shipped to the field, bales of cotton piled in the court house and the public square, warehouses full almost to overflowing with essential supplies. “It seems a charming sort of place despite all this frenzy,” Jule concluded, with a reassuring smile that told Julia that the ice between them had thawed. “Safe and hospitable, or so it looks to me.”

Ulys’s staff had arranged very nice lodgings in the fine house of Harvey W. Walter, a lawyer who had left Holly Springs to become a Confederate officer. He had placed his residence, a large, new, Greek Revival mansion with Gothic towers, in the care of a Mrs. Govan, whose husband, son, and brother-in-law had joined the Confederate army. Despite their political differences over secession, Julia found her landlady a fine, noble woman. She and the other ladies of the household—her two daughters and her daughter-in-law, all displaced from their own home after it had been commandeered as a hospital—had waited up late to receive Julia and Jesse upon their arrival, and served them a much welcome supper before showing them to their apartment.

“Breakfast will be about nine o’clock,” Mrs. Govan said in parting. “I will have it announced to you.”

Julia slept comfortably and woke refreshed, and in the morning after Jule had tended to their toilets, Julia and Jesse joined the family for breakfast. Jesse was funny and charming, the Govan ladies were excellent conversationalists, and Julia felt herself utterly at home, except for Ulys’s absence. After the servants cleared the dishes away and Jule came for Jesse, Julia rose from the table with the family and, without thinking, turned toward the drawing room where she had been received the night before. Suddenly Mrs. Govan stepped between Julia and the door. “Excuse me, Mrs. Grant,” she said gently, placing a smooth, white hand on the doorknob. “I have set aside another drawing room for your use.”

For a moment Julia had forgotten that she was not a welcome guest but the wife of the occupying general. She was the enemy. “Thank you,” she managed to say, and waited for Mrs. Govan to indicate the proper sitting room for chagrined Yankee ladies.

She never again entered the private family apartments except by special invitation. The ladies of the household did not neglect her entirely, however; from time to time they visited her in her drawing room, and on one occasion, when they learned that Julia had never heard of any of their favorite songs, they gathered a few friends together and invited her into the family drawing room for a concert. Julia had never heard ladies’ voices ring out so grandly except in church, nor with such feeling, power, pathos, and enthusiasm. But oh, the lyrics! They sang “Dixie,” of course, which was harmless enough, but also “God Save the South,” with its appeal to heaven to “Lay Thou their legions low, roll back the ruthless foe, Let the proud spoiler know God’s on our side.” One lady was so moved that she began to weep during the chorus of “The Battle Cry of Freedom”—“Our Dixie forever! She’s never at a loss! Down with the eagle and up with the cross!”—and she practically shouted the last verse:

While our boys have responded

And to the fields have gone,

Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom!

Our noble women also

Have aided them at home,

Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom!

“My,” Julia said, breathless, when the ladies had finished and stood watching her expectantly, awaiting her verdict. “You certainly do shout out your own battle cry quite . . . melodiously.”

“You must come again and listen to us,” said a friend of Mrs. Govan’s.

“No, never again,” Julia exclaimed, rising. “It was bad enough that I listened to your rebel songs once. I would be a traitor indeed if I listened a second time.”

She fled the room, the sound of amused laughter following her down the hall.

Mrs. Govan was too gracious to bear a grudge, and that same afternoon, she invited Jesse to play with her own young son, and the boys became good friends. Encouraged by her reluctant landlady’s kindness, when she needed alterations made to a favorite gown, Julia asked her to recommend a dressmaker.

“I know just the one,” Mrs. Govan replied. “Would you like me to take you to her tomorrow?”

“Oh, yes, please,” said Julia. “I would very much enjoy the company.”

The following morning shortly after breakfast, Mrs. Govan escorted Julia to the dressmaker’s shop. As soon as she crossed the threshold, Julia discovered that word of her visit must have preceded her, for she found nearly a dozen ladies already present, a few who apparently had business of their own with the seamstress, but others who apparently had come only to satisfy their curiosity regarding the Yankee general’s wife.

Julia soon had them engaged in friendly conversation, scrupulously avoiding the subject of their favorite music. The dressmaker was deftly attending to Julia’s alterations when one of the ladies asked, “You are Southern, are you not?”

“No,” Julia replied. “I am from the West. Missouri is my native state.”

“Yes, we know,” said a gray-haired woman in small round spectacles, smiling with disdain, “but Missouri is a Southern state. Surely you are Southern in feeling and principle.”

“No, indeed,” Julia said, lifting her chin. “I’m the most loyal of the loyal.”

“But you own a slave,” exclaimed a younger, dark-haired woman in a yellow dress. “You can’t be for the Union and for slavery both.”

“The Yankee aggression against the South is unconstitutional,” the bespectacled woman declared, and a chorus of approving murmurs went up from the Southern ladies.

“I cannot speak to that,” said Julia testily. “I don’t know a thing about this dreadful Constitution.”

The other ladies stared, astonished. “Why, surely you’ve studied it,” said Mrs. Govan.

“No, I have not,” said Julia. “I wouldn’t know where to look for it even if I wished to read it, but I do know that the people of the North believe it’s unconstitutional for any of the states to secede. How useful a document can it be, if it’s subject to such vastly different interpretations?”

As the ladies exchanged glances, Julia, much embarrassed, resolved to become as knowledgeable about her government as were the ladies who had rebelled against it.

Northern ideals descended anew in the person of Jesse Grant, who unexpectedly arrived in Holly Springs to escort Julia and his grandson to Ulys in Oxford.

Full of misgivings, Julia instructed Jule to pack sufficiently for a few days away. She considered leaving Jule behind, but she was afraid that some unscrupulous person might decide that she had been abandoned and put her to work, or worse yet, assume that she was a runaway and sell her off deep into rebel territory. So Julia steeled herself for Jesse’s sanction and summoned the carriage to take them to the depot, informing Mrs. Govan that they would soon return.

At the depot, the elder Jesse greeted his namesake with great delight and Julia with a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, sparing a grimly sympathetic nod for Jule as she left them to sit in the rear with a few other colored travelers.

Julia soon discovered that Jesse had not traveled alone, but in the company of three gentlemen, whom he introduced as the brothers Harman, Henry, and Simon Mack, prominent clothing manufacturers from Cincinnati. Julia’s polite, circumspect questions availed her little, except the knowledge that they were of the Hebrew faith, and that they were intelligent, courteous, and generously tolerant of little Jesse’s exuberant antics. She also discerned that Ulys was unaware of his father’s traveling companions.

Ulys had sent an ambulance to meet them at the depot, and he was waiting outside headquarters when they arrived. “Jess, you little rascal, are you glad to see me?” he asked, snatching up his son and tossing him into the air. He kissed Julia and shook his father’s hand, and although he seemed surprised to discover his father’s entourage, he welcomed the men cordially as each was introduced. “As my father’s friends,” he added, “you’re welcome to join us for dinner.”

“We’d be delighted,” said Simon Mack, and his brothers readily agreed.

Later, over beef, canned vegetables, rice, bread, coffee, and condensed milk at a private table in the officers’ mess, the Mack brothers praised Ulys for his handling of the war, but since Ulys was ever reluctant to speak of himself or to discuss military strategy, Jesse soon turned the conversation to the news from Cincinnati, which prompted the subject of the brothers’ clothing business.

“Our company has suffered since the rebellion began,” Henry Mack admitted. “Our mills need cotton to weave the cloth from which we make our clothing, but embargoes and blockades have made cotton a rare commodity in the North.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Ulys, but Julia suspected no one but she recognized the irony. The authority to grant cotton-trading permits so that Northern manufacturers could purchase cotton from loyal Unionists in the South resided with Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, but the enforcement of it fell to military officers in the field.

“We have associates in the South, loyal Union men we’ve known since before the war, with cotton to sell and nowhere to sell it,” said Simon Mack.

“If you would provide my friends here with a cotton-trading permit,” Jesse said, shifting eagerly in his chair, “I could help them arrange to transport it to New York, and from there to the mills.”

Julia stole a glance at her husband, whose features had not changed expression, though his cheeks had become florid. “At a tidy profit, I don’t doubt,” Ulys replied in a level voice.

As Jesse shrugged, embarrassed to be caught out, Harman Mack quickly said, “Mr. Grant has agreed to become our partner in this venture, so it is only right for him to earn a commission.”

“How much?” Ulys asked.

“Twenty-five percent of the profits.”

Abruptly Ulys stood, his back stiff, his eyes bright with anger. “It is unfortunate that you will all be disappointed.” In two strides he was at Julia’s side, and she quickly rose and took the arm he offered her. “If you’ll excuse us, gentlemen.”

Ulys waited until they were safely alone in their quarters before unleashing his anger. “My father is determined to make his fortune from my position,” he stormed. “I can’t allow that. I can’t bring the taint of scandal upon my command.”

“Of course not.”

“Julia—” Suddenly he strode to the door. “Julia, I’m sorry, but I must resolve this immediately. I might not be back until late.”

Julia promised to wait up, but he did not return until long after she had put young Jesse to bed and had dismissed Jule for the night. “I’ve arranged for my father and his friends to depart on the first train North, and I’ve written an order that will solve this problem once and for all,” he informed her as he undressed and settled into bed.