Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (18 page)

“But also exhilarating.” Ulys studied her. “I’m glad that you
can
imagine how they might feel, Julia. Try to do more of this.” Before Julia could ask him what he meant, he added, “I’m also glad you’ve arrived in time to witness the running of the blockade.”

Julia gasped and seized his arm. “Is that what you mean to do?”

Ulys nodded. “I’ve ordered three transports prepared. Tonight after dark, they’ll go silently down the river as far as possible, then put on all steam, fly past Vicksburg and its batteries, and end up exactly where I want to use them, south of the city.”

“Are you going with them?”

“Not this time. I thought we could watch from the river as they set out, though, if you’d like.”

Julia nodded eagerly, her heart pounding with excitement—even as she realized that Ulys had let her go on and on urging him to action, and had even pretended to consider her strategy, though all the while he intended to move that very evening.

“Admiral David Porter insists on taking two or more gunboats as escort and to return the rebel fire,” said Ulys. “He’s a gallant fellow, and he says it would look bad if they ran past without returning the rebel broadside.”

Julia felt a swift thrill of alarm. “Then the gunboats will be mostly for show?”

“Mostly,” Ulys agreed, but he had hesitated a moment too long, and she understood what he did not say: This was a military exercise, and although every precaution would be taken, the potential always existed for something to go dangerously awry.

She was ashamed that she had, even for a moment, considered the running of the blockade a spectacle for her entertainment, like the foolish citizens of Washington City who had set out from the capital in carriages with picnic hampers to watch the Battle of Bull Run. She was Mrs. Grant, the general’s wife, and she had seen enough of war to know better.

As evening approached, Ulys escorted Julia and the children aboard the
Henry Von Phul,
where they were met by many officers and several of their wives. The Grants dined with them on board the transport, and after nightfall, the ship moved out on the river just out of range of the rebel batteries on the bluffs high above the opposite shore.

Everyone, including the children, quietly stole out onto the deck into the clear, moonless night, crowding the rail, shawls and overcoats drawn close against the night air and the steady wind. They watched as the Union flotilla stealthily advanced from Milliken’s Bend, a thick, black mass lost in shadow.

Suddenly the rebel battery between Vicksburg and Warrenton roared to life, and an enormous splash rose just ahead of Admiral Porter’s flagship. Then a shower of detonations boomed all along the line, rockets burst fore and aft, and geysers of water shot into the air and rained down upon them, sparkling in the lights from the rockets and shells.

“Pa!” Jesse shouted, clutching his father’s leg. The Union gunboats ran close to the bluffs and opened fire, but the rebel assault continued unabated. Again and again the flotilla was hit, yet it moved ever forward. Nellie shrieked and buried her face in Julia’s skirt; gaze riveted on the transports, flinching at every explosion, Julia stroked her daughter’s head and murmured comforts lost in the thunder of cannon. Fred and Buck stood together on her other side, pale, openmouthed with awe, determined to stand their ground though they jumped at each scream of the rockets.

Suddenly a ten-inch shell pierced the boiler of the Union transport ship
Henry Clay
and it went up with an earsplitting bang. Julia watched in horror as fire spread to its barges, sending up sheets of flame. All the while, more and more light shone down upon the ships in the river, as if day were breaking in sudden increments. Sulfurous smoke filled the air. Tearing her gaze from the transports, instinctively pulling Nellie closer, Julia looked to the opposite shore and saw that the rebels had lit bonfires and set houses ablaze on the east bluff to illuminate the ships on the river below.

And yet the Union flotilla pushed on, though the rebels poured shot and shell down upon them—and suddenly she realized that for some time, the barrage had struck only water. The gunboats and transports had passed out of range. The deadly batteries fell silent. The fiery beacons on the east bluffs were extinguished. A murmur of excitement went up from the officers aboard the
Henry Von Phul,
but Julia waited, her gaze flitting from Ulys’s face to the bluffs to the darkness into which the flotilla had disappeared.

The sulfurous smoke dissipated. From the riverbanks, katydids and frogs resumed their summer songs.

“Admiral Porter is to be congratulated,” Ulys said quietly.

The
Henry Von Phul
retreated to a more prudent distance to await official reports from Admiral Porter. Miraculously, although there were numerous injuries, no lives had been lost on the Union side.

Ulys was moving his army south of Vicksburg, and he would soon open siege in earnest.

A
PRIL
–A
UGUST
1863

J
ule had never witnessed a sight more terrifying and exhilarating than the running of the blockade. The flotilla had carried with it not only armaments and supplies, but her most ardent hopes and wishes as well. When Vicksburg fell, the Confederacy would be divided. The rebellion would be put down, the war would end, and slavery would crumble. She and Gabriel and all their colored brethren would at last be free, not only in rebel lands but everywhere.

The running of the blockade had succeeded so spectacularly that General Grant repeated the operation on April 22, sending six more transports loaded with supplies and several additional barges past the Confederate batteries to the Union foothold south of Vicksburg. Early the next morning, the encampment bustled with activity as he prepared to move out with the advance of his army.

Young Fred would go with him, and although he had assured his mother that he could manage fine packing his gear on his own, Julia, preoccupied with the younger children and her own travel preparations, sent Jule to assist.

She found Fred waiting for his father outside headquarters, his arms folded across his chest, looking about eagerly in case any of the officers should need a hand, his gear already packed and piled neatly on the ground beside him.

“You need any help?” she called as she approached, drawing her gray shawl closer around her shoulders to ward off the morning chill.

“I’ve been ready to go for an hour,” he replied, grinning. “Pa’s going to take Vicksburg in a week or two. I just know it.”

“I hope you’re right.” Jule was less certain victory would come so quickly. As she had dressed Julia earlier that morning, Julia had described a curious dream from the night before—General Grant seated with his legs crossed on a camp chair, his brow damp with perspiration, his collar open in the summer heat, thousands of cigar stubs littering the ground all around him. Julia worried, and Jule agreed, that the dream meant Ulys would still be laying siege to Vicksburg well into summer.

“Vicksburg will fall,” Fred replied confidently, his gaze traveling around the encampment, taking in the quick, steady preparations to move out. “Pa will capture it.” Then his gaze lit upon Jule and turned curious. “Jule, have you seen the contraband?”

“They’d be hard to miss.” Hundreds, perhaps thousands of newly freed or runaway slaves trailed after General Grant’s army, establishing camps of their own on the outskirts of the neat rows of Union tents, finding work as cooks or laundresses or laborers, eking out a living as best they could, impoverished and hungry but free of the chain and the lash. From what Jule overheard around headquarters, the authorities in Washington City were unsure what to do with them, but they were determined not to send them back to the plantations and workshops they had fled, where their labor would sustain the rebel cause. Their camps were haphazardly constructed, their clothes bedraggled, their rations scant, yet Jule envied the contraband, for although they were poor, they were free.

“My mother says the contraband would be happier if they’d stayed with their masters.”

“Better fed, maybe, in some cases, but happier?” Jule shook her head. “No.”

“Grandfather Dent says colored people are most content when they’re serving good masters.”

Jule managed to stifle a derisive snort. “I doubt your grandfather ever asked the opinion of a colored person on that subject.”

“Do you want to be a contraband?”

She regarded him levelly. “I want to be a free woman. Can you understand that?”

“I guess so.” Suddenly his face fell, his grin vanished. “You don’t like living with us?”

“Oh, Fred.” She rested a hand on his shoulder and realized that he had grown so tall that she had to look up to meet his eyes. “I’ve cared for you since you were a babe in arms. I love you and your brothers and sister very much. But I’m not happy as a slave, though that’s not your fault.”

“I’m never going to own a slave.”

“I’m very glad to hear that, but can I trust you with a confidence?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t think it’s enough not to own slaves yourself. If you turn your back on other people’s misery and say it’s got nothing to do with you, that’s just as bad.”

Suddenly he looked very young. “Has it really been so terrible with us?”

She sighed and looked away, more to give him a chance to blink away embarrassing tears than to allow herself time to reflect. “Well, Fred, think about it. You’ve been on the battlefield. You’ve seen something of war.”

He nodded.

“I know your pa’s kept you away from the worst of it, but you’ve seen the dead and injured. You’ve seen the sick and wounded in the hospital tents.”

He nodded again.

“And yet as terrible as war is, young men keep signing up to be soldiers.” She held his gaze steadily. “No one’s ever signed up to be a slave. No one. That’s how terrible slavery is. Do you understand, Fred?”

He swallowed hard and nodded.

“You take care, now,” she said, hugging him as she had when he was a much smaller child, woken in the night by bad dreams. “Stay out of range of those rebel guns.”

Shortly after they parted company, Fred, General Grant, and the Union army moved upon Vicksburg, and an hour later, Julia, the three younger Grant children, and Jule set out for St. Louis aboard the
Henry Von Phul,
the same ship from which they had observed the running of the blockade. Julia and the children would spend the summer with the old master, alternating as the whim struck them between their city residence, White Haven, and Wish-ton-wish, the pretty villa where the Grants had lived before moving to Hardscrabble, which the general had recently purchased from Julia’s brother Louis.

When the steamer landed at St. Louis, it was all Jule could do to stay with Julia and the children rather than racing ahead to search for the carriage the old master had promised to send for them. Her excitement grew as they sorted their luggage, took the children in hand, and disembarked, but when they finally reached the Dent carriage, Jule was disappointed to see Tom at the reins.

After Jule assisted Julia and the children into their seats, she lingered, catching Tom’s eye as he helped the porter stow the luggage. “Where’s Gabriel?” she asked, smiling. “It’s not that I didn’t miss you, but I missed him more.”

“Jule—” Tom hesitated, his expression so grim, so sympathetic, that for a moment she forgot how to breathe. “I’m sorry. Gabriel’s gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?” she said, her voice rising with each word. “Do you mean—is he dead?” It couldn’t be. She would have known. She would have felt it if his soul had been torn from the world.

“No, not that.” Tom climbed down from the wagon seat to place his hands on her shoulders, and she was dimly aware of Julia breaking off her conversation with Nellie to watch them through the window. “Sold. About three weeks ago.”

“Oh, dear Lord, no.” Jule pressed her hands to her mouth, heart thudding, vision graying over.

“Jule, what’s wrong?” called Julia, alarmed. “You look ill. Come sit down.”

Somehow, with Tom’s help, Jule found herself seated in the carriage between Julia and little Nellie, who took her hand and peered up at her worriedly. As the carriage lurched and pulled away from the station, Julia fanned her with her handkerchief. “My goodness, what’s wrong? What did Tom say to you?”

“Gabriel’s been sold.”

Julia’s hands fell to her lap. “What?”

“Gabriel’s been sold.” Jule enunciated each word with perfect clarity. “Your father sold my husband. He’s gone.”

“That can’t be. Papa would never do that.”

“But he did.” Jule’s head ached. Suddenly nauseous, she buried her face in her hands and bent forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Tom says he has.”

“There must be some mistake,” said Julia, her voice shaking. “We’ll get this sorted out, I promise.”

When they reached White Haven and Julia hurried into the house to speak to her father, Jule made her way to the stable, dazed and heartsick, and climbed into the loft. Gabriel was not there. His few possessions were missing. The pallet they had shared was gone, with fresh straw covering the depression their bodies had made.

Annie and Dinah found her there, her arms wrapped around her waist as she sat rocking back and forth, too shocked and grief-stricken for tears. The old master had sold Gabriel to pay a debt, they told her gently when she begged them to explain.

“We’ll buy him back,” Julia promised as Jule undressed her for the night. Jule nodded woodenly, and a small light of hope flickered to life, but in the weeks that followed, Julia’s flurry of letters brought only dismaying replies. The old master’s creditor had taken Gabriel into Arkansas, where he had sold him to a slaver, who had in turn sold him to a Georgian migrating to Texas. There the trail ended.

“I’m sorry, Jule,” Julia told her repeatedly, her eyes shining with tears. “I’m terribly sorry.”

There were no words adequate to her grief, and Jule could manage only the barest of nods in reply. Gabriel—her love, her dearest friend, the source of her only happiness on earth—was lost to her forever.

•   •   •

Julia continued to make inquiries long after she had exhausted any hope of locating Gabriel. “It was wrong of you to send him away,” she chided Papa. “He was a faithful servant and a good worker. He deserved better.”

“I don’t need two grooms anymore, and it was an extravagance; I couldn’t afford to keep them both,” Papa retorted, glowering. “Would you have had me pay the debt with Tom instead? That wouldn’t have been fair. He’s been with the family longer.” With slightly less bluster, he added, “Gabriel was younger and stronger. He fetched a better price.”

By early May, even Jule—outwardly, at least—seemed to have resigned herself to his loss. One morning she struck out alone into the forest and returned with a basketful of twigs, bark, and roots, which she brewed up into an odoriferous concoction in a kettle on an open fire behind the kitchen house. She seemed so intent on her work, stiff backed and straight mouthed and curiously blank of expression, that Julia left her to it. When Jule next appeared at the house later that afternoon, she was wearing an old dress of Annie’s, and the next day, Julia discovered that Jule had dyed all her own clothes black, even her lovely dove-gray shawl.

“She drifts through the house like a grim specter,” said Emma with a shudder after Jule wordlessly served them lemonade on the piazza and returned into the house, as silent as smoke. “Aren’t there enough poor war widows clad in mourning without her going around all in black? She makes a mockery of their suffering. You should speak to her.”

“She’s suffering too,” Julia said, but Emma only sighed and gazed heavenward.

Amid the glorious beauty of White Haven—the lofty trees, the cheerful birdsong, the rushing creeks, the flowering meadows—Jule’s quiet, relentless grief dimmed the brightness of what should have been a happy visit home. But other sources of consternation provoked Julia’s discontent—in particular, acquaintances who strongly sympathized with the Confederacy and could not believe that Julia did not also.

“It’s not right for you to say you’re for the Union, Julia,” an old friend of her dear mother’s scolded her when they struck up a conversation after church one balmy Sunday.

“We know better, my child,” an elderly dowager chimed in, wagging a finger. “It is not in your nature to be anything but Southern.”

They refused to entertain her suggestion that as a westerner, one could be Southern in birth and custom but Union in loyalty, and they were not alone. On another occasion, Julia invited several childhood friends to White Haven for dinner. Afterward, as they relaxed in the cooling shade of the piazza, her friends discussed the many ingenious methods they employed to exchange letters and packages full of contraband goods with friends throughout the Confederate South.

“You should not speak of such things in front of me,” Julia remonstrated. “I might feel it my duty to repeat it to the authorities.”

“We know you won’t,” retorted the wife of a Confederate colonel, laughing.

“We know how you have been brought up,” teased another longtime friend, clad in half mourning, her husband having fallen at Shiloh. “An oath would not be more binding than the sanctity of your roof.”

And Julia was confounded, for they were right.

Whenever they visited their city residence, Julia could scarcely walk the length of the block without encountering old acquaintances, some of whom she scarcely remembered, others who had once been good friends but who had turned chilly toward her as Ulys rose within the Union army.

“When are you going to join your husband the general?” inquired one lady with cloyingly false concern.

“I shall go as soon as Vicksburg is ours,” Julia replied.

“Not until then?” the first lady’s companion asked, arching her eyebrows. “Don’t you know that Vicksburg is as strong as the Rock of Gibraltar? How can it ever fall?”

“I don’t know how it will be taken,” said Julia, “but I do know that General Grant will never lift his siege until the city has surrendered. As soon as Vicksburg is ours, the same messenger who brings the news of victory will escort me back to the general. That is how you will know your Gibraltar has fallen.”

As the weeks passed, letters came from Ulys regularly and less frequently from Fred. In late May, Julia was alarmed to read that her son had been nicked in the thigh by a musket ball at Big Black River Bridge. Ulys assured her that Fred bore his slight wound proudly and was already up and about, practicing his marching and riding his pony, but Julia felt sick and light-headed whenever she envisioned a garish scar marring her son’s perfect young skin, and she became nearly petrified with horror when she considered what might have been, if the rifle had been aimed a little higher.

She read of furious battles at Port Gibson, Raymond, and Champion Hill. Within a month of running the blockade, Ulys had marched his men more than two hundred miles and had defeated two rebel armies in five battles. By the time he reached Grand Gulf, he wrote, he had been without luggage for a week, had not changed his clothes or slept within a tent in all that time, and had nothing to eat except what he could forage by the wayside. Julia wished he and Fred were more comfortable, but Ulys’s stamina and endurance were legendary, and she was not surprised to hear that Fred had inherited his father’s hardiness.