Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (19 page)

One afternoon in early July, Julia was sitting in an upper room chatting with her sister Nell, who had brought her children for a visit, when they were startled by a sudden salvo of artillery somewhere not too distant. Julia bolted from her chair, flew to the window, and thrust her head and shoulders outside, but she saw nothing, not even a telltale puff of smoke.

“Papa,” she called down, spotting him on the piazza below. “What do you suppose the matter is? Do you think Vicksburg has surrendered?”

Without looking up from his newspaper, Papa turned the page and shrugged, frowning. “Yes, I should not wonder if both Vicksburg and Richmond have fallen from the infernal noise they’re making.”

“Perhaps it’s in honor of Independence Day,” Nell suggested.

Julia supposed that could be the reason, but later they learned that the canon salute was in celebration of a Union victory, for even as Ulys was ferociously bombarding Vicksburg, the Army of the Potomac had halted General Robert E. Lee’s invasion of the North in a tremendously bloody battle at a small Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg.

On a morning shortly thereafter, Julia, Nell, and Emma sat on the piazza, watching the children play in the shade of the locust trees, and talking somberly of friends who had gone to the war and friends who would never return from the battlefields. Jule sat in attendance nearby, clad in fading black. Julia’s thoughts were with Ulys and young Fred, and she wished so fervently to be with them, if only for a day, just so she could embrace them and be certain that they were safe, that she almost imagined she heard the pounding of hooves and glimpsed Ulys riding urgently up the zigzag road to come to her.

At the same moment she realized the hoofbeats were real, she glimpsed a rider clad in Union blue. “Jule, will you see him for me?”

Jule rose and approached the railing, shading her eyes with her hands. “His uniform’s dusty from the road, but I see a major’s insignia.” Her hands fell to her sides. “It’s Major Dunn.”

“Major Dunn,” Julia echoed, rising slowly from her chair as every nerve in her body screamed warning. Why would a member of Ulys’s staff have come to White Haven so unexpectedly? Why was he approaching at such a rush if not to tell her—

A few yards from the house, Major William Dunn brought his horse to a halt and swiftly descended. “Mrs. Grant,” he said, removing his hat as he strode toward them. “Ladies. I bring news from Vicksburg.”

Julia took a deep, shaky breath and held fast to Nell’s arm. “What news?” she demanded, and by some miracle, her voice was steady and clear.

“General Grant sent me from Vicksburg to Cairo to telegraph to the secretary of war that he has taken the city,” Major Dunn declared proudly. “I was then ordered to come immediately here, to escort Mrs. Grant and her children to Vicksburg to visit the general.”

Nell let out a cry of joy, Emma sighed in relief, and Julia sank back into her chair, murmuring fervent prayers of thanksgiving.

Julia and Jule swiftly packed for the journey, a task that had become so familiar it was completed in less than an hour. The family accompanied them to St. Louis, where they would spend the night before departing on the first steamer of the morning, and since Annie had remained at White Haven, they dined at the Planters House. Gentlemen, some with ladies on their arms, offered their congratulations, and as Julia graciously thanked them, she observed Papa sitting taller in his chair, holding his chest out a trifle more, with something suspiciously resembling a proud smile playing in the corners of his mouth. In the distance, a salvo of artillery proclaimed the good news over the river. Singing and music came through the windows and down the halls.

Julia’s gaze was turned toward the window when a gentleman she knew approached the table. “Mrs. Grant, please pardon the interruption.”

“Why, if it isn’t General William Strong,” she said, smiling as she offered him her hand. “You’ll never guess what has happened at Vicksburg.”

“I’ve heard a rumor or two,” he replied, “but
you
may not guess what is happening outside the hotel at this very moment.”

“A parade!” Jesse exclaimed.

“Yes, Master Jesse, that’s so.” The general smiled indulgently and offered him a little bow. “But do you hear that singing? People have come to serenade your mother.”

“What?” exclaimed Julia. “Why on earth would they serenade me?”

Nell raised her glass to her sister, her eyes full of merriment. “Because you are Mrs. Grant.”

“They’re asking for you to come to the window and address them,” said General Strong. “I would be honored to escort you, if you care to go.”

“I couldn’t possibly,” Julia protested, mindful of the other guests watching and smiling and making no polite pretense to the contrary.

“Of course you must,” said Emma. “Someone must answer. If you won’t, I’ll go and pretend to be you.”

“Julia isn’t obliged to appear,” Papa said, “but I could say a few words—”

“No, thank you, Papa,” said Julia quickly, rising and taking the arm General Strong offered her. “They’re asking for me, so I must answer. I should at least bow to show how deeply I appreciate their affection for my husband.”

General Strong gallantly escorted her to a window on the second floor, and as she approached it, she gasped to behold a vast crowd gathered below. “I had no idea there were so many loyal Union folk in St. Louis.”

“Would you like me to say anything on your behalf?”

Julia nodded and shared a few scattered thoughts. Then she stepped forward to the window, the general a reassuring presence at her side. The crowd roared with approval when they spotted her, and she felt her legs trembling beneath her flowered poplin skirts. Goodness, she should have worn something finer, one of her silks perhaps—but she never could have anticipated this.

The general raised his free arm for silence. “Mrs. Grant thanks you for your kind regards,” he began, his voice ringing out above the crowd. “She departs tomorrow to visit General Grant in Vicksburg.” A great, triumphant cheer broke out; someone pounded a drum, while another sounded a blast on a trumpet. “General Grant has not taken one day’s absence since the war commenced, nor has he troubled himself about the political opinions of his soldiers or what papers they read. He has allowed no censorship of that sort, his rule being simply that his men should be true to the flag and fight like heroes when required.”

Applause rang out. “Hear, hear,” someone shouted. “Grant for president!”

“Oh, dear me, no,” Julia murmured.

“If I might add an observation of my own,” General Strong continued, “General Grant has extraordinary common sense and has proven himself a great commander. He and his men have won immortal honors.”

“Three cheers for Grant and the Union,” called a man in the front of the crowd, waving his hat in the air, and the crowd enthusiastically complied.

When the shouts subsided, General Strong said, “Mrs. Grant now bids you good night, and she begs you to accept her thanks.”

Julia offered the crowd one last gracious nod and withdrew from the window, but even as the general escorted her back to her family, the cheers and applause went on and on.

The crowd had dispersed by the time they departed the Planters House, and as they walked home, Emma linked her arm through Julia’s. “You’ll never guess what Papa said while you were addressing your admirers.”

“Ulys’s admirers,” Julia corrected her. “What did Papa say? Something outrageous, I suppose?”

“You might think so.” Emma smiled and lowered her voice. “He said that if Vicksburg had to fall, he was glad it had surrendered to your husband.”

•   •   •

When their steamer docked in Vicksburg, Ulys met them with his ambulance, and all was a great commotion of hugs and kisses and congratulations. “Hail, my glorious victor,” Julia teased softly, brushing her cheek against his, enjoying the tickle of his beard on her skin.

“Welcome, my lovely bride,” he murmured back, his eyes shining with warmth and affection.

Fred greeted her proudly, addressing her formally as Mother before flinging his arms around her with unrestrained cheerfulness as in the old days. At thirteen he stood several inches taller than she, his eyes clear and blue, his ruddy hair tousled, and his skin tanned and glowing with good health.

“I’m pleased to see that your wound hasn’t left you with a limp,” Julia told him.

“But it has left me with a scar,” he boasted casually as his younger siblings listened, awestruck. “I’ll carry it always as a memory of that battle.”

“Don’t be alarmed,” Ulys murmured for Julia’s ears alone. “The scar’s barely visible.”

Julia nodded, much relieved.

As the ambulance carried them through Vicksburg to Ulys’s headquarters, Julia’s happiness ebbed as she took in the sights of the battered city encircled with barricades and rifle pits. Once gracious homes and charming cottages were pockmarked with shell holes, while others had been reduced to dusty rubble or charred ruins. Cannonballs were stacked into pyramids on piazzas and street corners, and unexploded thirteen-inch shells topped gateposts and tree stumps.

At last they reached the city heights, where Ulys had supplanted Confederate General John C. Pemberton in the Lum residence, a gracious white colonial that reminded Julia of sketches she had seen of the Executive Mansion in Washington. Shade trees surrounded the house, which commanded lovely views of the Mississippi from its double piazzas, and pastures for the horses lay nearby. In the gardens, hedge roses bloomed in abundance and figs ripened on the trees.

Less than a week after her arrival, Ulys found Julia enjoying the breezes on the shaded upper piazza. “I’ve just received a letter from the president,” he said, handing her a piece of paper.

Julia glanced at it, squinting, enough to make out the familiar signature. “Does this confirm your promotion?” Shortly after Ulys took Vicksburg, he had been appointed a major general in the regular army.

Ulys shook his head. “It’s a letter of thanks.”

“How lovely,” said Julia, handing it back to him. “Do read it to me and save my eyes.”

Executive Mansion,
Washington, July 13, 1863

My dear General:

I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did
—march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong. Yours very truly

A. Lincoln

“How remarkable for a president to make such an admission,” said Julia.

“By all accounts, he’s a man of great humility,” Ulys replied, folding the letter. “He’s also an excellent commander in chief.”

“You didn’t vote for him,” Julia teased.

“I couldn’t vote for him,” Ulys corrected her. “I hadn’t lived in Illinois long enough. But I’m very grateful that so many other men did vote for him, for he’s the man we need in the presidential chair right now.”

Julia nodded. President Lincoln’s letter was so gracious, and Ulys so obviously appreciative, that she hadn’t the heart to point out that if Abraham Lincoln had not been elected, the South might not have seceded, and there might never have been a war.

•   •   •

The hungry citizens of the beleaguered city readily accepted rations from the Union army, but some officers warned Julia not to mistake that for tolerance of the occupiers or their wives. “No one who sees and hears the women of this city can but feel the intensity of their hate,” General Sherman told her one afternoon when she and Ulys rode out to see him at his army’s camp at Big Black. “With one breath they beg for the soldiers’ rations, and with the next they pray that the Almighty or Joe Johnston will come and kill us, the despoilers of their homes and all that is sacred.”

As the weeks went by, while the children played or rode out on their ponies to inspect the troops with their father, Julia forged acquaintances with the ladies of the neighborhood, and the dreadful stories of all that they endured evoked her greatest sympathies. With their homes under the constant threat of bombardment, many families had retreated to caves dug into the clay hillsides, with multiple entrances to allow for air circulation and to lessen the danger of entrapment.

“It’s not as dreadful as it sounds,” one lady told her. “We carved niches for flower pots, and closets for food, and bookshelves. We brought in our carpets and a dining room table too, although all cooking took place outside, of course.” Her gaze turned distant. “We could not change our clothes for weeks. Once during a bombardment, a chunk of earth broke free from the ceiling and nearly crushed my niece.” She gave a little start and forced a wan smile as if she suddenly remembered she was speaking to the general’s wife and ought not give offense.

When one young matron asked if Julia felt any guilt or responsibility for how they had suffered, Julia confessed, “No, I do not.”

“Have you no compassion?”

“I have compassion and sympathy in abundance,” Julia assured her, “but I feel neither guilt nor shame nor responsibility for what has befallen you. Nor should my husband, though he commands the army that held you under siege for so long. The people of Mississippi brought calamity upon themselves by rebelling against the United States. The citizens of Vicksburg have only themselves and their leaders to blame.”

“I didn’t vote for any of them,” the young woman said hotly as she turned and strode away.

•   •   •

In mid-August, Ulys and Julia agreed that they should enroll the three eldest children in boarding school in St. Louis for the upcoming term. As they expected, Fred strongly objected to any plan that would take him from the field, but Ulys convinced him that he must continue his education if he hoped to enroll at West Point someday.