Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (20 page)

Ulys accompanied Julia and the children as far as Cairo, where Julia embraced him and made him promise that he would summon her back soon, after he attended to important matters in Memphis and New Orleans. Then Julia and the children stood at the rail and watched him disembark, flanked by two aides. When he turned on the landing and waved, Julia felt a sudden, sharp stab of worry. Always before she had held fast to a quiet certainty that he would return safely to her, but on that day her faith eluded her.

Julia and Ulys had agreed that the children deserved a holiday with the family before reporting to school, so they spent a week at White Haven, riding through the forest, fishing in the creek, running happily wild with their cousins. Julia and Nell went riding too, not as swiftly or daringly as they once had, but with the same exhilaration she remembered from girlhood.

One afternoon, she and Nell invited several ladies from their church to White Haven for a sewing bee to make pinafores and trousers for children orphaned by the war. Everyone was eager for news from the battlefield, and they peppered Julia with so many questions about Ulys and his armies that she chatted much more than she sewed, which was perhaps just as well, for it spared her eyes the strain.

The matrons of White Haven were curious about the nation’s leader, and one friend of Julia’s was disappointed to learn that neither Ulys nor Julia had ever met President Lincoln. “But Mr. Lincoln and General Grant do exchange letters on occasion,” Julia said, and was pleased when her friend brightened. “Recently they’ve exchanged a few letters discussing the arming of the Negroes, a policy which they both believe will strengthen the Union army a great deal.”

Although only a few of her guests owned slaves, Julia did not confess the rest of it: that Ulys had spoken as eagerly of emancipation as he had of forming colored regiments. “I have given the subject of arming the Negro my hearty support,” he had written to Mr. Lincoln on the day she and Ulys had parted in Cairo. “This, with the emancipation of the Negro, is the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy.”

Suddenly their conversation was interrupted by the sound of a horse’s hooves pounding up the zigzag road. Even before she turned to look, Julia knew it was an officer bearing terrible news.

She took a deep, steadying breath and rose to meet him. She watched, squinting and shading her eyes, as the officer dismounted and strode toward them. He was Captain George Maheu of Iowa, she recalled. He had a pretty sweetheart in Dubuque. He had shown her a daguerreotype.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Grant,” he said, removing his hat as he halted at the foot of the steps. “General Grant has ordered me to escort you and young Master Jesse to Vicksburg.”

A sigh of relief went up from her companions, but something in the captain’s expression told Julia this was not the usual summons to rejoin her husband. “Is the general well?”

Captain Maheu hesitated, took a deep breath, and shook his head grimly. Nell gasped. Someone took Julia’s hand and held it tightly, lending her strength.

“General Grant was injured after a review at New Orleans,” the captain said. “His horse reared, but he kept his saddle, and the horse fell back upon him.”

One of the ladies cried out. Another whispered a fervent prayer.

A
UGUST
1863–J
ANUARY
1864

G
eneral Grant can’t be too badly injured,” Jule reassured her as the carriage raced to take them to the dock to board the next steamer south. “They wouldn’t have taken him from New Orleans back to Vicksburg if he was hurt too bad to travel.”

“Perhaps that’s why no prophetic dream warned me of his accident,” Julia said, feigning confidence. “Though hundreds of miles separate us, I surely would have sensed it if my husband’s life were truly in danger.”

Jule regarded her wanly before turning her gaze out the window. “I don’t have your prophetic gifts, but I like to think I would too.”

And Julia felt wretched anew, knowing that no steadfast messenger would ever bring word of Gabriel to Jule, no swift train or steamer carry her to his side.

Aboard the steamer, Julia pressed Captain Maheu for every detail of her husband’s accident. On the fourth of September, Ulys had attended a military review in Carrollton, Louisiana, where Major General Nathaniel P. Banks had presented him with a fiery, blooded warhorse from Virginia. Astride the magnificent stallion, Ulys had galloped swiftly beneath towering oaks, a superb rider in a well-worn brown duster coat and slouch hat surrounded by officers brilliantly attired in their dress uniforms, all polished brash and glittering emblems.

But as they rode back to the city, a blast from a train whistle startled the spirited charger, and it dashed headlong into a freight wagon. A lesser rider would have been thrown, but Ulys remained in the saddle, and when the horse fell, it rolled on top of him, knocking him unconscious. Some time later, he woke at the Carrollton Hotel to find himself in bed, his body swollen to the armpit and several doctors bent over him, conferring in hushed voices.

“He spoke of pain almost beyond endurance,” Captain Maheu told Julia, as gently as he could. “That he survived the crushing weight of the horse at all is a testament to his extraordinary hardiness.”

When Julia arrived at Ulys’s Vicksburg headquarters, she found him working from bed, still in great pain, badly bruised from feet to shoulders, more concerned about General Rosecrans’s stunning defeat at Chickamauga than his own injuries. With Jule’s help she nursed him tenderly, and within days of her arrival, Ulys was up and moving about on crutches. Dr. Henry Hewit examined him daily, marveling at his progress and urging him to rest, knowing military necessity would trump his advice every time.

•   •   •

On the third day of October, General Halleck sent Ulys a dispatch summoning him to Cairo at “the wish of the Secretary of War.”

As soon as he could make the necessary preparations, Ulys placed Major General James B. McPherson in command of Vicksburg and embarked via steamer for Cairo, accompanied by two aides and Julia, Jesse, and Jule. Though he was still quite lame from his injuries, he endured the travel without complaint, reaching Memphis on October 14; Columbus, Kentucky, the following day; and Cairo the day after that.

The next morning, Ulys received a telegram directing him to proceed by train to the Galt House in Louisville.

“This is all very cryptic,” said Julia, wondering at the vague instructions, the circuitous route. Ulys murmured agreement, but if he suspected the reason for all the secrecy, he did not confide in her.

Hours after they set out from Cairo, the train stopped at Indianapolis, but just as it lurched forward to continue on to Louisville, Julia glanced out the window and spied a young man in a dark blue coat and hat running toward the engine, waving his arms frantically and shouting. Somehow he must have caught the engineer’s attention, for the train shrieked to a halt.

Once aboard, the man came directly to Ulys’s car. “The secretary of war is here,” he announced, panting. “He would like to see you.”

Astonished, Julia tried to catch Ulys’s eye, but he had risen painfully from his seat, his gaze fixed on the doorway, where another man had appeared. Short, stout, and jowly, with a long beard and dark hair patched with gray, he peered at Ulys unsmilingly through round wire spectacles.

Introductions were made, and as the staff filtered out, Julia handed Jesse off to Jule, then settled quietly in the far corner. Secretary Edwin M. Stanton glanced her way as he seated himself, but he turned his attention to Ulys without asking her to depart.

The train whistle blew, the wheels began to move, and Secretary Stanton gave Ulys two sheets of paper. “These are the orders for two different commands,” he said. “President Lincoln would like to offer you your choice between them.”

Ulys carefully studied each order, then handed one back to the secretary and set the other on his desk. “I will accept this one.”

For the first time, Secretary Stanton smiled. “The president will be pleased.”

“The honor is all mine,” Ulys told him sincerely. “I will give him no reason to repent placing his trust in me.”

The men conferred quietly, somberly, as the train made its way to Louisville. Eventually it reached its destination, and through a downpour of frigid rain and sleet, the delegation made their way to the Galt House, where Ulys and his companions bade the secretary’s party good evening and settled into their own rooms.

“Come, tell me,” Julia said after changing into her nightgown, sitting beside Ulys on the bed and rubbing his hair dry with a towel. “What mysterious orders did Mr. Stanton give you?”

“The two orders were identical, except for one particular,” he said. “Both create the Military Division of Mississippi, including the departments of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee, and all the territory from the Alleghenies to the Mississippi River north of Banks’s command in the Southwest.”

“My goodness, Ulys,” Julia gasped. “Such a vast area, and so many men to command!”

“And so many enemies to confront,” he added soberly. “But here is where the two orders differ. One leaves the department commanders as they are, while the other relieves General Rosecrans and assigns General George Henry Thomas to his place.”

Julia sat back against the headboard, the damp towel on her lap. “And which did you choose?”

“I accepted the latter.”

She nodded, not at all surprised. “General Rosecrans won’t bear that easily.”

“He’ll bear it like a soldier,” said Ulys firmly. “He’ll be little use to anyone if he doesn’t.”

But the next morning, a messenger knocked on their door with an urgent summons for Ulys to report to Secretary Stanton’s suite, and more than an hour elapsed before he returned. “I found Secretary Stanton still in his dressing gown, pacing the floor,” Ulys told her, scooping up Jesse and settling him on his lap on the sofa. “He received reports that Rosencrans might retreat from Chattanooga.”

“What did you do, Pa?” asked Jesse.

“I telegraphed Rosecrans to tell him I was assuming command.” Ulys lifted Jesse off his lap and set the boy on his feet on the floor. “You’re getting to be more than a lapful, you know.” As Jesse grinned and darted off to his toys, Ulys told Julia, “I next telegraphed General Thomas that he must hold Chattanooga at all hazards, and that I would be at the front as soon as possible.”

Julia’s heart sank, for she knew she could not accompany him. “How soon will you depart?”

“The day after tomorrow, sooner if I can manage it.” He gave Julia a fond, encouraging smile and took her hand. “Don’t be distressed, my dear little wife.”

That was far easier said than done, but Julia took a deep breath and lifted her chin. “I, too, can be brave, when I have to be.”

•   •   •

On the twentieth of October, General Grant and his staff set out for Chattanooga, while Julia, Jesse, and Jule remained in Louisville at the home of Julia’s aunt Emily Wrenshall Page, the old missus’s younger sister. Mrs. Page’s housekeeper, a stout, coal-black woman in her mid-fifties, showed Jule to the slaves’ quarters in the attic, where Jule would have her own bed, three pegs to hang her clothes, and her own washstand.

“It used to be crowded up here,” the housekeeper remarked. “Two to a bed, shared quilts, no washstands. Now we have half the slaves and twice the space.”

“And twice the work for those left behind, I bet,” said Jule. “The others get sold off?”

“They run off,” said the housekeeper, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “The young men first, some of the women later. They got brave when they saw how the men never got caught.”

“But not you?”

The housekeeper shrugged, but her look spoke volumes. Too old, too stout, too comfortable, too afraid—even after Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation, running away remained a dangerous gamble. Jule’s own willingness to risk everything for freedom had dwindled in her mourning. She could hardly run away to Texas, a vast territory controlled by the Confederates, and fleeing to the North would only put more miles between her and Gabriel.

But whenever she came close to abandoning all hope, she seemed to hear a faint echo of Gabriel’s exhortation: “If you get the chance, run.”

Later that autumn came word of General Grant’s two great victories at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, and in mid-December, he summoned Julia to join him at his new headquarters in Nashville.

Their train to Nashville chugged past hills and fields clad in the drab green, gray, and brown of early winter. General Grant’s ambulance met them at the station, and as it carried them through the city to their lodgings, Julia was unusually still and silent. “Jule,” she asked, her gaze turned to the window, “will you see it for me?”

Jule complied, but even as she described the passing scenes, she knew her words failed to capture its air of desolation and ruin. Gracious mansions and modest townhomes alike had been reduced to rubble. Fences and bridges were down; factories lay in ruins. Offices and hotels had been commandeered as hospitals, and harried orderlies and somber nurses bustled in and out, while soldiers with bandaged limbs sat outside resting or limped along the sidewalks on crutches. A few black-shrouded women glanced up at the ambulance as it went by, their eyes fathomless with sorrow, but most ignored it, and all held their worn shawls closed at the neck to ward off the cold, empty market baskets dangling from thin arms.

“The Nashville of my memory is sunny and warm and adorned by flowers,” said Julia, her words a quiet lament. “Now families go hungry and cold and clothed in tatters. This dreadful war has wreaked havoc on us all.”

“Some folks were suffering worse than this long before war broke out,” said Jule.

She pretended not to notice the sharp, wary look Julia gave her in reply.

•   •   •

Julia was happy and relieved to be with Ulys again, though from the moment of her arrival, he was so preoccupied with telegrams and dispatches that she rarely saw him except at meals and bedtime. On Christmas Eve, he spent all day conferring with his staff and telegraphing his commanders in the field. That night, after putting Jesse to bed, she waited up late for him, hoping that they might enjoy a few moments alone. He finally came upstairs shortly after midnight. “Longstreet’s making trouble around Knoxville,” he explained wearily, undressing and draping his clothes over the back of a chair.

“Cousin James?” It was impossible to think of him only as Confederate General Longstreet, without the entanglement of family relations. “I thought he abandoned the siege.”

“He did, but he didn’t lay down his arms.” Ulys climbed into bed and reached for her, and she snuggled up beside him. “I’ll have to start for Knoxville at early dawn. I’m sorry to leave you and the little rascal alone at Christmas.”

“If you must go,” she said, resting her head upon his shoulder, “you must.”

After Julia and Jesse saw Ulys off the next morning, she resolved to spend the day being useful rather than dwelling upon her own loneliness with her family scattered on Christmas Day. Few Union officers’ wives resided in Nashville, but Julia quickly summoned them together and proposed that they provide a bit of holiday cheer for the soldiers. She opened her own purse and sent out ladies in search of delicacies from local shops and farms, and she divided the wives and their children into two groups, one to visit the soldiers encamped outside the city, and the other to go to the hospitals. Then off they went to distribute tasty treats and small gifts and to sing carols.

At dusk, as Julia escorted her little band from the last hospital, a nurse thanked her for coming. “You’ve brought the men some comfort on this holy day,” she said. “Come back again. Their great need will remain long after Christmas has passed.”

Julia promised that she would return, and in the weeks that followed, she often entrusted Jesse to Jule while she visited the hospitals, distributing books to soldiers convalescing from illness or surgery, writing letters home for the men who could not do so themselves, offering cheerful conversation to the lonely, and granting requests to sing favorite songs that raised the men’s spirits and reminded them fondly of homes far away.

Then, in January, she received alarming news from her own far-off home in the form of a telegram from Louisa Boggs, the wife of her cousin Henry in St. Louis. Fred had been afflicted with a stomach ailment ever since Vicksburg, but his illness had taken a serious turn, and Louisa strongly urged Julia to come at once. “Typhoid fever and dysentery,” Julia read aloud to Ulys, her voice breaking. “That’s what claimed the life of young Willie Sherman last October.”

Ulys took the telegram from her. “Fred will not die,” he said firmly. “He’s always had a strong constitution and he’s receiving the best of care. He’ll recover. I’m sure of it.”

Nevertheless, Julia would go to him immediately. She and Jule quickly packed while Ulys arranged for Major Dunn to escort them to St. Louis. As the major loaded their baggage onto the ambulance and Jule helped Jesse into his seat, Julia embraced Ulys in the doorway, trying to absorb his reassuring strength into herself.

“Telegraph me every day,” Ulys said. “Even if there’s no change, tell me so.”

“Pray for him,” Julia said, her throat constricting. She climbed into the ambulance where Jesse and Jule waited, and they raced off to the train station.