Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (29 page)

The president hesitated. “Well, no.”

“No?” Julia exclaimed, her heart plummeting. “Why, Mr. President, aren’t you going to make terms with them? They are our own people, you know.”

“Yes, Mrs. Grant,” he said, nodding somberly. “I never forget that.”

He took from his pocket a piece of paper, which he unfolded and read aloud. Julia listened intently to the terms of peace he had presented to Mr. Stephens and his companions: national authority would be restored over all the states, slavery would be abolished throughout the country, and all military forces hostile to the government of the United States would be disbanded. When Mr. Lincoln finished, he looked up, fixed his sad, rueful gaze on Julia, and returned the paper to his pocket.

“They did not accept that?” asked Julia.

“They did not.”

“But those terms seem most liberal.”

“The commissioners, echoing the instructions given to them by Jeff Davis, insisted that the goal was to achieve peace between two sovereign nations,” the president said. “I seek peace within our one common country. I insist upon the end of slavery, while Mr. Stephens is bound to the opposite. We have no common ground to tread upon.”

“I see.” It was all Julia could manage to say, so profound was her disappointment.

“I thought you would, when I explained it to you.” The president fit his lanky frame through the door and bowed to her before replacing his hat. “I have, for the past year or so, looked to General Grant for the end to this cruel war. The conference has failed, and so I rely upon him more than ever.”

“He will not fail you, Mr. President,” Julia replied. “He has his mind set upon victory, and he always was a very obstinate man.”

“I know my trust could be no better placed.” When the president smiled, it was like the sun breaking unexpectedly through clouds. “Mrs. Grant, did you have the opportunity to see the three commissioners?”

“I did.”

“Did you meet Mr. Stephens, and did you notice his unusual coat?”

“Yes, indeed, Mr. President.”

“Well, did you not think it was the biggest shuck for the littlest ear you ever did see?”

Julia laughed. “I confess I didn’t think of it in quite those terms, but now I always shall.”

The president rewarded her with a warm, hearty laugh of his own.

Later that day, Julia learned that Mr. Lincoln had found Ulys at his office and had conferred with him briefly before departing for Washington. “I told him I’d see him soon,” said Ulys wryly.

Julia reached for his hand and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. Ulys had been summoned to appear before the House of Representatives to testify before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War about General Benjamin Butler’s failure to take Fort Fisher. It was not a task he relished, so Julia felt a trifle guilty for looking forward to a few days in the capital.

They left City Point on February 9, arriving in Washington City the following day. Julia had grown accustomed to the fanfare and frenzy that always marked their arrivals, and she smiled and bowed graciously and exchanged pleasantries with several of the ladies in the throng as Ulys’s aides swept them off to their waiting carriage. After they were settled into comfortable rooms at the Willard, Julia received callers in the ladies’ parlor while Ulys met with President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton at the War Department. That evening, after dining alone in the peaceful seclusion of their rooms, they attended the theater with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and General and Mrs. Burnside. The program at Ford’s Theatre included the comedy
Everybody’s Friend
followed by the farce
Love in Livery,
which pleased Ulys greatly, for although he detested opera, like Mr. Lincoln he loved a good play
.

When the president’s distinguished party arrived, the orchestra struck up “Hail to the Chief,” and the audience welcomed them with such thunderous applause and powerful cheers that the performance onstage was suspended for several minutes. The president bowed to his admirers with the utmost courtesy and humility, while Ulys looked as if he wished the people would quiet down, take their seats, and allow the play to continue. For her part Mrs. Lincoln basked in the admiration, smiling proudly down upon the audience and inclining her head gracefully to one person and then another. Suddenly she threw Julia a quick, arch, sidelong smile, as if to urge to her relish the cheers, to bask in the reflected glow of her husband’s glory while she could, for they would fade all too soon.

•   •   •

Despite Mrs. Lincoln’s silent warning of the transience of fame—which might have been Julia’s imagination, too much read into one inscrutable glance—Ulys’s star seemed on a trajectory of unrestrained ascent. The following morning, after delivering his testimony to the joint committee, he was received with great enthusiasm in the House. Julia watched from the gallery as, shortly after Congressman Daniel Wheelwright Gooch read excerpts regarding prisoner exchanges from Ulys’s testimony, Ulys himself was recognized on the floor and the chamber voted to recess so the members could pay their respects. Scores of congressmen crowded around him, eager for introductions, but after several minutes he was escorted to the clerk’s desk and formally introduced to the entire body, while the chamber resounded with thunderous applause from officials and spectators alike. A similar scene played out soon thereafter in the Senate, where he was praised and congratulated with such enthusiasm that Julia could scarcely imagine how they would respond when he ultimately won the war.

Later that afternoon, Ulys and Julia attended Mrs. Lincoln’s reception at the White House, which Julia overheard several guests remark was in many respects the finest of the season. Mr. Lincoln, gaunt but amiable, assisted his wife in receiving her guests, among whom the most prominent were Admiral Farragut and Ulys himself. Mrs. Lincoln looked elegant and self-assured in a rich lilac gown trimmed with black velvet and narrow ribbon, the neckline cut low to show off her lovely shoulders, the skirt set with diamond-shaped panels of white satin and velvet. Her dark hair was braided and coiled and adorned with a headdress of point lace and feathers, and she completed her costume with a necklace of lustrous pearls, a diamond breast pin, white kid gloves, and a lace fan.

Julia supposed that only one lady could have outshone Mrs. Lincoln that afternoon, but when she looked around for Mrs. Sprague, she did not see the auburn-haired beauty anywhere. A few discreet inquiries among the officers’ wives revealed that Mrs. Sprague had spent most of the winter social season at her Washington home, for she was in a delicate condition, not yet in confinement, but far enough along that she declined most invitations.

“Surely she’ll attend the inauguration,” a colonel’s wife told Julia archly. “Chief Justice Chase will be administering the oath of office, and the ball will be the social event of the season. Mrs. Sprague would have to be mere minutes away from her blessed event to be kept away from that.” She peered at Julia inquisitively. “Will you and General Grant attend, Mrs. Grant?”

“I don’t know.” Ulys had said nothing about it, and it had not occurred to Julia to wonder if they might. “I suppose it will depend upon what’s happening with the war.”

She resolved to ask Ulys the next time she saw him, but when he found her in the crowd soon thereafter, he forestalled her question with a command: “If there’s anyone else here to whom you ought to pay your respects, do so now. We’ll be leaving soon.”

“For the Willard?”

“Yes, and then on to City Point.”

“This afternoon? Already?”

With a slight frown Ulys replied, “I would say rather, ‘at last.’ My place is in the field. I’ve tarried too long already.”

•   •   •

General Sherman had moved on from Savannah into South Carolina, and on February 17, his valiant men captured Columbia. The news filled Julia with wild hope, because if the Union army liberated the prisons, and if the captives had not been marched off elsewhere before the city fell, her brother John might be freed and allowed to go home at last.

The day after General Sherman took Columbia, the Confederates surrendered Fort Sumter and evacuated Charleston. A Union victory seemed more certain than ever before. Julia frequently overheard Ulys tell his most trusted aides that he did not see how the Confederacy could endure much longer. His network of loyal Unionist spies in Richmond had smuggled out reports that clerks serving Mr. Davis’s cabinet secretaries were frantically packing up important documents for transport, and a plan to evacuate the government from the city had been devised and approved. Every day scores of soldiers in butternut and gray deserted the rebel camps and surrendered themselves to Union pickets, while others simply packed up their kits and went home, probably assuming that the war would be over soon anyway and they ought not to get shot in the meantime. Throughout the South, the Confederate military had been conscripting every able-bodied man between eighteen and forty-five, but new laws had been passed allowing for the drafting of boys aged fourteen to eighteen, who formed the junior reserves, and men from forty-five to sixty, the senior reserves. “They’re robbing the cradle and the grave,” said Ulys regretfully one night as he finished his last cigar. The lives he sought to preserve by bringing a swift end to the war were not all on the Union side.

Even with the enlistment of boys and old men throughout rebeldom, Ulys figured the enemy lost at least a regiment each day, taking into account casualties of battle, deaths from disease, fatalities from natural causes, and desertions. With rebel morale at its lowest ebb, Ulys was impatient for winter to end so he could commence the spring campaign, which he firmly believed would be the last of the war. For weeks heavy rains had drenched the landscape, and the muddy roads had become an impassable morass for artillery and teams. Until the downpours relented and the sun dried the roads, his teamsters could not move the wagon trains and artillery necessary for prolonged fighting in enemy territory. He wanted General Sheridan’s cavalry with him too, but they were still maneuvering north of the James, having come from the Shenandoah Valley. Ulys would not set out until Sheridan’s forces could join him south of the river.

Ulys’s headquarters crackled with activity from before dawn until long after sunset. Unable to move on General Lee’s army, they planned and prepared, drilling the troops, studying maps, collecting intelligence, and testing the roads. They were focused, determined, apprehensive, and eager—but often their concentration was broken by visitors from the North, politicians, dignitaries, newspapermen, and often their ladies, eager for a glimpse of the soldiers in their natural setting before the war ended and they would be viewed only in parades. To lift the burden from her husband’s shoulders, Julia gladly assumed the role of hostess.

Late one afternoon, upon returning to the cabin after calling on soldiers on the sick list, Julia found Ulys at his desk engaged in earnest conversation with General Ord.

“See here, Mrs. Grant,” Ulys greeted her. “General Ord has returned from rebel lines with an intriguing suggestion that terms of peace may be reached through you.”

“My good lady,” General Ord began, “recently I met under a flag of truce with General Longstreet to resolve some problems with fraternization between the opposing pickets. Our soldiers and the rebels have been trading papers, sharing tobacco, even challenging one another to races and whatnot, and it’s high time this was stopped. After settling this little matter, I said to him, ‘Longstreet, why do you fellows hold out any longer? You know you cannot succeed. Why prolong this unholy struggle?’”

Julia resisted the urge to ask how Cousin James looked, if he had quite recovered from his dreadful wound, if he seemed to be starving, as so many of the rebel deserters who crossed into their lines did. “What was his reply?”

“He said he would be glad to have peace restored between our two nations.”

Ulys sighed and lit a fresh cigar, and Julia thought of Mr. Lincoln’s distinction between peace among separate nations and peace within one common country.

With a glance for Ulys, General Ord continued, “It was proposed that a conference between Generals Grant and Lee could be arranged, and that since you are old friends, you and Mrs. Longstreet could cross enemy lines and act as mediators.”

“What an intriguing idea,” Julia exclaimed.

“It was our belief that you ladies could become the mediums of peace,” General Ord explained. “Mrs. Longstreet has already been summoned from Lynchburg to Richmond for this purpose.”

Julia would rejoice to see her dear friend again, especially to broker peace. “I’m willing to go the minute you give the word,” she told General Ord, and then, remembering herself, she turned to Ulys. “I may go, may I not?”

Ulys smiled but shook his head. “No, I think not.”

“Why not?” Julia protested. “I’d be proud to serve my country this way.”

“No, that would never do.”

Julia approached him and took his hand in both of hers. “Please, Ulys, do consent. Mrs. Longstreet is coming. How will it look if I seem unwilling to meet her?”

“Mrs. Longstreet will understand that it was not your decision.” Ulys gave her hands an affectionate squeeze and returned to his desk and the cigar he had left smoldering in the ashtray. “Even if I were willing to put you at such great risk, which I am not, it would be out of the question. The men have fought this war and the men will finish it.”

It was not only a man’s war, Julia well knew. North and south, women had been engaged in their own battles for more than four years. Though they did not carry rifles and wear Union blue or homespun butternut, many suffered, and many had perished.

F
EBRUARY
–M
ARCH
1865

I
’m afraid I might be obliged to leave Washington soon,” Jule confessed sadly as she and Emma made their way to church one icy morning in late February, linking arms to steady themselves. Earlier that week, an unexpected taste of spring warmth had melted the ice along the banks of the Potomac and drenched the city in rain, but temperatures had plummeted overnight, freezing puddles and ruts in the muddy streets into a precarious landscape frosted in white. “Maybe for New York or Boston.”

“But why?” Emma protested, not daring to lift her gaze from the icy terrain underfoot. “You’re comfortably settled. You have almost more work than you can manage. You have dear friends who would miss you terribly.” She gave Jule’s arm a little squeeze to indicate that she considered herself foremost among them. “Why would you want to start over somewhere else?”

“I don’t want to.” Jule burrowed her chin into her scarf to ward off the bitter winds gusting down the avenue. “But lately Mrs. Grant’s been coming to the capital too often and too unpredictably. Last time I was twenty minutes late for an appointment at the Willard because she was holding court in the ladies’ parlor and I couldn’t sneak past the doorway.”

Emma risked a skeptical glance. “She probably would’ve been too preoccupied with her callers to notice if you’d hurried by with your bonnet up.”

“Maybe, but I couldn’t risk it.”

Emma halted, bringing Jule to a stop beside her. “Why are you still so afraid to meet her? Surely you don’t fear you’ll be thrown back into slavery.”

“No, not anymore.” Jule resumed walking, bringing Emma along with her. Ratified or not, the Thirteenth Amendment had put those fears to rest. “I can’t rightly explain it. When I think of her, I feel so much—so much anger and resentment, I’m afraid what I might do or say. We were close once, or at least, as close as slave and mistress can be. For most of my life, I trusted her to look out for me, and to set me free if she could.” Jule inhaled deeply, outrage and disappointment simmering. “She married an abolitionist and still kept me enslaved. President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and still she didn’t set me free. I know she thinks I betrayed her by running away, but
she
betrayed
me.
”

“All the more reason for you to hold your ground, to stay in Washington, where you’ve made your new home,” Emma declared. “If you do happen to run into her, well, simply tell her what you just told me. You’ll probably feel much better afterward.”

“She might not be my mistress anymore, but she’s still the wife of a very powerful man.” Jule shook her head. “No, even now I can’t risk offending her.”

“Don’t let her chase you off,” Emma implored. “When the war’s over, she’ll likely go back to Missouri, too far away to trouble you anymore.”

“Maybe. I expect it depends where General Grant’s posted. Oh, Emma, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to start over among strangers again. I don’t want to put a single mile more between me and Gabriel.”

“Then don’t go,” Emma urged. “At least not before the inauguration. It’s not far off, and you’ll profit greatly from it. We both will.”

Jule’s appointment book was already filled with the names of ladies determined to look their best for Mr. Lincoln’s swearing-in ceremony and the grand ball the following evening. Her blemish remedies and hair tonics sold almost as quickly as she could fill the bottles. It would be very foolish indeed to scurry away before the most important—and lucrative—events of the social season.

“I’ll stay,” she told Emma, “at least through the inauguration.”

She would let the course of the war determine what she did after that.

In the days that followed, Jule felt her spirits rising with the joyful, exuberant mood that swept through Washington as the capital prepared for Mr. Lincoln’s second inauguration. Thousands of visitors flooded the city, packing hotels and boardinghouses full to overflowing and spilling out onto the streets, where hardier folk set up makeshift camps on sidewalks and in parks. At the Willard, ladies and gentlemen alike sat up all night in crowded parlors because no more beds could be found for them. Every one of Jule’s most loyal clients demanded a place on her card, and visitors begged to be squeezed in at the oddest of hours.

On the night before the inauguration, Jule was yanked from sleep by the crash of thunder and the scour of hail upon the roof. Groggy, heart pounding, she sat up in bed and drew her quilt around her, for a moment believing herself back at Holly Springs or Vicksburg, confusing the tempest for the roar of artillery. When she realized it was a storm and not an attack, and that she was safe within four strong walls beneath a solid roof, she lay back down and waited for the storm to subside so she might drift back to sleep.

She woke before dawn to a gray and drizzly morning, and a glance out the window revealed that the night’s torrential downpour had turned the streets into thick rivers of mud. Hoping that the skies would clear before the grand parade, she rose from bed, quickly washed and dressed, put on her older pair of shoes—such a luxury, to own two pairs of sturdy shoes!—and went downstairs for a quick bite of breakfast before hurrying off to her first appointment of the day. She had numerous clients to make beautiful for the president’s inauguration and the White House reception that would follow, the wives of senators and generals and visiting dignitaries. Emma, too, would be very busy, Jule knew, finishing up elegant gowns for Mrs. Keckley’s wealthy clientele, but they planned to meet later to watch the parade and to hear Mr. Lincoln deliver his inaugural address from the Capitol.

Jule made her way carefully through the mud from her boardinghouse to the Willard, where she dressed the hair of a governor’s wife and their two graceful daughters. All three were so pleased with their tresses that the mother indulged the young ladies’ desire for not one but three bottles of Jule’s hair tonics, one concoction for the eldest’s curly hair, another for her younger sister’s fine, straight locks, and a third to brighten the fading gold of their mother’s.

“How will we tell which is which?” asked the youngest girl, examining the bottles curiously as Jule set them on the table.

“You’re holding yours,” said Jule, smiling. “The darkest one is your sister’s, and the lightest is your mother’s.”

The elder sister held her mother’s bottle and her own up to the light. “They’re so close in hue, I’m afraid I’ll mistake mother’s for mine.”

“It won’t harm your hair if you do,” Jule assured her.

“Perhaps not,” the governor’s wife said, “but you really ought to label your products.”

“Yes, you should,” exclaimed the youngest girl. “And use pretty labels, with flowers and a picture of a lady with gloriously beautiful hair.”

“You must have an impressive name for each of your concoctions as well,” her elder sister chimed in. “Like Doctor Mountebank’s Arsenical Lotion or Duchess Mary’s Jasmine Cold Cream.”

Jule smiled and shook her head. “I’m not a doctor or a duchess,” she said, packing her brushes and ribbons in her bag.

“You don’t have to be,” said the governor’s wife, waving a hand dismissively. “I’ve heard that Duchess Mary is really a perfumer’s daughter from Edinburgh. You must use an interesting name, even if it’s simply ‘Jule of Washington, Hairdresser.’ A clever name would help people remember your tonics—and you.”

“Maybe so,” said Jule as she accepted her fee, discreetly tucked within a sheet of paper, folded and sealed. “I thank you for the suggestion.”

After attending to a few more clients, Jule hurried through the crowded streets to meet Emma at her boardinghouse on Twelfth Street. From there, accompanied by several other young ladies who sewed in Mrs. Keckley’s workshop, they joined the tens of thousands of other eager spectators lining the parade route along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol. Thankfully, the rain had let up, and the procession was as glorious a spectacle as Jule had ever seen, despite the mud underfoot and the cloudy skies above. Graceful horses pranced, soldiers marched proudly, and bands played merry tunes for the ladies, gentlemen, and children who packed the sidewalks, peered out from upper windows, or looked down from rooftops, cheering and waving hats and flags and handkerchiefs.

A team of sturdy horses pulled a model of an ironclad gunboat, complete with a revolving turret that startled and delighted onlookers by firing blanks as it made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue. Uniformed officers of fire departments from Washington and Philadelphia and fraternal lodges from across the North marched proudly, carrying banners and flags. A local printers’ society had mounted a handpress on a wagon, printing broadsides and distributing them to spectators they passed along the way. Jule was gratified to see people of color marching in the parade too, a battalion of colored soldiers as well as distinguished leaders of several Negro civic associations.

“This is the first time people of our race have been included in an inauguration,” Emma told her. “I mean truly included, part of the celebration and ceremony, not just onlookers or the folks who cook the food and clean up afterward.”

For the first time too, people of color would be permitted on the Capitol grounds while the president delivered his address. As soon as the parade passed by, Jule, Emma, and their companions quickly hurried down side streets, avoiding the worst of the congestion as they made their way to Capitol Hill. A massive crowd thousands strong already filled the muddy grounds when they arrived, but they managed to find a place to stand within the fences.

When the president emerged onto the East Portico surrounded by dignitaries, a sheet of paper in his hand, the newly completed Capitol dome rising in magnificent splendor high above, the vast crowd surrounding Jule let out a great roar of welcome and gladness. As Mr. Lincoln came forward to the edge of the platform, the clouds suddenly parted and the sun broke through, and a bright shaft of sunlight shone down upon him like a benediction from heaven.

Jule stood listening, spellbound, as President Lincoln offered his brief, simple, and profoundly beautiful address, clear and poignant and warm, full of forgiveness and reconciliation. He spoke of the war, and how slavery was the undeniable cause of it, and how four years earlier everyone, North and South alike, had wanted to avoid war, but one side would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. He spoke of their shared belief in one Almighty God, and how peculiar it was that each side prayed to him and invoked his aid against the other. “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces,” he noted, his high, thin voice carrying to the far edges of the crowd, “but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

Jule felt Emma’s gloved hand close around hers, and she knew the same fervent inspiration filled both their hearts.

It was possible that God had sent them the terrible war as punishment for the offense of slavery, President Lincoln continued, and that the war could be a mighty scourge to rid them of it. People north and south alike hoped, and fervently prayed, that the war would swiftly pass away, but if God willed that it should continue “until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,” they must accept that the Lord’s judgment was true and righteous.

“With malice toward none,” Mr. Lincoln urged his listeners, “with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Breathless, her heart pounding with fervent admiration, Jule watched as Mr. Lincoln turned to a tall, imposing, black-robed gentleman, who stepped forward holding an open Bible. The gentleman—the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Jule heard someone murmur—set the holy book on a stand, and after Mr. Lincoln placed his right hand upon it, the chief justice solemnly administered the oath of office. Then the president bent and kissed the Bible, and as the multitudes roared their approval, an artillery salute boomed and the Marine Band played a stirring tune—but Jule stood motionless and silent, President Lincoln’s powerful oration reverberating in her ears and heart and thoughts.

“This is history, Jule,” Emma said close to her ear, applauding furiously, her eyes shining with unshed tears of joy. “We were here. We saw it happen. How could you wish to live anywhere else?”

She couldn’t, Jule realized as she joined in the thunderous applause and ardent cheers of the thousands of citizens, white and colored alike, all around her. Washington City was her home, and she would not let fear and worry drive her from it.

•   •   •

When Julia read of Mr. Lincoln’s stirring inaugural address, she wished anew that Ulys had accepted his invitation to attend the ceremony and the lavish ball that had followed, but soon sad news from Covington drove all regrets for celebrations missed from her thoughts. Only a few days after the president’s second term began, Jesse Root Grant sent Ulys a black-edged letter bearing the stunning news that on March 6, Ulys’s eldest sister, Clara, had died of consumption.

“I’ve known she was on the decline,” Ulys admitted to Julia, his voice rough, his head bowed over the pages. “But I still hoped she’d rally. I wasn’t expecting to hear of her death so soon.”

So intense was his sorrow that he could not bring himself to respond to his father’s letter for more than a week, and after that, he buried his grief beneath his stoic exterior. It pained Julia that with so many lives depending upon him, Ulys could not take time to mourn his own loss.