Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Julia thought Ulys’s father would respond well to his letter, but she was alarmed to discover that Ulys had not modulated his tone for Papa. “The times are indeed startling,” he had written while informing her father of his plans, “but now is the time, particularly in the border slave states, for men to prove their love of country. I know it is hard for men to work with the Republican party but now all party distinctions should be lost sight of, and every true patriot be for maintaining the integrity of the glorious old Stars and Stripes, the Constitution and the Union. The North is responding to the President’s call in such a manner that the Confederates may truly quake.”

  “‘In all this I can but see the doom of Slavery’?” Julia protested, reading his letter over before he sent it. “Did you have to end on that note?”

  “That’s my informed opinion,” Ulys replied, taking the letter from her gingerly as if concerned she would tear it up in a fit of anger.

  “Well, I hope you’re wrong,” she retorted. “But even if that is how you feel, must you taunt Papa with it?”

  “It’s no taunt. It’s a cautionary observation your father would do well to consider.”

  “He’ll see it as a taunt, but even if he doesn’t, he’ll never give you his blessing to wage war upon the South.”

  “But do I have your blessing?”

  “Yes, of course.” Julia was for the Union, but more important, she was for Ulys, always. “Without question.”

  “Even if this war leads to the destruction of slavery?”

  “I don’t see that one must necessarily follow the other.”

  He studied her a long moment in silence, his expression both sad and sympathetic. “It will, and when it does, I hope you won’t reproach me or regret giving me your blessing today.”

  • • •

  Before his father and father-in-law had time to reply to his letters, Ulys had assembled enough volunteers to form a company—and was promptly offered a commission as its captain. Ulys declined, for he had reasonable hopes of being offered command of a regiment, but he did agree to help the troops prepare before they reported to the state capital for assignment. He divided the men into squads, taught them to march, drilled them, and, drawing upon his experience as a quartermaster as well as a veteran of war, advised them as they assembled their gear.

  Here Julia’s expertise as a longtime military wife proved invaluable. The ladies of Galena, determined to sew uniforms for the brave soldiers representing their city, consulted her about how an army uniform should be fashioned. Julia, who was accomplished with her needle despite the headaches sewing inflicted upon her, knew well the precise details of an army uniform, and she found herself leading the project as the ladies bought material, found tailors to take measurements and cut the pieces, and distributed the sewing among their circle.

  When the handsomely attired Galena company was about to depart for Springfield, Ulys was asked to accompany them in order to continue their training until they could be assigned to a regiment. Soon thereafter, he wrote to Julia to explain that he would be delayed in returning home, for Governor Yates had asked him to stay on to assist in the adjutant general’s office. The state legislature had authorized the governor to accept ten additional regiments, and Ulys was charged with mustering them into state service.

  Yet although lesser men were named colonels and placed in command of Illinois regiments nearly every day, no appointment came to Ulys. The state’s negligence only fueled Papa’s irate condemnation of Ulys’s choices. “Grant could easily win a high command if only he would join the Confederate Army,” he argued in letters to Julia. “James Longstreet has been made a brigadier general. Your husband could surely do just as well.”

  Julia was dismayed to learn that her cousin had joined the rebels, as far too many other friends and family had done, but she was not surprised. Papa, brother John, and sister Emma were staunchly for the South, as were several of Julia’s former beaux from her time as a belle in St. Louis, and the husbands of many of her schoolmates. Even the Grant family suffered divisions; Ulys’s aunt Rachel Thompkins, with whom he had exchanged many a cordial letter through the years, wrote from her expansive plantation in Virginia to declare, “If you are with the accursed Lincolnites, our ties of consanguinity shall be forever severed.”

  The venom in the letter chilled Julia. Would Papa ever go so far as to disown her for her loyalties? Mamma would never have allowed it, but Mamma was gone, mercifully spared bearing witness to the rising turmoil within her beloved family.

  • • •

  The family of Edmund Slate, Esquire, kept three slaves to do the work of more than twice that number. Lisette, fifty years of age, was cook, housekeeper, maid, and laundress. Jacques, the only one of Lisette’s five living children not sold off long ago, was groom, footman, and gardener. Jule, the only servant the Slates did not own outright, was ladies’ maid, seamstress, and Lisette’s assistant in everything the debt-ridden Virginia natives desired.

  Jule marked the passing of the hours by the gnawing in her stomach and the fogginess of her thoughts. The servants could go without food more readily than the Slate ladies could endure wearing last season’s gowns, so Jule, Lisette, and Jacques were ordered to exist on a diet of cornmeal porridge for breakfast, cornmeal porridge with a thin slice of bread for lunch, and cornmeal porridge with a gray chunk of salted pork for supper. At the end of the month, when the total of bills due regularly exceeded what Mr. Slate earned at his law practice, the bread and pork tended to disappear from their tin plates. Mrs. Slate had a sharp eye and a tight fist, and she kept a ledger of every penny and every ounce of goods that crossed her threshold. Scraps from the family table were bestowed upon the hogs and chickens, and once the missus had whipped Jule across the shoulders for salvaging an apple core from the slop bucket as she carried it to the sty, devouring all but the stem on her walk back to the house.

  Jule had always been small, but after a few weeks in the Slate household, her dress began to shift loosely about her waist and shoulders, gaping at the sleeves and neckline as she went about her work. Her skirts concealed her protruding hipbones, but when she slept on her side, she woke with the insides of her knees red and bruised from the pressure of bone against skin. If she lay on her back, her breasts seemed to melt into her rib cage until they were as flat as the soft, swelling bosom of a girl barely out of childhood. In autumn her menses ceased, and for one fleeting, terrifying, hopeful moment she thought she was with child, until she remembered that she could not possibly be, for she had not lain with Gabriel since the previous spring. Blinking back tears, she secretly gathered herbs from the Slates’ garden and brewed the tea that would make her bleed again, wondering why she bothered, whether instead she ought to let her body save its diminishing strength for keeping her heart beating and her lungs drawing breath.

  She had seen Gabriel only once since she had left the Dents’ city house with her dove-gray shawl around her shoulders and her belongings tied up in a calico bundle she carried beneath one arm. It was early winter, and Jule was walking down the sidewalk, market basket in the crook of her arm, eyes downcast, giving way to white pedestrians rather than risk a blow to the head or arrest, when she heard her own name called out by a familiar voice. She turned in the direction of the sound only to discover the Dents’ carriage passing her in the street, her own beloved husband at the reins.

  “Gabriel,” she breathed. He held her gaze, his expression shocked and exultant, until the carriage, carrying Miss Emma and a young lady Jule did not recognize, pulled too far ahead. He could glance quickly over his shoulder back at her and slow the carriage, but he could not stop for her.

  Mustering her depleted strength, Jule hurried in pursuit, following the carriage through Mrs. O’Fallon’s neighborhood and into another, where it came to a halt before an unfamiliar house. Miss Emma and her companion were apparently inside visiting, while Gabriel paced beside the
carriage, looking frantically down the street, searching for her.

  When his eyes met hers, she halted, fighting for breath. He ran to her and caught her up in her arms just as her knees gave way. “My beautiful girl,” he said, his breath warm upon her cheek, tears in his voice. “My Lord, what have they done to you?”

  She was newly aware of her scrawniness, of her worn dress and chapped skin. “I’m glad you knew me.”

  He held her tightly, rocking her slowly back and forth as if he were soothing a terrified child. “Oh, Jule, Jule, my sweet love.” Then he held her out at arm’s length and looked her up and down, eyes narrowing with anger. “How are you? How they treating you? You get anything to eat there?”

  “Not much.” There was no point in denying the obvious to spare him worry. “The missus has a temper and a free hand with the rawhide, but it could be worse.”

  He frowned, his mouth tight with anger. “You sound like Dinah.”

  “Dinah was right.”

  “Come here.” One strong arm around her waist, he guided her to the carriage, where he settled her inside it despite her feeble protests that they would both be severely punished. He left her alone for a moment to climb up to the driver’s seat, but soon returned with a bundle wrapped in cheesecloth. “Here,” he said, placing it on her lap. “Eat.”

  When her trembling hands were slow to untie it, Gabriel gently reached around to open the bundle—and her mouth watered at the smell of sausage, cheese, bread, dried apples, and a perfectly ripe, sweet, fresh plum. “I can’t take your lunch,” she said, although she wanted nothing more.

  “Eat it. I can get more from Annie later. Dear God in heaven, Jule, it’s so good to see you.”

  She swallowed a mouthful of bread and cheese, forcing herself to eat slowly lest it all come back up again. “But I guess you hoped to see me looking better.”

  “I’d hoped the old master kept his promise to Miss Julia, to hire you out to people who’d treat you kindly.”

  “Maybe he don’t know.”

  “More likely he don’t care, as long as the money still comes in.” He shook his head as Jule picked the last crumbs from the cheesecloth and licked them from her fingertips. “There’s gonna be a reckoning someday, Jule. They’re gonna answer for what they’ve done.”

  Jule’s heart stirred with a tired flicker of the righteous light his fireside sermons had once kindled within her. She lacked the strength for anything more.

  She lingered as long as she dared, but all too soon, they parted with fervent kisses and vows that they would find a way to be together. Jule raced off to finish the marketing and hurry home, but she had been gone too long, and dinner was delayed, and she endured a beating to remind her not to tarry next time. Nevertheless, her heart was full, her lips still warm from her husband’s kisses, her stomach comfortably full for the first time in months—and although she did not know it then, for the last time in many more.

  In the days immediately following their brief reunion, Jule knew Gabriel must have told the old master about how he had found her, for Mrs. Slate inexplicably added butter and potatoes to her servants’ meals, and she ordered Lisette to do the marketing in Jule’s place. But the hollows in Jule’s cheeks had scarcely begun to fill out when the butter and potatoes were taken away without warning.

  In the Slate household, the winter passed in worry and speculation about the rising conflict. The government of Missouri had voted to remain in the Union but not to supply men or weapons to either side, a decision that had not prevented Unionists and secessionists alike from forming militia units and jostling for control over federal armories within its borders. Although reports warned of scattered bands of secessionists skirmishing in the Missouri countryside, Mr. Slate assured his anxious wife and daughters that they were safe in the city.

  Five months had passed since Jule had last seen Gabriel, and she felt herself as insubstantial as the breezes that carried the fragrances of spring blossoms and horses past the door of the kitchen house where she slept on a pallet on the hard earth floor, longing for the comforts of Gabriel’s hayloft. Mrs. Slate had restored Jule to her marketing duties, and on one sunny May morning, her head aching from hunger, Jule took a precious coin from the dwindling stash tied up in Julia’s handkerchief. She had stolen a crumpled sheet of paper and a discarded stub of a pencil from Mr. Slate’s wastebasket, and after she bought something to eat, she would have enough pennies left over to post a letter to Galena, Illinois. She could no longer wait for Julia to return to St. Louis and reclaim her, and she had abandoned hope that a prophetic dream would alert Julia to her misery. Writing to plead for help would reveal Jule’s crime of literacy, but Julia was complicit in that too, and Jule knew she had no other choice.

  She was so intent on her mission, clutching her market basket in both hands and feeling the condemning letter like a heavy weight in her pocket, that she only gradually became aware of a stir of apprehension in the air, the worried expressions of passersby. Then she heard it—the sounds of hundreds of men marching in the streets. Heart thudding, she drew back until she stumbled against the brick façade of a dry goods store. There she watched, stunned, as hundreds of secessionist militiamen—angry, resigned, defiant, scowling—marched past under guard by Union troops clad in the uniforms of the regular army and newer garb that marked the German Missouri Volunteers.

  “They’re the secesh General Lyon captured at Camp Jackson,” Jule overheard a young gentleman tell a companion. “Since they refused to take an oath of allegiance to the United States, he’s marching them through the city to the arsenal, and once there he’ll parole them and order them to disperse.”

  “He could’ve paroled them at Camp Jackson,” the other man replied. “This display is humiliating.”

  The first man grinned wolfishly. “It’s meant to be. They should’ve taken the oath when they had the chance.”

  As the men strode off, arguing, Jule realized that all around her, disgruntled murmurs were turning into angry shouts—directed not at the rebels, but at the soldiers guarding them. “Damn the Dutch!” a voice rang out, and others quickly took up the refrain. More harsh insults followed, and soon men and boys began hurling rocks and bottles upon the Union troops from the sidewalks and second-story windows. As Jule watched, horrified, a drunken, disheveled man stumbled into the path of the marching troops, shouted a hoarse stream of oaths, and fired a pistol into their midst. Women screamed as a captain in the Third Missouri clutched his abdomen and collapsed. Immediately other soldiers halted and opened fire, first above the heads of the civilians and then into the crowd.

  Instinctively Jule threw herself to the ground and covered her head as screams and cries and gunfire erupted all around. A store window shattered above her, showering her in fragments of glass. She gasped in pain as a man stepped on her leg as he fled, and as more shots rang out, she scrambled on hands and knees into a doorway. Terrified, she closed her eyes, steeled herself with a few deep breaths, bolted to her feet, and ran—ran as fast and as far away from the escalating riot as she could.

  When the screams and gunfire faded behind her, she slowed to a walk, gasping for breath, shaking, a painful cramp stabbing her beneath her rib cage with every step. Men and boys, wild-eyed and eager, streamed past her heading in the direction of the violence and madness. Unsteadily Jule made her way back to the Slate residence, realizing only when she stumbled into the kitchen house that she had somehow held on to her basket, but the letter to Julia was no longer in her pocket.

  As the terrified Slate ladies queried her about what she had seen, Jule’s thoughts were with the missing letter. She could only hope that someone would post it unread or that it would be destroyed in the chaos. If someone recognized Julia’s name and gave it to the old master instead—not even Julia could protect Jule from the consequences.

  When Jule served breakfast the next morning, she listened, heart in her throat, as M
r. Slate read aloud bits from the paper to his frightened family. Twenty-eight people had been killed in the furor, including women and children, and some fifty more had been injured. In a shaking voice Mr. Slate ordered the family and servants to remain indoors as several days of rioting followed, with most of the secessionist hatred and violence directed toward German immigrants and Union soldiers. Civilians shot at soldiers from the windows of their businesses and homes, and troops once again fired upon throngs of angry rioters in the streets. Martial law was imposed, but the uproar was subdued only after troops from the regular army arrived to replace the German volunteers.

  Jule waited in dread for news of her letter, but nothing good or ill ever came of it. She dared not write another.

  • • •

  “I’ve decided to offer myself for national service,” Ulys said to Julia, shifting restlessly in his chair during a long-awaited leave of absence from the state capital. “Stuck in the adjutant general’s office, I feel as if I’m neglecting a duty that’s paramount to any other duty that I ever owed.”

  “Then I wholeheartedly agree that you should,” Julia said, managing a tremulous smile, “though I’ll be very sorry indeed to be parted from you again.”

  “We’ll be together as much as we can,” he said. “You, me, and the children. We’ll find a way.”

  Julia nodded, though she knew it would not be easy—but what was, in those unprecedented times?

  In late May, Ulys wrote to Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas detailing his past military experience and offering his services. “I feel myself competent to command a regiment if the President in his judgment should see fit to entrust one to me,” he said, with the characteristic humility Julia usually found endearing but worried was not, perhaps, quite the tone to strike in such circumstances. But she would never ask him to be a lesser man than he was, a braggart and boastful, so she said it was a fine letter and the adjutant general would be foolish not to respond with a commission. Ulys returned to his post in Springfield, and the weeks passed, and other, less-qualified men were named colonel while he was overlooked. The adjutant general not only did not reply as Ulys wanted, but he failed to respond at all.