Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  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.

  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.

  Chapter Thirteen

  AUGUST 1863–JANUARY 1864

  General 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.