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 tog
ether 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.
Julia kept up a cheerful façade for Jesse’s sake as the train sped them northward, but behind it all was turmoil and worry. Louisa had mentioned Fred’s illness in previous letters, but even after she and Cousin Henry had taken him out of boarding school so that she could nurse him properly, Julia had not feared for his life. All had changed in a moment, in the reading of a telegram. She prayed for the Lord to shine his healing grace upon her son, but she also willed the train to move faster, faster, so that she might be with him in his final moments if her prayers failed.
They were obliged to switch trains in Louisville, and as Julia took Jesse in hand and followed Major Dunn across the platform, she lost sight of Jule in the press of the crowd. “She hurried off that way,” Major Dunn said, nodding to the baggage car. “I think she went ahead to collect your luggage.”
Julia tightened her grip around Jesse’s hand and followed the major along the platform to the rear. A porter was attending to their bags, but Jule was nowhere to be found.
Julia felt as if a cold fist had seized her, squeezing the breath from her lungs. She looked wildly about—and then, in the midst of the throng, she glimpsed a familiar headscarf and a black shawl that had once been dove gray, but they were immediately swallowed up in the bustle of passengers and porters.
“Jesse, stay with Major Dunn,” she ordered, quickly making her way through the crowd. Inside the station, she glanced this way and that, increasingly frantic—and then she spotted Jule passing through the doors to the street. “Jule,” Julia cried, waving, but Jule neither stopped nor turned. Gathering up her skirts, Julia ran after her, but by the time she reached the sidewalk, Jule was already halfway down the block.
Julia cupped her hands around her mouth. “Jule,” she cried. “Come quickly! We’ll miss the train!”
Jule’s quick strides slowed. After a moment, she turned deliberately around, but the distance between them was too great for Julia to read her expression.
“We aren’t staying over,” Julia called, hurrying after her. “We’re going straight on to St. Louis.”
“You are,” said Jule flatly. Only a few yards separated them, but something in her voice brought Julia to a halt. “I’m going my own way. I won’t go back to Missouri.”
“But, Jule—” Then the full meaning of her words sank in. “You don’t mean you’re running away?”
“I shouldn’t have to.” Jule’s face was stone. “Mr. Lincoln signed that Emancipation Proclamation. I should be free.”
“But Missouri isn’t—”
“Don’t give me more of that ‘exemption’ talk.” Jule shifted her calico bundle to one arm and planted her other fist on her hip. “Don’t talk to me about the law. Talk about what’s right. You say you’re for the Union and Mr. Lincoln—well, prove it. Grant me my freedom. Go on. Do it.”
“You know I can’t.” Julia raised her hands and took a few tentative steps forward, expecting any moment to hear the train whistle shrill its warning. “Papa owns you, for all that we say you’re mine. It would be meaningless for me to declare that you’re free. You know that.”
“I’m not free because you don’t want me free,” Jule countered. “Did you ever ask your papa to free me? Did you and the general ever ask to buy me from him, so you could free me yourself?”
Julia hesitated. “No, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Did you ever pay me wages for my work, like you would’ve if I was a free woman, to show you think I ought to be free?”
“Jule.” Julia felt close to tears, frantic. “I was kind to you, I—”
“You kept me a slave. How is that kind?”
“You had a roof over your head, plenty to eat—” With every word, Jule’s frown became more scornful. Desperate, Julia said, “Jule, please. After all our years together, how could you leave me now, in my hour of greatest need?”
For the barest of moments, uncertainty and defiance warred in Jule’s expression before resolve won out over both. “I pray Fred gets better, but you’ll have to tend him without my help.” She took two steps backward. “I don’t hate you, Miss Julia, but I don’t forgive you either.”
She turned and darted off, her footsteps drowned out by the blast of the train whistle. Julia watched her go, stunned and despairing and angry. She was tempted to shout for a constable, but then she remembered the departing train, and Fred languishing in his sickbed, and she turned and ran back to the station.
Major Dunn was pacing anxiously on the platform, and when he saw her coming, he shouted to the conductor to wait one moment longer. His request was either unheard or ignored, and the train was already moving as Major Dunn seized her arm, heaved her on board, and quickly jumped on after her.
Jesse was fidgeting in his seat, peering anxiously out the window. “Did Jule get lost?” he asked when he saw them coming down the aisle without her.
“Yes,” said Julia shortly, fighting back tears. “Jule is lost.”
Chapter Fourteen
JANUARY–FEBRUARY 1864
It was after midnight when Julia, Jesse, and Major Dunn finally arrived at the Boggs residence in St. Louis, half-frozen and exhausted from arduous travel and worry. Louisa met them at the door, red-eyed and fatigued from sitting up with Fred day after worrisome day. Julia quickly shrugged out of her wraps and hastened upstairs to her son, who tossed fitfully in bed, burning with fever and shaken violently by hoarse, hacking coughs.
“He declines by the hour,” Louisa told her softly, putting an arm around Julia’s shoulders as if to bear her up. “But Dr. Pope says we have every reason to believe he will rally.”
All through the night Julia tended her ailing son, and all the next day. On the second morning,
Papa brought Buck and Nellie to see her; she embraced them tearfully in the parlor but forbade them to enter the sickroom.
“Is Fred going to be all right?” asked Nellie, ever gentle and tenderhearted.
“Of course he will,” Julia said, forcing confidence into her voice, “but you must pray with all your might. Can you do that?”
Nellie and Buck both nodded vigorously, their little faces drawn and worried. Then Papa placed his hands on their shoulders, told them to kiss their mother good-bye, and took them away again as quickly as they had come.
Dr. Pope attended Fred every day, but his medicines seemed to have little effect. In the last week of January, he somberly told Julia that she must prepare herself for the worst and that Ulys should be summoned at once, to say his good-byes before it was too late.
Later that day, she received Ulys’s terse telegram announcing that he was on his way.
As the hours passed, she tried, as the doctor had urged, to prepare herself for the worst, but she could not do it, she could not—and somehow, knowing that Ulys would soon be there infused her with new hope.
She was sitting in a chair at Fred’s bedside, clasping his hand in one of hers, resting her aching head on her arm on the bed, when she heard a faint whisper. “Mamma?”
She bolted upright. “Yes, Fred, my darling.” Her heart clenched as she brushed his sweaty locks off his forehead. “I’m here.” And then she froze, her hand on his brow, hardly daring to believe it, wondering if it was only the workings of a mother’s anguished imagination or if he truly did feel cooler.
“I’m thirsty.”
She filled a cup from the pitcher and helped him sit up to drink. Then, with a sigh, he settled back against his pillow and drifted off to sleep again, his breaths deep and even. She pressed a hand to her mouth to hold back sobs of joy and disbelief before hurrying off to share the good news with Louisa.
Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule Page 20
