Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Bitterly sorry, Julia folded the page and hid it away in her luggage, for a peculiar superstition prevented her from discarding his letters. She wished he had never sent it. She thought she had managed a fraught situation with grace and that he would reward her with praise, so his unexpected annoyance and disapproval were difficult to bear. The acclaim of the press, the praise of the entire world, meant nothing if Ulys was disappointed in her—but inseparable from her regret was indignation, for her every instinct told her that his oblique reprimand was unwarranted and unfair.

  • • •

  Jule felt a wave of immeasurable relief when she learned that Julia had left Washington for New York, and yet she read with great satisfaction of Julia’s triumph at the Sanitary Fair. “That’s Julia through and through,” she remarked, smiling over a newspaper report about the magnificent sword and Julia’s vote for General McClellan—but then she caught herself. How, she wondered, could she feel any lingering fondness for the woman who had kept her unjustly enslaved for most of her life?

  Then she recalled the fleeting, innocent sweetness of their ginger-and-cream years and wondered how she could not.

  Even so, knowing that she need not fear a chance encounter on the bustling streets of Washington brought Jule an expansive sense of release, of air enough to breathe. Despite the tensions and deprivations of war, Washington City seemed abundant with possibilities, vibrant with hope despite the squalor of the contraband camps and the horrors of the military hospitals.

  There was too an air of expectation, of a long season of waiting coming to an end, for the spring sunshine had dried the muddy roads of Virginia enough to make them passable. Armies north and south would soon be on the move—and for the first time, General Grant would confront General Lee.

  Jule had seen innumerable military reviews during her time with Julia in the field, but she turned out just the same on April 26 to join the crowds lining Fourteenth Street to watch General Ambrose Burnside’s thirty thousand troops march out to reinforce the Army of the Potomac. In the early months of the war, her landlady told her, every parade of soldiers through the capital had drawn cheering crowds, but in recent years the sight of passing regiments had become so commonplace that they attracted little notice. But even Jule, a newcomer to the city, understood that this would be no ordinary procession, for the column would include seven regiments of United States Colored Troops.

  It seemed that every person of color in Washington had come to watch the soldiers set out to confront General Lee. A thrill of joy and anticipation flooded Jule as she waited on the sidewalk among the crowd, listening for the familiar strains of fife and drums that heralded the column’s approach. She joined in the applause as down New York Avenue they came, brave and dignified, turning south onto Fourteenth Street past the cheering throng.

  “There they are,” a joyful voice rang out. Jule glanced over her shoulder and spied a colored woman gesturing to the passing column, a toddler in her arms and two older girls by her side. “Do you see how well they march?” she asked her children, beaming. “Do you see? Those are our soldiers, our brave colored soldiers.”

  As the awestruck girls assured their mother that they did indeed see, Jule gazed at the dark, proud, eager faces of the colored soldiers and felt her throat constricting with emotion. Their splendid uniforms, the rousing music, the bold and steady marching, the cheering crowd—in that glorious moment it seemed to Jule that there was no limit to what the people of her race could accomplish in the years to come, unhindered by slavery, when peace once again reigned over a reunited nation. She had never witnessed a more glorious sight, and she prayed that the men would acquit themselves bravely. Everyone would be watching them, she knew, following their movements in the press, scrutinizing and debating their performance on the battlefield. Many white folks north and south alike would viciously pray for them to fail, but Jule would pray even more fervently for them to triumph. The United States Colored Troops carried the hopes and faith of every colored person with them, for in victory they would surely disprove every false, slanderous word ever spoken about the cowardice and weakness of their menfolk.

  The marching regiments approached the Willard Hotel, where President Lincoln and General Burnside stood on the eastern portico to review the parade. When the colored troops passed the president, they waved their hats in the air and cheered for the Great Emancipator, the man who had set their people free. Mr. Lincoln stood with his hat off, bowing and nodding, and Jule’s heart swelled with gratitude and pride to see that he showed them the same respect and courtesy he had shown every white soldier.

  The column needed more than four hours to cross Pennsylvania Avenue. After the soldiers came scores of ambulances, followed by thousands of cattle to feed the troops, all heading across the river to Virginia. A sense of purpose and determination filled the city, from the marching soldiers to the people lining the streets showering them with blessings and good wishes. And then they were gone, leaving hope and fear and anticipation and apprehension in their wake.

  The crowds dispersed, and Jule, too, turned toward home. Now, she knew, the citizens of Washington City would again prepare for the inevitable deluge of casualties.

  • • •

  In New York, Julia anxiously awaited Secretary Stanton’s telegrams bringing her news from the front.

  Ulys’s army and Lee’s clashed in the Wilderness, and the dead and wounded poured into Washington from field hospitals, just as they had after the battles at Bull Run, the Peninsula, Antietam, and Gettysburg. Julia felt faint when she imagined the noxious odor of bodies in the summer heat hanging sickly sweet over every street and alley, no corner of it spared the miasma of death. She was stung, too, by a guilty grief when she learned that General Longstreet had been seriously wounded in the neck and shoulder in the battle, accidentally shot by Confederate troops who had mistaken him and his companions for federal cavalry. Julia did not know where her cousin had been taken or whether he was expected to live or die. When she closed her eyes to pray for him, she saw him as he had been on her wedding day, standing beside Ulys, handsome and happy and gallant in the uniform of the nation he would eventually repudiate. She knew that the best she could hope for was that Cousin James would recover from his wounds but would be unable to return to the field.

  From the Wilderness the fighting moved on to Spotsylvania Court House, and from there to the North Anna River. Casualties were massive on both sides, disproportionately so for the Union, but the outcomes of the battles were tactically inconclusive. As stunned as the people of the North were by the staggering tolls of the dead and wounded, they were also heartened by what Ulys did each time he failed to destroy General Lee’s army: In circumstances where his predecessors had retreated, he regrouped and moved his valiant army forward, again and again, keeping General Lee on the defensive and inching ever closer to Richmond. Everyone then realized what Julia, well aware of his superstition about retracing his steps, had known for decades—General Grant possessed a very different military mind than the people of the Union had yet observed in that terrible war.

  In the second week of May, an escort was secured at last and Julia and Jesse left New York for St. Louis, so she missed the long-awaited letter Ulys had sent her from Spotsylvania Court House. Colonel Hillyer telegraphed her the essential details, but it was not until she arrived in St. Louis several days later that she held the precious letter and read it entire.

  Near Spotsylvania C. H. Va.

  May 13 1864

  Dear Julia,

  The ninth day of battle is just closing with victory so far on our side. But the enemy are fighting with great desperation entrenching themselves in every position they take up. We have lost many thousand men killed and wounded and the enemy have no doubt lost more. We have taken about eight thousand prisoners and lost likely three thousand. Among our wounded the great majority are but slightly hurt but most of them will be unfit for service
in this battle. I have reinforcements now coming up which will greatly encourage our men and discourage the enemy correspondingly.

  I am very well and full of hope. I see from the papers the country is also very hopeful.

  Remember me to your father and family. Kisses for yourself and the children. The world has never seen so bloody or protracted a battle as the one being fought and I hope never will again. The enemy were really whipped yesterday but their situation is desperate beyond anything heretofore known. To lose this battle they lose their cause. As bad as it is, they have fought for it with a gallantry worthy of a better.

  Ulys.

  As she read, Julia envisioned the scenes of carnage so vividly that she wept—for Ulys, for his courageous men, for the fallen men and widowed women on both sides.

  By the first day of June, Ulys had driven the Army of the Potomac closer to the Confederate capital of Richmond than it had been in two years. At nine o’clock that night he had written to tell Julia that a very severe battle had taken place that day, and that despite the late hour he still heard firing along some parts of the battlefront. “The rebels are making a desperate fight,” he had written, “and I presume will continue to do so as long as they can get a respectable number of men to stand.”

  Ulys wrote with such unadorned composure that if not for the press and Secretary Stanton’s occasional telegrams, Julia almost could have imagined that he was back in Washington, miles away from the horrors at Cold Harbor, where six thousand brave Union soldiers died within a single hour on the way to a costly defeat.

  Ulys—her valiant general, her victor—was indomitably resilient despite setbacks that would have staggered a lesser man. On June 15, he directed his engineers to construct a pontoon bridge twenty-one hundred feet across the James and stealthily moved his troops over the river, catching General Lee entirely by surprise. “Since Sunday we have been engaged in one of the most perilous movements ever executed by a large army,” Ulys wrote to her later that same day, although nearly a week passed before she received the letter, “that of withdrawing from the front of an enemy and moving past his flank, crossing two rivers over which the enemy has bridges and railroads whilst we have to improvise. So far it has been eminently successful and I hope will prove so to the end. About one half of my troops are now on the South side of the James River.”

  Julia needed Fred to show her on his maps to be sure, but her hopes were justified—Ulys’s army now threatened Petersburg, the most important supply base and railway depot for the entire region, including the Confederate capital of Richmond. When Ulys captured Petersburg, Richmond would inevitably fall—and so too would the Confederacy.

  While Ulys conducted offensive maneuvers north and south of the James River to extend his siege lines and attempt to cut off Confederate supplies, Julia made what contributions she could to the Union cause. She joined sewing bees to make uniforms and necessities, often bringing Nellie along to help with the easier tasks. She visited wounded soldiers at Jefferson Barracks, which had been converted to a military hospital in 1862 and held more than three thousand beds, which were nearly always full. She patronized sanitary fairs and performed whatever kindnesses she could for Union widows and orphans, who were increasing in number day by day.

  At Wish-ton-wish, where Papa resided most of the year, she could lose herself in simple pleasures—putting the pretty cottage in order with new India matting and muslin curtains, reading aloud with the children on the rose-covered piazza, strolling in the cooling shade of the forest. On rainy mornings when she could not go riding, she lingered over breakfast with Papa to discuss politics—or rather, to listen while he opined and then to tease him with questions that toppled his arguments, or at least rattled them a little. The last of the Dents’ colored servants had left them long ago, but Papa had hired German and French immigrants to replace them, and he grudgingly acknowledged that they performed their duties just as capably. Why shouldn’t they, Julia thought after observing them for a few days, with ambition and the lure of prosperity to motivate them rather than the fear of the lash?

  She wondered what had become of Jule. She resigned herself to never knowing.

  Throughout Julia’s visit, the family had many visitors, for although most of Julia’s old friends with Confederate sympathies shunned her, neighbors and acquaintances loyal to the Union sought her out. Julia had never realized how much work it was to entertain guests until she had to do it without the old family servants who had been with them for years, sometimes their entire lifetimes, and knew the house and the family’s needs better than they did themselves. Slavery was a selfish necessity, she had told herself in the early years of her marriage whenever Ulys’s steadfast opposition made her doubt the traditions of her people. After Jule fled, so dignified in her anger, Julia had begun to question whether slavery was necessary at all, or merely selfish. Watching the colored soldiers in Union blue march and drill and suffer in military hospitals, observing that the end of slavery in Washington City and elsewhere had not brought about the economic ruin advocates of the “peculiar institution” had ominously predicted, Julia realized that the answer was obvious. She had simply been too concerned with her own comforts to see it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  JUNE 1864–JANUARY 1865

  In the middle of June, Ulys established his headquarters at City Point, Virginia, fixed his sights on Petersburg, and settled in for the siege.

  As the summer passed, Julia decided that she ought to establish new headquarters too: a residence in a city in the East within an easy day’s journey of City Point, someplace with excellent schools for the children. Ulys agreed, and so at the end of August, Julia packed up the children, bade farewell to Papa and her sisters, and headed to Philadelphia.

  Her brother Frederick, newly appointed to Ulys’s staff, met them at the station. His fair hair was thinner than she remembered, and his angular face boasted a new thick mustache and chin beard, but his familiar military bearing was as upright and precise as ever. The children showered their uncle in hugs and kisses, which he heartily returned, adding a warm embrace for Julia. “Ulys regrets that he couldn’t be here to welcome you,” Frederick added, smiling sympathetically. “But you know as well as anyone that while the war lasts, no one can fill his position but he.”

  “Of course I understand.” Julia embraced her brother again, overjoyed to see him after their long separation. “I’m honored that he sent his very best officer to meet us.”

  Fred had arranged for a carriage to take them to the Continental Hotel, and while they awaited Ulys’s summons, they caught up on all the family news and made inquiries about a more permanent residence for the family. Two days after their arrival, Ulys telegraphed that Frederick should immediately escort Julia and the children to visit him at City Point.

  The next morning, after Julia scrubbed the children thoroughly and dressed them smartly, they departed by train for Baltimore, where they boarded a steamer that carried them down the Chesapeake, past Fortress Monroe, and up the James River to City Point. When their steamer docked beside Ulys’s headquarters boat, it was all Julia could do to restrain the children from disembarking before the crew set the gangplank in place. Then they ran ashore and raced aboard their father’s boat.

  Escorted by her brother and greeting officers she knew in passing, Julia followed her children’s shouts and shrieks of laughter to Ulys’s stateroom. When she at last found her darling husband, she burst out laughing, for he had a child dangling from each arm, a leg, and his shoulders, his coat was askew, and his cigar, though clamped firmly between his teeth, seemed seconds away from tumbling to the floor.

  “I think they’re happy to see me,” he remarked by way of greeting when he saw her standing in the doorway. His eyes shone with affection.

  “Oh, Ulys,” she murmured, hurrying to embrace him. He freed an arm long enough to pull her close and kiss her, but moments later his sons wrestled him t
o the floor, while Nellie danced around them, clapping her little hands and cheering, “Get up, Papa! Get up! No surrender!”

  Suddenly a shadow darkened the doorway, and all the Grants as well as Frederick glanced up to discover one of Ulys’s aides-de-camp, dispatches in hand, staring in mute astonishment at his general in chief, whom he had discovered on the floor, interrupted in the middle of a rough-and-tumble wrestling match.

  Red in the face and chuckling, Ulys got up at once and brushed off his knees. “Well, Horace,” he greeted the lieutenant colonel apologetically, “you know my weaknesses—my children and my horses.”

  City Point proved to be a much busier place than Julia had imagined. Gunboats, monitors, and transports crowded the river, and vessels of every description lined the quartermaster’s docks, where men unloaded stores and munitions for the army. Storehouses all around the wharf were being filled at a steady pace, and a near constant stream of wagons traveled to and from the front. It was a splendid summer day, sunny and breezy and not too hot, and the children were enchanted by the sights and sounds of the military camp—the boats moving briskly up and down the James on military missions, bright flags whipping in the breeze, bugles calling from the heights down to the river. When the children begged for a tour, Ulys obligingly led them from the headquarters mess, past the rows of white tents where his brave soldiers slept, to his own larger tent—which they thoroughly explored and insisted had room enough to accommodate them all quite comfortably if he would let them stay.

  Julia held fast to Ulys’s arm nearly every moment of their visit, so happy was she to see her beloved husband again, so reluctant to part from him at the end of the day, as she knew she must. They had little time alone, so it was not until the afternoon waned that she found a moment to inquire about the war. With Ulys apparently unable to advance upon Richmond except in the smallest of increments and General Sherman stalled near Atlanta, the Union advance seemed to have ground to a dispiriting halt.