Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “The siege of Petersburg will succeed,” Ulys told her with unmistakable certainty. “Richmond, too, is suffering the effects of the blockade, and it’ll crumble from the inside out if my troops don’t capture it first.” He touched a finger to her lips. “Now, my dear little wife, this is for your ears alone. You mustn’t repeat anything that I tell you, not even to someone you assume is utterly loyal.”

  “You have my solemn vow that I won’t breathe a word to anyone.”

  Late in the afternoon, Frederick escorted Julia and the children back to Philadelphia, from whence they launched their search for a suitable residence for the duration of the war. After considering Philadelphia and other cities in the region, on the advice of friends they chose nearby Burlington, New Jersey. Frederick went ahead to scout for a house, and when he found a cottage pleasantly situated in a good neighborhood, he immediately secured it for them.

  Ulys was in the Shenandoah Valley conferring with General Philip Sheridan when Julia and Frederick moved their little household about twenty miles up the Delaware River to their new home. “What an excellent brother you are,” Julia exclaimed when she saw the pretty two-story cottage her brother had discovered. Verdant ivy covered the spacious porch, tall fir trees flanked the front gate, and French windows upstairs and down let in sunny views of the garden.

  It was a lovely but lonely home in which to pass the long days until she could see Ulys again.

  • • •

  After a dismal summer full of stalemate, discouragement, and defeat, General Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in early September elevated Mr. Lincoln from a beleaguered administrator into a triumphant commander in chief. As hope for a victorious conclusion to the war soared throughout the Union, Radical Democracy Party candidate General Frémont withdrew from the presidential race, and as Election Day approached, Democrat General McClellan, the popular but perpetually hesitant military commander who did not support his own party’s peace platform, seemed a dangerously imprudent choice.

  On the first Tuesday of November, Julia sat up late, too anxious to sleep, until a messenger brought word that Mr. Lincoln had been reelected—and decisively so, receiving fifty-five percent of the popular vote and an enormous margin in the Electoral College, two hundred twelve votes to General McClellan’s twenty-one. Best of all, her home state of Missouri, so long conflicted over the questions of slavery and secession, had proven its loyalty by choosing Mr. Lincoln.

  Soon thereafter, Ulys was able to leave headquarters long enough to visit Julia and the children in Burlington, but although they were happy to be reunited, Ulys could not rest for the steady stream of visitors who descended upon the cottage to pay their respects. He was constantly reading telegrams and issuing dispatches, and it seemed that no sooner had he arrived than he was obliged to depart. On his way back to City Point, throngs of admirers turned out to cheer him all along his route, and to his consternation, the press printed detailed accounts of his movements, divulging his whereabouts not only to loyal citizens, but also to the enemy, who read Northern newspapers smuggled through the lines almost as soon as did the residents of the cities where they were printed.

  In early December, Julia repaid his visit, traveling by train to Washington City, where she boarded a steamer and sailed down the Potomac to Fortress Monroe. There Ulys met her, and she transferred to his boat so they could continue on to City Point together.

  Julia enjoyed every moment of her visit, her time alone with Ulys most of all, but also meeting his staff officers, the corps commanders, and the many distinguished gentlemen who came down from Washington City to tour the camp and confer with the general in chief. Often their ladies accompanied them, and, by popular custom, many requested buttons from Ulys’s coat as souvenirs.

  “I think it is very silly for ladies to be cutting off your buttons,” Julia said tartly one afternoon after lunch, sitting with Ulys at headquarters, enduring eyestrain and headache to sew buttons back onto his coat while he read dispatches. “Your loyal and devoted admirers don’t seem to consider how their general appears with half a dozen buttons missing from his uniform.”

  Ulys looked up from his papers, mulled it over, and shrugged. “Very well. From now on, if any lady wants a button, I’ll refer her to you.”

  In the days that followed, ladies appealed to Julia for buttons in ever increasing numbers, pretty maids and charming wives and earnest dowagers alike, and despite her reluctance she felt obliged to consent. It seemed too trifling a thing to refuse, especially since so many of the ladies were parted from brave husbands, sons, and sweethearts serving in the Union army.

  On another occasion, Julia was strolling alone on the deck when she encountered a young woman clad in a simple, dark-blue wool dress and shawl approaching the stateroom Julia and Ulys shared. Her head was swathed in a veil and she carried a plump, rosy-cheeked baby.

  “I would like to see General Grant, please, madam,” the woman asked breathlessly, her voice shaking with agitation.

  “When I left the general he was resting,” Julia replied. “I don’t believe he can see anyone presently.” In truth, Ulys was suffering from a sick headache. Julia had applied a poultice to his brow and had left him alone in their quiet, darkened stateroom, hoping she had remembered Jule’s recipe correctly, wishing forlornly that Jule had been there to guide her.

  “I must see him,” the young woman implored. “I must see him! I will!”

  “I’m very sorry, but—”

  “Oh, madam, please let me see him!” She burst into tears, and the child in her arms fussed and mewed. “My husband is sentenced to be shot!”

  “Oh, my goodness. When?”

  “This day, at twelve o’clock, and it’s all my fault.” Shaking her head, the sobbing woman paced and patted her baby on the back in a futile attempt to calm him. “Our son is seven months old, and my Bob had never seen him, so I wrote and begged him to come.”

  “I see,” Julia replied, dismayed. “You do understand that soldiers can’t simply leave the army without permission, don’t you?”

  “I thought they’d never miss him from out of all these thousands of men.” The distraught young wife drew closer to Julia, the desperate plea in her eyes visible even through her veil. “My Bob did come home as I asked, and he was on his way back to the regiment when they caught him and now they say he must be executed for desertion. Oh, please do let me see General Grant!”

  “Wait here,” said Julia. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She slipped inside the stateroom only to find Ulys awake, dressed, and preparing to light a cigar. “Ulys, a young lady wishes to see you on a most urgent matter.”

  Quickly Julia told him the sad tale, but even before she reached the end, Ulys was shaking his head regretfully. “I can’t interfere. The lady should petition General Patrick.”

  “But her husband is meant to be shot today at noon, and it’s nearly nine o’clock now.”

  “Julia, it’s not appropriate for me to intercede.”

  Pressing her lips together and inhaling sharply, Julia strode to the door, flung it open, and announced, “You may enter and tell General Grant yourself.”

  Julia stepped into the corridor and waited just outside the door, listening to the woman’s soft entreaties and Ulys’s rumbling questions. Soon thereafter, he called Julia back inside. “Have paper and ink brought to me,” he commanded, and with a nod she hurried off.

  Before long the young wife emerged from the stateroom, the baby dozing on her shoulder, a folded piece of paper in her hand. “Thank you, madam,” the woman said, her face transfigured by joy. “God bless you, and God bless the general.”

  Julia nodded in farewell, and as the woman hurried off to see to her husband’s reprieve, Julia hesitated a moment before entering the stateroom. “Thank you, Ulys.”

  He frowned, but without rancor. “I’m sure I did wrong.”

 
“I’m sure it would have been a far greater wrong to deprive that young woman of her husband and the child his father.”

  “You may think so, but I’ve no doubt that I’ve just pardoned a bounty jumper.”

  Silently Julia inclined her head to him. She knew the importance of discipline in the ranks, but she also understood a soldier’s longing to see a child born in his absence. Ulys ought to empathize even better than she. Surely he had not grown so great that he had forgotten the loneliness and misery that had compelled him to resign from the army when Fred and Buck were very young.

  • • •

  On Christmas Day, Washington City rang with the thrilling news that General Sherman had reached the Atlantic, the terminus of his march across Georgia. Word quickly spread that he had sent the president a telegram declaring, “I beg to present to you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.”

  The citizens of the capital celebrated Christmas with a fervent, patriotic jubilance Jule had never before witnessed, and their renewed interest in merrymaking kept her satisfyingly busy dressing the hair and beautifying the skin of the social elite. For the first time in her life, she had plenty to eat, nice dresses to wear, a comfortable room to call her own, and a steadily increasing savings.

  Jule was aided in her endeavors by a new friend, Emma Stevens, a former slave employed as an assistant seamstress to the renowned dressmaker Mrs. Elizabeth Keckley. Although Emma was more than ten years younger than Jule, she had acquired her freedom several years sooner, and she cheerfully assumed the role of Jule’s confidante and guide as she navigated the capital, her new landscape of freedom.

  As a very young child, Emma had been manumitted with her mother when their old mistress passed away, but the woman’s heirs had contested the will. Emma and her mother had been kept in slavery for ten long years more while the lawsuit Emma’s mother brought against the heirs dragged out in court. Upon miraculously winning their case, and their freedom, Emma and her mother had adopted the last name of the lawyer who had courageously represented them in a hostile courtroom.

  Emma rented a small attic bedroom in the same Twelfth Street boardinghouse where her employer resided, and she often spoke admiringly of Mrs. Keckley’s extraordinary skill and the dignity and grace with which she moved among the city’s elite—as an employee rather than a social equal, perhaps, but respected nonetheless. “Mrs. Keckley is not only Mrs. Lincoln’s modiste, but her most trusted confidante too,” Emma told her proudly. “President Lincoln respects her so much that when he speaks with her—which is often, and in the most warm and friendly manner—he addresses her as Madame Keckley.”

  “The president does that?”

  Emma nodded emphatically, beaming.

  Jule shook her head in wonder. She could only imagine what it would be like to climb so high and succeed so well that the president himself would bestow such a title upon her.

  Emma generously used her intimate knowledge of Mrs. Keckley’s dressmaking orders to Jule’s benefit, letting her know which ladies had ordered gowns for special occasions so that Jule might leave a card at their homes announcing her hairdressing services. As the winter social season progressed, particularly busy days found Jule hurrying from one gracious residence to another from morning until early evening, arranging one lady’s golden tresses and another’s dark curls, dispensing ointments and balms to clear the complexion or soften dry hands. She learned the city’s omnibus routes by heart and established a lengthy list of satisfied, loyal customers. She had rarely been busier, and never more confident in herself and her prospects. Though she felt a jolt every time she heard that General Grant was in the capital, Julia was rarely with him, and Jule no longer feared that she would be recognized and arrested. She only occasionally woke sweating and trembling from nightmares that she had been captured and thrown back into slavery. Far more often, terrifying visions of Gabriel suffering beneath the lash somewhere in the impossibly distant Southwest haunted her.

  Her dreams had never foretold the future, she reminded herself when her fears for his safety threatened to overwhelm her. Prophecy was Julia’s gift, one more blessing piled upon her abundant store.

  Christmas parties kept Jule too busy to brood over her empty arms and lonely bed, and the turning of the year kept her even more constantly employed. The New Year’s Day reception at the White House was the highlight of the season, and Jule learned that it was by custom a three-hour affair in which Mr. Lincoln would stand in the East Room shaking hands and welcoming visitors—foreign diplomats first, then ranking officials, and lastly the public, anyone who wished to come. Naturally every lady who attended the reception or any of the great many private parties that followed it wished to look her best, and after the whirlwind of activity, when Jule and Emma had caught their breath, they compared notes and congratulated each other on a very profitable season.

  “You spend so little on your lodging and almost nothing on indulgences for yourself,” Emma noted, a slightly scolding, teasing tone to her voice. “With all the money you’re saving, you should open a little workshop and hire employees to mix and bottle your various potions for you. You could keep selling them to your clients yourself, of course, but you could also find pharmacies that would be willing to sell them for you. I’m sure they would, for a small percentage of the profits.”

  Jule had learned to trust Emma’s canny business sense, and she was tempted by the vision of expanding her trade, but she had another, more urgent use for her savings. “Every penny I don’t have to spend on essentials must go to buying Gabriel’s freedom,” she said, “but first, to finding him. I know the search will cost money too.”

  “Do you really think there’s any hope you’ll ever find him?”

  Jule’s breath stuck in her throat. “Of course,” she managed to say. “I have to believe that. Don’t you see?”

  Emma regarded her with stricken sympathy. “I do see,” she said, laying her hand on Jule’s arm. “Maybe when the war’s over, Gabriel will find you before you’ve exhausted your fortune on the search. Wouldn’t you have a merry time spending it together?”

  Jule felt tears gathering, but she managed a smile. “That’s not Gabriel’s way. He’d want to distribute it to the less fortunate. But I don’t suppose he’d mind a little celebration too.”

  “I look forward to meeting him,” said Emma sincerely, and Jule thought they were some of the kindest words anyone had ever spoken to her.

  • • •

  Early in the New Year, the deed to a fully furnished residence worth fifty thousand dollars on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia was delivered to Julia at the cottage in Burlington.

  The loyal citizens of that generous city had raised the funds out of respect for General Grant and a desire to express the people’s gratitude in a tangible, practical manner. Overwhelmed, Julia immediately wrote back to thank them on her husband’s behalf, and after sending off the letter, she promptly telegraphed the astonishing news to Ulys at City Point. “I think you had as well arrange to move into your new house at once and get Nellie and Jess at good schools,” he replied in his next letter. “Leave Fred and Buck where they are. They have been changed from one school to another often enough. As soon as I can I will run up and see you in your new house.”

  Julia had scarcely begun to make inquiries when Ulys sent another dispatch summoning her to City Point, and so instead of preparing to move to Philadelphia, she quickly made arrangements for an extended absence from Burlington. Her lovely sister-in-law Helen had recently moved her children to the East to be closer to Frederick, and she agreed to watch over her nephews and niece while Julia was away. When all was in order, Julia traveled the familiar route by rail and steamer to Fortress Monroe, where Ulys met her and escorted her the rest of the way.

  General Rufus Ingalls, Ulys’s quartermaster and longtime friend, met t
hem at the dock with a team of carpenters, all grinning and fairly bursting with some secret. Mystified, Julia accepted General Ingalls’s arm and allowed him to escort her to a bluff overlooking the James River. There, to her delight, he led her to a charming cabin standing among a little village of smaller cabins. Bare-limbed trees surrounded it, promising cool shade come springtime, and the Stars and Stripes waved proudly from a flagpole in the front garden.

  “Your new quarters, madam,” Ingalls said, gesturing grandly to the cabin.

  “It’s lovely, absolutely lovely,” Julia declared. “I cannot thank you enough.”

  “We built this for the general especially so you could stay with him,” the general replied, beaming proudly. “We miss you too much when you’re away.”

  “You flatter me,” Julia protested, laughing, and happily agreed to let him show her around. A large front room would serve as parlor, dining room, and office, and its large open fireplace would spread warmth to all corners. Doors on the far wall led to two bedrooms, offering beds enough for all whenever the children came to visit. The cabin was simply furnished, with only the necessities, but as Julia’s gaze traveled around the front room, she knew she could easily transform the rustic place into a cozy home.

  She soon had the cabin in good order, and it proved to be as snug and cozy as any winter quarters she and Ulys had yet shared. As the weeks passed, many notable visitors called there to confer with Ulys—General Edward Ord, General George Meade, and others—and Julia listened surreptitiously from her chair by the fireplace while vital matters of the war were discussed. Occasionally Ulys was obliged to travel to Washington to confer with the president and secretary of war, and usually Julia would accompany him, enjoying the sights and grandeur of Washington. They never stayed long, for Ulys always felt most urgently that he should return to military headquarters before the rebels discovered he was away and took advantage of his absence to launch an assault.