Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (17 page)

In the morning, Julia devised for her son a tour of the encampment so that Ulys would not be disturbed. Bundling Jesse in his warmest clothes, Julia took him by one hand, Jule by the other, and together they went exploring. Each camp was new and enthralling to Jesse, though they all looked much the same to Julia, but she and Jule both enjoyed his delight, and hours later, when they headed back to meet Ulys for lunch, they were all red cheeked, breathless, and happy from exertion.

Just as they reached headquarters, a man called out, “Mrs. Grant, may I have a word?”

She turned to discover a man in a long black coat, black hat, and white minister’s collar hurrying toward her. “Reverend Briggs,” she greeted him. “How delightful to see you again. How are the sheep in your vast flock?”

Reverend Briggs was one of the tallest men in camp, in his early sixties, with a slight stoop to his shoulders that suggested many a long night bent over his Bible with a pen in hand, composing a sermon. “Some of them are quite distressed today, Mrs. Grant, and not for the usual reasons.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?”

The minister rubbed his hands together; she saw that they were red and chapped and made a mental note to procure him some warm gloves and one of Jule’s miraculous salves. “I certainly hope so. The men know of your kindness, and of your religious devotion, and they trust that you empathize with people of many different faiths.”

“We are all God’s children,” Julia said, regarding Reverend Briggs curiously while keeping an eye on Jesse, who was not one to remain sedately at his mother’s side while she conversed with another adult. Fortunately, Jule, ever watchful, followed after as he began to wander. “Whether we are Methodist or Lutheran or even Papists.”

“Or Hebrew?”

“Yes, of course.”

Reverend Briggs looked relieved. “Then, in the spirit of religious tolerance, I hope that you might speak to General Grant on behalf of our hundreds of soldiers of the Jewish faith. They are to a man loyal, dutiful soldiers.”

The minister’s vehemence caught Julia by surprise. “I’m sure they are. What can I do to help them?”

“As you may well imagine, the general’s order has upset them greatly.” His voice was clipped and hurried with unmistakable anger. “Nevertheless, they’re determined to do their duty, once they understand it. Are General Grant’s Jewish officers and men to hold to their original commitment to the United States Army, or should they obey the general’s new order? They cannot, as the general must surely realize, do both.”

“Reverend,” said Julia, startled, “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. I’ve been out since breakfast and I know nothing of any new order.”

“My apologies. I assumed you knew. It’s the talk of the camp.” The minister gestured toward the far end of the headquarters piazza, where notices were posted. A crisp new page had been tacked up to a column, the lower corners rustling in the wind.

“Jule, will you take Jesse inside?” asked Julia, gathering her skirts and climbing the stairs. “Please change him out of his muddy clothes and give him his lunch in the kitchen.”

“But I want to eat with Papa,” Jesse protested.

“You’ll see him at suppertime.” Jule gave him a winning smile and extended a hand. “Have lunch with me, and I’ll finish that story I started last night.”

Jesse beamed and took her hand, and as she led him inside, she and Julia exchanged a worried, wary glance before Julia strode down the piazza to read Ulys’s order.

Headquarters 13th Army Corps,
Department of the Tennessee,
Oxford, Miss. Dec. 17 1862.
GENERAL ORDERS, NO. 11

The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department, and also Department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department within twenty-four hours of the receipt of this order.

Post Commanders will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.

No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application for trade permits.

By Order of Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant:

Jno. A. Rawlins

Ass’t Adj’t Genl.

“Oh, no, Ulys, what were you thinking?” Julia murmured. Quickly she turned back to the minister. “I assure you, I’ll speak to the general, and I’ll advocate for the Hebrews among your flock. I’ll try to convince him to rescind the order altogether.”

“Thank you very much, Mrs. Grant,” the minister said. “The men have the utmost faith in you, and I know now that it was well placed.”

“That remains to be seen.” She bade him good afternoon and hurried inside.

Ulys was late coming to the table. Julia had no appetite, so after they said grace, she kept her hands folded in her lap while Ulys tucked in. “I read your new order expelling the Jews,” she said.

He eyed her warily while he chewed and swallowed. “From your tone I gather you wish to register an opinion.”

“I do. I must.” She took a deep breath. “Ulys, I would never second-guess your decisions on the battlefield, but this order—it is scarcely to be believed. It’s wrong. It’s obnoxious.”

His eyebrows rose. “Obnoxious?”

“Yes, Ulys. Obnoxious and offensive and unjust. Reverend Briggs called to express his grave concerns. Did you forget that hundreds of Jews are serving in your own army? Did you consider how your order would affect their morale?”

Thunderstruck, Ulys set down his fork and sat back in his chair, and she had her answer. “I didn’t mean all Jews,” he said. “Only those involved in the cotton trade.”

“Your order clearly stated, ‘The Jews, as a class.’ Oh, Ulys. These men have served honorably, risking their own lives for the Union, and you’ve shamed them. If there are certain Jews who have committed offenses, then by all means punish those individuals, but you cannot condemn an entire race, the good with the bad.”

“You’re a fine one to speak of condemning an entire race.”

Julia felt heat rise in her face, for she knew he spoke of slavery. “That’s not at all the same. You know this order is really about your father and the Mack brothers.”

Ulys pushed back his chair and rose from the table. “I believe you’re a woman of limited understanding.”

“And I believe,” Julia replied shakily, “that we have both today discovered that the one we love is far less perfect than we imagined them to be.”

In the days that followed, Julia took little comfort in learning through Reverend Briggs and other sympathetic officers that Ulys’s generals were almost insubordinately slow to carry out his order and expel the Jewish men serving in their ranks. Even Ulys soon seemed to regret his decision. “I’ve heard talk that some generals aren’t carrying out the order because they believe it’s illegal,” he told her as they lingered over breakfast. “I’m not certain that it’s illegal, but I am beginning to think that it was wrong.”

“Then rescind it,” she urged, reaching for his hand.

He managed a wry smile. “Make a strategic withdrawal?”

“Call it whatever you like, as long as you call it back.”

Suddenly Rawlins burst into the room. “General, sir, you’re needed at once,” he said, telegram slips clutched in his hand. “The rebels have captured Holly Springs.”

D
ECEMBER
1862–A
PRIL
1863

T
hroughout the morning, grim reports of Confederate general Earl Van Dorn’s whirlwind attack on Holly Springs continued to filter in, shocking Julia with news of the capture of the entire garrison of twelve hundred Union soldiers. Munitions, food, and forage had been confiscated, warehouses destroyed. After capturing the depot, General Van Dorn’s soldiers had burned and plundered the town for hours, turning it into a veritable inferno, cheered on by delighted Southern ladies who had emerged from their homes into the frosty dawn still clad in their dressing gowns, clapping their hands and shouting encouragement to the raiders. Confederate officers learned that Julia was boarding at the Walter residence and raced there on horseback to apprehend her, but upon discovering that she was no longer there, they settled for capturing her horses and burning her carriage.

“If General Grant had not summoned you to Oxford,” said Jule, visibly shaken. “If we had still been in Holly Springs when the raiders came—”

“Let’s not speak of it,” Julia interrupted, feeling faint. She could imagine it all too well—herself sitting on the floor of a dark prison cell, comforting a terrified Jesse; Jule snatched away and sold off into the Deep South, never to be seen again.

Ulys quickly organized a response, sending his calvary to drive Van Dorn away, dispatching teams into the countryside to gather food and forage. But Julia knew that replenishing their supplies would only partially restore all that had been lost in the raid. Communications had been badly disrupted, and Ulys had been forced to abandon his main line of attack into Vicksburg, a city essential to the rebel defenses because it connected regions of the Confederacy separated by the Mississippi. The city occupied the first high ground near the river below Memphis as well, and it was the origin of important railway lines leading into all points of the South. If Vicksburg fell, the Confederacy would eventually follow.

Ulys soon reestablished his headquarters in Holly Springs, but not in the Walter house. William Henry Coxe, a cotton planter who represented himself as a Union man, invited Ulys to occupy his home, a lovely four-year-old Gothic villa on Salem Avenue.

As soon as Julia settled her small household into their new accommodations, she called on her former landlady, concerned for the family’s well-being after the frightful raid. Mrs. Govan invited her in for coffee—the last they had, she remarked with a wistful smile. “When the raiders came for you, I said that you had already left to meet General Grant in Oxford, which was true.” Mrs. Govan smiled as she stirred a scant pinch of sugar in her coffee. “They then demanded I relinquish your personal effects. I said that you had taken everything with you, which was not entirely true.”

Mrs. Govan beckoned to a servant and issued instructions to load Julia and Jesse’s trunks onto Mrs. Govan’s carriage.

“You saved our belongings,” Julia exclaimed, wishing, not for the first time, that their husbands fought on the same side. “I had given them up for lost. Thank you very much indeed.”

“I would have saved your horses and carriage too, if I could have hidden them.”

Soon thereafter, in consideration of the courtesy shown his wife, Ulys ordered a guard placed upon Mrs. Govan’s home and issued a guarantee against search, trespass, or devastation by federal parties for the remainder of the war.

On Christmas Eve, Mrs. Govan sent Julia a fine turkey and several grouse for the Grants’ holiday dinner. “I wish I could return the compliment with some delicacies from the North,” Julia fretted to Jule, “but these days our mess is indifferent at best. All the nice things I brought with me from St. Louis are long gone.”

“Not everything,” said Jule. “You still have a few jars of quince jelly from White Haven.”

“Where?”

“At the bottom of your trunk. I wrapped the jars for safekeeping in the pieces of that quilt you’re never going to finish.”

“I certainly shall finish it someday.” Julia had begun the patchwork quilt as a bride, but what with raising the children, her persistent headaches from eyestrain, and many tasks to occupy her time, she sewed on it only infrequently. Ulys teased that she took it with her everywhere, and yet it never came any closer to completion. It had become something of a family joke, common ground between Dents and Grants.

“Don’t you find it curious,” Jule remarked, “that a lady who can see into the future often can’t see what’s right in front of her?”

Abruptly Julia stopped searching through the trunk, sat back on her heels, and frowned up at Jule, exasperated. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re still referring to the overlooked jelly.”

“Of course,” said Jule, feigning innocence, but the determined set to her mouth betrayed her. “What else would I be talking about except your poor vision, and how much good it does you when I see for you?”

“What else indeed.” Usually Jule was better able to conceal her discontent, which had increased steadily ever since President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had gone into effect. Jule thought she should be free too, and she stubbornly refused to accept the wording of the document and facts of geography: Papa was exempt from the decree since Missouri was not in rebellion. By law, Jule was still a slave, and by choice, she had become an ever less manageable one.

“However the jelly came to be spared,” Julia said briskly as she unearthed the jars from their patchwork nest, “it will make a wonderful gift.”

She arranged the four jars in a basket, cushioned in a bed of pretty fabric, and sent Jule off to deliver her gift to Mrs. Govan.

Van Dorn’s raid had disrupted communications, but word of Ulys’s dreadful Order No. 11 had spread nonetheless. As Jewish families within the Department of the Tennessee were forced from their homes, rabbis and other influential Jewish leaders throughout the North lodged official protests. Delegations from Cincinnati and Louisville had met with President Abraham Lincoln at the White House, and soon thereafter, General Halleck telegraphed Ulys, “A paper purporting to be a Genl Order No. 11 issued by you Dec 17th has been presented here. By its terms it expels all Jews from your Dept. If such an order has been issued, it will be immediately revoked.”

Ulys promptly had Rawlins issue another order declaring, “By direction of the General in Chief of the Army at Washington the General Order from these Head Quarters expelling Jews from this Department is hereby revoked.”

Julia privately rejoiced, and she knew from Ulys’s haggard looks that he deeply regretted the entire affair and wished it could be expunged from the pages of history. “I fear that when this war is done, all I will be remembered for is my shameful behavior toward the Jews in this one moment of anger,” he confided one evening as she nursed him through a particularly severe sick headache.

“That is not all you will be remembered for,” Julia had consoled him, entirely certain of it, and ever mindful of her mother’s prophecy that someday his true greatness would be known to all.

•   •   •

Julia’s household remained in Holly Springs into the New Year, but after repairs to the railroad through Grand Junction were completed in early January, Ulys moved his headquarters fifty miles northwest to Memphis. Upon their arrival, Ulys took rooms for the family at the Gayoso House, a gracious hotel on Main Street, and established his offices in a bank building nearby. The Gayoso was a fine establishment, the rooms comfortable, the staff courteous if aloof, but the ladies of the city were openly hostile to the Yankee occupiers, and Julia had little hope of forming cordial acquaintances as she had in Holly Springs.

A few days after their arrival, Ulys left Memphis, having resolved to relieve General John A. McClernand of his command in Arkansas and to lead the expedition upon Vicksburg himself. A week later he returned to Memphis to make the necessary arrangements for securing the rear territory before moving on Vicksburg. On the morning of his departure, he had solemnly told Julia that the real work of the campaign to capture Vicksburg was about to begin. “I don’t know how often I might be able to see you and the children until the city falls,” he warned, taking her hands.

“I understand,” she replied, smiling bravely. “Ulys, you know how much I long to see Fred, Buck, and Nellie again. If you’re going to be away indefinitely, should I not go to them?”

He brought her hands to his lips and agreed that a visit might be possible, and a few days later he wrote from Young’s Point, Louisiana, “I shall not return to Memphis until the close of this campaign. You had better make your visit to the children at once. As soon as I am stationary I will write to you to join me.”

Happy tears filled Julia’s eyes as she imagined embracing her three eldest children again. She would have departed at once, but various arrangements had to be made first, and the vagaries of the post complicated their planning. Ulys wanted Fred to accompany him as he had in Springfield in the early months of the war, and Fred, who seemed destined to become a military man like his father, was very eager to go. As for Buck, Nellie, and little Jesse, Ulys preferred for Julia to take them back to Memphis so they would be nearby in case an opportunity came for them to visit him. Finally everything was in place, and by the end of March, Julia and all four of her children had settled happily into larger quarters in the Gayoso House, where they awaited a summons from Ulys to visit him at his headquarters near Vicksburg.

Fred did not remain with them long. The day after the children arrived in Memphis, Colonel Hillyer escorted Fred and his own son to Ulys’s encampment. “Fred is looking well and seems as happy as can be at the idea of being here,” Ulys wrote, despite a terrible storm that had delayed the travelers at Lake Providence. He assured Julia that he would require Fred to read every day and study his arithmetic, and write to her at least twice a week. “Kisses for yourself and children dear Julia,” he ended his letter. She hoped it would not be long until he could deliver those kisses himself rather than through the post.

•   •   •

At long last, Ulys wrote with instructions for Julia to bring the children on the next boat for a few days’ visit.

How wonderful it was to have her whole family around her once more! Fred looked dashing in the uniform she had made for him, wearing a sword with a yellow sash at his side. He had a clever little Indian pony to ride, he shared the soldiers’ mess, and he slept on a cot in his father’s tent. “He never knows what it is to be afraid,” Ulys confided proudly when Fred couldn’t overhear.

“A little healthy fear might be prudent,” Julia reminded him, and Ulys assured her yet again that he kept Fred well out of harm’s way.

They toured the camp, and all the officers they met paid their kindest regards to Julia. She received them graciously, admired the encampment, and inspected a canal that the men had apparently been digging and reinforcing for many days. “They named it after me,” Ulys remarked.

A dubious honor, Julia thought, considering that the river had flooded the canal and had filled it with backwater and sediment. It was a remarkable feat of engineering—but Julia could see no point to it whatsoever.

She waited until Jule had led the children off to their lunch before she unburdened herself. “Why don’t you move on Vicksburg at once?” she asked as they strolled along a well-worn path between regimental banners. “Do stop digging this silly canal. You can’t possibly mean to use it.”

“General McClernand before me was charged to widen and deepen this canal,” Ulys replied, amused. “President Lincoln navigated the Mississippi in his younger days and he understands the river. He sets much store by this endeavor.”

“Well, I think it’s a waste of time and effort.”

Ulys laughed heartily—and the sound reminded her how long it had been since she had last heard him laugh. “It’s true that I won’t use the canal,” he admitted. “I never expected to, but it served its purpose by giving the men something to do while I waited for the waters to subside. It also gave any observers something to watch while I made plans elsewhere.”

“I suppose you had to give the reporters something to write about,” Julia acknowledged. “If the papers proclaimed that absolutely nothing was going on here, the people of the North would be calling for your head.”

“And I would be so bored that I might willingly let them take it. I only hope the Confederates observing us from Vicksburg won’t realize it’s a ruse as quickly as you did.”

“Don’t give them enough time to figure it out. Move upon Vicksburg now and you’ll take the city.”

Ulys’s eyebrows rose. “I suppose you have a plan of action to propose?”

“I do. Mass your troops in a solid phalanx at a point north of the fortress, rush upon it, and the enemy will be obliged to surrender.”

“I’m afraid your plan would involve great loss of life without any certainty of success. I’m sorry, Julia, but I can’t adopt it.” Ulys halted and took both her hands in his. “You needn’t worry. I’ll move upon Vicksburg, and I’ll take it too.”

“I know you will, but when?”

“When the time is right and not an hour before. You must never forget that each and every one of my soldiers has a mother, wife, or sweetheart whose life is as dear to them as mine is to you.”

“But Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas has been sent to relieve you for inaction. Everyone in Memphis talks of it.”

“Then everyone in Memphis is wrong.” He kissed her cheek and cupped her chin in his hand. “The president sent Adjutant General Thomas here to devise a plan for taking care of the contraband—the newly freed slaves.”

“Are you sure?” asked Julia. “Perhaps that’s another ruse.”

“I’m sure. We’ve already spoken about it.”

“Thank goodness.” Julia sighed and pressed a hand to her brow. “I can’t tell you what a relief this is.”

“I didn’t realize you were so concerned about the plight of freedmen.”

“Don’t tease, Ulys. You know I mean that I’m glad you aren’t going to be relieved of your command.” She thought for a moment. “Although I do feel for the slaves. I can only imagine how it must feel to find oneself suddenly at liberty after a lifetime of servitude. Where does one even begin? It must be terrifying.”