Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (14 page)

The crewman hesitated before sending them to other quarters—still belowdecks, still small and windowless, but much better than the hold.

“Have you eaten?” the lieutenant asked after she looked the place over. He smiled boyishly and seemed extraordinarily pleased with himself. She was too bemused to do more than shake her head.

He produced a bundle of paper-wrapped sandwiches, the sort she recognized from the officers’ mess, and he persuaded her to come above decks to dine in the fresh air. She hid her incredulity as he cheerfully engaged her in a mostly one-sided conversation, ignoring, or perhaps oblivious to, the curious or hostile glances of other passengers.

“You’d like my hometown, Columbus,” he assured her, which struck her as rather odd, since he had known her only a few hours and had no idea what she might like or dislike. “Friendly, kind people everywhere. Helpful people. The best way to get there, if you’re traveling on the river, is to disembark at Cincinnati. Do you know the city?”

When Jule wordlessly nodded, he went on to describe a church she ought to visit, the Zion Baptist Church on Third Street between Race and Elm. Finally curiosity compelled Jule to speak. “Why would a white man like you worship in a colored church?”

The lieutenant had just taken a bite of apple, and a laugh turned into a cough so suddenly that Jule thought he might be choking. He cleared his throat, shook his head, and grinned at her. “Oh, I’ve never worshipped there. I’m a Jew. But you, Miss Jule, you would find the sermons illuminating, I think.”

Miss Jule.
Astonished, she stared at him as he rambled on about how one could travel from Cincinnati to Columbus and to parts farther north—and suddenly the light of understanding broke through her bewilderment. He regretted taking her back to her master because he was an abolitionist, not because he craved more warlike duty. He could not help her escape because of his sworn loyalty to General Grant, but if she should happen to have another chance, he hoped she would make the most of it.

She hung on his every word all the way to St. Louis, breaking in to murmur questions from time to time, committing every detail to memory.

•   •   •

Two days after Jule left Cairo, Julia, Anna, and the children reviewed the troops as they set out for battle. Julia’s heart seemed to beat in time with the music of fife and drum as she watched the men form ranks and march to the landing. As the young officers hurried along, she overheard them cheerfully boasting to one another that they would win their spurs or a strawberry leaf, an eagle or a star—the insignia of the higher ranks to which they aspired.

“We’ll all come to you to set them in place, Mrs. Grant,” a lieutenant called to her in passing.

“And I shall be happy to do it,” she declared, waving. “I’ll have my needle and thread ready.”

As the lieutenant’s companions laughed and clapped him on the back, another young fellow shouted, “We’re sure we all have your kind wishes, Mrs. Grant.”

“Of course you do, as well as my prayers.”

The men filed aboard the steamships, which looked grand and proud as they pulled away from the shore, their decks filled with eager soldiers, every railing adorned with bright flags waving in the wind.

“Is that Pa, Mamma?” asked Nellie, tugging on Julia’s coat and pointing.

Julia shaded her eyes with a gloved hand and searched for Ulys, but to her disappointment, she did not find him. “I don’t know, darling. I don’t see him.” They had exchanged private farewells at headquarters earlier that morning, but it would have been lovely to catch one last glimpse of him before he departed. She wished Jule were there to see for her.

“Is he going to be all right?”

Swiftly Julia bent to hug her daughter. “Yes, of course he is.” She had told him in parting that she was sure he would return victorious. It was not a prophecy, just an ardent wish, but he had seemed glad to hear it all the same.

A few days after the troops set out, three of the steamers that had carried them up the Ohio River returned, bringing with them the wounded, the deceased, and the glorious news of Ulys’s victory. Breathless from relief, Julia sank to her knees on the landing, her heart overflowing with gratitude to Almighty God. Kneeling, clasping her hands, she prayed for his continuous favor for her nation and her beloved husband.

She was terribly disappointed when she discovered that Ulys had not returned aboard one of the steamers, but he had sent her a letter telling her of his intention to attack Fort Donelson without delay. “Fred may accompany one of the staff officers to Fort Henry for a brief visit, if that would not make you too anxious,” Ulys wrote.

The very thought of it filled Julia with apprehension, but Fred pleaded so earnestly that she eventually acquiesced. After subjecting him to a lengthy lecture about safety and responsibility, she let him depart the next morning with an officer she knew well and trusted, and by evening he returned bearing war trophies he had collected from the field of battle—a handful of grapeshot, two empty cigar boxes, and several pipes, which he generously divided among the other children, who regarded him as a hero.

Fred saved the best treasure, a small cannonball, for four-year-old Jesse, whose eyes widened with wonder as he accepted the gift. Jesse amused himself by rolling the cannonball back and forth on the windowsill, the rumble of iron upon wood strangely reminiscent of distant thunder—until suddenly it tumbled off the sill and landed on his foot. He cried out in pain, but Fred quickly exclaimed, “A soldier never cries, Jess.” At that Jesse gulped back his sobs, clutched his injured foot in both hands, and sank trembling and pale to the floor. Julia immediately summoned the doctor, and to her relief, when he examined Jesse’s foot he found no broken bones, only some vivid, painful bruising that would fade with time.

Julia had made up her mind to remain in Cairo as long as she could, but all too soon Ulys wrote to tell her that she must go to Covington at once and remain there until he sent word. Aboard the steamer to Cincinnati, by day Julia was preoccupied with the children, but at night she was overcome with loneliness. One evening, sitting alone on the deck, she felt so desolate that she buried her face in her hands and broke down in sobs, releasing into the night the unhappiness she struggled to conceal from the children throughout the long days.

“Are you quite all right, madam?”

With a start, Julia looked up to discover an elderly woman looking kindly down upon her. “Yes, yes,” she stammered, suddenly ashamed. Other women had lost husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons in the previous week’s fighting, and she was blubbering away over a little homesickness. She would have made a terrible soldier.

“Shall I call someone for you?”

“No, I’m quite fine, thank you.” Forcing a smile, Julia rose and hurried away.

In Covington, she found Jesse Root Grant in excellent spirits, as well informed about Ulys’s maneuvers in the field as many of his officers. He recited facts and statistics and compared his son’s strategies with those of military geniuses of bygone eras, always to Ulys’s advantage. For her part, Hannah confided that she did not worry as much about Ulys as she had in the Mexican War, when his inadvertent silence had caused her hair to go white. “I believe that Ulys has been raised up for the particular purpose of fighting this evil rebellion,” she said with quiet certainty. “The same power that raised him up will protect him.”

One afternoon in mid-February, Mary darted into the parlor where Julia and Jennie were sewing. “Have you not heard the great news?” she exclaimed, breathless and pink cheeked. “Richmond has fallen!”

“That is not and cannot be true,” Julia declared, as Jennie gasped with delight and clapped her hands. “Richmond will fall only before Ulys and his army.”

“Oh, Julia,” Mary said, fondly exasperated. “We’re all proud of Lyss, but does it matter which general takes Richmond as long as it falls?”

“I wish it were true, but Richmond hasn’t fallen,” insisted Julia.

Soon enough, news reports proved her right: It was Fort Donelson that had fallen, and to her beloved Ulys, in a joint effort with the navy. After enduring the Union assault for several days and failing to break through Ulys’s lines, the Confederate commanders had realized that their position was hopeless. Confederate Brigadier General Simon B. Buckner, left in charge after his two superior officers relinquished their commands and fled, sent a message to Ulys proposing an armistice and the appointment of commissioners to settle the terms of his capitulation. Ulys’s response was reprinted in all the Cincinnati papers. “No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted,” Ulys had written with his usual brevity and directness. “I propose to move immediately upon your works.”

General Buckner was said to have sent back a bitter, petulant reply, stating that Ulys’s overwhelming forces compelled him, despite the “brilliant success of the Confederate arms yesterday, to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms you propose.”

“How can this rebel suggest that Ulys is anything less than a gentleman?” Julia protested, but her indignation was but a drop compared to the wave of exultation that swept through Covington, Cincinnati, and the entire Union. Here is a general who fights, the people declared in the streets and the parlors and in the press. Ulys’s victories thoroughly rejuvenated the depressed morale of the people of the North, and soon his letter to General Buckner inspired a new nickname: Unconditional Surrender Grant.

The day after Fort Donelson fell, Ulys was promoted to major general—so Julia was astonished when, after making a quick trip to Nashville to consult with General Don Carlos Buell, he was accused of leaving his command without permission. Other bewildering accusations quickly sprang up—Ulys failed to maintain order in camp, he failed to communicate his plans to Commander of the Department of the Missouri Major General Henry W. Halleck, and he refused to answer Halleck’s daily messages. Scarcely a month after his triumphs, Ulys was suspended from his command, and the expedition into Tennessee he had so diligently planned was assigned to another general.

To Julia’s dismay, the controversy stirred up the old malicious lies about Ulys’s sobriety, prompting army headquarters to order an investigation. No evidence of drunkenness could be found, and other officers rushed to defend him on the other charges, testifying with adamant certainty that Ulys had always sent General Halleck frequent reports, sometimes two or three a day.

Eventually the truth came out: After a Southern sympathizer employed in the telegraph office deserted, it was discovered that he had intercepted numerous messages that were supposed to have been sent between Ulys and General Halleck. Thus exonerated, Ulys was reinstated to his command in the middle of March, and he immediately joined his army in Savannah, Tennessee.

The uproar following the capture of Fort Donelson had barely subsided when Ulys and his brave army defeated the rebel forces at Shiloh in Tennessee. “Again another terrible battle has occurred in which our arms have been victorious,” he wrote to Julia. “I got through all safe having but one shot which struck my sword but did not touch me.”

Julia’s heart thumped so hard it pained her. A strike upon his sword was still much too close.

A week later he wrote that General Halleck had arrived and had taken command, although Ulys and General Buell remained in charge of their separate armies. “I am looking for a speedy move, one more fight and then easy sailing to the close of the war,” Ulys wrote. “I really will feel glad when this thing is over. The battle at this place was the most desperate that has ever taken place on the Continent and I don’t look for another like it. I suppose you have read a great deal about the battle in the papers and some quite contradictory? I will come in again for heaps of abuse from persons who were not here.”

As trainloads of wounded men were carried from the battlefield to hospitals, tales spread that the Confederate attack had caught Ulys entirely by surprise, that he had not established adequate defenses, that he had ineptly directed his forces, that green troops had turned cowardly and had refused to charge until their own guns were turned threateningly upon them. Ulys was blamed for the more than thirteen thousand killed, wounded, or missing on the Union side and nearly eleven thousand for the South; was called bloodthirsty, a butcher—charges that brought angry tears to Julia’s eyes.

“If the papers only knew how little ambition I have outside of putting down this rebellion and getting back once more to live quietly and unobtrusively with my family, I think they would say less and have fewer falsehoods to their account,” Ulys wrote to Julia two days before his fortieth birthday. “I do not look much at the papers now, and consequently save myself much uncomfortable feeling.”

“Someone has to set the record straight about my boy,” Jesse declared. His anger filled Julia with foreboding, but no prophetic dream warned her of his intentions. She learned along with everyone else in Cincinnati that he had forwarded a private letter from Ulys and another from Colonel Hillyer defending Ulys’s actions at Shiloh to
The Cincinnati Commercial,
which immediately printed them. Rather than silencing Ulys’s critics, the letters provoked more criticism as other newspapers picked up the story.

One day, Julia was alone in the Grants’ parlor reading yet another scathing editorial in the
Cincinnati Daily Gazette
when Hannah appeared in the doorway. “You have a visitor,” she said, showing in a tall, slender woman clad in black crepe. Despite her pale face and melancholy expression, she was stunningly beautiful.

Julia invited the woman to sit beside her on the sofa, where she introduced herself as the widow of Lieutenant Colonel Herman Canfield, one of the many brave Union officers who had perished at Shiloh.

“Oh, Mrs. Canfield,” said Julia, stricken. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“No, there is not, and that is not why I wished to see you.” The beautiful widow pressed her lips together, fighting back tears. “I’ve come because I must tell you of your husband’s kindness to me.”