Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (36 page)

Heart pounding, Jule forced herself to keep to a walk until she reached the corner. As soon as she was out of sight of the Grant residence, she quickened her pace until she was almost running.

“I can’t stay,” Jule told Emma, despondent, the next time they met.

“Nonsense,” Emma protested. “What’s the worst that could happen, even if you rounded a corner and bumped into Mrs. Grant on Pennsylvania Avenue? Slavery is finished. You have nothing to fear and no reason to hide.”

“I know that,” said Jule shakily. “I can’t explain myself. I know it’s unreasonable. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Jule.” Emma embraced her. “You don’t need to apologize, or to explain. But do promise me you won’t leave Washington before my wedding. Peter and the children and I would be so disappointed.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jule assured her.

The wedding, on a lovely afternoon in mid-May, was beautiful—the bride radiant, the groom happy, the guests joyful and thankful and merry. Soon thereafter, Jule considered moving to Texas to search for Gabriel, but President Johnson had recently issued a proclamation declaring an end to the insurrection everywhere but in Texas, and her friends convinced her it would not be safe for a colored woman to travel there alone. As spring turned into summer, Jule contemplated moving to New York, but again Emma persuaded her to delay, this time because of a terrible cholera epidemic sweeping through the city.

But every time Jule found a good reason to stay in Washington, an unsettling encounter renewed her urgency to flee. One afternoon, she went to the Willard to meet a client, only to glimpse the Grant family seating themselves in the dining room. After a moment of panic, she concealed herself behind a folding screen and watched them, frightened and fascinated, long enough to learn that they were celebrating in honor of Fred’s imminent departure for West Point, where he had been accepted as a cadet. Jule’s eyes filled with tears as she took in the dear faces of the children who had once loved her so wholeheartedly, with such sweet innocence. She had likely become no more than a dim, fond memory to them, the capable nurse who had run away in wartime, abandoning them in—what was it Julia had said?—in her hour of greatest need.

Then, one afternoon in early autumn, a few weeks after General Grant had been named the first four-star general in the nation’s history, Julia was dressing Mrs. Gilbert’s hair for a ball when the young matron indicated the bottle of Jule’s hair tonic on her bureau. “Mrs. Grant came for tea a few days ago,” she remarked. “She was kind and very polite but seemed unsettled, and when I asked her if something was the matter, she told me that she had been struck by a familiar fragrance in my home that she could not quite place. Soon we discovered that it was my hair tonic, and she was so keenly interested that I showed her this bottle.”

“Is that so?” Jule managed to say.

“Indeed. She went quite pale and still when she examined the label. ‘I knew a Jule once,’ she said, ‘but that was very long ago and far away, and my Jule had no such lofty title.’ Isn’t that curious?”

“Yes, it is,” Jule said, her throat tightening.

Her Jule, indeed.

She resolved to leave Washington before winter, but where would she go? Texas was impossible, St. Louis familiar but perhaps equally unsafe. Jule was torn between New York City and Boston, and Emma was equally opposed to both.

Then one night, Jule was visited by a strange and vivid dream.

She was seated in a church, her head bowed in prayer, listening as a choir sang the old familiar spirituals she had learned in childhood. She heard the crackling of a campfire, smelled the woodsmoke, and even as she took comfort in the familiarity of it, she realized that a Missouri campfire did not belong within the stone walls of a church in the middle of New York City—which, in the manner of a dream, she knew it was. At that moment the preacher began to speak, words of praise and thankfulness for divine blessings, and it was a voice she knew as well as her own and loved more than any other.

She woke, and even as the dream faded, the voice lingered in her thoughts. Jule knew then that of all the prophetic dreams the Lord in his mysterious ways had bestowed upon the already richly blessed Julia, he had spared one for her.

She would go to New York City, and she would find happiness there.

•   •   •

In the first months of his presidency, Mr. Johnson had seemed to appreciate having a man of Ulys’s experience and stature at his service as general in chief. He had sent Ulys almost daily notes, had consulted with him regularly, and had sought out every opportunity to be seen in public with the victorious general, basking in the glow of Ulys’s popularity as his own precipitously declined. But over time, Julia observed that their relationship became more contentious. While Ulys never failed to do his duty by his country and his commander in chief, he could not ignore the president’s innumerable defects of character—just as Mr. Johnson could not mistake the loud cries of “Grant! Grant!” that often drowned out his own speeches when the two men appeared on the same stage.

By spring of 1867, President Johnson was determined to remove Secretary Stanton, whom he despised, from the War Department, and when Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act to restrict the president from dismissing any cabinet member without the consent of the Senate, he simply waited until Congress recessed in August. Then he suspended Stanton—and asked Ulys to accept the position of secretary of war ad interim.

“What did Mr. Johnson say when you refused the appointment?” Julia asked.

“I didn’t refuse.”

“You didn’t?” Julia stared at him. “But Ulys—”

“I consented only with great reluctance, and I told the president so,” said Ulys. “It’s essential to have someone who can’t be used or intimidated in that post.”

Julia nodded assent, although her heart sank with dismay.

In early December, President Johnson had asked the Senate to approve Secretary Stanton’s suspension, but on January 13, 1868, the Senate voted thirty-five to six to reinstate him. The following morning, Ulys resigned as ad interim secretary, incurring the president’s wrath.

Ulys’s consternation and outrage did not go unnoticed by his friends. “I’ve been with Grant in the midst of death and slaughter,” Sherman told Julia on the last day of January, shaking his head and frowning, “but I’ve never seen him more troubled than since he’s been in Washington.”

Julia agreed, but she felt helpless to do anything more than to offer Ulys her steadfast support and love.

Three weeks after Ulys left the War Department, President Johnson again suspended Mr. Stanton. Three days after that, the House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming majority in favor of a resolution to begin impeachment proceedings against the president, charging him with high crimes and misdemeanors.

Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presided over the impeachment trial, which after several grueling, contentious weeks ended in acquittal. Thirty-six votes were required to remove the president from office, and three times the balloting resulted in thirty-five votes for impeachment, nineteen against.

Less than a week after the trial concluded, Mr. Stanton resigned as Secretary of War. Ostensibly Mr. Johnson had triumphed, but everyone, except perhaps the president himself, knew that his political career was essentially finished. He had already lost the upcoming presidential election—indeed, he would almost certainly fail even to win the Democratic nomination—before a single vote was cast.

•   •   •

Ulys remained the most admired man in the nation, and the capital hummed and sparked with energetic speculation that he was certain to be chosen as the Republican Party’s nominee. Julia remained, as ever, proud that her husband evoked such tremendous admiration from the people, but she adored being a military wife and doubted Ulys would enjoy the presidency more than his position as general in chief. Once, when she and Ulys were alone, she ventured, “Ulys, do you even want to be president?”

“No,” he told her, without needing even a moment’s reflection. “But I don’t see that I have anything to say about it. The Republican Convention’s about to open in Chicago, and from what I hear, they intend to nominate me—and I suppose if I’m nominated, I’ll be elected.”

“But if you’re elected, how can you hope to serve the country as well as you do now?” she asked. “To satisfy one faction or region you must hurt another. Think about this, my dear, dear Ulys. Think of President Johnson. What a time he’s had!”

“Oh, Johnson,” scoffed Ulys, dismissing him with a wave of his cigar. “If I’m nominated I must accept the candidacy as my duty, and if I’m elected, I must serve. I wouldn’t seek the office, but if it falls to me, I believe I can satisfy those widely separated factions and regions.”

“How so?”

“The people of the North support me already, and the people of the South will accept my decisions on matters affecting their interests more amiably than those of anyone else who might be elected. They know I’d be just and that I’d administer the law without prejudice.”

Julia knew that too. Of course Ulys would be a good, wise, and just leader, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to be president.

The convention met, and mere days after President Johnson was acquitted, the Republican delegates nominated Ulys as their candidate, unanimously and on the first ballot. Mr. Stanton brought Ulys the news at army headquarters, and he brought it home to Julia. That evening she invited a few intimate friends over to celebrate, but Ulys expressed no pride or exultation, merely a quiet acceptance. Papa, much recovered from a dreadful stroke suffered the year before, stood proudly by Julia as Ulys received the compliments and assurances of support from their guests. At that moment, Julia felt her mother’s presence more strongly than she had ever felt it anywhere but White Haven.

Ulys resolved not to campaign, but rather to spend the summer quietly with his family in Galena and St. Louis. On the eve of their departure for the West, General Sherman called to bid them farewell.

“Now, Mrs. Grant,” he told her with an ironic smile, “you must prepare yourself to observe your husband’s character thoroughly sifted.”

“What could I possibly have to fear?” protested Julia. “You of all people know he’s a man of great integrity.”

“My dear lady, it isn’t what he
has
done, but what they will
say
he has done. Mark my words, you’ll be astonished to discover what a thoroughly bad man you have for a husband, and have had all these years without realizing it.”

Soon thereafter, Julia settled happily into their beautiful home on Bouthiller Street in Galena, well content with Ulys’s decision not to campaign. They both soon discovered that there had never been any need, for his faithful, loyal soldiers took up his cause with great exuberance, filling all corners of the reunited nation with flags, banners, speeches, and all the old merry martial tunes from the war. His gallantry at Appomattox was praised north and south, and longtime friends and fellow officers eulogized him in every city and hamlet.

But the papers brought distasteful news along with the good, and Julia was distressed and angered when General Sherman’s predictions came to pass.

“Listen to this,” she declared one morning as she and Ulys read the papers after breakfast, too full of righteous indignation to rest her strained eyes from making out the tiny, infuriating type. “‘General Grant is now lying confined to his residence at Galena in a state of frenzy and is tearing up his mattress, swearing it is made of snakes.’”

Ulys, reading in his favorite armchair, dressed in his white linen suit, smiled benignly at her wrath. “I don’t mind what they say, and neither should you. We both know it isn’t true.” He puffed his cigar and turned a page.

On election night, Julia remained at home while Ulys awaited the returns at Mr. Washburne’s residence, smoking and playing cards with the congressman, Badeau, and a few other close friends. He was expected to beat his Democratic rival, former New York governor Horatio Seymour, but nothing was certain until the final votes were tallied.

The hours passed in anxious waiting and quiet excitement. Shortly before midnight, a jubilant crowd began to assemble in front of the Grant residence, and at about half past one, Julia glanced out the window to discover Ulys walking up the hill, surrounded by his proud, beaming companions.

“Well, my darling Julia,” he addressed her from the foot of the front stairs, rather sadly, “I’m afraid I am elected.”

He joined her on the porch, took her hand, and held it tightly as he addressed the crowd, which burst into cheers and shouts of joy until all of Galena resounded with his name, from the hilltops where they stood to the rushing Mississippi in the valley far below.

M
ARCH
1869–M
ARCH
1877

F
riends and relations filled Julia’s beloved home on I Street, Dents and Grants and others who had come to Washington to celebrate Ulys’s inauguration. Although the morning broke to a cold drizzle and heavy mist, and the stiff, cold winds heralded an approaching snowstorm, the capital was packed with raucous and rejoicing visitors, many of them proud veterans wearing the insignia of their regiments and companies. Visitors and longtime residents alike seemed to have embraced with hope and thankfulness the brief, memorable words Ulys had uttered when he had formally accepted his nomination: “Let us have peace.”

Enmity between the president-elect and his former commander in chief remained so intense that Ulys refused to ride with Mr. Johnson to the Capitol. Instead, Rawlins and a few other close friends accompanied him in his carriage while his predecessor remained at the White House signing bills. Julia left for the Capitol ahead of time in a separate carriage, with the children, Papa, and the elder Jesse riding with her and the rest of the family following. Only Hannah had not come to witness her son’s momentous day, her boundless modesty keeping her quietly at home. Julia imagined her sewing by the hearth or planting her kitchen garden, marking the occasion with as much pride as her inherent humility would allow.

Julia and her companions squeezed into the overcrowded gallery of the Senate chamber, enjoying the convivial mood and watching the rear corridor for a first glimpse of her victor. At precisely noon he entered, escorted by two senators and followed by Vice President–Elect Schuyler Colfax. Handsomely attired in a plain black suit and straw-colored calfskin gloves, Ulys seated himself in front of the presiding officer, his expression calm and imperturbable despite the countless pairs of opera glasses fixed upon him. With a sharp bang of his gavel, Senator Benjamin Wade promptly brought the Senate to order and called Mr. Colfax forward to take his oath of office, after which Mr. Colfax offered a few brief and appropriate remarks. Next the newly elected senators were called forward to be sworn in, a lengthy proceeding that provoked impatience from the onlookers in the galleries, who restlessly shifted toward the exits, eager to claim good seats on the platform outdoors, where Ulys would soon take his oath.

It was not quite half past noon when the sergeant at arms directed the audience to proceed from the Senate chamber to the East Portico, with Ulys at the head of the column surrounded by dignitaries. “Thank goodness the rain stopped,” her sister Nell murmured as Julia and her companions were escorted to their seats. Julia glanced up at the sky to see that patches of blue and shafts of golden sunlight had broken through the gray clouds, but a cold wind blew, steady and strong, and the air smelled of snow.

Thousands of proud, eager onlookers packed the muddy, waterlogged Capitol grounds. Thousands of faces turned expectantly to the platform decorated with statuary, evergreens, and flags and bunting in the national colors. Cheers rang out from the crowd as the doors swung open, increasing to a deafening roar as Ulys appeared at the head of the procession.

Julia’s heart pounded and her cheeks ached from smiling as Ulys came to the front of the platform to take his oath of office. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase met him there carrying a Bible, somber, tall, and imposing in his black robes.

It was no secret that Chase had coveted Ulys’s nomination, but he had fallen out of favor with the Republicans during Johnson’s impeachment by presiding over the hearings with impartial integrity rather than promoting the party agenda. Julia doubted he would have claimed the nomination in any case, for Ulys’s tremendous popularity would have been impossible for him—for anyone—to overcome.

Thus it was Ulys who spoke the words of the solemn oath that blustery day, who kissed the open Bible and became the eighteenth president of the United States. A salute of twenty-one guns thundered the news to the city. Bugles blared triumphant anthems, and the vast crowd roared its approval so powerfully that Julia felt it as an almost physical force.

When the cacophony diminished, Ulys took from his pocket several pieces of foolscap. Slowly and deliberately he read his inaugural address, concisely enunciating the policies of his forthcoming administration. He would endeavor to promote the greatest good for the greatest number, he said, to execute all laws in good faith, and to the best of his ability appoint to office only those who would do the same. His words were firm, his delivery clear, although Julia doubted his voice would carry beyond the first few rows. “In conclusion,” he said before long, and Julia suspected he had never spoken the phrase with greater relief, “I ask patient forbearance one toward another throughout the land, and a determined effort on the part of every citizen to do his share toward cementing a happy union; and I ask the prayers of the nation to Almighty God in behalf of this consummation.”

He bowed, and as bells pealed throughout the city and the people again erupted in resounding cheers and applause, he folded the pages of his speech, shook the hands of the distinguished gentlemen nearest to him, and hastened to Julia’s side. “And now, my dear,” he said, kissing her cheek and placing the pages in her gloved hands, “I hope you were satisfied.”

“Well satisfied and never prouder,” she declared, smiling.

The ceremonies concluded, the dignitaries and special guests left their seats and mingled on the East Portico, the mood convivial even between rivals. Julia accepted warm congratulations from so many ladies and gentlemen that she knew she would have great difficulty remembering who had spoken which graceful phrases. The children, thankfully, kept close to their parents in the crush, but she soon realized that her father was nowhere to be seen.

Ulys urged them to return home to see if Papa was there, and in the meantime he gave orders for the Capitol guards to keep searching in case Papa had not left the grounds. While Julia and the rest of the family hastened to their carriages, Ulys drove off with a few companions to the White House, intending to remain only long enough to meet the household staff and tour the family’s private chambers.

The milling crowds slowed traffic to a crawl, allowing Julia sufficient time to imagine a dreadful variety of disasters that could have befallen her father. At last they reached home, only to discover an unfamiliar carriage parked on the street before the house and the front door slightly ajar. They hurried inside, where they discovered Papa reclining on the sofa in the parlor, three solicitous gentlemen attending him.

“What happened?” Nell exclaimed as the family crowded around their beloved patriarch.

A gentleman who introduced himself as Mr. John F. Driggs, a former congressman from Michigan, explained that as Papa was leaving the Capitol, he had lost his footing on the stone staircase and had tumbled backward to the ground, striking his head, badly injuring his hip, and acquiring a number of scrapes and cuts, but thankfully, no broken bones. With assistance, Mr. Driggs had brought him to a private room and procured a stimulant, and when it appeared that his injuries were not serious, he had summoned a carriage and had brought Papa home.

Papa was well recovered by evening, but he was easily persuaded to remain home and rest rather than attending the inaugural ball. “I could stay to watch over him,” Ulys offered, all innocence, but his grin betrayed him.

“It would be just like you to avoid your own inauguration ball,” Julia scolded, giving him a playful swat on the arm. “You are the president, and you must go, and finely dressed too.”

After much conflict and controversy over where the ball should be held and whether it should be held at all, the inaugural committee, which had been refused permission to host the grand affair in the Capitol rotunda, had settled upon the unfinished wing of the Treasury Building, though evidence of ongoing work remained. There were several rooms for dancing, each furnished with an accomplished band, flooded with warm gaslight, draped in a profusion of bunting, and beautifully adorned with garlands and wreaths of flowers and evergreen. The allegorical painting
Peace
had been brought over from the Capitol and was on display in the Cash Room, another note of grace in a spacious chamber that boasted gleaming polished marble, a beautifully painted ceiling, and an airy balcony encircling all.

Despite her concerns about Papa’s health, Julia had a marvelous time. She felt almost regal in her new gown of heavy white satin trimmed in point lace, her neck, ears, and hair adorned with pearls and diamonds. After receiving their six thousand guests, the Grant and the Colfax families withdrew to a private room and dined with their most intimate friends and family. Only afterward did Julia learn that some other guests did not get a mouthful of supper, or lost coats, hats, and wraps in the mad chaos of the cloakroom, or could not find their carriages afterward in the bedlam among the hacks on Fifteenth Street. Many a distinguished gentleman and distressed lady made their way home on foot through slushy streets, shivering without their wraps. “Everything today has been a great success,” a correspondent for
The New York Times
later remarked, “but the inauguration ball tonight was too much of a success to be really a good thing.”

The Grants and their entourage had no difficulty securing their own carriages, and in the very early hours of the morning they rode home to the Grant residence on I Street, weary but glowing with pride and happiness.

The entire household slept long past dawn, but by midmorning Ulys had reported to his offices at the White House, where Julia knew he was deliberating with his most trusted advisors about the remaining vacancies in his cabinet and elsewhere in the government. Julia spent the day enjoying the company of her family, receiving callers, and tending to Papa. When Ulys returned home for supper that evening, he remarked, “It’ll be a great convenience to me, and to my staff, when we reside in the Executive Mansion. You should make ready to move.”

Julia adored their home and was in no hurry to relocate, and she had made no secret of it. “It’s impossible for me to make any arrangements with the house full of guests,” she explained, gesturing vaguely over her shoulder as if all the Dents and Grants stood behind her, affirming her words.

The next day, Ulys returned from his new offices carrying a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. “A gift from the chief justice of the Supreme Court,” he said, placing it in Julia’s hands. “Mr. Chase had it delivered to you at the Executive Mansion, where he reasonably assumed you would be.”

Blushing at his gentle rebuke, Julia untied the string and removed the paper. “Why, it’s a Bible,” she said, admiring the fine leather cover. A letter from the chief justice informed her that it was the very Bible upon which Ulys had taken his oath of office. “‘His lips pressed the 121st Psalm,’” Julia read aloud. “‘The Book will, I am sure, be to you a precious memorial of an auspicious day; destined, I trust, to be ever associated in American remembrance with the perfected restoration of peace, and with the renewal and increase of prosperity throughout our land.’ What a lovely sentiment.”

“How fine that Bible will look on display in our private family drawing room at the White House,” Ulys said pointedly. Julia responded with a nod and a noncommittal smile.

For a week their guests lingered, but all too soon, they prepared to return to their own homes, and Julia reluctantly accepted that she, too, must make arrangements to depart. The president and his wife must live at the Executive Mansion—it was customary, pragmatic, and far safer for them all. Ulys wanted to sell the I Street residence, and when Julia learned that generous donors from New York wanted to purchase it as a gift for General Sherman, she consented to the sale without further complaint out of friendship to him and Mrs. Sherman.

When the Grants finally moved into the White House in late March, they found the residence in a state of utter confusion and disarray. Upon inspecting the family’s private quarters, Julia was so appalled by their dilapidated, threadbare condition that she immediately ordered the installation of new wallpaper, carpets, and furniture. The public rooms also required significant refurbishing, and so Julia set herself to the formidable task of organizing the household, arranging for repairs, and hiring servants.

While Julia was settling into her role as official White House hostess, Ulys was assembling his cabinet and filling other important government posts. One of his first official acts as president was to appoint General Sherman as general in chief of all the armies. This he did over the objections of numerous senators, congressmen, and other advisors who urged Ulys to keep the position vacant so that he could return to it when his term as president expired. That sounded like an excellent idea to Julia, but when she tried to persuade Ulys, he adamantly refused. “I resigned my commission to become president,” he said firmly. “If I don’t fill the position of general in chief, neither Sherman nor any other general will be promoted. Sherman has always succeeded me as I climbed through the ranks, and I won’t deny him this promotion to save a place for myself four years from now. He deserves that office, and he’ll serve me and the country loyally in it.”

“When you explain it that way,” Julia remarked, “I’m not only thoroughly convinced; I’m embarrassed that I ever objected.”

Ulys gave her a wry smile. “I hope all of my opponents will be as amenable as you when the facts are placed before them.”

“Oh, my dear Ulys,” she said, shaking her head, profoundly sympathetic. “No president in the history of the country has ever been that fortunate, though I would rejoice if you were the first.”

Ulys’s cabinet was complete long before Julia’s renovations, and privately she suspected she relished her tasks far more. After so many years of pecuniary uncertainty, it was intoxicating to be able—not only able, but encouraged—to spend lavishly on furnishings and decor. The family quarters and the executive offices at the east end of the second floor received most of her attention, but she took special delight in choosing a new china service for state dinners and official events. She commissioned the artist William E. Seaton to create exquisite floral illustrations to grace the center of each piece, which were transferred to fine porcelain by the celebrated Haviland and Company of France. An elegant yellow-gold border bearing the Grant coat of arms provided what Julia considered the perfect final touch.