Cavalry Charger
Major
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2017
I have found an excellent article related to the two Julia's which I may have shared on a previous thread. I've read the nurse Jules took her leave from Julia in Jackson, Mississippi, but this article states it was in Louisville, I'm assuming Kentucky, as she was travelling to be with her son Fred who was lying ill in Missouri. Apparently, Jules was afraid that she could become enslaved again in Missouri, so it appears at that point she was acting as a paid servant and not a slave. Here is an extract with a link to the rest of the article. Well worth a read.If memory serves me rightly, 'Jules' took leave of Julia at a train station with no hint she was going to take advantage of her newfound freedom under the Emancipation Proclamation. I will see if I can find more on this, but my understanding is that it was unexpected.
"After their fortunate escape to Oxford, the Grants and Jule returned to Holly Springs, where they welcomed the New Year. Jule had reason to rejoice on that Day of Jubilee. According to Julia, Jule was no longer a slave. “Eliza, Dan, Julia, and John belonged to me up to the time of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation,” Julia Grant noted in her memoirs. Technically, because the proclamation did not free slaves in areas under Union control, Jule and the others might have remained in bondage even after that date, but a slave attached to Grant and his army of liberators would have been manifestly untenable after New Year’s Day 1863.
Even after that date, Jule continued her service to Julia, most likely as a paid servant, as Julia lived with Grant in Memphis and then in Vicksburg. By the end of November 1863, Julia was with Grant in Tennessee, comforting wounded soldiers in his camp hospital. It is almost certain that Jule was with her in Nashville in January when Julia learned by telegram that her oldest son, Fred, was gravely ill in St. Louis. Julia and Jule and young Jesse quickly embarked on what proved to be their final journey together. “At Louisville, my nurse (a girl raised at my home) left me,” Julia later recalled. “I suppose she feared losing her freedom if she returned to Missouri.” We know nothing of Jule’s life once she left Julia, except for one tiny but satisfying fact. In her memoirs, after describing Jule’s disappearance, Julia wrote, “However, she married soon afterwards.”
The tale of the two Julias reveals the complexity of the Civil War’s social landscape in a way that the traditional image of brother fighting brother does not. One Julia was a slave owner and the wife of the general who defeated a slave nation. The other Julia was her slave for 37 years. The two women grew up side by side, but in two entirely different worlds. They traveled together nearly 5,000 miles, risking their freedom and their lives. They saw death, disease and destruction up close, yet they did not experience the same war. Julia Grant’s war destroyed a way of life she had loved, but her husband’s victories led to one she loved even more. By all accounts, no woman has ever enjoyed being First Lady more than Julia Grant. Jule’s Civil War was a wrenching but ultimately liberating journey from slavery to freedom. She risked more than her traveling companion during the war. We do not know much about Jule, but we know she had fierce determination. Once given her freedom, she refused to risk losing it."
The Two Julias
The unknown story of Ulysses S. Grant’s wife – and her slave.
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com