Divided Loyalties
I have often wondered how Julia coped with the discrepancy between her origins and her committment to her husband and his role in the Civil War. If nothing else, it appears Julia was diplomatic in her dealings and always staunch in her support of Grant, the unity of the country and the need for loyalty in relation to both. The link provided in the OP gives us a little more insight:
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Role in Grant’s Military Career:
The marriage of Julia Dent and Ulysses Grant offers as unique a glimpse into the conflicts and challenges faced by couples of the mid-19th century who came from the two contrasting cultures of North and South. While similar in this respect to the union of Abraham and Mary Lincoln, the Grant marriage nevertheless provides a more dramatic context. Unlike Mary Lincoln who renounced her Confederate relatives, Julia Grant remained close to her slave-owning father and family members who supported the Confederacy. She did so at the very time that her husband was leading a war that accumulated an astronomical number of deaths to them as well as the Union Army that he led. Without apology for her family’s Confederate viewpoint, she was steadfast in her loyalty to her husband and the Union Army, a testament perhaps to her naturally diplomatic gifts. It was not a matter merely of shifting her remarks based on the views of people she encountered on either side of the conflict but her very presence in Union Army camps, to serve as ballast for her husband as he sought to remain emotionally steady through a rigorous sense of purposeful duty that was nevertheless traumatic.
In the initial phase of the Civil War, Julia Grant was uncertain about her role, feeling the need to volunteer with other Galena, Illinois women supporting the Union Army, but admitting to her lack of success when assigned to simply knit a pair of soldier socks in a week’s time.
Union Loyalty, Confederate Sympathy:
In a manner not dissimilar to what was experienced during the war by First Lady Mary Lincoln, a Kentucky native but First Lady of the Union, southern friends of Mrs. Grant verbally challenged the authenticity of her Union loyalty by revealing that they knew how to defy Union law and have their mail delivered to those living in the Confederacy, making it a dare for her to report it – which she did not. Her friendly trust of Confederate women she encountered in Mississippi, as well as her naïve decision to travel with one of her slaves and permit herself to be exposed to their negative anti-Union songs, seemed to only give credence to their charge that Mrs. Grant was with the Confederacy “in feeling and principle.”
From the moment he decided to enter the army as a matter of principled conviction that the southern states had no right to secede from the United States, her support was firm. "Julia takes a very sensible view of the present difficulties,” Grant wrote to his father at the time, “She would be sorry to have me go, but thinks the circumstances may warrant it and will not throw a single obstacle in the way."
Julia Grant held to this conviction knowing that it could irreparably damage her intensely close relationship with her father. Grant wrote to Colonel Dent, rationally explaining his decision to side with the Union, stating plainly that, “now is the time, particularly in the border slave states for men to prove their love of country. I know it is hard for men to apparently work with the Republican Party but now all party distinctions should be lost sight of, and every true patriot be for maintaining the integrity of the glorious old Stars and Stripes, the Constitution and the Union. the Southerners have been the aggressors.”
Julia Grant with her son Jesse, daughter Nellie and beloved father Frederick Dent who supported the Confederacy despite his son-in-law’s heading the Union Army. (Library of Congress)
Her father, however, conceded nothing on the matter, badgering Grant that he could much more easily enter the fray with higher military rank if he joined the Confederate Army. Grant refused, so enraging Fred Dent that he sharply retorted, "Send Julia and the children here. As you make your bed so you must lie." It was a testament to the couple’s commitment to each other that they never wavered, though the loss of previously close family relationships was devastating. "If you are with the accursed Lincolnites,” one of Grant’s aunts wrote them, “the ties of consanguinity shall be forever severed."
It was a tribute to Mrs. Grant’s considerable exercise of charm that she was able to maintain her absolute loyalty to her husband during the Civil War while avoiding an outright breach with her father. Other family members of both of the Grants declared themselves permanently estranged from the couple because of their Union loyalty. Whenever Unionists verbally attacked the South in her presence, Julia Grant disciplined herself to remain silent."