I recently heard someone give a talk about Van Dorn's Holly Springs raid.
He made the statement that Julia and son Jesse arrived in Holly Springs shortly before the December 20, 1862 raid and that they had moved on to Oxford to Join General Grant there before Van Dorn arrived in Holly Springs.
This person said that Julia was accompanied on this trip to Mississippi by her slaves.
Is this correct or was she simply accompanied by her African American servants who were not slaves.
Or can anyone tell me the facts, not suppositions, in this event.
Just wanting to know the truth.
Here is a wonderful article I've discovered which might help to answer your question:
The Two Julia's
"She couldn’t have managed without her slave. Though the slave’s real name was Julia, she was often called Jule or Black Julia. In Julia Grant’s memoirs, she described Jule as “my nurse and maid, a slave born in my old Missouri home.” Home was a plantation near St. Louis, called White Haven, where her father, Frederick Dent, and more than a dozen slaves lived a life more commonly associated with the Deep South. Jule was a small, “ginger colored” woman, according to one recollection.
Probably relating family lore, Julia’s biographer wrote that Dent gave the slave girl as a gift to his beloved first daughter when Julia Dent was born in 1826, but no records have been found. It is not clear if Jule ever legally belonged to Julia; historians still debate whether Dent retained legal title to the four slaves his daughter claimed to own. We know Dent influenced the Grants’ use of slaves. It was through Dent that Grant acquired a slave (whom Grant later freed), and Dent insisted that Julia leave her slaves with him when the Grants lived in the North, fearing they would escape to freedom.
When Julia and Ulysses Grant moved to Galena in 1859, Jule and the three other slaves remained with Dent in St. Louis, while Julia struggled to teach white servants to clean, care and cook like her slaves. Julia much preferred the familiar ease of Jule’s service, though. It is likely that in November 1861, when Julia traveled with her children from Galena to St. Louis and then to Cairo, she convinced her father and husband to allow her to take Jule with her.
Grant understood his tiny, cross-eyed wife’s need for familiar, reliable help to deal with unfamiliar military camp conditions and frequent moves, often with their four children in tow. As the price of having Julia with him, Grant tolerated Jule’s presence, though the slave’s arrival at his headquarters was surely an embarrassment. Almost immediately, one of Grant’s detractors tried to brandish Jule as a weapon against him. In January 1862, Abraham Lincoln received an anonymous letter from Cairo, decrying Grant’s drinking and his “secesh” wife with her slave, “as is the case now in camp here.” Though the president sought information from Grant’s congressman and sponsor, Elihu Washburne, Lincoln ultimately did nothing about the charges; perhaps his own wife’s alleged “secesh” tendencies sparked empathy for the young brigadier.
When Grant left Cairo in early February for Fort Henry, in Tennessee, he urged Julia to take her children and live with his parents in Kentucky. Several months later, after the Battle of Shiloh, he sent for her to join him in Memphis, and she followed when he moved his headquarters to Corinth, Miss. Julia, Jule and 4-year-old Jesse Grant then lived with the general in LaGrange, Tenn., before the trio pushed south to Holly Springs, Miss., in late November, courtesy of a pass that Grant issued for “Mrs. Grant servant & child.”
“When I visited the General during the war, I nearly always had Julia with me as nurse,” Julia recalled in her memoirs. “She came near being captured at Holly Springs.” Grant’s troops had seized Holly Springs only a few weeks earlier, and when Julia arrived, the sight of the Federal general’s wife with her slave provoked questions about her devotion to the Union cause. A Confederate woman who encountered Julia in a dressmaker’s shop asked, “You are Southern, aren’t you?” Julia replied, “No, I am from the West. Missouri is my native state.” The Mississippi matron persisted, “Yes, we know, but Missouri is a Southern state. Surely, you are Southern in feeling and principle.” Indignantly, Julia declared, “No, indeed, I am the most loyal of the loyal.”
Grant was at his temporary headquarters in Oxford, 30 miles south, when he telegraphed his wife on Dec. 19, asking her to visit him for the weekend. As always, she rushed to be with him, hurrying to the train depot with Jule and Jesse. In her haste, she left her carriage, her horses and most of their clothing in the house of Confederate sympathizers where she had lodged for the past three weeks.
Meanwhile, Gen. Earl Van Dorn and more than 2,000 Rebel cavalrymen were racing toward Holly Springs. One of the raiders who attacked the town at dawn on Dec. 20 later described the “wild and exciting” scene: “torches flaming, guns popping, sabres clanking, negroes and abolitionists begging for mercy, women in dreaming-robes clapping their hands with joy.” Capt. Robert Murphy surrendered more than 1,000 Union soldiers without a fight. He also handed over tons of military, medical and food supplies – and Julia’s carriage – all of which the Confederates put to the torch.
That was a great haul for the rebels, but they had their eyes on another prize: Mrs. Grant. According to Julia, “Some of Van Dorn’s staff officers rode up to the house of which I had lately been an inmate and asked for me.” Van Dorn knew precisely where Julia was staying, and it is possible that he knew Jesse and Jule were with her, too. In fact, Jule might have been an even greater catch for the Confederates than Julia that morning. Capturing Julia Grant would have pained and embarrassed one Union general. Capturing Jule at that particular time would have embarrassed the president of the United States. Twelve days from then, as the whole world already expected, Abraham Lincoln would sign his Emancipation Proclamation.
Although we know almost nothing about Jule, the slave must have been an object of keen interest to free blacks she encountered as she accompanied General Grant and his family. Just as surely, Jule would have been curious about the slaves who fled their owners and followed Federal soldiers to safety, and about Grant’s initiative to settle former slaves on lands abandoned by secessionists. As the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation neared, the trickle of slaves seeking freedom behind Union lines became a flood. Jule must have wondered at a world in which any other slave in the South but she could find freedom in General Grant’s camp.
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."
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/the-two-julias/