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the other hand, though he did not want for commanders, had far too many who were a positive help to the enemy. Nothing useful had come out of General Sigel’s Shenandoah Valley campaign, and General Butler had become trapped behind his trenches eight miles south of Richmond. He had fought so feebly that even James Horrocks could see that the Army of the James was poorly led. “There is no confidence felt in the beast at all,” he informed his father.57

Grant’s reaction to the failure of Sigel and Butler was to push his own soldiers to march faster and fight harder. Only four days after the fighting at the Mule Shoe, the Army of the Potomac began another move southward. The effect on the army, wrote Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his father, was almost the same as real victory, “when in fact it has done only barren fighting. For it has done the one thing needful before the enemy—it has advanced. The result is wonderful.… It is in better spirits and better fighting trim today than it was in the first day’s fight in the Wilderness.”58

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28.1 At the start of the war in 1861, one dollar in gold had equaled $1.10 in Confederate dollars; three years later in 1864, it equaled $20. At the same time, in the North, one gold dollar equaled $1.55 in U.S. greenbacks in 1864.

28.2 The emperor of the French breezily assured Maximilian that the United States was “well aware that since the new regime in Mexico is the work of France they cannot attack it without immediately making enemies of us.” But Seward had nonetheless let it be known through the U.S. minister in Paris that the United States would never recognize a French puppet regime in Mexico—which put Louis-Napoleon in a bind and complicated his relations with the Confederates. He could only support the South if its victory was assured; otherwise the new emperor of Mexico would have a powerful and vengeful United States as his neighbor.2

28.3 After the death of his child during the draft riots in July, Culverwell had accepted a post at MacDougall Hospital in the Bronx, New York, so he could be close to his family. Still determined to try his luck as an actor, he had resigned in the autumn to join Mrs. John Wood’s company at the Olympic Theatre in Manhattan. He promised his long-suffering wife that it would be his final attempt to conquer the stage. Mrs. Wood had given him the role of the ardent young poet in the burlesque Brothers and Sisters. Culverwell had never performed such lengthy speeches before, and his nervousness grew in anticipation of the first night. His opening speech began with the line “Drunk with enthusiasm I …” On October 8, Culverwell leaped onstage and declared, “Drunk.” With that he died a thousand deaths, unable to utter another word. The next morning “Ma Wood” dismissed him, and Culverwell returned to the Federal army.3

28.4 Lord Lyons accepted the extra burdens placed upon the legation because of the war, but he refused to spy for the Foreign Office. When Lord Russell asked him to obtain drawings of the American-made Parrott gun, a new invention that showed destructive promise, he answered: “I consider it to be of the utmost importance that not only this Legation should not be employed in such practices, but that both myself and every other member of it should be absolutely and bona fide without any knowledge of their existence.”

28.5 Bright also used his influence to rescue seventeen-year-old Alfred Massey Richardson. Alfred had been working for the chairman of the Union and Emancipation Society of Manchester. The previous August, his head filled with ideas about freeing the slaves, Alfred and a friend, Stephen Smelt, had run off to New York. They both joined the 47th New York Volunteers, but not before being beaten up and robbed of their bounty money. “Can you undertake to obtain [Richardson’s] discharge?” Bright wrote to Sumner on the same day that Lincoln signed Rubery’s pardon. “I think Mr. Stanton will be able to spare so young a boy, if you apply to him.” Sumner took Bright’s request literally and secured the release of Richardson