But the British press can’t be counted on for clarity or accuracy or nonpartisanship. He spends hours upset by stories that turn out not to be true. By now it’s clear that the war will not be short and that the suffering will be great. The Battle of Camp Allegheny. The Battle of Rowlett’s Station. The Battle of Dranesville. The terrible, terrible Trail of Blood on Ice. No sooner do they hear of one victory than the details of an agonizing defeat arrive. It’s impossible to know what to believe. It’s impossible to know who is winning. He has a terrible feeling it’s not the Union.

Mary is struggling to nurse Edwina and failing. The doctor diagnoses broken breast syndrome. She weeps over her breakfast of egg and sausage. “I know,” she tells Edwin, “that in the big world, this is such a little matter. I’m going to cry for three more minutes, and then I’m going to stop.” She’s as good as her word. Edwina goes onto the bottle.

Edwin travels to shows in Manchester, then Liverpool. Outside of London, his reviews are excellent, except for one Shylock and one Hamlet on consecutive nights. These two performances are described as truly painful, and the cause, the critic says obliquely, is both lamentable and reprehensible. Edwin has again taken to the stage drunk. But he sobers up, rights the ship, and is forgiven.

Everywhere he goes, he sees the vehement preference of the British for the South. He hadn’t expected this. Most of the British people oppose slavery. And yet it seems that their dearest wish is to see the South prevail and the Union dissolve. His fellow actors tell him that the North is not interested in destroying or confining slavery, but merely in continuing to participate in its profits.

I’ll get no justice here, Edwin thinks. And neither will my country.

Lincoln and Willie

He was too good for this earth . . . but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die!

—Abraham Lincoln on the death of his son, 1862

Edwin gains a child and Lincoln loses one.

On February 16th, 1862, Ulysses S. Grant won the first major victory for the Union, taking Fort Donelson in Tennessee and earning the moniker Unconditional Surrender Grant. Washington, DC, celebrated with bells and cannon fire. Lincoln immediately promoted Grant to major general. More celebrations were planned, but canceled due to the death four days later of Lincoln’s son. Willie is just eleven years old, dying at the same age as Henry Byron Booth, another golden child.