All the same, there was a great deal of what Andy Hunt called ‘secesh madness’ in San Francisco, and a lot of rash talk about war. The Southerners in particular could think of almost nothing else but fighting, and several dinner parties became positively bellicose, with bread rolls being thrown, and even knives. On the night that San Francisco heard that Texas had seceded, the wintry streets were electric with fright, and bristling with joyous aggression. Shots were fired into the sky, and even on Sacramento Street, in Chinatown, there was a ringing of gongs.

America was on the brink of the grimmest and most glorious military spectacle of the century. More than 2,250,000 men were to fight in the coming war; and more than one out of every four of them were to die. Between them, the secessionist states formed a Confederacy which covered 750,000 square miles, a greater empire than Napoleon had been able to subdue with his armies in fifteen years. What was more, the statesmen and soldiers and ordinary people of that Confederacy shared a love of the South which was fierce, and deep, and enduring; and from the day that it was announced that Abraham Lincoln had carried the electoral college, they knew that their love was on the line. It was time at last to put up, or bow down. It was time for Bull Run, and Shiloh, and Antietam, and Gettysburg. It was also time for the railroads.

Theodore, freshly excited by Lincoln’s success, had travelled to Washington yet again, and two days after the inauguration, on 4 March 1861, Lincoln had told him at a private meeting that ‘there must be war, no matter how conciliatory I am; the South has the need of it’. Lincoln had repeated to Theodore his support for a transcontinental railroad, and had given him a tortoiseshell pen as a souvenir.

The very next day, as Theodore packed his steamer trunk to return to California, the news came from Richmond that Jefferson Davis, who had reluctantly agreed to accept the Presidency of the Confederated States the previous month, had already called for 100,000 military volunteers.

Theodore wrote to Collis:

I do not doubt for a moment that we have now arrived at that great crossroads in history for which we have been waiting for so long. It is a tragedy, and there is considerable sorrow and bewilderment here in Washington, both personal and national. But now (at last!) they may ‘Clear the Way’ for the railroad.

He enclosed a cutting from the Petersburg Express, which read; ‘The election of Lincoln is truly a national calamity. May God avert the storm which is now impending.’