David Terry sailed to the Southern states to join the Confederates. The volatile young William Gwin, son of Senator Gwin, was already in the Confederate Army, along with Grant Melford. Senator Gwin himself, after being temporarily imprisoned on suspicion of enlisting young men for the South, took his wife Mary Bell and his family and sailed into exile in France.

Even Dan McReady went off to join up with the Connecticut volunteers. In Sacramento, Collis waited with almost uncontrollable impatience for news that the ‘Act to Aid in the Construction of a Railroad and Telegraph Line from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean’ was at last going to be drafted, and that Congress had finally decided on the route. Theo had written to say that although Congress was looking favourably on the Sierra Pacific surveys, their old adversaries the Hannibal & St Joseph Railroad were still pressing hard for a line out of St Joe; and that James C. Stone, the president of the Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western Railroad, had now employed a professional lobbyist to pursue his route out of Missouri. Collis was seething for days, and refused to eat, even though Hannah did everything she could to calm him.

In July, the Army of the Potomac, the greatest army ever seen on American soil, was routed at Bull Run by the Rebels, and its soldiers were still running when they reached the rutted streets of Washington. For the next three years, the war would rage backwards and forwards between the two capitals, only 110 miles apart, and out over the surrounding countryside. Collis read the reports from the East and felt as if he were being slowly consumed by fire from the inside out.

Another winter passed. Another spring. At last, in April 1862, Collis decided to travel to Washington himself. He took Kwang Lee with him and sailed from Sacramento’s Front Street levee on the morning of 6 April. Hannah remained in their carriage, under her lemon-yellow parasol, and waved him goodbye with her handkerchief. He stood by the steamer’s rail and blew her a kiss.

He had left her a letter under the pillows of their bed. Part of it read: ‘I know that my temper has tried you very hard over the years we have been together, but I wish you to know that I love you more dearly than my own life, and that your support and understanding have been more valuable to me than gold. When the railroad is built, many people will take credit for it, but I alone shall know that you were the inspiration for it, and the strength which ensured its creation.’