Read American History Revised for Free Online Page B

that the Populists would prevail and inflate the money supply, they started unloading their bonds for gold. In 1894, U.S. gold reserves dropped more than 50 percent from $100 million to $45 million. In early 1895, gold losses accelerated to almost $2 million a day, raising fears that the government would default and the economy would collapse.
    Morgan proposed to President Cleveland a bold scheme whereby he would purchase gold in Europe with the proceeds of a $65-million offering of thirty-year gold bonds. The government would be the issuer, and Morgan would be the underwriter responsible for selling the bonds. To cover the twofold risk of being able to sell the bonds and simultaneously buy back the gold from the Europeans at a price that was affordable, Morgan would have to charge a substantial spread. How much money Morgan netted on the deal, he steadfastly refused to say.
    For Cleveland, the deal resulted in political calumny that marked the end of his career. But for the country, Morgan’s decisiveness stopped the gold run in its tracks and saved the government from bankruptcy by one day.
Arriving on Time
    1862 President Abraham Lincoln was scheduled to leave Washington DC on a 6:00 a.m. train to travel 120 miles to Gettysburg, where he was to make short dedicatory remarks at noontime. Lincoln was not pleased; he planned to give a very important speech, and he wanted to make sure he was there on time. With ten thousand people trying to get to Gettysburg for the ceremonies, he knew the roads and train crossings would be jammed. “I do not like this arrangement,” he said. “I do not wish to go so that by the slightest accident we fail entirely, and, at the best, the whole to be a more breathless running of the gauntlet.”
    So he left a day early, and even then the journey took over six hours. Had Lincoln followed his staff’s plans, he would have arrived too late to deliver what is commonly recognized as one of the greatest speeches ever given.
The Day That Saved the North—Thanks to the Author of
Ben-Hur
    1864 There are many ways to win a war. One of the easiest is to capture the enemy’s capital. As shown when the Vietcong temporarily overran the U.S. embassy in Saigon during the 1968 Tet invasion, the psychological impact can be so devastating that nobody cares that the invasion may have been a military failure; what matters is the symbolism of capturing the enemy’s political headquarters.
    In July 1864, General Robert E. Lee concocted a bold plan to humiliate the North and ensure Lincoln’s defeat in the upcoming election: capture the nation’s capital. (Lee, after all, had a home—Arlington—right across the river from Washington DC and Washington and Richmond were only a hundred miles apart.) Though he needed all his troops to defend Virginia against the approaching army of Ulysses Grant, Lee took a gamble and sent a major portion of his army up north under General Jubal Early. Early’s mission: seize Washington, cause panic in the North, and entice France and England to recognize the Confederacy, thereby ending the war.
    Standing in his way was Lew Wallace, the man who later in life went on to write the 1880 book
Ben-Hur.
Mention
Ben-Hur
and we all think of the famous 1959 movie based on Wallace’s book. In 1864 Lew Wallace was not a novelist, but an obscure major general in the Union army, and it was here that he played the role for which he deserves most to be remembered. At a critical moment he saved the North from losing the Civil War.
    Jubal Early was a very aggressive general. As he swept through the Shenandoah Valley heading north into Maryland, it was obvious that Washington DC was in grave danger. Grant immediately dispatched two brigades of men to the nation’scapital. Question was, who would get there first? Only one obstacle stood in Early’s way: a ragtag group of “hundred days” men under the leadership of Lew Wallace. Recruited on the promise they would only have to serve one