Stock in the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company.
Stock in the Atlantic Telegraph Company.
And against these a large amount of indebtedness.
On the 20th of December South Carolina seceded, and on the 26th of the same month Major Anderson abandoned Fort Moultrie, and moved his small garrison into Fort Sumter, and the first notes of the coming war were sounded; to quote from Dr. William H. Russell’s book on The Atlantic Telegraph:
“The great civil war in America stimulated capitalists to renew the attempt; the public mind became alive to the importance of the project, and to the increased facilities which promised a successful issue. Mr. Field, who compassed land and sea incessantly, pressed his friends on both sides of the Atlantic for aid, and agitated the question in London and New York.”
CHAPTER IX
THE CIVIL WAR
(1861-1862)
DECEMBER, 1860, had ended in financial disaster: it was the third time in less than twenty years that Mr. Field had seen his business swept from him, and yet he was of so buoyant a disposition that immediately we find him back at his office and very soon at work for the advancement of his great enterprise. On June 10th he wrote to Mr. Saward:
“I never had more confidence in the ultimate success of the Atlantic Telegraph Company than I have to-day.”
And Mr. Saward wrote to him on July 5th: