New York City, September 1, 1869.

Jay Gould sat in an office on Broad Street and wrote a check for $10,000.

The check was made out to General Daniel Butterfield, the newly appointed sub-treasurer of the United States, whose job it was to oversee the government's gold sales in New York.

Butterfield's annual salary was $8,000.

He took the check, folded it into his coat, and said nothing about collateral, nothing about terms, nothing about a repayment date.

There was no promissory note. There was no paperwork of any kind.

That $10,000 check was the price of the United States Treasury. Butterfield came from money,

which is worth knowing because it means he did not need money. His father was John Butterfield,

who co-founded American Express and built the Butterfield Overland Mail Company, the great stagecoach

line that carried the U.S. mail from St. Louis to San Francisco. Daniel grew up in Utica, New York,

in a house that wanted for nothing, went to work for American Express as a young man, and might

have lived out his life as a comfortable heir to a transportation empire. Instead, he went to war,

and the war made him famous. When the fighting broke out in 1861, Butterfield left the express

office and enlisted. He had no military training, no West Point pedigree, but he had his father's

name and a willingness to stand where the bullets were, and in the Union Army of 1861 that was enough.

He rose fast.

At the Battle of Gaines' Mill in June, 1862, his brigade lost more than 600 men.

Butterfield grabbed the colors of the 83rd Pennsylvania volunteers

and rallied the shattered ranks under heavy fire.

They gave him a Medal of Honor for that, though the medal did not arrive until 1892 when the government got around to it.

He was wounded, promoted to Brigadier General, and by January 1863 he was chief of staff to Major General Joseph Hooker, commanding the Army of the Potomac.

And somewhere during the Peninsula campaign, recuperating at Harrison's landing on the James River,

...