Meanwhile British attention was eagerly fixed on the Northern advance, and it was at least generally hoped that the projected attack on New Orleans and McClellan's advance up the peninsula toward Richmond would bring to a more definite status the conflict in America.

Extreme Southern sympathizers scouted the possibility of any conclusive Northern success, ignoring, because ignorant, the importance of Grant's western campaign.

They "were quite struck aback" by the news of the capture of New Orleans, April 25.

"It took them three days to make up their minds to believe it[591]," but even the capture of this the most important commercial city of the South was not regarded as of great importance in view of the eastern effort toward Richmond.
News of the operations in the peninsula was as slow in reaching England as was McClellan's slow and cautious advance.

It was during this advance and previous to the capture of New Orleans that two remarkable adventures toward a solution in America were made, apparently wholly on individual initiative, by a Frenchman in America and an Englishman in France.