When America was engaged in its civil war, emperor Napoleon III of France put Maximilian Habsburg on a throne if México. Maximiliam was a benevolent ruler, but he was a foreigner. When the Americans settled their difference, the French left Maximilian on his own and he was defeated, captured, and executed. By all accounts, he accepted his fate with dignity, perhaps not to the length of having to console the priest who was there to console him in his last moments.

The French invasion of Mexico in 1863 was resisted fiercely by the defenders of the San Javier fort in the city of Puebla. When it fell, México city was plucked without a major effort and Maximiliam Habsurg was installed as emperor. But the French never actually occupied the rest of the country, who rose up and in 1865 captured the French surrogate and executed him in 1866.

During the American Civil War, union forces under the command of general U. S. Grant advanced down the Mississippi river culminating in the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1863. The fighting in the east was stalemated and Grant was named chief of the union armies in 1864. The picture represents the final assault on the Vicksburg defenses. A Grant-like figure stands out on the right.

Lincoln and his cabinet appear in this picture after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Secretary of state Seward, the man who bought Alaska, sits to the right facing the president.

The first battle of iron-clad ships occurred off Hampton Roads, Virginia, between the Confederate Virginia (originally called the Merrimack), the one with the turret, and the Monitor, the larger one. The battle fought in 1862 was a draw.