CHAPTER IX.

CULMINATION OF CONSPIRACY--BLACK FRIDAY.

September is the memorable month of the gold conspiracy in Wall street. Between the 20th of August and the first of September, Gould, in company with Woodward and Kimber, two large speculators, made a pool to raise the premium on gold, and some ten or fifteen millions were bought, but with very little effect on the price.

An event now took place which would have seemed to justify the implicit belief of an Erie treasurer in the corruptibility of all mankind. The unsuspicious President again passed through New York, and came to breakfast at Mr. Corbin’s house on the 2d of September. He saw no one but Mr. Corbin while there, and the same evening at ten o’clock, departed for Saratoga. Mr. Gould declared afterward, however, that he was told by Mr. Corbin that the President, in discussing the financial situation, had shown himself a convert to the Erie theory about marketing the crops, and had stopped in the middle of a conversation in which he had expressed his views and written a letter to Secretary Boutwell. In regard to this letter, Secretary Boutwell testified as follows:

“I think on the evening of the 4th of September I received a letter from the President, dated at New York, as I recollect it; I am not sure where it was dated. In that letter he expressed an opinion that it was undesirable to force down the price of gold. He spoke of the importance to the West of being able to move their crops. His idea was that if gold should fall, the West should suffer and the movement of the crop would be retarded. The impression made on my mind by the letter was that he had rather a strong opinion to that effect. Upon the receipt of the President’s letter, I telegraphed to Judge Richardson, ‘Send no order to Butterfield as to sales of gold until you hear from me.’”

Mr. Gould had therefore succeeded in reversing the policy of the National Government, but this was not all. He knew what the government would do before any officer of the government knew it. Mr. Gould was at Corbin’s house on the 2d of September, and it seems certain that he saw Corbin privately, unknown to the President, within an hour or two after this letter to Mr. Boutwell was written, and that it was at this interview, while the President was still in the house, that Mr. Corbin gave him the information about the letter, perhaps showed him the letter itself. It was immediately at this time that Gould bought $1,500,000 worth of gold for Corbin.

No time was lost, and from this day Gould bought largely of gold. He did everything to give the public the impression that the government was behind the “deal.” An article written by Corbin was published as an editorial in the _Times_ and attracted attention, as the editor, John Bigelow, had just had a conversation with the President and was supposed to speak with authority. Notwithstanding the authorship of the article, it is just to say that the _Times_ detected the odor of Wall street about it and quarantined the article before making it public. Its effectiveness for Gould was much lessened. Gould wrote to Boutwell with a view of obtaining an official statement from him, but received a reply that said little and that diplomatically. Meanwhile Gould had been buying millions in gold and had formed a pool that bought millions more. That the movement was fictitious is shown by the fact that the impression on prices was comparatively small. Fisk looked on incredulously. “The country is against you,” was his criticism of the scheme.

Down to this moment Jim Fisk had not appeared in the affair. It was not until after September 10th that Gould appears to have decided that there was nothing else to be done but to take him into confidence. Fisk immediately bought seven or eight millions and the market began to respond slowly to these enormous purchases.

“Meanwhile Mr. Gould had placed another million and a half of gold to the account of Gen. Butterfield and notified him of the purchase; so Mr. Gould swears, in spite of Gen. Butterfield’s denial. The date of this purchase is not fixed. Through Mr. Corbin a notice was also sent by Gould about the middle of September to the President’s private secretary, Gen. Porter, informing him that half a million was placed to his credit. Gen. Porter instantly wrote to repudiate his purchase, but it does not appear that Butterfield took any notice of Gould’s transaction on his account. On the 10th of September the President had again come to New York, where he remained his brother-in-law’s guest till the 13th, and during this visit Mr. Gould appears again to have seen him, although Mr. Corbin avers that on this occasion the President intimated his wish to the servant that this should be the last time Mr. Gould obtain admission.

“Things were now so managed that the President was placed in a position that his honor was seriously in danger of being compromised, yet so ably was the matter engineered that he was perfectly unconscious of the designs of the plotters. He was prevailed upon to go to a then obscure town in Pennsylvania, named Little Washington. The thing was so arranged that his feelings were worked upon to visit that place for the purpose of seeing an old friend who resided there. The town was cut off from telegraphic communications, and the other means of access were not very convenient. The President set out on his journey on the morning of the 13th, and there he was ensconced to remain for a week or so, about the time the Cabal was fully prepared for action.

“Gould then said to Fisk: ‘This matter is all fixed up. Butterfield is all right. Corbin has got Butterfield all right and Corbin has got Grant fixed all right, and in my opinion they are all interested together.’

“This was patriotism with a vengeance. Just think of the audacity of it! Gould enters into a scheme to place the President in a position where he could not interfere with the plan of getting a ‘corner’ on gold, and then he turns around and accuses the first magistrate of the republic with being privy to a plot that was calculated to create a panic and cause widespread disaster in business circles and make him an object of universal contempt.”

Some of the members of the pool got frightened and sold out, but Gould continued to buy. “I had to buy,” testified Gould afterward, “or show the white feather. The other fellows deserted me like rats.” Gould had the material aid of the Tenth National Bank, an institution which he owned and which he used as an adjunct to his speculative operations. The extent to which he used it in the gold conspiracy was shown by the fact that it in one day overcertified Gould’s checks to the amount of $7,500,000. Garfield called this bank “a manufactory of certified checks.”

As Gould bought the bears sold “short” and the battle became intensely exciting.

Fisk’s assistance was as valuable as Gould expected it to be. He took no stock in the crop theory, but the idea of making the administration a partner in the diabolical enterprise seems to have attracted him. “Nothing,” said Garfield in his report to Congress, “nothing but the scent of corruption could sharpen the appetite of Fisk for the game his leader (Gould) was pursuing. The compounded villainy presented by Gould and Corbin was too tempting a bait.” So Fisk was drawn into the movement when his aid was most needed. This corner was a glittering edifice built on a foundation of deceit and corruption. It could not long stand. The most that Gould and Fisk could do was to frighten the “shorts” into covering before Grant awakened to the realization of how he was being used and issue orders to sell gold. Wall street was soon filled with rumors that the administration was in the deal and the excitement ran high.

“The malign influence,” says the Congressional report already quoted, “which Cataline wielded over the reckless and abandoned youth of Rome finds a fitting parallel in the power which Fisk held in Wall street when, followed by the thugs of Erie and the debauchees of the opera, he swept into the gold-room and defied both the street and the Treasury.”

The magnitude of the conspiracy is shown by the fact that before Black Friday Gould had employed fifty to sixty brokers to make his purchases, and $50,000,000 to $60,000,000 of gold had been bought by William Heath & Co., Woodward, H. K. Enos, E. K. Willard, and others of the brokers. He required all this to advance the price of gold from 135½ to 140½.

Fisk’s entrance into the game was a powerful help to Gould, for it not only furnished another purchaser for gold, but directed public attention from himself to Fisk. The ex-peddler loved to bask in the sun of public notoriety. Gould was timid, but Fisk had the brazen courage of a courtesan.

Gould and Fisk now became exceedingly nervous over the firmness of the President’s policy. He induced Mr. Corbin to write a letter directly to the President himself. This letter, written on the seventeenth, under the influence of Gould’s anxiety, was instantly sent away by a special messenger of Fisk’s, who rode twenty-eight miles on horseback from Pittsburg, and delivered it in person to the President. He read the letter, and had his suspicions at once aroused. He said laconically to the messenger: “It is satisfactory; there is no answer.” He began to see through the game, and at once desired Mrs. Grant to write to Mrs. Corbin requesting her husband to have nothing more to do with the Gould-Fisk gang.

The messenger telegraphed “All right” to the conspirators.

“We now come to the week which was to witness the explosion of all this elaborately constructed mine. On Monday the 20th, gold again rose. Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, Fisk continued to purchase without limit and forced the price up to 40. At this time, Gould’s firm of Smith, Gould & Martin, through which the operation was conducted, had purchased some $50,000,000, and yet the bears went on selling, although they could only continue the contest by borrowing Gould’s own gold. Gould, on the other hand, could no longer sell and clear himself, for the reason that the sale of $50,000,000 would have broken the market to nothing. The struggle had become intense. The whole country was looking on with astonishment at the battle between the bulls and the bears. All business was deranged and all values unsettled. There were indications of a panic in the stock market; and the bears, in their emergency, were vehemently pressing the government to intervene. Gould now wrote to Mr. Boutwell a letter so inconceivably impudent that it indicates desperation and entire loss of his ordinary coolness:

“Sir: There is a panic in Wall street, engineered by a bear combination. They have withdrawn currency to such an extent that it is impossible to do ordinary business. The Erie company requires $800,000 to disburse. Much of it in Ohio, where an exciting political contest was going on and where we have about ten thousand employed, and the trouble is charged on the administration. Cannot you consistently increase your line of currency?”

From a friend, such a letter would have been an outrage, but from a member of the Tammany ring, the principal object of detestation to the government, such a threat or bribe, whichever it may be called, was incredible. Mr. Gould was, in fact, at his wits’ end. He dreaded a panic and felt that it could no longer be avoided.

The conspirators interpreted the telegram from their messenger, reading “all right” to mean a favorable answer to the letter, and they were much elated. But the President, supposing that the messenger was only a clerk from the post-office, had said “all right” merely to indicate that he had received the letter and required his presence no longer. His suspicions were aroused after the messenger had left, when he ascertained that he had brought the letter at post-haste all the way from New York. That night Mrs. Grant wrote to Mrs. Corbin a note stating that the President had heard that Mr. Corbin was engaged in Wall street speculations, and if it were true he desired that he should immediately dissociate himself from them. This letter filled Gould with consternation. He and Corbin sat in the latter’s house all night reading and rereading the note and endeavoring to grasp the meaning between the lines. “If you show that note,” said Gould, finally, “I am a ruined man.” Corbin said he must obey orders and leave the street, but he insisted Gould should first take up the gold held in Corbin’s name and pay him the profits. Corbin had already received a check for $25,000. But Gould had already all the gold he wanted, and after standing for a while in silence by the door, his brow black with mystery, he left the house.

The game was up. One stroke of a woman’s pen had punctured the dazzling bubble. A word from the President was sufficient to collapse the biggest corner on record. How to save himself? That was the question which, with knit brow and lips compressed with hidden excitement, Gould debated as he returned home that night. No thought for others who were deep in the game with himself. No thought for Fisk, his friend and associate. His mind labored for himself alone. He soon reached a conclusion. While there was yet time he would dump his heavy load of gold on the market and let others take what he could not carry. His only capital now was the early information he possessed of the President’s aroused suspicions; of his change of purpose. He did not tell even Fisk of Mrs. Grant’s letter to Mrs. Corbin, but let Fisk continue his purchases in ignorance of the real situation. He only remarked to Fisk that Corbin was getting weary and wanted his profits, or something to that purpose. Thursday--the day preceding Black Friday--Gould began his dumping process. “I sold that day,” he testified afterward, “and only bought enough to make the street think I was still a bull.”

Here is Mr. Clews’ story of days immediately preceding the fatal Friday.

“On Wednesday, the 22d of September, two days preceding ‘Black Friday,’ the clique, it is believed, owned several millions more gold than there was in the city, outside the vaults of the sub-treasury. Belden bought about eight millions of gold on that day, while Smith, Gould, Martin & Co. were also heavy purchasers. The clique held a caucus in the office of Wm. Heath & Co. in Broad street and concluded that it had gold enough to put the price to 200 if it could carry the gold without lending and compel the shorts to purchase. But the idea of finding a market for over thirty millions of gold was also a gigantic problem, and they felt the risk of being ground between the upper and the nether millstones of their scheme.

“On the morning of Thursday another council of war was held in the office of Belden & Co., on Broadway. At this meeting, Gould, Fisk, Henry N. Smith and William Belden were present. The proceedings of this meeting were kept a profound secret, but one result of it was that Belden gave his clerk the famous order to put gold to 144 and keep it there. On that day Belden purchased about twenty millions of gold, the price opening at 141½ and closing at 143½.

“The chiefs of the Cabal had another private meeting up town that evening. The great question of closing up the transactions on the following day was the chief topic of discussion. These operators held contracts for over $100,000,000 in gold. Gould said that the ‘short’ interest was $250,000,000. The total amount of gold in the city did not exceed $25,000,000, and the difference between this and the aggregate amount of the contracts of the clique was the enormous amount that would have to be settled in the event of a ‘corner.’

“Fisk proposed that the clique show its hand, publish the state of affairs, and offer to settle with the shorts at 150. His plan was rejected by his brother conspirators.”

And now opens that remarkable day in September, 1869, known as “Black Friday.” Wall street has passed through other days of excitement and calamity, but even the panic days of 1873 and 1884 pale before the awful passion and fury of Black Friday.

The New York _World_ of September 25, 1869, thus describes the day:

“The scene during the conflict almost beggars description and exceeds anything ever before witnessed in Wall street. It was a tussle of enormous magnitude, fierce and desperate. It was a day long to be remembered and not easily forgotten by those who witnessed it or were caught in the maelstrom that carried everything before it.”

The conspirators were early in the street, and the offices of Smith, Gould & Martin, Fisk & Belden and William Heath & Co. were the center of enormous excitement. William Belden, who was Fisk’s partner, played a conspicuous part in this day’s history. He was a man cool and daring--the fit companion of such men as Gould and Fisk. The day, however, left a stain on his record that could never be obliterated, and when, in 1888, Belden formed a co-partnership with a member of the Stock Exchange, the governing committee of the institution stated that unless the member severed his partnership with Belden he must leave the Exchange.

Gould, Fisk, Belden and their brokers held a counsel of war and laid out the work of the day. Heath was to look after this, Willard was to attend to that, Belden was to direct this and Fisk was to direct that, while “Gould”--the language of the Congressional report is now quoted--“Gould, the guilty plotter of all these criminal proceedings, determined to betray his own associates, and silent and imperturbable, by nods and whispers directed all.” “I determined,” said Mr. Gould afterward, “not to open my mouth that day, and I did not.”

What a study for a dramatic painter Gould would have made that day!

There was undoubtedly some secret understanding between Fisk and Belden to which Gould was a party, by which all the orders given that day could be repudiated if the market went against them. A ready tool was found in Albert Speyer, who accepted verbal orders from Belden in the presence of Gould and Fisk to buy, and who went into the board-room and did buy immense quantities of gold at the highest prices. The street was filled with the wildest rumors. Prices rapidly advanced to 165. The shorts trembled before the rising tide that seemed about to sweep over them. Many were frightened into covering their contracts. Gould continued to sell. Fisk and Belden continued to buy. The excitement rose point by point to the wildest pitch. Old operators lost their heads, men rushed hatless and half crazy through the streets, their eyes bloodshot, their faces pale with anxiety, their brains on fire. There came rumors of contemplated selling of gold by the Treasury, and the street went mad. Where these rumors started no one ever knew, but they were the forerunners of actual fact. James Brown, the Scotch banker, appeared in the board and began to offer gold at declining figures. Then the earthquake started, and the golden edifice built by Gould began to tumble. Soon the Treasury order to sell $4,000,000 of gold appeared, and then the terrible collapse. Prices fell from 165 to 133½. The board-room was the scene of contending furies. Albert Speyer completely lost control of himself; his hair is said to have turned white that night after he went home a ruined man. Wall and Broad streets were filled with men wild with excitement. Infuriated mobs surrounded the offices of Fisk & Belden and Smith, Gould & Martin. Threats of violence were made. Speyer went about saying: “Some one has threatened to shoot me. Let him shoot.” The Gold Exchange Bank was obliged to suspend operations. Its clearances that day amounted to over $300,000,000 of gold. Trading was stopped in the Gold Board. Fisk & Belden suspended and their contracts were repudiated. The fortunes of hundreds were swept away in that day’s battle. Several firms were driven to the wall and announced their failures. The administration was involved in suspicion which it took years to remove. The nation was disgraced and its credit was broken.

But Gould, “the guilty plotter of all these criminal proceedings,” went home saved. What he made or what he lost in that struggle is unknown, but though he had involved others in ruin and had betrayed others, he had saved himself from overthrow. To have gone down in the fight would have been a display of heroism. To save himself alone from the wreck was dishonor.

It is not strange that in his sworn autobiography delivered to the Committee on Labor and Education, Mr. Gould omitted all mention of Black Friday, but when as a witness before the Committee on Corners he was asked about the Black Friday panic, he calmly said that it was the “result of overtrading,” and that its real cause was “the fluctuations in the price of gold caused by the war!” It is a singular coincidence that exactly twenty-two years after Black Friday, on the very anniversary of the day in 1891, Gould caused another big flurry in Wall street. After several years of depression, a “boom” in stocks was in progress, when the sudden announcement was made that the Missouri Pacific, of which Gould was president, would pass its dividend. The announcement caused a revolution in prices and the “boom” completely collapsed.

Mr. Clews tells a graphic story of what he saw:

“On the morning of the fatal day, Belden and William Heath had an early breakfast together at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and repaired immediately to their offices. Belden announced that gold was going to 200. ‘This will be the last day of the Gold Room,’ he added. Moved by Belden’s threat, a large number rushed to cover. In the language of Henry N. Smith, ‘They came on with a rush to settle.’ He was settling in the office of Smith, Gould & Martin, at 150 to 145, while Albert Speyer, acting as broker for Fisk and Gould, was bidding up to 160 for a million at a time. It was only when the price came down to 133 that Speyer realized the humorous absurdity of his position. He had then bought 26 millions since morning at 160.

“A voracious demand for margins about midday brought the work to a crisis. The scene at the office of Heath was indescribable when Belden went there to see Gould and his confederates, to find out what was to be done next with the frenzied purchasers. An eye-witness thus describes the scene at Heath’s office: ‘I went outside while Belden went in. I walked up and down the alley-way waiting for him to come out. Deputy sheriffs, or men appearing to be such, began to arrive and to mount guard at Heath’s office to keep out visitors. After waiting a prodigious long time, as it seemed to me, Jay Gould came creeping out of the back door, and looking round sharply to see if he was watched, slunk off through a private rear passage behind the buildings. Presently came Fisk, steaming hot and shouting. He took the wrong direction at first, nearly ran into Broad street, but soon discovered his error and followed Gould through the rear passage. Then came Belden, with hair disordered and red eyes, as if he had been crying. He called: ‘Which way have they gone?’ and upon my pointing the direction, he ran after them. The rear passage led into Wall street. At its exit the conspirators jumped into a carriage and fled the street.”

They did not fly the street, however, but went to the Broad street office of Smith, Gould & Martin, where the crowd assembled, evidently with riotous intent, apparently bent upon an application to Judge Lynch for justice; and had any of the gentlemen appeared outside the confines of the front wall, the chances were that the lamp-post near by would have very soon been decorated with a breathless body. To insure their safety inside, however, a small police force kept guard outside, which made the barricade complete. These gentlemen remained under this shelter until the small hours of the morning, busily endeavoring to find out where they stood in the result of the gold deal; and the more they pondered over it, the greater grew the doubt in their minds whether they were standing on their heads or their heels.”

The story told by Mr. Adams is also worthy of repetition as a graphic description of the terrors of the day. Beginning with the morning before, he says:

“It was the morning of Thursday, the 3d; Gould and Fisk went to Broad street together, but as usual Gould was silent and secret, while Fisk was noisy and communicative. There was now a complete separation in their movements. Gould acted entirely through his own firm of Smith, Gould & Martin, while Fisk operated principally through his old partner, Belden. One of Smith’s principal brokers testifies: ‘Fisk never could do business with Smith, Martin & Gould very comfortably. They would not do business for him. It was a very uncertain thing, of course, where Fisk might be. He is an erratic sort of genius. I don’t think anybody would want to follow him very long. I am satisfied that Smith, Gould & Martin controlled their own gold and were ready to do as they pleased with it without consulting Fisk. I do not think there was any general agreement. None of us who knew him cared to do business with him. I would not have taken an order from him nor had anything to do with him.’ Belden was considered a very low fellow. ‘I never had anything to do with him or his party,’ said one broker employed by Gould. ‘They were men I had a perfect detestation of; they were no company for me. I should not have spoken to them at all under ordinary circumstances.’ Another says, ‘Belden is a man in whom I never had any confidence in any way. For months before that I would not have taken him for a gold transaction.’

“And yet Belden bought millions upon millions of gold. He himself says he had bought twenty millions by this Thursday evening, and this without capital or credit except that of his brokers. Meanwhile Gould, on reaching the city, had at once given secret orders to sell. From the moment he left Corbin he had but one idea, which was to get rid of his gold as quietly as possible. ‘I purchased merely enough to make believe I was a bull,’ says Gould. This double process continued all that afternoon. Fisk’s wild purchases carried the price up to 144, and the panic in the street became more and more serious as the bears realized the extremity of their danger. No one can tell how much gold which did not exist they had contracted to deliver or pay the difference in price. One of the clique brokers swears that on this Thursday evening the street had sold the clique one hundred and eighteen millions of gold, and every rise of one per cent, on this sum implied a loss of more than one million dollars to the bears. Naturally the terror was extreme, for half Broad street and thousands of speculators would have been ruined if compelled to settle gold at 150 which they had sold at 140. It need scarcely be said that by this time nothing more was heard in regard to philanthropic theories of benefit to the western farmer.

“Mr. Gould’s feelings can easily be imagined. He knew that Fisk’s reckless management would bring the government upon his shoulders, and he knew that unless he could sell his gold before the order came from Washington he would be a ruined man. He knew, too, that Fisk’s contracts must inevitably be repudiated. This Thursday evening he sat at his desk in the Erie offices at the opera house, while Fisk and Fisk’s brokers chattered about him. ‘I was transacting my railroad business. I had my own views about the market and my own fish to fry. I was all alone, so to speak, in what I did, and I did not let any of those people know exactly how I stood. I got no ideas from anything that was said there. I had been selling gold from 35 up all the time, and I did not know till the next morning that there would probably come an order about twelve o’clock to sell gold.’ He had not told Fisk a word in regard to Corbin’s retreat nor his own orders to sell.

“When the next day came, Gould and Fisk went together to Broad street and took possession of the private back office of a principal broker, ‘without asking the privilege of doing so,’ as the broker observes in his evidence. The first news brought to Gould was a disaster. The government had sent three men from Washington to examine the bank which Gould owned, and the bank sent word to Mr. Gould that it feared to certify for him as usual, and was itself in danger of a panic, caused by the presence of officers, which created distrust of the bank. It barely managed to save itself. Gould took the information silently, and his firm redoubled sales of gold. His partner, Smith, gave the orders to one broker after another--‘Sell ten millions!’ ‘The order was given as quick as a flash, and away he went,’ says one of these men. ‘I sold only eight millions.’ ‘Sell, sell, sell! do nothing but sell!--only don’t sell to Fisk’s brokers,’ were the orders which Smith himself acknowledges. In the gold-room Fisk’s brokers were shouting their rising bids, and the packed crowd grew frantic with rage and terror as each successive rise showed their increasing losses. The wide streets outside were thronged with excited people; the telegraph offices were overwhelmed with messages ordering sales or purchases of gold or stocks; and the whole nation was watching eagerly to see what the result of this convulsion was to be. All trade was stopped, and even the President felt that it was time to raise his hand. No one who has not seen the New York gold-room can understand the spectacle it presented; now a perfect pandemonium, now silent as the grave. Fisk, in his dark back office across the street, with his coat off, swaggered up and down, ‘a big cane in his hand,’ and called himself the Napoleon of Wall street. He really believed that he directed the movement, and while the street outside imagined that he and Gould were one family, and that his purchases were made for the clique, Gould was silently flinging away his gold at any price he could get for it.

“Whether Fisk really expected to carry out his contract, and force the bears to settle or not, is doubtful, but the evidence seems to show that he was in earnest and felt sure of success. His orders were unlimited. ‘Put it up to 150,’ was one which he sent to the gold-room. Gold rose to 150. At length the bid was made--‘160 for any part of five millions,’--‘162 for five millions.’ No answer was made and the offer was repeated--‘162 for any part of five millions.’ A voice replied, ‘Sold one million at 62,’ The bubble suddenly burst, and within fifteen minutes, amid an excitement without parallel even in the wildest excitements of the war, the clique workers were literally swept away and left struggling by themselves, bidding still 160 for gold in millions which no one would any longer take their word for, while the premium sank rapidly to 135. A moment later the telegraph brought the government order from Washington to sell, and the result was no longer possible to dispute. Mr. Fisk had gone too far, while Mr. Gould had secretly weakened the ground under his feet.

“Gould, however, was saved. His fifty millions were sold; and although no one yet knows what his gains or losses may have been, his firm was now able to meet its contracts and protect its brokers. Fisk was in a very different situation. So soon as it became evident that his brokers would be unable to carry out their contracts, every one who had sold gold to them turned in wrath to Fisk’s office. Fortunately for him it was protected by armed men whom he had brought with him from his castle of Erie; but nevertheless the excitement was so great that both Mr. Fisk and Mr. Gould thought it best to retire as rapidly as possible to a back entrance leading into another street, and seek the protection of the opera house. There nothing but an army could disturb them; no civil mandate was likely to be served without their permission within these walls, and few men would care to face Fisk’s ruffians in order to force an entrance.

“The subsequent winding up of this famous conspiracy may be stated in few words. But no account could possibly be complete which failed to reproduce in full the story of Mr. Fisk’s last interview with Mr. Corbin, as told by Fisk himself. ‘I went down to the neighborhood of Wall street Friday morning, and the history of that morning you know. When I got back to our office, you can imagine I was in no enviable state of mind, and the moment I got up street that afternoon I started right around to old Corbin’s to rake him out. I went into the room and sent word that Mr. Fisk wanted to see him in the dining-room. I was too mad to say anything civil, and when he came into the room, said I, ‘You damned old scoundrel, do you know what you have done here, you and your people?’ He began to wring his hands, and ‘Oh!’ he says, ‘this is a horrible position. Are you ruined?’ I said I didn’t know whether I was or not; and I asked him again if he knew what had happened? He had been crying, and said he had just heard; that he had been sure everything was all right, but that something had occurred entirely different from what he had anticipated. Said I, ‘That don’t amount to anything; we know that gold ought not to be at 31, and that it would not be but for such performances as you have had this last week; you know damned well it would not if you had not failed.’ I knew that somebody had run a saw right into us, and said I, ‘This whole damned thing has turned out just as I told you it would.’ I considered the whole party a pack of cowards, and I expected that when we came to clear our hands they would sock it right into us. I said to him, ‘I don’t know whether you have lied or not, and I don’t know what ought to be done with you.’ He was on the other side of the table, weeping and wailing, and I was gnashing my teeth. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘you must quiet yourself.’ I told him I didn’t want to be quiet. I had no desire to ever be quiet again, and probably never should be quiet again. He says, ‘But, my dear sir, you will lose your reason.’ Says I, ‘Speyers’ (a broker employed by him that day) ‘has already lost his reason; reason has gone out of everybody but me.’ I continued, ‘Now what are you going to do? You have got us into this thing, and what are you going to do to get out of it?’ He says, ‘I don’t know. I will go and get my wife.’ I said, ‘Get her down here.’ The soft talk was all over. He went up stairs and they returned, tottling into the room, looking older than Stephen Hopkins. His wife and he both looked like death. He was tottling just like that. (Illustrated by a trembling movement of the body.) ‘I have never seen him from that day to this.’

“This is sworn evidence before a committee of Congress, and its humor is perhaps the more conspicuous because there is every reason to believe that there is not a word of truth in the story from beginning to end. No such interview ever occurred, except in the unconfined apartments of Mr. Fisk’s imagination. His own previous statements make it certain that he was not at Corbin’s house at all that day, and that Corbin did come to the Erie offices that evening and again the next morning. Corbin himself denies the truth of the account without limitation; and adds that when he entered the Erie offices the next morning, Fisk was there. ‘I asked him how Mr. Gould felt after the great calamity of the day before.’ He remarked, ‘Oh, he has no courage at all. He has sunk right down. There is nothing left of him but a heap of clothes and a pair of eyes.’ The internal evidence of truth in this anecdote would support Mr. Corbin against the world.

“In regard to Mr. Gould, Fisk’s graphic description was probably again inaccurate. Undoubtedly the noise and scandal of the moment were extremely unpleasant to this silent and impenetrable intriguer. The city was in a ferment, and the whole country pointing at him with wrath. The machinery of the gold exchange had broken down, and he alone could extricate the business community from the pressing danger of a general panic. He had saved himself, it is true; but in a manner which could not have been to his taste. Yet his course from this point must have been almost self-evident to his mind, and there is no reason to suppose that he hesitated.”

“His own contracts were all fulfilled. Fisk’s contracts all except one, in respect to which the broker was able to compel a settlement, were repudiated. Gould probably suggested to Fisk that it was better to let Belden fail, and to settle a handsome fortune on him than to sacrifice something more than $5,000,000 in sustaining him. Fisk, therefore, threw Belden over, and swore that he had acted only under Belden’s order. One of the first acts of the Erie gentlemen after the crisis was to summon their lawyers and set in action their judicial powers. The object was to prevent the panic-stricken brokers from using legal process to force settlements and to render the entanglement inextricable. Messrs. Field & Shearman came and instantly prepared a considerable number of injunctions, which were sent to their judges, signed at once, and immediately served. Gould then was able to dictate the terms of settlement, and after a week of complete paralysis, Broad street began at last to show signs of returning life.

“The fate of the conspirators was not severe. Mr. Corbin went to Washington, where he was snubbed by the President, and at once disappeared from public view, only coming to light again before the congressional committee. General Butterfield, whose share in the transaction is least understood, was permitted to resign his office without any investigation. Speculation for the next six months was at an end. Every person involved in the affair seemed to have lost money, and dozens of brokers were swept from the street. But Mr. Jay Gould and Mr. James Fisk, Jr., continued to reign over Erie, and no one can say that their power or their credit was sensibly diminished by a shock which, for the time, prostrated all the interests of the country.”