The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield (4 page)

By 1869 Jay Gould is a full-blooded railway man. He is
rumored to be a full-blooded Jew as well. As his facility with money becomes apparent, his rivals put out that his name was Jacob Gold before he anglicized it. He ignores the rumors as he considers how to boost the Erie’s central business: transporting freight and people. He devises a plan that depends on a financial vestige of the Civil War: the paper dollars that circulate alongside America’s gold dollars. The former, called greenbacks for the color of their ink, rise and fall in value compared with the gold dollars, which are paper too but are backed by the federal Treasury’s promise to redeem them in gold, unlike the nonredeemable greenbacks. The greenbacks, being legal tender but less valuable than the gold dollars, predominate in the domestic American economy; the gold dollars are employed in international trade. A rise in the value of gold relative to greenbacks translates into cheaper American exports, especially of farm products from the West, and hence more of them. More exports mean more traffic on the Erie. Gould therefore favors a rise in gold.

During the summer of 1869 he talks up gold to private investors, who express interest but lack especial influence, and to government officials, who possess influence but, at first, little interest. He and Fisk make friends with Abel Corbin, the husband of President Grant’s sister. Corbin arranges a meeting with Grant, during which Gould and Fisk point out the benefits to the American people in general and the Erie Railroad in particular of healthy exports. “We have employed on the Erie road some twenty thousand men, all told, and a stock of eight hundred locomotives, with the other equipments of the road on a corresponding scale,” Gould tells Grant. “I am aware of no way in which these men and equipments can be used to advantage unless the crops come forward from the West.” Grant is noncommittal but appears inclined to let the market find its own price for gold, without the government’s getting involved.

Gould cultivates the assistant federal treasurer in New York, Daniel Butterfield, who oversees the government’s gold trades. Butterfield’s is a critical position, for the federal Treasury contains sufficient gold to move the price substantially up or down, depending on whether the government is buying or selling. Butterfield doesn’t set policy, but he implements it, and he will know before anyone else in New York if Grant changes his mind and orders the government to intervene in the gold market.

Gould himself begins buying gold, discreetly but decidedly. He uses multiple brokers and keeps his own hand hidden. He hopes to create a broad surge that will feed on itself and move the gold price higher.

At some point his plans grow larger. From the devious Drew and the daunting Vanderbilt he has learned the concept of a “corner,” a market anomaly in which more of a commodity or stock has been contracted for sale to a purchaser—the cornerer—than exists on the market. The sellers find themselves at the mercy of the cornerer, who can dictate terms of settlement. Corners in wheat, pork bellies, railroad stocks, and other assets have been attempted and occasionally accomplished on Wall Street; Gould now develops a scheme to corner gold. If successful, the operation will make Gould very wealthy. It might also paralyze the financial system, but Gould leaves that problem to others.

Gould writes the script but remains in the shadows; Jim Fisk takes the production to center stage. In late September Fisk barges into the Gold Room, the special market at New Street and Wall where gold and greenbacks are frenetically traded. Regulars in the Gold Room liken it to a gambling parlor or a dog pit; the marble Cupid in the center should be a Midas, some say, turning everything to gold and starving in the process.

The latest innovation is a mechanical indicator of the current price. A large arrow responds immediately to rises and falls in the dollar value of gold. On the morning of Friday, September 24, the arrow rests at 143, indicating that 143 greenbacks are required to purchase 100 gold dollars. When the Gold Room opens at ten, the arrow likely will creep upward, as it has been creeping upward since the first of September. Gould’s quiet purchases of gold have boosted the price; market watchers and players, including speculators who have climbed on the Gould bandwagon and become gold bulls, expect the rise to continue.

Yet something strange is afoot. Gold brokers have crowded the curb outside the Gold Room since dawn, and transactions are already taking place. A broker bids 145; his offer is accepted. Another bids 147; also taken. By the time trading officially begins, the price has topped 150. The gold arrow leaps the 5 percent—a large amount in this context—all at once.

And it keeps moving upward. Violent emotions surge across the Gold Room: the money lust of the gold bulls, who see their speculation nearing success and shout for the price to go still higher; the incipient panic of the gold bears, who have bet on a fall and now stare ruin in the face.

Amid the maelstrom stands Jim Fisk. His cherubic face beams with the pleasure of a child at play, an image rendered a bit incongruous by the cigar with which he punctuates his shouts at the brokers. In the stifling atmosphere of the Gold Room he is sweating profusely; the salty rivulets have plastered his strawberry ringlets to his forehead and caused the waxed ends of his moustache to droop. Fisk loudly and belligerently leads the charge of the gold bulls against the bears. As the price rises past 150, he bawls to his brokers: “Take all you can get.”

The price leaps upward again; the big arrow on the gold indicator lurches to 155. The Gold Room explodes in shouting, arm waving, and rushing to and fro. The anarchy sloshes next door to the stock exchange, where share prices have been heaving up and down on the hopes and fears of the gold men. One broker, more agitated than most, vows mortal harm to a nearby gold bull, promising to shoot him dead if he persists in driving gold up. The bull responds by tearing open his shirt and inviting the bear to fire. Fisk roars with delight and goads the bears further. “Take all you can get at 160!” he shouts above the din.

The bears see their end fast approaching. Most are already insolvent; their only hope is that the corner will break and the price fall before their creditors can catch them. This last hope fairly vanishes when the price jumps again, to 162.

And then …

The weak link in the golden chain of Gould and Fisk has always been the gold reserve of the government. Should this gold be released on the market—should the government in Washington even signal an intent to release it—the corner will be broken. This is why the partners have urged the president to keep the government out of the market, and why they have cultivated Butterfield as a lookout in the Treasury Department.

Grant has withheld the government’s hand till now, not wishing to intervene in a contest among the capitalists. But the wailing of the bears has carried to Washington by telegraph, and finally the president becomes alarmed, fearing that a gold corner will trigger a financial collapse. Shortly before noon on this Friday, he orders the Treasury to sell.

The order, relayed to New York, hits the Gold Room like a thunderclap. At noon, by the first chimes from the steeple of Trinity Church, the neighborhood outpost of Episcopalianism, where winning brokers offer thanks and losers pray for deliverance, the gold arrow hovers in the 160s; only moments later, before the echoes of the last of the dozen peals has faded, the arrow has plunged to the 130s.

The bears, lately strangling on their fears, suddenly breathe the fresh air of salvation. Again they see the sun; once more they feel the earth beneath their feet.

It is the bulls’ turn to panic. Great riches were in their grasp a moment ago; these have been snatched away. And because most of their purchases have been made with borrowed money, accepted at extortionate rates, the evaporation of their golden dream now threatens them with utter dissolution. As the new reality sets in, their groans of disappointment turn to howls of fear and rage.

The bulls look to their leader, Fisk, for guidance. But Fisk has vanished. Some claim to have seen him dashing north toward the Opera House. A small herd of angry bulls give chase; they shout that if they catch Fisk, his carcass will swing from one of the lampposts that line Broadway.

The mob reaches the Opera House, where they crash against a wall of thick men retained by Fisk and Gould for such emergencies. The jagged scars and flattened noses of the men suggest they have dealt with desperadoes more threatening than disappointed brokers. The mob mills around, wondering what to do.

Inside the Opera House, behind the heavy doors of the Erie office, Fisk wipes the sweat from his face and reclaims his composure. Gould greets him in a calm, low voice, apparently oblivious to the uproar outside. But his fingers work with subtle fury, tearing odd sheets of paper into tiny bits. While Fisk mops his brow, Gould carpets the floor around his desk with confetti. Separately and silently they calculate how they’ll survive this latest debacle. “It was each man drag out his own corpse,” Fisk will say of the moment. “Get out of it as well as you can.”

Love makes the most careful man reckless. Nothing else can
explain Jim Fisk’s decision to introduce Edward Stokes to Josie Mansfield. Ned Stokes is the ne’er-do-well son of a New York family that used to be rich but currently must send its sons to work. Stokes supervises a Brooklyn oil refinery that the family controls and that Fisk, on behalf of the Erie, acquires an interest in. Fisk takes a liking to Stokes, who is seven years younger than Fisk, seventy pounds lighter, and incomparably more handsome, in a darkly dangerous way. Any sensible man in Fisk’s position would keep Stokes as far from Josie as possible. But Fisk arranges a meeting between Stokes and Josie, and he later takes Stokes to Josie’s house to further the acquaintance.

He seems not to notice the spark between the two—a spark that becomes an electrifying surge as soon as Fisk looks away. Stokes has a wife, a child, and a more regular domestic existence than Fisk, but thoughts of home and hearth fly out of his head when he sees Josie. She has stuck with Fisk from considerations of financial security and perhaps a mite of gratitude, but security has brought boredom, and any gratitude she feels toward Fisk melts away when Stokes kisses her hand and gazes deeply into her eyes.

Fisk is busier than usual, these months after the gold panic. The brokers and investors who wanted to lynch him and Gould on the afternoon of what is being called Black Friday are burying the two in lawsuits; Fisk spends half his waking hours with attorneys. Congress wants to know how the gold conspiracy nearly succeeded and who in the Grant administration was involved; Fisk spends the other half of his time testifying before committees in Washington.

He doesn’t realize that Stokes has become a regular visitor to Josie’s house. More fatigued than usual in the evenings, he doesn’t observe that Josie is happier than she has been for some while, but in a distracted, distant way.

Fisk grows busier all the time. After the Erie war and
Black Friday, he reckons that his civic reputation can use some burnishing. When a delegation from the moribund Ninth Regiment of the New York National Guard approaches him about becoming their sponsor, he listens closely. Regimental enrollment is down, the envoys explain; uniforms are shabby; the armory is ancient. All this might change should Jim Fisk lend his support. They would be honored to recommend him to the rank and file for election as colonel of the regiment.

The idea intrigues him. The pomp and pageantry of soldiering have always appealed to him. A steamboat line he owns lets him playact an admiral, but the National Guard is the real thing. During the Civil War he followed the custom of the financial classes in shunning enlistment while letting the draft fall on those who couldn’t afford to hire a substitute or pay the $300 commutation fee. The invitation from the Ninth Regiment seems a chance to reap the honorific benefits of service without crimping his business activities or facing the hazards of combat. If the men of the regiment become so loyal to their commander as to guard him against his personal enemies, all the better.

“I’m no military man,” he tells his interlocutors. “I’ve never trained a day in my life, never shot off a gun or pistol, and don’t know even the ABCs of war, yet. Fact is, I doubt whether I could shoulder arms or file left, or make a reconnaissance in force, or do any of them things, to save my boots. And as for giving orders—why, I don’t know anything about it.” But he supposes he can learn. “Elect me, and then we’ll talk about it.” The men of the Ninth excitedly elect him, and he and they talk about all those matters, and others more immediate. He buys them uniforms, furnishes food and drink on weekend excursions, and outfits the regimental band with new instruments. The Ninth, lately the laggard of the New York regiments, becomes the pride of the city. Fisk offers $500 to the regimental company that enlists the largest number of fresh recruits; the resulting competition causes enrollment to double.

Fisk determines to present his regiment to the city, and he can think of no better venue than the Opera House. The hall is crowded on a Saturday night in May 1870; the staging of
The Twelve Temptations
has drawn enthusiastic reviews. The curtain is late in rising, and the management has offered no explanation. The atmosphere grows oppressive; the ladies and some men fan themselves to catch a breath.

Suddenly, just before nine, a commotion is heard outside the theater proper, in the foyer. Necks crane and eyes scan the doors. To no one’s great surprise, Fisk emerges as the source of the hubbub. He enters the hall, dressed in the full regalia of his colonelcy. Behind him, two by two, enter the five hundred men of the Ninth Regiment, stepping lively to the accompaniment of the regimental band. Fisk has saved the best seats for the soldiers, most of whom give the appearance of never having been inside such a theater. Awkwardly and noisily they find their places.

Fisk beams, proud to show off his theater to his regiment and his regiment to the patrons of his theater. The audience, skeptical at first, allows itself to become part of the spectacle and offers rousing applause to these defenders of the state and their doughty commander.

Yet one man bucks the tide of good cheer. A constable with a summons makes his way to Fisk, in the presence of the regiment and the regular audience. He hands the colonel the notice that he must answer to the authorities for an outstanding debt. Fisk scans the summons and with theatrical disgust tosses it to the floor. He proceeds to his personal box.

The constable tries to follow Fisk, but several members of the regiment’s Company K, which deems itself Fisk’s personal bodyguard, block the way. One of the men retrieves the summons and reads it aloud. Messrs. McBride and Williams, grocers, have sued the colonel for alleged delinquency in paying for seventy-five pounds of butter. The total due is $41.25. The audience roars at the incommensurability of the present grand celebration and the measly butter bill. Fisk dramatically glowers and declares that his enemies are trying to upstage him.

The curtain rises and the scheduled performance begins. Fisk watches the opening act and then repairs to the lobby to greet late arrivals and, at intermission, the rest of the house. He issues directions to the waiters who circulate among the crowd dispensing champagne. He shakes hands with the gentlemen, bows to the ladies, and slaps the backs of his men. At the conclusion of the performance he leads the officers of the regiment into one of the private rooms for a late supper. More champagne mingles with stronger spirits. The officers toast their colonel’s health and generosity; ribald references are made to Messrs. McBride and Williams and the unredeemed butter.