Hon. GEORGE S. BOUTWELL,
Secretary of Treasury.
At a meeting, which was accidental, as far as the President was concerned, on board one of Fisk and Gould's Fall River steamers, when he was on his way to Boston, in June of that year, to attend the Peace Jubilee, an attempt was made to commit General Grant to the policy of holding gold. I was present on the trip with the President. What happened on the boat may be best given in the language of Mr. Fisk and Mr. Gould. Mr. Fisk, in his testimony before the committee, said:
"On our passage over to Boston with General Grant, we endeavored to ascertain what his position in regard to the finances was. We went down to supper about nine o'clock, intending while we were there to have this thing pretty thoroughly talked up, and, if possible, to relieve him from any idea of putting the price of gold down."
Mr. Gould's account before the committee was as follows:
"At this supper the question came up about the state of the country, the crops, prospects ahead, etc. The President was a listener; the other gentlemen were discussing. Some were in favor of Boutwell's selling gold, and some were opposed to it. After they had all interchanged their views, some one asked the President what his view was. He remarked that he thought there was a certain amount of fictitiousness about the prosperity of the country, and that the bubble might as well be tapped in one way as another. . . . We supposed from that conversation that the President was a contractionist. His remark struck across us like a wet blanket."
The error of Fisk and Gould and their associates, from the beginning to the end of the contest, was in the supposition that the President was taking any part in the operations of the Treasury concerning the price of gold. If he expressed any opinions outside in conversation, there were no acts on his part in harmony with or in antagonism to the views he entertained. As a matter of fact, with the exception of the letter from the city of New York, he had no conference or correspondence with me up to the 22d day of September, when I called upon him, and gave him a statement of the price of gold in the city of New York, and of the nature and character of the combination that existed there, as far as it was understood by me. Their policy was directed to two points: first, to influence the President, if possible, to interfere in a way to advance the price of gold; and, second, to satisfy their adherents and opponents that the President either had so interfered or would so interfere.
Even Fisk and Gould may at a period of time have rested in the belief that the President either had interfered or that he would interfere. Their confidence was in Mr. A. R. Corbin, a brother-in-law of the President, who, under the influence of various considerations, which appear to have been personal and pecuniary to a very large extent, lent himself to the task of influencing the President. As a matter of fact, his attempts were very feeble and misdirected and of no consequence whatever. Indeed, such is my opinion of the President, and such my belief as to his opinion concerning Mr. Corbin, that nothing which Mr. Corbin did say, or could have said, did have or could have had the least influence upon the President's opinion or conduct. It is, however, also true that Fisk and Gould employed Corbin and gave him consideration in their undertakings out of which he realized some money. I received information, also, which may not have been true, that they suggested to him that he might become president of the Tenth National Bank, which had a very conspicuous part in the events which culminated in Black Friday.
An attempt to strengthen the impression that it was the purpose of the President to prevent the sale of gold was made through an article prepared by Mr. Corbin, probably under the direction of Mr. Gould and others, which appeared finally, with some alterations and omissions, in the New York Times of the 25th of August. It appears to have been the purpose of the parties interested to mislead the Times as to the authorship of the article, and they secured the agency of Mr. James McHenry, a prominent English capitalist, who called at the Times office, and presented the article to Mr. Bigelow, the editor, as the opinion of a person in the intimate confidence of the President. The article was put in type and double leaded. When so prepared, suspicions were aroused, and the financial editor, Mr. Norvell, made very important corrections, taking care to omit sentences and paragraphs that contained explicit statements as to the purposes of the President. Some of the phrases omitted were in these words: "It may be that further purchases of bonds will be made directly with gold." "As gold accumulates, the less would be the premium upon it. High prices for gold before the sale of our products would cause lower prices of gold after the sale of products."
Among the statements made which were preserved in the article as printed finally were these: "The President evidently intends to pay off the 5-20s as rapidly as he may in gold"; "So far as current movements of the Treasury are concerned, until crops are moved it is not likely Treasury gold will be sold for currency to be locked up."
Following the appearance of this article, I received a letter from Mr. Gould, dated the 30th of August, in which this sentence appears: "If the New York Times correctly reflects your financial policy during the next three or four months; namely, to unloose the currency balance at the Treasury or keep it at the lowest possible figure, and also to refrain during the same period from selling or putting gold on the market, thus preventing a depression of the premium at a season of the year when the bulk of our agricultural products have to be marketed, then I think the country peculiarly fortunate in having a financial head who can take a broad view of the situation, and who realizes the importance of settling the large balance of debt against us by the export of our agricultural and mining products instead of bonds and gold."