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 communication, and the other means of access were not very convenient. There the President was ensconced, to remain for a week or so about the time the Cabal was fully prepared for action.
Sometime about the period of the President’s departure for Little Washington, Fisk bought seven or eight millions of gold. 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” in 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 render him an object of universal contempt.
Gould and Fisk, through Corbin, also attempted to compromise Grant’s family, as well as his private Secretary, General Horace Porter. This intention was fully disclosed through the interview of Fisk with Corbin. Fisk testified: “When I met Corbin he talked very shy about the matter at first, but finally came right out and told me that Mrs. Grant had an interest; that $500,000 in gold had been taken at 31 and 32, which had been sold at 37; that Mr. Corbin held for himself about two millions of gold, $500,000 of which was for Mrs. Grant and $500,000 for Porter. I did not ask whether he was General or not. I remember the name Porter. This was given out very slowly. He let out just as fast as I did when he found that Gould had told me about the same thing. I said: ‘Now, I have had nothing to do with your transactions in one way or the other. We have embarked in a scheme that looks like one of large magnitude. Mr. Gould has lost as the thing stands now. It looks as if it might be a pretty serious business before getting out straight again. The whole success depends on whether the Government will unload on to us or not.’ He said: ‘You need not have the least fear.’ I said: ‘I want to know whether what Mr. Gould told me is true. I want to know whether you have sent this $25,000 to Washington, as he states?’ He then told me that he had sent it, that Mr. Gould had sold $500,000 in gold belonging to Mrs. Grant, which cost 32, for 37 or something in that neighborhood, leaving a balance in her favor of about $27,000, and that a check for $25,000 had been sent. Said I: ‘Mr. Corbin, what can you show me that goes still further than your talk?’ ‘Oh, well,’ the old man said, ‘I can’t show you anything, but,’ said he, ‘this is all right.’ He talked freely and repeated: ‘I tell you it is all right.’ When I went away from there, I had made up my mind that Corbin had told me the truth.”
An attempt was made to prove, before the Garfield Committee, that a package containing $25,000 was sent to Mrs. Grant through the Adams Express Company, but expert testimony failed to decide whether the amount was that or $250, as the two noughts at the extreme right were crowded into the cents column, and it was difficult to determine whether or not a very light “period” was placed between them and the “$250.”
The design of the clique was manifest, however, to implicate the family of the President in some way or other, in order that they might make use of the Executive influence to help accomplish their great speculative purpose. But as the Garfield Committee truly said in its report: “The wicked and cunningly devised attempt of the conspirators to compromise the President of the United States or his family utterly failed.”
The scheme might have succeeded if Fisk had been possessed of the coolness and penetration of his partner, but his impetuosity, anxiety and enthusiasm aroused suspicion and partially spoiled the plot.
Fisk was so eager to be satisfied that Grant was all right that he overdid the thing by urging Corbin to write Grant a letter to stand firm and not to permit the Treasury to sell gold under any consideration. The outcome of this afforded clear proof, if any were wanting, that Grant had no guilty knowledge of the base purposes for which he was being used. Fisk had this letter from Corbin sent by a special messenger from Pittsburgh, who rode twenty-eight miles on horseback, 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.
Mrs. Grant wrote to Mrs. Corbin to say that the President was greatly troubled to learn that her husband had been speculating in Wall Street, and that she should desire him to disconnect himself immediately with the party who were attempting to entrap the President.
Corbin hastened to obey the mandate from Little Washington. He was greatly agitated, but the ruling passion of avarice was strong; in bidding Gould farewell, and before taking his final adieu of the clique, he requested the arch plotter to hand him over his share of the profits. Referring to this incident, Gould said: “I told him I would give $100,000 on account, and that when I sold, if he liked, I would give him the average of my sales. I did not feel like buying any gold of him then.”