Then I saw that these men who were engaged in the conspiracy to create a panic, and benefit themselves both politically and financially by its results, were a deeply designing lot, and that under the law, gold could be bid up, the highest bidders obtaining it, having the option of either paying by depositing their money in payment for it in the National depositories, which were the Fourth National Bank and the Bank of Commerce, or else depositing it in the Sub-Treasury. If deposited in the latter it would be locked up, and the effect intended by the Treasury, to make money easy, would be neutralized, in so far as the influence of the money as a circulating medium was concerned.
In order, therefore, to provide for that probable contingency, my firm subscribed for the whole ten millions of gold, the names being the clerks of my office. We were awarded eight millions, and we paid the money into the Bank of Commerce, and the Fourth National Bank, through which it was brought into circulation.
Thus ten millions of greenbacks and also ten millions of gold came fresh from the Sub-Treasury into circulation immediately, promptly anticipating and defeating the machinations of the Ring.
The Tweed Ring being “all broke up” on this deal, the effect was magical on the market. The plans of the conspirators had been entirely upset, and the Pennsylvania election took place a few days afterward with an overwhelming majority for the Republicans.
Had the panic, which was projected by the Ring, taken place, the result might have been otherwise, and the re-election of Grant thus jeopardized.
After this triumph over Tweed and his gang, I set my wits to work to plan their overthrow. I saw that their power was entirely money power, obtained by official position through official theft. I was satisfied that these patriots who had put their hands up to the elbows in the City Treasury of New York were bent upon buying, stealing or otherwise obtaining their way to the National Treasury at Washington.
They had hoped to do there on a large scale what they had accomplished on a smaller scale in the city of New York, where they were becoming restive under their limited resources.
It was with the view of suppressing the dangerous aspirations of this band of political marauders that I originated the well known Vigilance Committee of Seventy, and at the first meeting to organize this committee I nominated sixty-five of its members.
The committee was thus backed at the start by so many prominent citizens as to make it at once a power in the community.
Then for the first time in many years the citizens of New York were emboldened to become outspoken on the subject of political plunder and tyranny, and against the officials who had ruled the city with a rod of iron.