The President was to be sounded in regard to his financial policy on the occasion of this memorable trip to Boston, and when the selected guests sat down at nine o’clock to supper the conversation was directed to the subject of finance. “Some one,” says Mr. Gould, “asked the President what his view was.” The “some one” in question was, of course, Mr. Fisk, who alone had the impudence to put such an inquiry. The President bluntly replied that 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. The remark was fatal to Mr. Gould’s plans and he felt it, in his own words, “as a wet blanket.”
Mr. Fisk, in his testimony, frankly said:
“On our passage over to Boston with Gen. Grant we endeavored to ascertain what his position in regard to finances was. We went down to dinner 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 in his testimony said of the President: “He was our guest. At this supper the question came up about the state of the country, the crops, and the prospects ahead. 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. That was about the substance of his remark. He then asked me what I thought about it. I remarked that I thought if that policy was carried out it would produce great distress, and almost lead to civil war.”
However, Gould was already in, and he was not a man to back out as long as he saw any chance for success, and he finally succeeded in really impressing on the President’s mind that in order to move the crops it was necessary that gold should sell at 145. Gould’s first purchases had been made as low as 130¼, which was about the normal price.
But it should be said at the outset that there is not a particle of evidence that Gen. Grant was ever personally concerned in the speculation or that he winked at members of his official household being so. On the contrary, the evidence is all the other way. Grant never seemed to like Gould. When the latter succeeded in getting his first interview with the President, Gen. Grant reprimanded his servant for allowing him so easy an access to his person, and at a later day the President remarked to his Secretary that he did not like to have that man—referring to Gould—around so much. “He is always trying to get something out of me,” was the President’s remark.
After the party returned to New York, Gen. Grant, Mr. Gould and Mr. Corbin had private interviews on the gold question at Mr. Corbin’s house. As a result of these interviews, according to Mr. Gould’s testimony, the President remarked that the government would do nothing during the fall months to put down the price of gold or to make money tight. Just after those interviews Mr. Gould purchased two millions in government bonds for Mr. Corbin’s account. The next interview with President Grant on this great subject was at Newport, where James Fisk, Jr., followed him.
Fisk testified that Corbin told him that Mrs. Grant had an interest in the gold speculations; that five hundred thousand of gold had been taken by Mr. Gould at 131 and 132, which had been sold at 137; that Mr. Corbin held for himself about two millions of gold, five hundred thousand of which was for Mrs. Grant and five hundred thousand for “Porter.”
The story of the conspiracy, as Mr. Clews tells it, is interesting as well, and has certain points of difference from the others. He says:
“Although the policy of stopping the sale of gold had been agreed upon in deference to the views of the best financiers of the country, yet Mr. Gould and his fellow strategists thought it was best to make assurance doubly sure on this point, in order that nothing might stand in the way of the great speculative intrigue to get a “corner” in gold. President Grant was conservative on the subject. The conspirators, therefore, conceived the design of arranging things so that Secretary Boutwell could not depart from this policy, no matter what emergency might arise.