An event now took place which would have seemed to justify the implicit belief of an Erie treasurer in the corruptibility of all mankind. The unsuspicious President again passed through New York, and came to breakfast at Mr. Corbin’s house on the 2d of September. He saw no one but Mr. Corbin while there, and the same evening at ten o’clock, departed for Saratoga. Mr. Gould declared afterward, however, that he was told by Mr. Corbin that the President, in discussing the financial situation, had shown himself a convert to the Erie theory about marketing the crops, and had stopped in the middle of a conversation in which he had expressed his views and written a letter to Secretary Boutwell. In regard to this letter, Secretary Boutwell testified as follows:
“I think on the evening of the 4th of September I received a letter from the President, dated at New York, as I recollect it; I am not sure where it was dated. In that letter he expressed an opinion that it was undesirable to force down the price of gold. He spoke of the importance to the West of being able to move their crops. His idea was that if gold should fall, the West should suffer and the movement of the crop would be retarded. The impression made on my mind by the letter was that he had rather a strong opinion to that effect. Upon the receipt of the President’s letter, I telegraphed to Judge Richardson, ‘Send no order to Butterfield as to sales of gold until you hear from me.’”
Mr. Gould had therefore succeeded in reversing the policy of the National Government, but this was not all. He knew what the government would do before any officer of the government knew it. Mr. Gould was at Corbin’s house on the 2d of September, and it seems certain that he saw Corbin privately, unknown to the President, within an hour or two after this letter to Mr. Boutwell was written, and that it was at this interview, while the President was still in the house, that Mr. Corbin gave him the information about the letter, perhaps showed him the letter itself. It was immediately at this time that Gould bought $1,500,000 worth of gold for Corbin.
No time was lost, and from this day Gould bought largely of gold. He did everything to give the public the impression that the government was behind the “deal.” An article written by Corbin was published as an editorial in the Times and attracted attention, as the editor, John Bigelow, had just had a conversation with the President and was supposed to speak with authority. Notwithstanding the authorship of the article, it is just to say that the Times detected the odor of Wall street about it and quarantined the article before making it public. Its effectiveness for Gould was much lessened. Gould wrote to Boutwell with a view of obtaining an official statement from him, but received a reply that said little and that diplomatically. Meanwhile Gould had been buying millions in gold and had formed a pool that bought millions more. That the movement was fictitious is shown by the fact that the impression on prices was comparatively small. Fisk looked on incredulously. “The country is against you,” was his criticism of the scheme.
Down to this moment Jim Fisk had not appeared in the affair. It was not until after September 10th that Gould appears to have decided that there was nothing else to be done but to take him into confidence. Fisk immediately bought seven or eight millions and the market began to respond slowly to these enormous purchases.
“Meanwhile Mr. Gould had placed another million and a half of gold to the account of Gen. Butterfield and notified him of the purchase; so Mr. Gould swears, in spite of Gen. Butterfield’s denial. The date of this purchase is not fixed. Through Mr. Corbin a notice was also sent by Gould about the middle of September to the President’s private secretary, Gen. Porter, informing him that half a million was placed to his credit. Gen. Porter instantly wrote to repudiate his purchase, but it does not appear that Butterfield took any notice of Gould’s transaction on his account. On the 10th of September the President had again come to New York, where he remained his brother-in-law’s guest till the 13th, and during this visit Mr. Gould appears again to have seen him, although Mr. Corbin avers that on this occasion the President intimated his wish to the servant that this should be the last time Mr. Gould obtain admission.
“Things were now so managed that the President was placed in a position that his honor was seriously in danger of being compromised, yet so ably was the matter engineered that he was perfectly unconscious of the designs of the plotters. 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 communications, and the other means of access were not very convenient. The President set out on his journey on the morning of the 13th, and there he was ensconced to remain for a week or so, about the time the Cabal was fully prepared for action.
“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’ on 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 make him an object of universal contempt.”
Some of the members of the pool got frightened and sold out, but Gould continued to buy. “I had to buy,” testified Gould afterward, “or show the white feather. The other fellows deserted me like rats.” Gould had the material aid of the Tenth National Bank, an institution which he owned and which he used as an adjunct to his speculative operations. The extent to which he used it in the gold conspiracy was shown by the fact that it in one day overcertified Gould’s checks to the amount of $7,500,000. Garfield called this bank “a manufactory of certified checks.”