The accountant who tried to corner gold

Jim Fisk and Jay Gould weren't your average Wall Street speculators — they were robber barons with a plan so audacious it nearly broke the American economy. Their scheme was elegant in its simplicity: buy up every available ounce of gold in New York, create artificial scarcity, watch the price soar, then sell at the peak. The only problem? They needed to keep the federal government from releasing its gold reserves and flooding the market.

So Gould did what any self-respecting Gilded Age schemer would do: he befriended President Grant's brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, and convinced him that a high gold price would help farmers by making their exports more competitive. Corbin whispered this theory into Grant's ear at every opportunity. For a while, it worked. As Fisk and Gould accumulated gold throughout the summer of 1869, the price climbed from $130 to $160 per ounce.

But Grant eventually smelled a rat. On September 24, 1869 — a Friday — he ordered Treasury Secretary George Boutwell to sell government gold immediately. The market collapsed within minutes. Gold plummeted from $160 to $133 in a single day. Fortunes evaporated. Brokerage houses failed. The stock market seized up completely.

Fisk and Gould, naturally, walked away largely unscathed — they'd started selling early, likely tipped off that Grant was catching on. The subsequent congressional investigation found plenty of corruption but resulted in zero criminal charges. Black Friday became a cautionary tale about market manipulation, though whether anyone actually learned the lesson is debatable.