September 24, 1869: The Panic of 1869

September 24, 1869: The Panic of 1869 occurs. It does not immediately lead to an economic depression, although it was a factor which, along with the later Panic of 1873, contributed to a depression in the years to come.

Jay Gould

New York stock market investors Jay Gould and James Fisk had approached Abel Corbin, brother-in-law of President Ulysses S. Grant, in order to get inside information on the American economy. It worked, and Gould and Fisk began buying gold, raising its price. So, on this day, Grant, learning he had been betrayed and that the American economy could be ruined, orders the release of $4 million worth of gold -- about $86 million in 2022 money.

Jim Fisk

The result is a stock market crash that becomes known as Black Friday. But while the short-term effects were bad, the long-term effect was the stabilization of the American economy. There would be no depression – in Grant's 1st term. In his 2nd term, that would be another story.

But his reputation was already damaged: The biggest hero of the Civil War was now viewed as a man who had been fooled into an emergency measure. It was the 1st scandal of his Administration, but it would not be the last.

Fisk was murdered in 1872. Gould was able to rebuild his fortune through railroad speculation, and, in 1882, a cartoonist drew him with a bowling ball, depicting Wall Street as "Jay Gould's Private Bowling Alley." He died in 1892, at age 56, from tuberculosis. He was said to be worth $72 million -- about $2.3 billion in today's money. So, by today's standards, filthy rich, but not the richest of the rich.

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September 24, 1869 was, as stated, a Friday. This was the dawn of professional sports. It was a day off for the Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball's 1st openly professional team. So there were no scores on this historic day.

January 7, 1872: The Murder of Big Jim Fisk

January 7, 1872: Jim Fisk dies, a day after being shot at the Grand Central Hotel on Broadway in Lower Manhattan. He was 36 years old. It was one of the most spectacular crimes of the Gilded Age.

James Fisk Jr. (no middle name) was born on April 1, 1835 in Pownal, Vermont, about 40 miles northeast of Albany, New York. He got rich through selling dry goods to the U.S. Army during the American Civil War, and became known as Big Jim for both his physical and his financial size. He was also nicknamed Diamond Jim well before Jim Brady came along.

He became a stockbroker, and he and Jay Gould gained control of the New York and Erie Railroad. They expanded their fortunes through an alliance with New York's political czar, William "Boss" Tweed, their attempt to corner the gold market, with the assistance of Abel Corbin, husband of President Ulysses S. Grant's sister Virginia, led to the stock market Panic of 1869. Fisk and Gould emerged with their fortunes intact, but it smeared Grant's previously pristine reputation.

Fisk paid his employees well, but pretty much everybody else who knew who he was hated him. He lived long enough after being shot to identify his murderer as Ned Stokes, a business associate, who surely knew all of Fisk's secrets.

But it wasn't over money, or ethics. It was personal. It seems they also shared a mistress, the socialite Josie Mansfield. Stokes claimed self-defense, was sentenced to 6 years in prison, and served 4. He died in 1901. Mansfield fled the country due to the scandal, spent the rest of her days in Paris, and died in 1931.

The Grand Central Hotel was at 673 Broadway, at 3rd Street in Greenwich Village. It opened in 1870, and was advertised as the largest hotel in America. Baseball's National League was founded there in 1876.

By August 3, 1973, it was a welfare hotel. On that date, part of the building collapsed, killing 4 people. New York University built a dormitory on the site. A plaque honoring the NL's founding is on the Broadway side.

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January 7, 1872 was a Sunday. Baseball and football were out of season. Hockey was not yet organized. And basketball wouldn't be invented for almost 20 years. So there were no scores on this historic day.