Things were 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 communication, and the other means of access were not very convenient. There the President was ensconced, to remain for a week or so about the time the Cabal was fully prepared for action. Sometime about the period of the President’s departure for Little Washington, Fisk bought seven or eight millions of gold. 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” in 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 render him an object of universal contempt. Gould and Fisk, through Corbin, also attempted to compromise Grant’s family, as well as his private Secretary, General Horace Porter. This intention was fully disclosed through the interview of Fisk with Corbin. Fisk testified: “When I met Corbin he talked very shy about the matter at first, but finally came right out and told me that Mrs. Grant had an interest; that $500,000 in gold had been taken at 31 and 32, which had been sold at 37; that Mr. Corbin held for himself about two millions of gold, $500,000 of which was for Mrs. Grant and $500,000 for Porter. I did not ask whether he was General or not. I remember the name Porter. This was given out very slowly. He let out just as fast as I did when he found that Gould had told me about the same thing. I said: ‘Now, I have had nothing to do with your transactions in one way or the other. We have embarked in a scheme that looks like one of large magnitude. Mr. Gould has lost as the thing stands now. It looks as if it might be a pretty serious business before getting out straight again. The whole success depends on whether the Government will unload on to us or not.’ He said: ‘You need not have the least fear.’ I said: ‘I want to know whether what Mr. Gould told me is true. I want to know whether you have sent this $25,000 to Washington, as he states?’ He then told me that he had sent it, that Mr. Gould had sold $500,000 in gold belonging to Mrs. Grant, which cost 32, for 37 or something in that neighborhood, leaving