Business; Capitalists and financiers -- United States; Speculation; Wall Street (New York, N.Y.)
a balance in her favor of about $27,000, and that a check for $25,000
had been sent. Said I: ‘Mr. Corbin, what can you show me that goes still
further than your talk?’ ‘Oh, well,’ the old man said, ‘I can’t show you
anything, but,’ said he, ‘this is all right.’ He talked freely and
repeated: ‘I tell you it is all right.’ When I went away from there, I
had made up my mind that Corbin had told me the truth.”
An attempt was made to prove, before the Garfield Committee, that a
package containing $25,000 was sent to Mrs. Grant through the Adams
Express Company, but expert testimony failed to decide whether the
amount was that or $250, as the two noughts at the extreme right were
crowded into the cents column, and it was difficult to determine whether
or not a very light “period” was placed between them and the “$250.”
The design of the clique was manifest, however, to implicate the family
of the President in some way or other, in order that they might make use
of the Executive influence to help accomplish their great speculative
purpose. But as the Garfield Committee truly said in its report: “The
wicked and cunningly devised attempt of the conspirators to compromise
the President of the United States or his family utterly failed.”
The scheme might have succeeded if Fisk had been possessed of the
coolness and penetration of his partner, but his impetuosity, anxiety
and enthusiasm aroused suspicion and partially spoiled the plot.
Fisk was so eager to be satisfied that Grant was all right that he
overdid the thing by urging Corbin to write Grant a letter to stand firm
and not to permit the Treasury to sell gold under any consideration. The
outcome of this afforded clear proof, if any were wanting, that Grant
had no guilty knowledge of the base purposes for which he was being
used. Fisk had this letter from Corbin sent by a special messenger from
Pittsburgh, who rode twenty-eight miles on horseback, and delivered it
in person to the President. He read the letter, and had his suspicions
at once aroused. He said laconically to the messenger, “It is
satisfactory; there is no answer.” He began to see through the game, and
at once desired Mrs. Grant to write to Mrs. Corbin requesting her
husband to have nothing more to do with the Gould-Fisk gang.
Mrs. Grant wrote to Mrs. Corbin to say that the President was greatly
troubled to learn that her husband had been speculating in Wall Street,
and that she should desire him to disconnect himself immediately with
the party who were attempting to entrap the President.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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