The panic of 1857 had left this road in a demoralized condition, and Gould found that he could buy a majority of the first mortgage bonds at ten cents on the dollar. He had now found the true field for his peculiar talent. He made himself president, treasurer and general superintendent of the road, studied the business of railroading on the ground, developed the local traffic, and finally effected the Rensselaer and Saratoga Consolidation. By this time, both bonds and stocks were good and he sold the latter for one hundred and twenty dollars. There has been no time when it was possible to estimate the wealth of Mr. Gould, and as he was secretive in those early days as in his later, there was no saying what he was worth when in 1860 he came into Wall street. One statement has it that when the firm of Smith, Gould & Martin was organized, Mr. Gould’s possessions amounted to thirty thousand dollars in cash. Another is that when he sold out his holdings in the Rensselaer and Saratoga Consolidation, he was worth seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. With a mind peculiarly alert to all the influences which affected the values of railway securities, with habits of great industry, with phenomenal tenacity of purpose, with a fair amount at least of capital to back him, it is not surprising that Mr. Gould profited largely by his speculation in railway stocks and gold during the war of the rebellion. The keen-sighted, intelligent men in “the Street” at that time nearly all made money, and Mr. Gould was at least a millionaire when the Confederacy fell. What his methods were at the time it is useless to speculate about. It was before the day when by absolute mastery of gigantic railway and telegraph systems he could at his will depress the value of almost any institution on which he fixed his eye by setting on foot a ruinous war in rates until he had made it to be his own interest to restore a more normal and healthful condition of affairs by ceasing his antagonism and building up the property which he had acquired cheaply during the period of depression. But the details of his operations were always so subtle as to be shut out from the discovery of either friend or foe.