In March, 1872, the blow was struck. A man named Archer had been elected vice-president in place of Fisk, and with his aid the revolution was accomplished. Gould had made him vice-president with the view of conciliating the opposition. Nine members of the Board of Directors had been won over to the opposition. These wrote to Gould, asking him to call a meeting of the board. As Gould did not respond, Vice-President Archer called the meeting. The revolutionists assembled at Barlow’s house and prepared to carry the Grand Opera House by storm. Gould had this barricaded by his men, with instructions to permit no one to pass in. But the revolutionists succeeded in passing the picket line and passed in, and Mr. Archer called the meeting to order. Then ensued an extraordinary scene which lasted all night. Gould ordered the “conspirators,” as he called them, to leave the building. They refused. Gould at this time had the benefit of the legal advice of David Dudley Field and Thomas G. Shearman. Mr. Field was long one of the leaders of the New York bar. One of his brothers sat on the Supreme Court bench of the United States, and the other, Cyrus W. Field, was the father of the Atlantic cable, and soon one of the closest of Gould’s business associates. Mr. Shearman, who afterward became famous in the defense of Henry Ward Beecher, had before this time published an article on the corruption of the New York judiciary, which attracted widespread attention, but he was now counsel to a man who owned two or three Supreme Court judges and a few months later publicly admitted the distribution of a corruption fund. Space will not permit the telling of all the incidents of that night. Shearman appeared with forty policemen and ordered the revolutionists to leave, but they shut themselves up in their rooms and refused to do so. Gould obtained from Judge Ingraham a temporary injunction to restrain Archer and the other directors from acting, but they calmly proceeded to elect new officers and directors. Field and Shearman declared that Gould’s legal position was absolutely perfect, but notwithstanding this he was finally obliged to give in. The opposition elected Gen Dix as president and Gen. McClellan as one of the directors. The _World_ of March 11, 1872, thus describes this memorable night: “The scene at the Grand Opera House was one to be remembered. Gould and Eldridge, with their counsel, in one room and the newly chosen directors in another, the doors of both rooms barred, opening to no one but an avowed friend, each fearful of orders of arrests being served on them, every spare room in the offices filled with blue-coated officers of the peace, sitting in all the chairs and on all the tables and lying on the floors, and an intense sense of subdued excitement pervading the heavy air of the place. The only communication between the two hostile parties was by means of Peter B. Sweeney, who acted as go-between.