“Meanwhile Mr. Gould had placed another million and a half of gold to the account of Gen. Butterfield and notified him of the purchase; so Mr. Gould swears, in spite of Gen. Butterfield’s denial. The date of this purchase is not fixed. Through Mr. Corbin a notice was also sent by Gould about the middle of September to the President’s private secretary, Gen. Porter, informing him that half a million was placed to his credit. Gen. Porter instantly wrote to repudiate his purchase, but it does not appear that Butterfield took any notice of Gould’s transaction on his account. On the 10th of September the President had again come to New York, where he remained his brother-in-law’s guest till the 13th, and during this visit Mr. Gould appears again to have seen him, although Mr. Corbin avers that on this occasion the President intimated his wish to the servant that this should be the last time Mr. Gould obtain admission. “Things were now 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 communications, and the other means of access were not very convenient. The President set out on his journey on the morning of the 13th, and there he was ensconced to remain for a week or so, about the time the Cabal was fully prepared for action. “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’ on 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 make him an object of universal contempt.” Some of the members of the pool got frightened and sold out, but Gould continued to buy. “I had to buy,” testified Gould afterward, “or show the white feather. The other fellows deserted me like rats.” Gould had the material aid of the Tenth National Bank, an institution which he owned and which he used as an adjunct to his speculative operations. The extent to which he used it in the gold conspiracy was shown by the fact that it in one day overcertified Gould’s checks to the amount of $7,500,000. Garfield called this bank “a manufactory of certified checks.” As Gould bought the bears sold “short” and the battle became intensely exciting.