The Gilded Age Murder That Built America: Jim Fisk скачать в хорошем качестве

The Gilded Age Murder That Built America: Jim Fisk

Jim Fisk, the flamboyant "Barnum of Wall Street" financier, was shot twice by former business partner Edward Stokes on January 6, 1872, at Manhattan's Grand Central Hotel over mistress Josie Mansfield. The 36-year-old robber baron who nearly destroyed America's economy with his 1869 Black Friday gold corner scheme drew 20,000 mourners to his funeral—the largest since Lincoln—while his killer served only four years. -------------------------------- Gain FREE access to secret full-length documentaries on wealthy families "too scandalous for YouTube" by joining our newsletter: https://www.substack.com/@oldmoneyluxury -------------------------------- TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Introduction 1:24 Chapter One: The Prince of Erie 5:19 Chapter Two: The Circus Boy's Ascent 8:58 Chapter Three: The Erie War 12:33 Chapter Four: Black Friday 16:19 Chapter Five: The Fatal Triangle 19:55 Chapter Six: Twenty Thousand Mourners -------------------------------- Two shots echoed through the marble lobby of the Grand Central Hotel on January 6, 1872, as Jim Fisk—the most flamboyant financier in America—tumbled down the grand staircase with bullets in his abdomen and arm. "For God's sake, will no one save me?" he cried before dying the following morning at age 36. The shooter was Edward Stiles Stokes, his former business partner, and the woman they were fighting over was Josie Mansfield, Fisk's mistress who waited across town for news. Just three years earlier, Fisk had nearly destroyed the American economy in a scheme to corner the gold market on Black Friday 1869. Jim Fisk operated his empire from the Grand Opera House at 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue, which housed both Erie Railroad headquarters and theatrical spectacles in the same building. He maintained a hidden passageway connecting the opera house to his mistress's adjacent townhouse on 23rd Street. James Fisk Jr. was born April 1, 1835, in rural Pownal, Vermont, to an itinerant peddler father who traveled the countryside selling goods from a wagon. At fifteen, he ran away to join Van Amberg's Mammoth Circus and Menagerie, where he learned salesmanship, spectacle creation, and audience manipulation that would prove invaluable on Wall Street. During the Civil War, Fisk secured contracts selling textiles to the Union Army while supplementing income with cotton smuggling across Confederate lines. His most audacious wartime gambit involved shorting Confederate bonds in London after learning of Petersburg's fall before news reached European markets. In 1866, Fisk arrived in New York and partnered with notorious financier Daniel Drew, who introduced him to Jay Gould. Together, Fisk and Gould fought the Erie War against Cornelius Vanderbilt by flooding the market with 50,000 fraudulent shares through convertible bonds. When arrest warrants were issued, they fled to Jersey City with $6 million cash and paid New York legislators $1 million to pass the "Erie Bill" retroactively legalizing their fraud. On September 24, 1869—Black Friday—Fisk and Gould attempted to corner America's gold market, driving prices from $143 to $162 before Treasury intervention caused collapse to $130. The scheme devastated the national economy, halting foreign trade, dropping stock prices 20%, and destroying grain farmers they claimed to help. Gould secretly liquidated his positions while Fisk kept buying, bearing the full weight of public hatred. Josie Mansfield was born December 15, 1847, in Boston, daughter of a journalist killed during California's Gold Rush when she was seven. After a failed acting career, she met Fisk in fall 1867 and played hard to get for three months before accepting his advances. Fisk showered her with gifts totaling nearly $1 million in today's currency, including jewelry, wardrobe, and the 23rd Street townhouse. On New Year's Day 1870, Fisk brought Edward Stokes to Mansfield's party, and within days Stokes began calling on her alone. When Fisk discovered the affair, Mansfield audaciously suggested: "I don't see why we can't all three be friends?" The personal betrayal escalated into legal warfare with embezzlement charges, blackmail threats, and extortion indictments. On January 5, 1872, Stokes learned Fisk had secured grand jury indictments against him and Mansfield, narrowing his options to nothing. Approximately 20,000 people filed past Fisk's open casket at the Grand Opera House—the largest public viewing since Abraham Lincoln. The mourners were working-class New Yorkers, immigrants, and the poor whom Fisk had cultivated, not the Wall Street elite who scorned him. Edward Stokes faced three trials, receiving a death sentence overturned on appeal before final conviction for manslaughter and six-year sentence. He served four years, rebuilt himself as a respectable Manhattan hotelier, and died in 1901 at age 60, never expressing regret. Mark Twain coined "Gilded Age" the year after Fisk's murder—an era glittering on the surface, corrupt underneath.