Jubilee Jim Fisk: Gilded Age Grifter

The Robber Barons' Club

The names are legendary: Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, John Jacob Astor, Jay Gould. Together, they were known as “robber barons” and they bestrode the American business scene in the second half of the 19th century.

They were unscrupulous; exploiting their employees, bribing politicians and judges, floating stock swindles, and destroying the environment.

A less well known member of the clan was James “Jubilee Jim” Fisk. His relative obscurity may be because he passed away at just 36. The cause of death was a bullet.

Jim Fisk's Early Life

Born into a family of modest means in 1835 (April Fool's Day as it happens), Fisk ran away at the age of 15 and joined a circus. After four years, he joined his father's door-to-door peddling business.

With the Civil War causing chaos, Fisk realized there was money to be made outside the bounds of the law. According to u-s-history.com, “Fisk amassed a considerable fortune by smuggling Southern cotton through the Union blockade, selling Confederate bonds to Europeans and, later, dealing in cotton in the South during Reconstruction.”

Like many millionaires, Fisk lost that fortune in risky business gambles but soon bounced back with the help of Daniel Drew, another member of the Robber Baron fraternity. Fisk and Drew opened a brokerage firm in New York in 1864 and soon the pair were engaged in a financial battle with Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The Erie War

The Erie Railway between Buffalo and New York City opened in 1851; having amassed a pile of cash from the Civil War, Drew, Fisk, and Jay Gould invested heavily in it. They became owners and directors of the company and set about diverting its value into their own pockets.

Railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, owner of the New York Central Railroad, decided ownership of the Erie would give him a stranglehold on the transportation of goods.

Quietly, Vanderbilt started buying up stock in the Erie until he owned a majority of its shares. He assumed this would give him control of the company, but he didn't grasp how villainous Drew, Fisk, and Gould were.

Illegally, the trio issued boatloads of stock in the Erie Railway diluting Vanderbilt's holding to a minority position.

Vanderbilt found a friendly judge who issued an injunction for Drew, Fisk, and Gould to appear in court. So, in March 1868, the three rogues crossed the Hudson River by rowboat to New Jersey, “and barricaded themselves in a hotel, protected by hired thugs” (Thought Company).

Outside the reach of New York state law, Drew and Gould remained sequestered from public view; not so Fisk. Always a flamboyant figure, dressed in flashy uniforms with large diamond rings on his fingers, he courted reporters who lapped up the outrageous quotes he gave them.

Meanwhile, Jay Gould was funnelling money to the impoverished legislators in Albany who were suddenly seized with the necessity to pass a law legalizing the stock manipulation that had squeezed Vanderbilt out.

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The end of the saga came about through a murky agreement. Gould and Fisk turned on Drew through more stock manipulation and Vanderbilt sold back his shares at a loss. Gould and Fisk ended up in control of the railroad, which they burdened with so much debt that it was 70 years before it made a profit.

American-rails.com notes that “The war marked a transition in the prevailing business norms of the period. It brought to light the brazen manipulation, rampant bribery, and strategic alliances that could be exploited to wield power ... Following the Erie War, endless speculation, insider trading, and stock watering became commonplace, practices that Gould and his associates had exploited to their advantage.”

There was no regulation of business practices; it was the time when capitalism was red in tooth and claw.

The Black Friday Panic

When Ulysses S. Grant became U.S. President in March 1869 he inherited a Treasury that was empty. To fix the problem, Grant began selling some of the government's gold. Like a couple of vultures feeding on a carcass, Fisk and Gould bought as much bullion as they could get their hands on.

The second part of their plan was to get Grant to stop selling gold. With the precious metal scarce, the price would rise and the two scoundrels would make a killing.

To make this happen they enlisted the services of Abel Corbin, Grant's brother-in-law. Through Corbin, the duo gained access to the president and tried to sweet talk him into withholding gold from the market.

However, Grant smelled a rat—actually, two rats—and ordered $4 million in gold to be sold on Friday, September 24, 1869. The rats had an accomplice in the Treasury who alerted them so they dumped their holdings.

Investopedia.com picks up the story:

“The gold market collapsed, causing the stock market to plummet more than 20% in the next week, ruining many investors. The day became known in financial history as Black Friday.”

But, Fisk and Gould walked away pretty much unscathed.

Jim Fisk's Personal Life

Fisk married young. He was 19, and his bride, Lucy Moore, was 15. For a man to whom cheating was a way of life, the promise of fidelity in his marriage vows meant nothing. While his wife lived in Boston, Fisk was gallivanting around New York.

His chat-up line was fairly basic; if he saw a woman he found attractive he offered her a $100 bill (worth about $2,000 in today's money). Then, he met Josie Mansfield, described euphemistically as either a struggling actress or a chorus girl. The Library of Congress says the meeting took place “at a notorious bordello in Manhattan.”

She turned down his $100; she wanted more. Soon, Fisk was paying Mansfield's rent and bedecking her with jewels and fashionable dresses. The affair was the talk of the town until Josie fell in love with one Edward Stokes, a business partner of Fisk's. This turned into a very nasty love triangle.

Mansfield tried to blackmail Fisk by threatening to expose his crooked business practices. Stokes also joined in the blackmailing fun. There were accusations of foul play and embezzlement. Fisk took the couple to court and won, enraging Stokes.

On January 6, 1872, the two men encountered one another at the Grand Central Hotel in New York's East Village. Stokes pulled a gun and shot Fisk twice. He fell to the floor and shouted “For God’s sake, will no one save me?” But, it was too late for Fisk, who died the following day.

Stokes was tried for murder and twice found guilty and sentenced to hang. Money enabled him to get a third trial with a friendlier jury and he was locked up in Sing Sing for four years.

Fisk's short life meant he never achieved the notoriety of his fellow robber barons. This was no doubt a benefit to the many people he never got a chance to swindle.

He also died before he was able to endow charities so as to polish up his legacy as Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Astor did; men who successfully turned themselves from ruthless industrialists into philanthropists.

Bonus Factoids

• A few months after Fisk's death a rumour started circulating in Finland that he had left a large chunk of his fortune to a family living in the country. The story, which was false, started with a newspaper report. As with such myths, it died down until early in the 20th century when a family came forward to claim the non-existent legacy. Fisk had no known family connections to Finland.
• The financial catastrophe of September 1869 marked the first time the word “black” was attached to a day of hurt on the stock market. It has been followed by Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, that marked the start of the Great Depression. More recently, Black Monday, October 19, 1987, saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average lose 22.6% in a single day. The Black Friday that follows the American Thanksgiving Day has nothing to do with stock market failures. It is said to mark the day of the year on which retailers get out of red ink losses and into the black of profit.
• In 1873. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner published a book that contrasted the excessive wealth of the Robber Barons with the poverty of the people they employed in their industrial enterprises. The title of the book was The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today and was used to describe the era from the 1870s to the early 20th century.

Sources

• “James Fisk: A Bigger Than Life Figure in the Gilded Age.” u-s-history.com, undated.
• “The Wall Street War to Control the Erie Railroad.” Robert McNamara, thoughtco.com, November 24, 2019.
• “The Erie War: Vanderbilt vs Gould, Titans Fight for Control.” Adam Burns, american-rails.com, August 22, 2024
• “Black Friday Stock Market Crash Overview.” investopedia.com, October 31, 2022.
• “The Crimes, Affairs, and Murder of Jim Fisk.” Aria Darcella, avenuemagazine.com, October 12, 2023.
• “Murder in Manhattan: The Death of Jim Fisk.” Heather Thomas, Library of Congress, November 13, 2018.

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This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

© 2024 Rupert Taylor