The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield (2 page)

Yet another day, another decade, another spectacle. Of course
, every day with Jim Fisk is a spectacle. Or so Josie Mansfield often observes.

Josie knows as much about Fisk as anyone does, and more than most people do. She knows he comes from Vermont, where he mastered the arts of persuasion while peddling tools and trinkets to the closefisted farmers of the Green Mountain State, whose wives loved Fisk for bringing the civilized world to their doorsteps and whose children thought of him as Santa Claus. She knows that he moved from Vermont to Boston in search of wealthier customers and fatter profits, and from Boston to New York for the same reason, amplified. She knows—or at least has heard—how he made a fortune smuggling Southern cotton to Northern mills during the Civil War.

She knows he loves a spectacle, and that the spectacles he loves best put him at center stage. He perfumes his hair and waxes his moustache; he wears velvet coats of peacock colors, tailored low in front to reveal the diamond studs in his silk shirts. More diamonds, much larger, adorn his fingers and sparkle when he twirls the fat cigars he employs to punctuate his florid sentences.

Josie knows Fisk runs with a fast crowd on Wall Street. He is Dan Drew’s protégé and Jay Gould’s partner; the three speculators have joined forces to fight the formidable Cornelius Vanderbilt for control of the Erie Railroad. Drew’s domed forehead and beetled brow hide secrets of market manipulation vouchsafed to few in the financial world; his starched collar and tight cravat cover a heart that can merely be presumed to exist. Many on Wall Street swear Drew invented the double cross; more reliable authorities make him the pioneer of stock watering, which he is said to have adapted from the days when, as a cattle drover, he herded beeves down Broadway and swelled their bellies with water before unloading them on naïve purchasers. Now he simply dilutes the value of corporate stock by issuing new, sometimes bogus shares. The Erie is Drew’s special plaything, his favored vehicle for manipulation. Josie can recite the Wall Street triplet: “Daniel says up, Erie goes up / Daniel says down, Erie goes down / Daniel says wiggle-waggle, it bobs both ways.” Yet Drew combines conscienceless weekday practice with weekend piety; he never misses Sunday service at the Fourth Street Methodist Church and is endowing a divinity school to propagate the Gospel and bolster the Golden Rule—to repair the damage he does it during the week, Drew watchers suggest.

She knows less about Jay Gould, in part because Gould cultivates mystery. He hides his comparative youth—he is not quite thirty-two—behind a bushy black beard and in public defers to Drew and Fisk. But his dark eyes flash when speculation is afoot, and his unconscious habit of tearing paper to shreds while reckoning risks and rewards tells Josie, whose biography has taught her to read men, that
he
might be the one to watch out for.

Cornelius Vanderbilt is the titan of Wall Street—full of ambition, even at seventy-three years of age; full of money, as the wealthiest man in America; full of himself, with flowing white hair and sideburns that suit his imperious manner. He won his fortune by strength of will and often of arm; broken jaws and black eyes among the competition marked his rise to the top of the world of steam transport. He built a fleet of passenger ships and still insists on being called “Commodore”; lately he has diversified into trains. He drives the fanciest coach in Manhattan, pulled by the fastest horses and filled with the prettiest young women. His wrath is legendary and his wealth gives him the power to wield it. “Gentlemen,” he famously wrote to a cabal who crossed him, “you have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you.” And of course he did.

He similarly aims to ruin Drew, Fisk, and Gould, who stand between him and control of the Erie Railroad. Josie knows that if Vanderbilt joins the Erie to his New York Central Railroad he will possess a monopoly of freight and passenger traffic between New York City and the Great Lakes and will become even wealthier, more prideful, and more powerful than he already is. The city and much of the Eastern Seaboard will be in his grasp; millions will pay whatever charges he deigns to dictate. If he fails to gain the Erie, he will gnash his teeth in the frustration he always feels at being bested and likely will launch a counterattack that could rock the railroad industry to its roots. With the economy as a whole coming to depend on railroads—these days hardly anything or anyone moves more than a few miles without riding a train—the fate of the country may rest on the outcome of the battle for the Erie.

Josie and New York watch as the strategies of the two sides unfold in early 1868. Vanderbilt’s assault is characteristically frontal: he orders his brokers to buy all the Erie shares they can. Like many frontal assaults, Vanderbilt’s attack is expensive: each round of purchases drives up the share price. But Vanderbilt’s great wealth almost guarantees success, and he intends to recoup his investment by hiking the Erie’s rates and fares after he captures the road.

Drew’s defensive strategy is likewise characteristic, in his case deviously so. Drew currently commands a controlling interest in the Erie, and he has lately added Fisk and Gould to the board of directors, which authorizes the issue of $10 million in bonds convertible to stock. The function of the bonds, Drew tells the board, is to fund improvements to the road; in reality he plans to use them against Vanderbilt. Together with some stock shares authorized by the board but not yet issued, the bonds give Drew potential access to some 100,000 shares that the market—meaning, at this point, primarily Vanderbilt—knows nothing about.

Vanderbilt’s ignorance is crucial to Drew’s plan, for the fate of the Erie turns on the question of whether Vanderbilt will run out of money before Drew and his comrades run out of stock. The share price continues to mount as the Commodore presses his purchasing, but Vanderbilt, allowing for the shares known to exist, calculates that he can absorb the rising price and still reach his goal.

Stealthily Drew, Fisk, and Gould engage a printing house to produce new stock certificates. These are blank forms, which the three fill in with the appropriate dates, amounts, and signatures. The operation brings a smile to Drew’s dour countenance; even the ebullient Fisk has never had such fun. Fisk merrily pronounces their operation an example of “freedom of the press.” When Gould warns him not to count his money too soon, Fisk laughs. Vanderbilt is as good as beaten, he declares. Even the Commodore’s great fortune can’t stand the weight of the new shares. “If this printing press don’t break down,” Fisk promises, “we’ll give the old hog all the Erie he wants.”

The next day they spring their coup. Vanderbilt is still buying confidently when the first of the secret shares enter the market. The brokers, feeling the crispness of the paper and smelling the freshness of the ink, realize that these are new and heretofore unaccounted for and that Vanderbilt is in serious trouble.

The Commodore grows furious at Drew’s maneuver, which at a stroke dilutes the value of the shares he has acquired, frustrates his attempt to seize control of the Erie, and embarrasses him for not having anticipated Drew’s ploy. “Damn the innocent face of that old hypocrite,” he thunders. “I’ll whip him if it costs me a leg.” He goes to court and obtains an injunction to disallow Drew’s new shares and prevent Drew and the Erie directors from issuing any more.

Now it is Drew’s turn to register offense. The courts have no place in the matter, he declares. Besides, New York’s courts are notoriously corrupt and Vanderbilt’s enjoining judge, George Barnard, is the worst of the bunch. Drew alleges that Vanderbilt has purchased his injunction.

Drew’s indignation doesn’t prevent him and Fisk and Gould from enlisting a judge of their own. The task isn’t easy, for Vanderbilt’s reputation and money have touched the ermine all around New York. But eventually they find a court in Binghamton willing to endorse their interpretation of corporate law: that the Erie directors can issue new shares of stock at will.

The market in Erie shares is a shambles. Vanderbilt presses forward, buying as fast he can and striving to prop up the price. Drew, Fisk, and Gould keep cranking out new shares, forcing the price down. Smaller investors, whipsawed between the main contenders, run for their lives.

Vanderbilt returns to Judge Barnard’s court. The friendly jurist approves a warrant for the arrest of Drew, Fisk, and Gould, for violating his earlier injunction to stop issuing stock. Vanderbilt smiles in prospective triumph; there is no printing press in the Ludlow Street jail.

Drew and the others learn almost at once that the sheriff is on the way. In the financial world, where knowledge is money, news travels fast—by the couriers who have long carried messages about the city, by the telegraph lines that increasingly link brokers to banks to corporate headquarters, by the spies all self-respecting speculators employ, and sometimes, it seems, by the mere nervous energy that pervades Wall Street and its environs. Fisk tells Drew and Gould how Vermonters sought by the law sometimes skip across a bridge over the Connecticut River into New Hampshire and from the far side snap their fingers in defiance at their pursuers. The Hudson is broader than the Connecticut and no bridges yet span its channel, but it might serve a similar purpose.

The three quickly gather their uncirculated stock certificates, the Erie ledger books, and $7 million in cash, much of it drained from Vanderbilt for the watered stock, and head for the Hudson. A policeman stops them on West Street, wondering at their hurry and the bags of money they’re carrying. Fisk assures him that all is well; they are simply relocating the offices of the Erie Railway. He tips the patrolman five dollars for his vigilance, and the grateful copper lets them pass.

They race to the landing where the Erie operates ferries to supplement its rail lines. They consign their baggage to one of the cargo handlers. Then Fisk, with surprising insouciance even for him, turns to go back into the city. He says he wants to say a proper good-bye to his friends. Gould prepares to accompany him. Drew tells them that they’re crazy and that he is too old to risk a night in jail. Besides, he isn’t about to let the company’s records and cash out of his sight.

The ferry pushes off. Drew doesn’t yet relax. He understands that the limit of New York’s jurisdiction lies in the middle of the Hudson, and he fears that Vanderbilt will intercept him before he gets there. But the passage proceeds uneventfully, and he lands in Jersey City a free, if still wanted, man.

He settles into a suite at Taylor’s Hotel, close to the ferry terminal. He watches the afternoon ferries arrive, expecting with each one to see Fisk and Gould step off. But daylight fades and evening sets in, and there is no sign of them.

Finally, well past dark, the two appear, in a bedraggled state. Gould is typically taciturn, but Fisk tells the story. They took a cab from the ferry terminal on the New York side to Delmonico’s restaurant for a farewell luncheon, he says. Word of their presence spread, as did reports of the disappearance of Drew. The sheriff serving the Vanderbilt-orchestrated arrest warrant discovered their location and approached the entrance to the restaurant. Fisk and Drew fled out the back. They briefly considered taking the Erie ferry across the Hudson but surmised that Vanderbilt would have men posted at the terminal. So they ventured to a rival line and paid the captain of the vessel in the slip for the use of a lifeboat and two oarsmen. They jumped in, and the rowers pulled the small craft away from the shore. Fisk directed them to row upstream, away from the regular track of the Hudson ferries. But night was falling, accompanied by a thick fog, and they found themselves rowing in circles. Out of the fog a ferry suddenly materialized; their row-boat was nearly run over. They seized the side of the ferry and let it haul them through the water, realizing amid the roar of the engines and the violent splashing from the bow wave that if their grip failed, they would be swept to the stern and splintered in the ferry’s paddle wheel.

But somehow they held on and reached New Jersey intact. When they arrive at Drew’s suite in Taylor’s Hotel, Gould is shaken and haggard. He complains that their ignominious flight has ruined their reputation in New York. Fisk is as wet and unkempt as his partner, yet his face is rosy and he treats the scrape as a lark. The $7 million in Drew’s valise affords all the comfort he requires.

Almost
all the comfort, rather. Josie Mansfield provides the
rest.

She hadn’t expected to move to Jersey City; she was getting to like New York. But she supposes she’ll survive, if the exile isn’t permanent.

She has learned to adapt, having no alternative. Her mother, who named her Helen Josephine, took her from Boston, where she was born, to gold rush San Francisco. Her father disappeared early, replaced, as a male figure, by a stepfather and then a husband. Of the stepfather she speaks as little as possible, apparently trying to remember as little as possible. Her husband, Frank Lawlor, was an actor whose finest role, in the judgment of the fifteen-year-old Josie, was rescuing a damsel in distress, namely her. The marriage got her out of California but didn’t do much for her emotionally or otherwise, and she and Lawlor agreed to part. She returned to Boston, found little to sustain her there, and moved to Philadelphia. She liked Philadelphia but heard fascinating stories of New York, ninety miles up the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Civil War was over; business in the great city was booming, and men with money needed women with charm.

Josie doesn’t lack charm, although precisely what it consists of, in her case, sometimes eludes description. She isn’t classically beautiful; her nose is too long, her jaw too square. But her brown hair flows in waves and her heavy-lidded blue eyes exert an irresistible attraction on male eyes, even pulling them away from her voluptuous form.

She is familiar, from Frank Lawlor, with the theater; she knows that it affords opportunity for attractive but impecunious young women. To the New York theater she goes. She calls herself an actress, a category comprising all manner of strivers, from prostitutes to mistresses to honest-to-goodness stage players. Josie lands midspectrum, although she aspires to the more respectable end of the scale.

In her aspiration she finds Jim Fisk. She occasionally visits the Thirty-fourth Street establishment of Annie Wood, a former actress and current madam, and in November 1867 notices Fisk, of the jeweled fingers and the fancy clothes. She whispers to Annie that she’d like an introduction, and Annie obliges.

Josie can tell at once that Fisk is smitten. She can always tell such things. She lets him admire her. Their eyes meet; Fisk can’t take his away.

She confesses to him that she knows almost no one in this strange city. When he responds as sympathetically as she supposes he will, she apologizes for her plain and well-worn dress, saying it is the best she can afford. When he inquires where she lives, she says in a modest rooming house but that she might not be staying there long. Why? he asks. Because the rent is due and she is short, she replies. Within the hour he becomes her protector and provider, and she his fond friend.

Within the week he decides that she requires better lodgings. He finds her a room in a more respectable boardinghouse. He visits her there and the friendship blossoms. He buys her dresses and diamonds. He eventually purchases her a house, a stylish brownstone on Twenty-third Street not far from his own house.

He drops over during the day and most evenings. He brings friends, and she entertains them. He and the friends talk business; she listens. She asks him questions about his speculations; hearing his answers, she praises his cleverness. She inquires, hesitantly, whether she might participate in some of his safer endeavors. He delightedly consents. She laughs with pleasure and bestows kisses and other signs of affection when her investments succeed.

She knows of Mrs. Fisk, and that she lives in Boston, but she and Fisk don’t speak of her. When Fisk travels to Boston she accepts his explanation that it is for business, just as she accepts the presents he brings her when he returns.

She sometimes visits him at the office. She can tell that the visits annoy Dan Drew and Jay Gould, who obviously disapprove of her and her relationship with their partner. But she knows that Fisk likes to show her off. And anyway, a girl of twenty-two has to get out now and then.

She is surprised when he informs her, in March 1868, that he will be staying in Jersey City for a while. She has been observing the struggle with Vanderbilt, but she hasn’t imagined it would come to this. When he invites her to join him at Taylor’s Hotel and says it will be like a vacation, she considers her options and decides to stand by her man. For now.