The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield

by H. W. Brands

  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 f
rom 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.

  Josie’s arrival prompts Drew to reconsider his partnership with Fisk. In New York he can ignore most of Fisk’s improprieties, but Jersey City is a small town, and Taylor’s Hotel is even smaller. Josie’s fleshly presence affronts him, and when she and Fisk disport themselves like newlyweds on a honeymoon, Drew has to wonder where Fisk’s priorities lie. Drew attempts to improve the moral tone by attending a nearby church, but the example doesn’t take, and Fisk and Josie carry on as before.

  The continuing confrontation with Vanderbilt doesn’t help Drew’s mood. Drew imagines that Vanderbilt will try to kidnap him and carry him back to New York’s jurisdiction; the Commodore has played rough before. So Drew has Fisk and Gould arrange security measures. They persuade the Jersey City police chief to position a special detail around the hotel; to this they add precautions of their own. Fisk hires four boats with a dozen armed men each to patrol the approaches to Jersey City lest Vanderbilt mount an amphibious assault. He enlists dozens more men from the gangs of the neighborhood to stand guard outside and within the hotel, which he jokingly dubs Fort Taylor.

  The formidable appearance and dubious character of the impromptu Erie militia make Drew wonder whether the cure isn’t worse than the disease. He increasingly blames Fisk and Gould for his predicament. The stash of money aggravates the strain. Drew considers the $7 million his, since he is the principal shareholder of the Erie and the originator of the scheme by which the money has been acquired. Fisk and Gould believe they have a claim to substantial shares of the loot, as partners in the operation. They know Drew’s reputation for double-dealing; they request, then demand, their portions, which Drew declines to cede. The conspiracy starts to unravel.

  And so, even as the trio entices the New Jersey legislature into incorporating the Erie as a New Jersey company, to make Vanderbilt think they might never return to New York, Drew gets word to the Commodore that he wants to make peace. Fisk and Gould are alert to such a defection, and Fisk monitors all mail, telegrams, and other messages entering and leaving the hotel. But Drew bribes a waiter to get a note past Fisk, and a meeting with Vanderbilt is scheduled.

  One Sunday Drew leaves the hotel as if for a Sabbath stroll. Out of sight he slips to the waterfront, where a waiting boat carries him across the Hudson. Not trusting Vanderbilt, he has deliberately chosen Sunday, when arrests in civil cases are suspended. He takes a cab to Vanderbilt’s home in Washington Square. Drew attempts small talk as an icebreaking courtesy; Vanderbilt gruffly gets to the business at hand. They agree that the Erie war has lasted long enough, and they accept the need for a settlement. No details are discussed, and Drew remains edgy. He watches the clock, knowing that if he is still in New York at midnight, he risks being arrested. But he gets away from Washington Square in midevening, and he is across the Hudson before his skiff turns into a pumpkin.

  Yet Fisk and Gould have noted his absence and divined his destination. When he returns they declare emphatically that they expect to be included in any subsequent negotiations. Drew explains that he was simply trying to look out for their interests—better than they could themselves, as he has been in the speculating game longer than they have. They don’t believe him. They watch him closely, and when he seems to be preparing to go back to New York again, they insist on joining him.

  He still manages to lose them. He says that the meeting is at the Fifth Avenue Hotel but that he has to make a stop before going there. They should proceed; he will meet them. He turns instead toward the home of former judge Edwards Pierrepont, where Vanderbilt is waiting.

  The two principals reach an agreement. Drew will retain control of the Erie and will keep the profits he has made on the run-up in the company’s share price, but the Erie will buy back the watered stock he and Fisk and Gould have sold Vanderbilt. Both sides will abandon their legal proceedings.

  Drew and Vanderbilt are about to seal the pact when Fisk and Gould burst into the room. Vanderbilt roars with laughter to see Drew’s deception uncovered by his partners. Drew forces a smile and affects not to be upset. He asks Fisk and Gould to join the discussion. The terms are delineated.

  Fisk balks at buying back Vanderbilt’s shares, complaining that it will cost the Erie millions. But Gould pulls him aside. They whisper together. Then they return to the table, and Gould, who till now has let Fisk do the talking, says he and Fisk will accept the deal on one condition: that Drew turn control of the company over to them.

  Now Drew balks. He has gotten rich from the Erie, and he is loath to lose the chance to get richer still. But he is also reluctant to reopen the battle with Vanderbilt, who bellows delight at Drew’s discomfiture. And he realizes that Fisk and Gould can outvote him if the matter comes before the Erie directors. So he takes his money and walks away from the company, appreciating the irony that he has saved the Erie from his rival only to lose it to his friends.

  Josie is happy to return from Jersey, and even happier when Fisk announces a new home for the reconstructed management of the Erie. Samuel Pike has opened an opera house on Twenty-third Street at Eighth Avenue; its ornate design and elaborate furnishings draw the attention and patronage of the theater set in the city. But
Pike encounters cash flow troubles and hints that he might have to sell. Fisk has been an impresario at heart since youth; it tickles his ambition to imagine himself the proprietor of an opera house, with all the opportunities for self-promotion proprietorship entails.

  Gould is skeptical, wondering what an opera house has to do with running a railroad. But Fisk’s excitement inclines Gould to believe that the Opera House will keep Fisk busy, leaving Gould to manage the company. He assents to Fisk’s plan, which calls for purchasing the Pike place and refitting the second floor to be headquarters of the Erie.

  The railroad is one of the state’s largest employers, and the New York papers report the relocation as a major event. Some applaud the move to larger quarters as overdue; others question the extravagance even by the generous standards of the Gilded Age. The same papers carry a simultaneous announcement that the Erie is building a new ferry terminal at the foot of Twenty-third Street, just a few blocks from the Opera House. Proximity to the Erie offices is one consideration; another is readier access to the railroad stations of midtown. The Erie will operate a horse railway from the ferry to the Opera House and the stations, ensuring the swiftest travel for its customers. Observers of the late flight to Jersey cheekily remark that the new arrangement will also facilitate fast getaways for the Erie directors, should the necessity again arise.

  The possibility appears quite real. Dan Drew leaves the road literally a wreck: in the week of his departure an Erie night express from Buffalo careens off rails that were supposed to have been replaced with fresh ones funded by money he is discovered to have diverted to his own pocket. Four cars plunge over a cliff, somersault several times, burst into flames (from upset stoves employed to heat the cars), and wedge into the bottom of a narrow canyon, trapping the passengers, twenty-two of whom burn horribly to death. The “Erie Slaughter,” the papers call it, and it reminds the public—and the new Erie directors—that a railroad is a serious business, not simply the plaything of speculators.