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By Root 7752 0

metal, their value plunged and soared depending on the bulletins from the battlefield. In terms of greenbacks, therefore, gold behaved just like a stock. It could be traded. Fortunes could be made (and lost) gambling on its value. Many held such trading in moral disrepute. Currency, after all, was not just a stock, it was the lifeblood of the economy and the sinews of war. But to traders, gold stocks were a source of profit—whether they went up or down. When the Union Army won, making the future of greenbacks rosier, their value relative to gold rose (i.e., the price of gold measured in greenbacks fell). This suited bearish investors. Those bullish on gold, on the other hand, prayed for Confederate successes and sang “Dixie” lustily in the Exchange whenever they got one.

Such unpatriotic amorality led the New York Stock Exchange to forbid its members from dealing in gold. This barely halted the trade for an instant. The dealers began migrating from one basement to another along Wall, William, and Broad—now in an ill-lit den called the Coal Hole, next in Gilpin’s News Room, and finally, in the winter of 1864, in their own home, the New York Gold Exchange at the corner of William Street and Exchange Place (the Gold Room, it was popularly called). At the height of the speculative frenzy, the Gold Room was crammed with frantic dealers—a “rat-pit in full blast,” said one observer—while outside speculators lined up in the street, “ankle-deep in slush.”

The key to success in the Gold Room was information. Knowledge of a battle’s outcome obtained an hour before one’s competitors could be parlayed into a phenomenal fortune. At first, brokers haunted the wire services. Then they built their own: by 1863 private wires brought military results to New York’s financial district before they reached Lincoln in the White House. J. P. Morgan installed the first such wire in his office, and as his operator was a friend of Grant’s telegrapher, he easily kept abreast of the latest military movements. By 1864 Wall Streeters had spies in the Confederate high command and could learn southern battle plans before colonels in the Army of Virginia did.

As Union fortunes slumped in the summer of 1864, with Grant stalled in Virginia and Sherman stymied in Georgia, gold reached an all-time high of $280 an ounce. Some began to argue that “Jeff Davis” speculators were even more interested in undermining U.S. currency than in reaping their spectacular profits. Philadelphia’s Jay Cooke was convinced that New York City was a “hotbed of Southern sentiment and scheming” and that its moneymen were out to ruin the credit of the government.

“What do you think of those fellows in Wall Street, who are gambling in gold at such a time as this?” Lincoln asked Governor Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania. “They are a set of sharks,” Curtin replied. “For my part,” said Lincoln, banging his clenched fist on the table, “I wish every one of them had his devilish head shot off!” In a crackdown, Secretary Chase dashed up to New York and drove the gold price down—for a time—by selling millions of dollars’ worth of specie. Congress tried to outlaw speculative gold contracts altogether, but the act proved utterly unavailing and was swiftly repealed.

Even labor began to benefit from the boom, despite employers having undertaken an anti-Union offensive. The Boss Barbers, Master Coopers, Master Shipwrights, and Iron Founders aggressively sought to reduce wages, increase hours, and, if possible, destroy the fledgling labor organizations. In 1864 the Pianoforte Manufacturers Association, led by Charles Steinway and D. Decker, spearheaded the fight against piano workers, locking out three thousand workmen.

This initiative had run into stiff labor resistance. Goaded by soaring prices, rising rents, and new taxes, workers organized more unions and launched strikes, drawing in the city’s various ethnic communities. Germans were particularly energetic, organizing the cigarmakers, pianomakers, tailors, and varnishers. Irish public works and transport laborers went on strike four months