FISK, JAMES, JB. 



FLORIDA. 



301 



FISK, JAMES, Jr., born in Bennington, Yt., 

 April 1, 1834 ; shot by Edward S. Stokes, in 

 New York City, January 6, 1872. His father 

 was a pedler, and a few years later removed 

 to Brattleboro, Vt., where the son obtained 

 a very meagre common-school education, 

 which was all he ever had. After some 

 experience as waiter in a hotel, and member 

 of a circus company, he turned his attention 

 to peddling, at first in company with his 

 father, then by himself; and finally, having 

 bought his father out, he employed him to 

 peddle for him among the more scattered pop- 

 ulation of the rural districts, while he himself 

 visited the larger towns and villages. With 

 the brightest wagons, the showiest horses, 

 and the most glittering harness in the State, 

 and with an abundance of that ready wit and 

 good-natured impudence for which he after- 

 ward became famous, he prospered so fast 

 that he was soon one of the principal travel- 

 ling jobbers in New England. He bought his 

 supplies of Jordan & Marsh in Boston, and the 

 members of this firm were so impressed with 

 his shrewdness that they gave him a position 

 in their establishment as salesman. From 

 salesman he became a partner. He made some 

 excellent bargains with the Government dur- 

 ing the war. It is said that he made a happy 

 stroke by smuggling cotton through the lines. 

 In four years he retired from the firm with 

 capital enough to open a dry-goods shop of 

 his own. In four months more his money was 

 nil gone, and the business was closed up. 

 When he appeared in New York in 1864, and 

 opened a broker's office in Broad Street, his 

 entire capital consisted (if history can be be- 

 lieved) of a borrowed silver watch. If he had 

 any thing more than that he soon lost it, and 

 when he introduced himself to the favor of 

 Daniel Drew, by negotiating for him the sale 

 of the Bristol line of steamboats, he was prac- 

 tically penniless. Mr. Drew first set him up 

 as a broker, in partnership with Belden, and 

 employed the new firm in carrying on his 

 famous war with Cornelius Vanderbilt for the 

 possession of the Erie Railway. That warfare 

 is a matter of history, which we need not here 

 recount. When the crisis came, on the eve of 

 the election for directors, in October, 1867, 

 there were three contestants in the field. 

 Fisk was serving under the Drew party, who 

 wanted to be retained in office. Yanderbilt, 

 master of Harlem, Hudson River, and Central, 

 seemed to be on the point of securing Erie 

 also. Mr. Eldridge was the leader of the Bos- 

 ton, Hartford and Erie party, which wanted 

 to get into the Erie directory for the purpose 

 of making that company guarantee the bonds 

 of his own worthless road. Eldridge was 

 assisted by Jay Gould. As a result of the 

 compromise by which the three opposing inter- 

 ests coalesced, Fisk and Gould were both 

 chosen directors of Erie, and from the month 

 of October, 1867, dates the memorable asso- 

 ciation of these two choice spirits since so 



famous in the money markets of the world. 

 From this association followed, in rapid suc- 

 cession, those stupendous commercial schemes 

 whose magnitude and daring surpassed all or- 

 dinary comprehension or belief. One of the 

 best and largest of our great trunk railways 

 was brought under the complete control of 

 these men ; its stock and bonds issued, as 

 fast as the scrip could be prepared, till these 

 two persons had accumulated their half a score 

 millions or more; its income subsidized in 

 every way for their benefit ; Legislatures were 

 bribed, judges bought, branch railroads bought 

 up or leased, and rivals either fought off, or 

 their silence purchased. For the long suffer- 

 ing stockholders of the road there seemed to 

 be no redress, no way of relief. Not satisfied 

 with these illicit gains, Fisk and his partners 

 began to speculate in gold, and in September, 

 1869, brought on that crisis which will be long 

 known in Wall Street as " Black Friday." But, 

 with his really large capacity for business, 

 Fisk felt that the affairs of the Erie Railroad, 

 of which he was for four years controller, and 

 the perfect wilderness of lawsuits which were 

 brought against his management, were not 

 sufficient to occupy his great abilities, and, 

 looking about for other employment, he pur- 

 chased the Eighth Avenue Opera-House, and, 

 leasing part of it to the Erie Railroad for of- 

 fices, managed the theatre himself; bought 

 the Fifth Avenue Theatre ; bought a summer 

 garden in the city, for the purpose of a res- 

 taurant ; bought two lines of steamboats 

 plying between Fall River and New York, and 

 Bristol and New York, and put himself in 

 naval uniform ; bought a ferry line across the 

 Hudson ; became the colonel of the Ninth Re- 

 giment of the N. Y. State Guard, and paraded 

 his troops in Boston and at Long Branch, and 

 was endeavoring to obtain the brigadier-gen- 

 eralship at the time of his death; bought 

 coaches, and express wagons, houses and lands, 

 and furniture of barbaric gorgeousness, and 

 filled these houses with opera-bouffe singers, 

 and others. At a chance meeting, Stokes, be- 

 tween whom and Fisk a mortal enmity ex- 

 isted, shot him, as he himself says, in self- 

 defence. 



FLORIDA. The Legislature of Florida for 

 1872 commenced its session at Tallahassee on 

 the 2d of January. Early in February the at- 

 tempt to secure the removal of Governor Reed 

 by impeachment was renewed. On the 10th 

 of February managers on the part of the As- 

 sembly appeared at the bar of the Senate and 

 presented articles of impeachment which were 

 received, and on the 14th the High Court of 

 Impeachment was organized with the Chief- 

 Justice of the Supreme Court presiding. The 

 substance of the charges against the Governor 

 was to the following effect : 



1. That in 1870 he did "unlawfully and in 

 violation of the constitution and laws of the 

 State of Florida cause to be issued, and did 

 himself sign his official signature as Governor 



