If any pair of investors had the financial clout and lack of scruples required to engineer the bedlam of Black Friday, it was Jay Gould and Jim Fisk. As president and vice president of the Erie Railroad, the duo had won a reputation as two of Wall Street’s most ruthless financial masterminds. Their rap sheets boasted everything from issuing fraudulent stock to bribing politicians and judges, and they enjoyed a lucrative partnership with Tammany Hall power player William “Boss” Tweed. Gould in particular had proven an expert at devising new ways to game the system, and was once dubbed the “Mephistopheles of Wall Street” for his preternatural ability to line his own pockets. “[Gould’s] nature suggested survival from the family of spiders,” historian Henry Adams later wrote. “He spun huge webs, in corners and in the dark…he seemed never to be satisfied except when deceiving everyone as to his intentions.”
