Episode 2 of 2
Black Friday Panic
- When
- September 24, 1869
- Where
- New York Gold Exchange
The gold price crashed on September 24, 1869, causing brokerage failures and a mild recession due to the failed corner attempt.
The panic resulted in the greenback premium falling from 62 percent to 35 percent. Many brokerage firms collapsed, and trade volume and agriculture prices plummeted. The financial devastation lasted for months, though the economy resumed recovery by January 1870.
Sources
- Black Friday (1869) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-06-03
- Jay Gould Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-28
- James Fisk (financier) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-11
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.