The hoax’s never seem to end…
Gold speculators in New York. (image from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 7, 1964)
It was May, 1864. Grant was closing in on Lee in Virginia. New Yorkers were growing hopeful that the long, terrible ordeal of the Civil War would soon be over.
But their hopes were dashed when on Wednesday, May 18 they read in two of their morning papers, the New York World and the Journal of Commerce, that President Lincoln had issued a proclamation ordering the conscription of an additional 400,000 men into the Union army on account of “the situation in Virginia, the disaster at Red River, the delay at Charleston, and the general state of the country.”
The implication of the proclamation was clear. Evidently the war was not going as well as had been hoped. This raised the possibility that the conflict might drag on for years to come, putting further strains on the nation’s economy and manpower. In reaction to this news, share prices on the New York Stock Exchange plummeted, while gold, considered to be a safe, inflation-proof investment, immediately rose in value. (Continue…)
