Jay Cooke's Gamble

by Lubetkin, M. John

• ISBN13: 9780806137407
• ISBN10: 0806137401
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-30
• Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr

Summary

In 1869, Jay Cooke, the brilliant but idiosyncratic American banker, decided to finance the Northern Pacific, a transcontinental railroad planned from Duluth, Minnesota, to Seattle. M. John Lubetkin tells how Cooke's gamble reignited war with the Sioux, rescued George Armstrong Custer from obscurity, created Yellowstone Park, pushed frontier settlement four hundred miles westward, and triggered the Panic of 1873. Staking his reputation and wealth on the Northern Pacific, Cooke was soon whipsawed by the railroad's mismanagement, questionable contracts, and construction problems. Financier J. P. Morgan undermined him, and the Credit Mobilier scandal ended congressional support. When railroad surveyors and army escorts ignored Sioux chief Sitting Bull's warning not to enter the Yellowstone Valley, Indian attacks--combined with alcoholic commanders--led to embarrassing setbacks on the field, in the nation's press, and among investors. Lubetkin's suspenseful narrative describes events played out from Wall Street to the Yellowstone and vividly portrays the soldiers, engineers, businessmen, politicians, and Native Americans who tried to build or block the Northern Pacific.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
List of Tables	xi
Preface	xiii
Introduction	xv
``God's Chosen Instrument''	3	(12)
``The Northern Pacific Must Be Built''	15	(11)
``Free from Fatigue''	26	(17)
``The Buffalo Will Dwindle Away''	43	(9)
``Knee Deep in Mud''	52	(13)
``No System Observed''	65	(15)
``Stop Firing at Me''	80	(13)
``The Army of the Glendive''	93	(21)
``The Fear of Red Skins''	114	(17)
The ``Battle of Poker Flat''	131	(17)
``Falstaff's Ragamuffins''	148	(14)
``20,000 Hostile Indians''	162	(13)
``Looks Like War!''	175	(12)
``Under the Whiskey Curse''	187	(54)
``All Down There Are Killed!''	241	(12)
``Strike Up Garry Owen''	253	(15)
``We Do Not Anticipate Any Trouble''	268	(15)
``Get Out, Gentlemen, Get Out''	283	(11)
Postscript: ``Ho Hechetu!'' (It is Well!)	294	(7)
Appendix: Lt. Edward J. McClernand's Account of the Rescue of the 1871 Western Yellowstone Survey	301	(4)
Notes	305	(36)
Bibliography	341	(24)
Acknowledgments	365	(4)
Index	369