Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Fall

MAY 4, 1884

Ferdinand Ward was a sociopath, but no one knew it at the time. The charismatic 30-year-old would spend the whole rest of his life swindling, bullying, and scheming people out of their money. He would be, says historian — and descendant — Geoffrey C. Ward, "perpetually unrepentant, uninterested in anyone's troubles but his own."

But on the morning of Sunday, May 4, as he knocked on the front door of 3 East Sixty-Sixth Street, in midtown Manhattan everyone still thought of Ward as "The Young Napoleon of Wall Street." Tall, thin, unconquerably charming, he had enjoyed a meteoric rise in Manhattan's financial circles and, in the process, had made many men rich — very rich. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. He regularly offered investors returns as high as 40 percent, and his investment firm held the highest possible ranking.

On this morning, he had come to the townhouse of one of his business partners, former president of the United States and savior of the country, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Grant, who had given up his military pension to take the presidency and who had, subsequently, retired from the office with virtually no money, now enjoyed a plush lifestyle thanks to Ward's financial genius. Grant's initial $100,000buy-in into their joint venture, the investment firm Grant & Ward, had ballooned to $750,000. The former general's newfound wealth and his enduring prestige allowed him to move among the highest circles of the country's rich and powerful.

Grant himself did little more at the firm than sign whatever papers Ward put in front of him, pay attention to his other business, and entertain visitors. "By the contract of copartnership Mr. Ward alone had the right to sign the firm name and he alone had the key [and] combination to the vault," Grant later explained to a friend. Grant had contributed his considerable reputation to the firm but left the finances to his young partner. "I am willing that Mr. Ward should derive what profit he can for the firm that the use of my name and influence may bring," Grant once said.

"Mr. Ward insisted that the business management should be left solely to him," said another of the firm's partners, Grant's son, Ulysses S., Jr. — "Buck." "I had the greatest confidence in him and I consider him to be a very able man." He was, after all, the Young Napoleon of Wall Street, credible and incredible at the same time. No one disputed his authority, Buck said; no one questioned his judgment.

Daily, Ward lined up 20 cigars on Grant's desk — a smoking tradition the general had started 20 years earlier during the Civil War — and otherwise left Grant to his own devices. "[He] sat in his familiar chair and smoked his cigar," one visitor later recounted. "He was so hearty and genial in his manner that no one could fail to like him and feel drawn to him."

But today, Ward needed Grant's help. Ushered into the first-floor parlor, Ward broke Grant's Sunday morning calm.

The firm was in trouble.

New York City's treasury had withdrawn a considerable amount of money from Marine Bank, owned by another of Grant & Ward's partners, James D. Fish. "We have six hundred and sixty thousand dollars on deposit there," Ward explained. "It would embarrass us very much if the bank should close its doors."

To ensure the bank opened on Monday morning, and thus avoid embarrassing the firm, Ward had, thankfully, rallied some $250,000 to help cover the bank's shortfalls. Could Grant somehow secure the other $150,000? Fish, embattled as he was by the treasury's withdrawal, could not. The firm's fourth partner, Grant's son, dabbled in the office's day-to-day operations, but mostly, he attended to his own law practice. In any event, he didn't have the ability to leverage so much money in such a short time under such troubling conditions.

Only Grant could do it.

Grant was famously impassive in the face of troubling news of any sort. As Ward outlined the firm's financial pinch, Grant listened stoically, then assented to help. Grant left his young partner in the parlor as he sallied forth. He'd see what he could do.

On that same day 20 years earlier — May 4, 1864 — Grant set forth from his field headquarters near Culpepper Court House, Virginia, to begin the campaign that would ultimately define his career. Now, he had no way to know that he was once more setting forth on another campaign — one that would ultimately define his legacy.

* * *

In an era of extravagant beards, William Henry Vanderbilt had one for the ages. His mutton chops extended outward like two brillo wings that formed perfect triangles. Like nearly everything about him, they made him seem larger than life. Being one of the wealthiest men in America helped, too.

Vanderbilt would have had little opportunity to befriend a tanner's son from Galena, Illinois — even one who'd become president of the United States — were it not for Grant's financial success since settling in New York in 1881. That, coupled with Grant's reputation as the general who'd saved the country, had earned Vanderbilt's respect and, over the ensuing months, Vanderbilt's friendship. "He is one of us," Vanderbilt once declared.

In the wake of Ward's troubling news, Grant sought out Vanderbilt for assistance. He calmly and clearly laid out the problem.

"I care nothing about the Marine Bank," Vanderbilt replied. "To tell the truth, I care very little about Grant and Ward. But to accommodate you personally, I will draw my check for the amount you ask. I consider it a personal loan to you, and not to any other party."

Later, after the fall, Grant would refuse money from friends and strangers alike — his pride too staunch to accept charity. But here, now — Grant saw this as just a matter of business. He would be able to repay the loan in a day or two — a week at most. When Wall Street heard that Vanderbilt himself had floated the money to support Marine Bank, it would quiet all nerves, such was the strength of Vanderbilt's reputation and pocketbook.

Grant thanked him politely and headed back home, where his partner awaited.

* * *

I often wonder about Ward, sitting there in the Grant parlor as Grant sought out friends willing to help. Accounts don't say how long Grant was gone, although he made at least one other stop before Vanderbilt's. Nor do accounts say what Ward did during the time Grant was gone — only that Grant left him there when he set out and found him there on his return.

But Ward is slippery, as rogues are wont to be, difficult to pin down. One account has him riding in the carriage alongside Grant, coaching him where to go. Another has Grant giving him Vanderbilt's check first thing Monday morning rather than Sunday afternoon on his return. Another has Buck delivering the check.

Ward was the kind of man whose wheels never stopped churning. Once, while poking through the house, he found a vase full of $20 gold pieces — $800 worth. He talked Mrs. Grant into investing the money in Grant and Ward rather than let it sit in the vase and not earn interest.

The home was "laden with curios and rich gifts — the spoils of the Grants' tour around the world," Ward once said, describing an almost museum quality to the place. Gild-frame paintings hung on the walls, with cabinets and shelves to hold brick-a-brack. There were so many vases, some sat on formal parlor chairs, while others sat on the fireplace mantel. An ornate oriental rug filled the center of the floor.

When the Grants purchased the home, Ward brokered the deal. "It was a much larger and more expensive house than we had intended (or had the means) to buy," Julia later wrote, "but it was so new and large that this quite outweighed our more prudential scruples — unfortunately, as later I had to pay out of the proceeds of General Grant's book a mortgage of fifty-nine thousand dollars on it."

Ward had taken the Grants' house payment and, instead of buying the brownstone outright, spent only enough to leverage the mortgage. He misappropriated the rest — just as now, sitting in the parlor, he plotted to make off with whatever money Grant came back with.

How confident was he that Grant would succeed? What plan — if any — did he have for that money? Was he already cooking up his next scheme? Planning his next swindle? It's perhaps too much to think of him twirling the tips of his moustache and, inside, laughing sinisterly, but his descendant, Geoffrey Ward, has planted the seed: "Ferdinand Ward appeared only as a stock villain," the historian observed of Ward's role, "insinuating himself onstage just long enough to ruin the ex-president and his family, then disappearing. ..."

But on some level — even if sparked only by self-concern — the frenetic strain of the shell game had worn Ward down. He felt frazzled. He'd lost weight. The air was being sucked right out of him.

* * *

On Monday, May 5, Grant pulled up to the firm's office at 2 Wall Street to no sign of trouble. He went upstairs and went about his business.

Downstairs, Buck smelled a fish. Ward had come to him to explain that the money his father had rounded up the previous day wasn't enough, after all. "Now, take it coolly, old boy," Ward said, "don't get excited, and remember that we don't want our names to go down, and we will fight before it comes."

Buck chose not to tell his father but, instead, gathered the company's portfolio and sought advice. First on the list: Jay Gould, another of the country's wealthiest tycoons, who looked over the investments and declared them worthless. Next: Buck's attorney, Stanley Elkins.

We need to pay a visit to Mr. Ward, Elkins suggested. We need to find out from him why Mr. Gould thinks the firm's investments are worthless.

Buck and Elkins arrived at Ward's around seven p.m. He's not at home, Mrs. Ward said.

We'll wait, Elkins replied — and the two men sat in Ward's parlor much as Ward had sat in Grant's the day before.

Five hours passed. Finally, Ward appeared in his slippers. The firm is fine, he assured them.

If that was so, said Elkins, then certainly Ward wouldn't object to writing a check to another of Elkins' clients, Buck's father-in-law, Sen. Jerome Chaffee. Four hundred thousand dollars would cover Sen. Chaffee's initial investment, he believed.

Certainly, Ward said. The check will be available in the morning.

Outside, Elkins expressed his suspicion. "Did you observe Ward had his slippers on?" he asked. "He was in the house all the time and was afraid to come down and see us."

* * *

The bouncing began the next morning, as soon as Marine Bank opened. It refused Ward's check and closed its doors — forever, as it would turn out. Other banks refused to cash checks drawn on Ward's accounts, too.

By noon, an angry crowd had congregated outside 2 Wall Street. When Grant pulled up in his carriage, he saw Buck, beleaguered, trying to fend them off.

"Marine bank closed this morning," Buck tried to explain. "Ward had fled. We cannot find our securities. Father, everything is bursted, and we cannot get a cent out of the concern."

Twenty years earlier, during the battle of the Wilderness, Grant sat beneath a tree and whittled as he waited for news of the fight. The pile of shavings at his feet grew, and he stripped away the fingertips of his gloves. Similarly, after the first day of the battle of Shiloh in April of 1862, he weathered a rainstorm beneath the boughs of a tree while waiting for the chance to let the battle play itself out. On May 6, 1884, he sought refuge in his upstairs office and waited for events to unfold. Like couriers on the battlefield, Buck, and the firm's cashier, George Spencer, brought him updates throughout the day.

"Spencer," Grant finally asked, "how is it that man has deceived us all in this way?"

The Bottom

MAY 1884

"I think the condition of the country on the whole is quite satisfactory," Grant told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the morning of May 6. The paper, in turn, told readers Grant had made his pronouncement "before the news of the financial difficulties in Wall Street had reached him." Perhaps Grant had jinxed himself in saying so.

Save for 80 dollars in his pocket and another 130 Julia literally pulled from a cookie jar that evening, Ward's financial chicanery had left Grant destitute. "Imagine the shock to us, who thought we were independently wealthy!" Julia exclaimed.

The collapse rippled through the Grant family well beyond the walls of 3 East Sixty-Sixth Street. "[L]ike a thunderclap," Julia later said. "It was a great shock to my family, as they all believed they were not only prosperous but wealthy." All of the Grants' children had invested various amounts in the firm, as had Buck's father-in-law, Senator Chafee. Combined, the family was out nearly a million dollars.

"Yes, I am absolutely penniless," Grant's eldest son, Fred, told reporters. "Ward has ruined us all."

As Buck later explained the totality of the ruin, "None of us liked to keep a dollar out of the firm that was not absolutely needed, because we thought that we were losing when we kept money that might be earning a very heavy profit. So confident were we all that Grant & Ward were making piles of money that we invested everything we could get."

Grant thought the firm was $2,800,000 in the black, with another $1,300,000 of securities in the vault. He believed "Ward to be worth 1,000,000 of Dollars himself alone."

But Ward had been shuffling money out the door as soon as it came in. In effect, he was running an elaborate Ponzi scheme, using investments from one person as dividends to pay off another. Ward greased the wheels by covertly telling investors that Grant was using his influence to affect government contracts; in fact, Grant never did any such thing and had expressly forbade Ward from ever making such suggestions.

In the end, the scale of Ward's fraud was staggering: nearly $16.8 million by the time the red ink stopped bleeding.

"I am looking for something to do ..." a glum Fred told reporters. "That will depend upon whether or not anything is saved from the wreck."

* * *

The day after the collapse, Grant returned to 2 Wall Street. "The General looked weary and troubled, and declined to see anybody except the most intimate friends," the New York Times reported. The unfolding crisis shook him badly. During those drawn-out hours, Grant would "suffer in his large armchair, clutching nervously with his hands at the arm-rests, driving his fingernails into the hard wood," a confident later revealed.

Outside the smoke-filled office, Grant tried to keep a brave front. To his sister, Jennie, he wrote on May 8 about "the great disaster to the firm of Grant & Ward." "We are all well, and are trying to be happy," he assured her. "Do not be the slightest uneasy."

Easier said than done. "I could bear all the pecuniary loss if that was all," Grant wrote privately to his friend George Childs, "but that I could be so long deceived by a man who I had such opportunity to know is humiliating."

That man, Ward, was holed up in his own office at 2 Wall Street. Buck, who confronted him there on the same day the Times described Grant as "troubled," found Ward in "a state of intense nervous excitement, weeping and wringing his hands in distress." Humbled and penitent, Ward admitted his perfidy — "a wicked thief and a great rascal, robbing, cheating, and deceiving him and the other members of his family from first to last."

Buck snapped, The least you can do is tell the truth about the matter.

I will, Ward promised.

Later, when trying to explain himself to investigators, Ward — looking "deathly pale" — said he "simply borrowed from Peter to pay Paul ... [borrowing] money at a high rate of interest to pay debts previously contracted." He admitted the other partners knew comparatively little about it.

So it was that the newspaper headlines began to evolve after news of the disaster broke. They went from "Drawing checks ... with no funds to meet them" to "Is Grant Guilty?" to, finally, suggestions of woeful ineptness. Opposition papers hinted that naivety equated to criminal neglect.

"You can rest assured ..." Fred declared, "that while father has a cent in the world it will be employed in cancelling his indebtedness."

The first debt Grant turned his attention to was the $150,000 check Vanderbilt had written him over the weekend. Vanderbilt insisted on forgiving it, but Grant refused, offering his brownstone as payment instead — but then everyone discovered Ward's mishandling of the mortgage. The Grants didn't actually own their home. "He was penniless in the house that was crowded with his trophies," a confident later said.

The Grants quickly began selling other properties: in Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Galena. "[A]nd last, though not least, the dear old homestead in Missouri, White Haven," Julia recalled. "When I signed this last deed, it well-nigh broke my heart. My tears fell thick and fast; I could not help it."

---

Excerpted from "Grant's Last Battle"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Chris Mackowski.
Excerpted by permission of Savas Beatie LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---