Black Friday (1869): Gold prices plummet after United States President Ulysses Grant orders the Treasury to sell large quantities of gold after Jay Gould and James Fisk plot to control the market.

On September 24, 1869, a gold panic broke out in the United States, triggering a financial crisis. The panic, which became known as Black Friday, was the result of a conspiracy between two investors, Jay Gould, later joined by his partner James Fisk, and Abel Corbin, a small time speculator who had married Virginia (Jennie) Grant, the younger sister of President Ulysses S. Grant. They formed the Gold Ring to corner the gold market and force up the price of the metal on the New York Gold Exchange. The scandal took place during the Grant Presidency. The Secretary of the Treasury, George S. Boutwell, had a policy to sell Treasury gold at biweekly intervals for a sinking fund to pay off the national debt. Along with other, non-routine gold sales, this infusion of cash acted to stabilize the dollar. The economy had gone through tremendous upheaval during the Civil War 1861–1865 and was not yet fully restored.

Jason Gould was an American railroad magnate and financial speculator who founded the Gould business dynasty. He is generally identified as one of the robber barons of the Gilded Age. His sharp and often unscrupulous business practices made him one of the wealthiest men of the late nineteenth century. Gould was an unpopular figure during his life and remains controversial.

James Fisk Jr., known variously as "Big Jim", "Diamond Jim", and "Jubilee Jim" – was an American stockbroker and corporate executive who has been referred to as one of the "robber barons" of the Gilded Age. Though Fisk was admired by the working class of New York and the Erie Railroad, he achieved much ill-fame for his role in Black Friday in 1869, where he and his partner Jay Gould befriended the unsuspecting President Ulysses S. Grant in an attempt to use the President's good name in a scheme to corner the gold market in New York City. On January 7, 1872, Fisk was assassinated in New York City, in relation to his business dealings.