New York Gold Exchange

The New York Gold Exchange was an exchange formed near the beginning of the Civil War for the purpose of creating an open market for transactions involving gold and the government-created paper currency, the greenback. It was formed by bankers and brokers who had been involved in the New York Stock Exchange and various mercantile exchanges who were instructed that trades in gold and greenbacks were taking up too much of the attention of the older exchanges. Among the pivotal men involved was James Boorman Colgate. It was the locus of the Black Friday (1869) Financial Panic when Jay Gould and James Fisk attempted to corner gold.

References

• Kinahan Cornwallis: The Gold Room and the New York Stock Exchange and Clearing House