The Con Man Who Robbed Ulysses S. Grant
Watered Stock
25 views
How a Ponzi scheme bankrupted President Ulysses S. Grant in 1884, 36 years before Charles Ponzi. The true story of Ferdinand Ward, the "Young Napoleon of Finance," and the collapse of Grant & Ward.
Grant won the Civil War and served two terms as President. In 1884 he lost every dollar he had, along with the savings of his whole family, to a 32-year-old con man who used Grant's own name to attract investors.
In this Gilded Age documentary: the fake "government contracts," bonds pledged again and again, a secret second set of books, a $150,000 check from William H. Vanderbilt that went straight into Ward's pocket, the Panic of 1884, and the morning Grant walked into his office on crutches and heard "Ward has fled." And how that ruin pushed a dying Grant to write his Personal Memoirs, one of the greatest books in American history.
CHAPTERS
0:00 "Grant & Ward have failed"
1:35 The general who was terrible with money
2:43 The Young Napoleon of Finance
4:11 How the machine worked
7:14 Sunday: the $150,000 check
10:04 Tuesday: the empty safe
11:36 The swords
13:52 The peach
16:05 What Ward really stole
MAIN SOURCES (public domain)
Adam Badeau, "Grant in Peace: From Appomattox to Mount McGregor" (1887). Badeau was Grant's former aide and saw him on the day of the failure.
Hamlin Garland, "Ulysses S. Grant: His Life and Character" (1898), chapters on the Grant & Ward failure and Grant's final year, including testimony from Ward's trial.
Additional facts: National Park Service (Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant).
Some figures, such as the total debts (about $17 million) and the monthly returns promised to investors, vary between sources and are given as approximate.
Visuals: public domain archives (Library of Congress, National Archives, NYPL, Wikimedia Commons), real 1900 film footage (Library of Congress Paper Print Collection via Internet Archive) labeled on screen with its true date, and Pexels stock footage. Some scenes are illustrated reconstructions, not historical documents.
MUSIC
"Night Vigil", "Lightless Dawn", "Investigations", "Crypto", "Ossuary 6 - Air", "Hitman", "Sad Trio", "Heartbreaking", "Dreams Become Real" — Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
SOUND EFFECTS
"Floor_trading6.wav" by fugacious, "basement room-tone SHORT 161005_1009.wav" by klankbeeld, "Rain on Windows, Interior, B.wav" by InspectorJ (freesound.org) — CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Other sound effects: Freesound (CC0).
THE SERIES
Part 1 — The Erie War: how Gould and Fisk printed stock out of thin air to beat Cornelius Vanderbilt
They Printed Fake Stock to Beat the Riches...
Part 2 — Black Friday 1869: the plot to buy all the gold in America
He Used the President's Family to Buy All ...
New documentary on a forgotten financial scandal every week. Subscribe to Watered Stock.
#UlyssesGrant #PonziScheme #GildedAge
The Con Man Who Robbed Ulysses S. Grant
Watered Stock
25 views
How a Ponzi scheme bankrupted President Ulysses S. Grant in 1884, 36 years before Charles Ponzi. The true story of Ferdinand Ward, the "Young Napoleon of Finance," and the collapse of Grant & Ward.
Grant won the Civil War and served two terms as President. In 1884 he lost every dollar he had, along with the savings of his whole family, to a 32-year-old con man who used Grant's own name to attract investors.
In this Gilded Age documentary: the fake "government contracts," bonds pledged again and again, a secret second set of books, a $150,000 check from William H. Vanderbilt that went straight into Ward's pocket, the Panic of 1884, and the morning Grant walked into his office on crutches and heard "Ward has fled." And how that ruin pushed a dying Grant to write his Personal Memoirs, one of the greatest books in American history.
CHAPTERS
0:00 "Grant & Ward have failed"
1:35 The general who was terrible with money
2:43 The Young Napoleon of Finance
4:11 How the machine worked
7:14 Sunday: the $150,000 check
10:04 Tuesday: the empty safe
11:36 The swords
13:52 The peach
16:05 What Ward really stole
MAIN SOURCES (public domain)
Adam Badeau, "Grant in Peace: From Appomattox to Mount McGregor" (1887). Badeau was Grant's former aide and saw him on the day of the failure.
Hamlin Garland, "Ulysses S. Grant: His Life and Character" (1898), chapters on the Grant & Ward failure and Grant's final year, including testimony from Ward's trial.
Additional facts: National Park Service (Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant).
Some figures, such as the total debts (about $17 million) and the monthly returns promised to investors, vary between sources and are given as approximate.
Visuals: public domain archives (Library of Congress, National Archives, NYPL, Wikimedia Commons), real 1900 film footage (Library of Congress Paper Print Collection via Internet Archive) labeled on screen with its true date, and Pexels stock footage. Some scenes are illustrated reconstructions, not historical documents.
MUSIC
"Night Vigil", "Lightless Dawn", "Investigations", "Crypto", "Ossuary 6 - Air", "Hitman", "Sad Trio", "Heartbreaking", "Dreams Become Real" — Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
SOUND EFFECTS
"Floor_trading6.wav" by fugacious, "basement room-tone SHORT 161005_1009.wav" by klankbeeld, "Rain on Windows, Interior, B.wav" by InspectorJ (freesound.org) — CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Other sound effects: Freesound (CC0).
THE SERIES
Part 1 — The Erie War: how Gould and Fisk printed stock out of thin air to beat Cornelius Vanderbilt
They Printed Fake Stock to Beat the Riches...
Part 2 — Black Friday 1869: the plot to buy all the gold in America
He Used the President's Family to Buy All ...
New documentary on a forgotten financial scandal every week. Subscribe to Watered Stock.
#UlyssesGrant #PonziScheme #GildedAge