Jay Cooke's Gamble

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M. John Lubetkin's singular achievement is to link Jay Cooke with George Armstrong Custer-the world of robber baron finance with the world of Indian fighting. In particular, his account of the Stanley-Custer Yellowstone expedition of 1873 shows remarkable fidelity to the action and the personalities on both sides."--Robert M. Utley, author of Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier 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 Crédit 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. M. John Lubetkin, a retired cable television executive, was the 2004 recipient of the Little Big Horn Associates' Lawrence A. Frost award.