ABSTRACT
During the Gilded Age Newport, Rhode Island became the social playground of New York's finest place. The long string of Wall Street scandals was a major factor in the shaping of US economic development in the late nineteenth century. And in the Wall Street drama of the last decades of the century, the main actors shifted from the bear raiders and former circus workers to bankers and presidents. Although speculation on Wall Street had cooled following the Panic of 1873 and the ensuing depression, eventually financial manipulators made a comeback. What caught the public's attention was that the new scandal entangled no less august a figure than Ulysses S. Grant, former president, national war hero, and ill-fated partner in a New York City brokerage and bank, Grant & Ward. The Napoleon of Wall Street was actively borrowing money from banks and investors and using the proceeds to buy stocks.
