The 1869 U.S. gold-market crash engineered by Jay Gould and James Fisk was called Black Friday.
Gould and Fisk sought to corner the U.S. gold market by buying gold and encouraging others to believe that President Ulysses S. Grant would prevent the Treasury from selling government gold. Their plan pushed the gold price sharply higher during September 1869.
Grant eventually ordered the Treasury to sell $4 million in gold. The sales began on September 24, 1869, causing the price of gold to fall rapidly. Investors who had bought at inflated prices suffered heavy losses, and the day became known as Black Friday.
The episode affected Wall Street and the wider economy, especially merchants and farmers who had relied on high prices for agricultural exports. It is sometimes confused with the Black Friday associated with retail shopping or with the stock-market panic called Black Tuesday in 1929. In 1869, the central market was gold rather than a broad stock index.