Abstract
Better known to American history as the gambling robber baron whose failed Northern Pacific Railroad triggered the Panic of 1873, Jay C. Cooke (1821–1905) was the father of modern war finance and a brilliant salesman of the fiscal obligations of citizenship. The son of an Ohio congressman, Cooke moved to Philadelphia in 1839, whetted his appetite for bond sales during the Mexican War, and "on the 1st day of January 1861 in one of the darkest hours of our country" established Jay Cooke & Co. in the heart of Philadelphia's Third Street financial district. Cooke reflected on his wartime experiences a generation later in an unpublished memoir. Composed in the 1890s with the aid of his granddaughter and now on deposit at the Baker Library Historical Collections of the Harvard Business School, Cooke's memoir offers invaluable insights into the history of Civil War Pennsylvania.