Ned Stokes, meantime, sleeps soundly in the Tombs. He appears to be at peace with himself, greeting his keepers at the New York City jail with a smile as they deliver breakfast and the morning papers. He ignores the stares of the other inmates, who gawk and point at this gentleman among them. He seems unaware of the two hundred extra policemen mustered by the city to guard his cell against the possible wrath of the Ninth Regiment at the assassination of their beloved patron. His brother brings him collars, cuffs, cravats, and socks from the Hoffman House, so that Stokes may be presentable when his lawyers arrive to discuss his case.
A rumor has circulated—apparently as a result of Stokes having been moved from one cell to another, leaving the first empty—that he has committed suicide. Reporters scramble to confirm or refute. “He persists in living, and living very comfortably,” the first with the facts, a Times man, explains. “He was taken to cell No. 50, the one assigned to him by Warden Stacom, and which has been handsomely fitted up at the prisoner’s expense. It is richly carpeted, the walls are papered and hung with a few fine pictures, and a new hair mattress and new bed-clothing have been substituted for the coarse prison articles. Altogether, the cell now appears more like a young lady’s boudoir.”
The reporter pays a second visit, arriving just as Stokes returns from a hearing in which his lawyers have unsuccessfully challenged the finding of the coroner’s jury, that Stokes’s shots killed Fisk. “The prisoner’s demeanor after the verdict of the jury was unchanged; indeed, if anything, his spirits were more buoyant. As soon as he left the court room he partook of a hearty dinner.” The prisoner’s confidence is contagious in the close quarters of the Tombs: “Bets of $100 to $50 were freely offered, yesterday, that Stokes will not be hung.”
Stokes remains upbeat days later when a grand jury indicts him for Fisk’s murder. Reporters find him standing in the doorway of his cell, leaning against the wall, unlighted cigar in his mouth, whittling a quill toothpick with a penknife. “You newspapermen are all wrong about my case,” he tells the group. “When it comes to trial you will see I have one of the strongest cases to present you ever heard of.” He smiles winningly, reminding the newsmen what Josie saw in him. “I have no more fears of the result than you have. I am confident I will get out of it. That Erie gang is working against me. It is one of the worst the world ever knew, and the head of it is an astute villain—that little Jay Gould. They seem to have the newspapers, though I don’t know how they can secure their influence.”
But the trial is delayed. Stokes’s lawyers challenge the validity of his indictment, asserting that the grand jury was selected by unconstitutional means. The district attorney’s office defends the indictment and the procedure, to preserve its case against Stokes but also to safeguard indictments it has brought by similar means against the Tweed ring. Stokes discovers, with a pained sense of irony, that winning his own case may jeopardize the people’s case against Boss Tweed, the facilitator of Fisk’s crimes.
The days become weeks, the weeks months, with Stokes still in jail. His spirits sag and his patience grows thin. The papers reveal that he is losing—perhaps has lost—the battle for public opinion. Fisk is remembered with increasing fondness, his financial manipulations now seen as a natural part of the Wall Street game. Stokes is cast as a woman stealer, a blackmailer, a cold-blooded murderer.
Stokes’s patience snaps when he learns of a play being performed at Niblo’s Garden, called Black Friday, which recounts the gold conspiracy and concludes with the shooting at the Grand Central Hotel. He has been silent about his case until now, at his lawyers’ insistence, but he can keep quiet no longer. He releases a letter “To the Public,” in which he recounts his travails. “I have suffered physically from unnecessarily close confinement,” he says. “I have suffered more mentally from the repeated and gross misrepresentations in newspapers under the control and influence of my enemies.” He has heard and read the continued allegations that he conspired with Josie Mansfield to extort money from Fisk. “These accusations are unqualifiedly false.” His relations with Miss Mansfield were merely those of a friend, he insists again.
He is outraged that Fisk’s associates are portraying the deceased as the aggrieved party in his dealings with Stokes; the truth, Stokes swears, is entirely the opposite. “I have been in legitimate business for the past ten years. With the exception of a reverse in 1865, I had been generally successful until I was induced to take James Fisk, Jr., as partner in my oil business in Brooklyn.” Fisk soon showed his real character as a swindler and a thug. “By him I was flagrantly robbed and outraged. My refinery was seized at midnight on Sunday by a lawless gang of ruffians, without any process of law, while I was thrown into prison and thereby enjoined from even attempting to proceed to regain my own property.” Litigation eventually yielded a marginally acceptable settlement, but an unscrupulous Erie lawyer and a crooked Tammany judge deprived him even of this.
The production at Niblo’s includes the most egregious falsehoods yet, Stokes says: “The incidents of this libelous play require no denial with them who know me, but 3,000 persons who know nothing of my antecedents or character nightly witness this misrepresentation of me as a gambler, a roué, forger and assassin, and possibly may accept it for truth.” The characterization is monstrously absurd from start to finish. “No man can honestly assert that I knowingly ever wronged anyone, and as for being an adept at cards, I barely know one card from another.” The forgery charge is equally ludicrous; Stokes says he knows nothing about the insidious practice.
As for being an assassin, he will rebut that allegation in court. “When all the facts of this unfortunate affair are developed, and when it shall be proved how infamously the witnesses perjured themselves at the coroner’s inquest, then public opinion, which has been based upon false statements, will set in my favor. I am anxious, and always have been anxious, for a speedy trial by an honest jury of my fellow men.”