he was also a partner
in the New York and St Louis branches of the Clarks. In 1858 he retired
from the firm, and for the next three years he devoted himself to
reorganizing some of the abandoned Pennsylvania railways and canals and
placing them again in operation. On the 1st of January 1861 he opened in
Philadelphia the private banking house of Jay Cooke & Company, and soon
achieved signal success in floating at par a war loan of $3,000,000 for
the state of Pennsylvania, whose credit had become notoriously bad. In
the early months of the Civil War Cooke co-operated with the secretary
of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase, in securing loans from the leading
bankers in the Northern cities, and his own firm was so successful in
distributing treasury notes that Chase engaged him as special agent for
the sale of the $500,000,000 of so-called "five-twenty" bonds authorized
by the act of the 25th of February 1862. To dispose of these bonds the
treasury department had already tried every regular means at its command
and had failed. Cooke secured the influence of the American press,
appointed 2500 sub-agents, and before the machinery he set in motion
could be stopped he had sold $11,000,000 more of bonds than had been
authorized, an excess which Congress immediately sanctioned. At the same
time he used all his influence in favour of the establishment of
national banks, and organized a national bank at Washington and another
at Philadelphia almost as soon as such institutions were authorized by
Congress. In the early months of 1865, when the needs of the government
were pressing, and the sale of the new "seven-thirty" notes by the
national banks had been very disappointing, Cooke's services were again
secured. He sent agents into the remotest villages and hamlets, and even
into the isolated mining camps of the West, and caused the rural
newspapers to praise the loan. As a result, between February and July
1865 he had disposed of three series of the notes, reaching a total of
$830,000,000. Through these efforts the Union soldiers were well
supplied and well paid while dealing the final blows of the war; and,
later, with money in their pockets, they were disbanded without
difficulty.

After the war Cooke became interested in the development of the
North-west, and in 1870 his firm undertook to finance the construction
of the Northern Pacific railway. In advancing the money for the work,
the firm over-estimated the possibilities of its c