The Toast of New York

The story begins before the Civil War, with Fisk, Boyd, and Luke swindling Southern townsfolk into buying soap bars with a potential $10 gold piece inside. After being discovered, they flee across the Mason-Dixon Line as the war starts. Fisk devises a plan to return to the South, buy cotton, and smuggle it to the North, where Luke will sell it to textile mills. By war's end, they've amassed millions, only to discover Luke invested their earnings in Confederate Bonds.