During the American Civil War, John Pierpont Morgan financed the purchase of 5,000 surplus rifles at $3.50 each, which were then sold back to the government for $22 each. The incident became renowned as a scandalous example of wartime profiteering. Interest in the incident was revived in 1910 as an indictment of Morgan.

In this book, R. Gordon Wasson argued that there was no evidence Morgan knew that he was participating in a scheme to profit from the chaotic situation at the onset of the Civil War.