The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

by T. J. Stiles

  21 EP, August 27, 1825, June 2, 1826 (the description of the Emerald appears in a Union Line ad); Robert T. Thompson, Colonel James Neilson: A Business Man of the Early Machine Age in New Jersey, 1784–1862 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1940), 269–72; entries for August 1828, May 3–6, 1829, Farm Diary, box 14, NP.

  22 EP, November 6, 1826; SEP, November 11, 1826; Entries 162 and 252, April 28, 1826, Abstracts Licenses Enrolled, July 1, 1825, to December 31, 1829, vol. 13041, New York Custom House Records, RG 41, NA.

  23 NYT, November 13, 1877; NYW, November 13, 1877. On CVs continuing obsession with horses, see WG to Samuel B. Parkman, March 16, 1827, GP.

  24 NYW, November 13, 14, 1877.

  25 Alexis de Tocqueville (George Lawrence, trans.), Democracy in America (New York: HarperCollins, 1988, orig. pub. 1966), vol. 2, part 3, chap. 6, 580.

  26 CV v. Patrick Rice, November 26, 1827, file 1827-#1360, Court of Common Pleas, Patrick Rice v. CV, November 26, 1827, file 1827-#1671, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC.

  27 NBF, July 29, 1829 (which shows Jacob Vanderbilt as captain of the Citizen); New-York and Richmond Free Press, July 6, 1833; Entry 37, July 10, 1828, Enrollments, 1818–1821, vol. 2169, Perth Amboy Custom House Records, RG 41, NA subscriber list, New Brunswick Coal Association, Rariton Coal Mining Company, fold. 47, box 4, NP. For CVs dealings with William Gibbons, see citations from GP, next endnote.

  28 Lane, 52; EP, July 8, 1828; NBF, July 29, 1829; New-York and Richmond Free Press, July 6, 1833; Entry 37, July 10, 1828, Enrollments, 1818–1821, vol. 2169, Perth Amboy Custom House Records, RG 41, NA WG to CV, March 14, 1832, WG to George Jenkins, June 30, 1827, WG to James Parker, October 26, 1827, WG to George Jenkins, October 30, 1827, WG to Elias Van Arsdale, November 15, 1827, WG to Robert L. Stevens, October 26, 1828, WG to Robert Baylies, November 23, 1828, WG to E. A. Stevens, November 30, 1828, WG to William Halsted, December 2, 1828, WG to Phineas Withington, January 30, 1829, GP. On the view of corporations as trade-restricting organizations, see Maier, “The Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation,” and WG to E. Hall, February 6, 1829, WG to Robert L. Livingston, February 18, 1829, WG to Thomas J. J. Lefevre, Matthew C. Jenkins, and James T. Watson, February 23, 1829, GP. Lane, 49, repeats a tale popularized by Croffut, 34, that CV decided to leave the line to become an independent operator, to Gibbons's protest; when CV refused an offer to become his partner in the Union Line, Gibbons then sold the boats. For early renderings of this story, see HW, March 5, 1859, and MM, January 1865. The Gibbons Papers show there is no truth to it.

  29 Lane, 49; NBF, July 29, 1829; Trenton Emporium and True American, July 11, 1829 (which appears to show that the Emerald, which had been sold and rebuilt, now operated on the Delaware). CV began to pay tolls on the Trenton and New Brunswick Turnpike for the Dispatch Line as early as May 1829; see the Trenton and New Brunswick Turnpike Company Toll Book, fold. 11, box 3, NP.

  30 The Gazette story was quoted in the SEP, May 2, 1829. On the heavy-handed ways of captains and the shifty world of the waterfront, see a story about freelance porters in EP, September 23, 1824. CV did not move out of New Brunswick until some time in 1830, contrary to Lane's account; see the farm diary and James Neilson to George Able, January 28, 1830, fold. 17, box 3, NP. CV's ownership of bank stock is notable, a sign of his interest in investment opportunities and ease with banks and corporations; but it should be noted that New York was far in advance of the rest of the country in abandoning exclusive practices in both lending and stock ownership, with women and artisans trading shares and receiving loans (though bank chartering remained highly political). See Robert E. Wright, “Bank Ownership and Lending Patterns in New York and Pennsylvania, 1781–1831,” BHR 73, no. 1 (spring 1999): 40–60; Naomi R. Lamoreaux, “Banks, Kinship, and Economic Development: The New England Case,” JEH 46, no. 3 (September 1986): 647–67; Naomi R. Lamoreaux and Christopher Glaisek, “Vehicles of Privilege or Mobility? Banks in Providence, Rhode Island, During the Age of Jackson,” BHR 65, no. 3 (autumn 1991): 502–27.

  31 David R. Johnson identifies 1830 as a turning point in the response to professional criminals, in Policing the Urban Underworld: The Impact of Crime on the Development of the American Police, 1800–1887 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), 12–15, 41–3. Allan Stanley Horlick, Country Boys and Merchant Princes: The Social Control of Young Men in New York (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1975), 45, 26, 89.

  32 Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution, 1–2; William Austin, Peter Rugg, the Missing Man (Worcester: Franklin P. Rice, 1882, orig. pub. 1824), 52–3.

  33 Royall, 243–4; Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 62. On the expansion of New York, see Burrows & Wallace, 429–528; Countryman, in Milton Klein, 295–316; Eric Homberger, The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of Nearly 400 Years of New York City's History (New York: Henry Holt, 1994), 68–72.

  34 Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 525–42. As L. Ray Gunn notes, 39, “Wherever its influence was felt, the transportation revolution literally remade society;” see also 19, 23–56. See also Martin Bruegel, Farm, Shop, Landing: The Rise of a Market Society in the Hudson Valley, 1780–1860 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 159; Wood, 305–47; EP, May 17, 1826. For the “Yankee principle” quote, see New York Illustrated Magazine of Literature and Art, September 20, 1845. An excellent summary of the impact of the transportation revolution on local economies, and the subsequent rise of manufacturing for national markets in New England, is provided by Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1966), 156–76. On the relative lack of immigration in the 1820s, see Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum (New York: Free Press, 2001), 42–3, who notes, “Immigration increased enormously after 1830.… The foreign-born population expanded from 9 percent of the city's total in 1830 to 36 percent in 1845.”

  35 Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 145; William R. Taylor, Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (New York: George Braziller, 1961), 47–8; Trollope, 302, 352, 370. The emphasis on being “smart” is also noted by Clifford Browder, The Money Game in Old New York: Daniel Drew and His Times (Lexington, K.Y.: University Press of Kentucky, 1986), 38–9. On the New England migration to New York, see Edward K. Spann, The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840–1857 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 7; Horlick, 69–72; and Dixon Ryan Fox, who observes in Yankees and Yorkers (New York: New York University Press, 1940), 198, “It is safe to say that by 1830 the Yankee strain was becoming predominant in New York blood.” On February 14, 1835, Philip Hone attended a meeting called to organize “a regular Knickerbocker society” to counter the influence of New Englanders; Hone, 148–9. On the impact of the decline of traditional authority and new geographical mobility on culture, see Confidence Men, esp. 1–15, 19–23. P. T. Barnum dedicated his book, The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself (New York: Redfield, 1855), to “the universal Yankee nation, of which I am proud to be one.” In understanding the rise of the Yankee stereotype, it is worth quoting Gunn again, 27, “Traditional community values declined and were replaced by those of the marketplace. Informal, face-to-face relationships gave way to more formal and impersonal modes of human interaction.”

  36 Lane, 50–1; Lane, Indian Trail, 196–201; George Henry Preble, A Chronological History of the Origin and Development of Steam Navigation, 1543–1882 (Philadelphia: L. R. Hamersly 1883), 58–9; NBF, July 29, 1829; Trenton Emporium and True American, July 11, 1829; Trenton and New Brunswick Turnpike Company Toll Book, fold. 11, box 3, NP; Abstracts of Licenses Enrolled, Jan
uary 1, 1830, to September 30, 1832, vol. 13044, New York Custom House Records, RG 41, NA. The Bellona cost CV around $15,000; see WG to E. Hall, February 6, 1829, GP.

  37 On the Stevens family, see in particular Dorothy Gregg's excellent study, “John Stevens: General Entrepreneur, 1749–1838,” in William Miller, ed., Men in Business: Essays in the History of Entrepreneurship (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952), 120–52. Robert L. Stevens introduced, among other things, the skeleton beam, a false bow, a hull-stiffening truss, and the placement of engines on platforms over the water; see Morrison, 29, 37–9, 48–51, 66. Hone visited Hoboken on May 21, 1831; Hone, 42. On the impending termination of the Citizen's Line, see WG to E. A. Stevens, November 30, 1828, GP.

  38 “The New Jersey Monopolies,” NAR, April 1867, 428–76; Lane, Indian Trail, 302–4; Gregg, 150–2. A fine survey is in Taylor, 74–90, esp. 89 and 101. For contemporary discussions of the Camden & Amboy monopoly, see Workingman's Advocate, August 16, 1834, and NYH, April 1, 1837.

  39 Lane, 51–2; HW, March 5, 1859.

  40 On WG'S anxiety about the railroad, see WG to Robert L. Stevens, January 16, 1829, and WG to Robert Baylies, February 2, 1829, GP Details of CVs previously unknown Sawpits venture appear in Charles Hoyt v. John Brooks Jr., May 8, 1833, file BM 2163-H, Court of Chancery, NYCC; see also an advertisement in the EP, June 15, 1831, which notes that the Fanny also worked as a towboat, and SEP, April 23, 1831. Contrary to Lane's account, CV moved to New York from New Brunswick between January and September 1830; see James Neilson to George Able, January 28, 1830, and Farm Diary, fold. 17, box 3, NP, and entry for September 19, 1830, Hiram Peck Diary, NYHS. On the location of Sawpits, I am indebted to Alice C. Hudson, chief of the Map Division at the New York Public Library. See, for example, Joseph R. Bien, Atlas of Westchester County, New York (New York: Julius Bien, 1893), plate 47. On CVs address at this time, see Croffut, 279.

  41 Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949, orig. pub. 1832), 301. Many historians discuss the commercialization of American society during this period, including Gunn, 23–56; Wood, 325–69; Maier, 51–84; Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution, 56–89.

  42 Entries for August 3, 11, September 17, 19, 21, October 13, 29, November 19, 1830, July 18, 1831, Hiram Peck Diary, NYHS. On Captain Brooks's relationship to CV see Charles Hoyt v. John Brooks Jr., May 8, 1833, Court of Chancery, BM 2163-H, NYCC. It is possible that Peck was writing of a different Vanderbilt, as later he specified “Captain C. Vanderbilt;” however, the reference to Captain Brooks, among other hints, strongly suggests that he meant CV in these entries. Lorena S. Walsh discusses the evolving domestic life of middling Americans during this period, including diet, hygiene, and table manners, in “Consumer Behavior, Diet, and the Standard of Living in Late Colonial and Early Antebellum America, 1770–1840,” in Robert E. Gallman and John Joseph Wallis, eds., American Economic Growth and Standards of Living before the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 217–61. On the new social dilemma of the untrustworthiness of one's fellow Americans, see especially Confidence Men, 31–53.

  43 On Cornelius J. Vanderbilt's birth, see Richmond County Advance, April 15, 1882. On the children's lingering resentment, see, for example, NYS, November 13, 1877; NYW, November 13, 14, 1877; NYTr, March 28, 1878.

  44 On the life of Jackson, see Robert V. Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson (New York: Penguin, 1988). For an insightful account of Jackson's personality, see Andrew Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).

  45 Entry for General Jackson, November 2, 1830, Abstracts of Licenses Enrolled, January 1, 1830, to September 30, 1832, vol. 13044, New York Custom House Records, RG 41, NA Heyl, 2:97–8; EP, June 8, 1831; New York Commercial Advertiser, June 20, 1831; SEP, June 11, 1831; Lane, 53–5. Lane mistakenly reads the EP article to mean that Jacob Vanderbilt himself had run to Peekskill for two years, whereas the Custom House records show that he enrolled as the General Jackson's captain in November 1830.

  46 EP, June 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 1831; SEP, June 11, 1831; New York Commercial Advertiser, June 20, 1831; Workingman's Advocate, June 18, 1831; entry for June 8, 1831, Hone, 42–3; New York Illustrated Magazine of Literature and Art, September 20, 1845. For a useful summary of steamboat explosions during this era (including one on the Bellona, killing two, in 1825), see The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, 1835.

  47 SEP, June 25, 1831.

  48 SEP, April 23, 1831; Charles Hoyt v. John Brooks Jr., May 8, 1833, Court of Chancery, BM 2163-H, NYCC.

  49 SEP, April 23, June 25, 1831; Charles Hoyt v. John Brooks Jr., May 8, 1833, Court of Chancery, BM 2163-H, NYCC; entry for Cinderella, October 19, 1831, Abstracts of Licenses Enrolled, January 1, 1830, to September 30, 1832, vol. 13044, New York Custom House Records, RG 41, NA; Lane, 53; New York Gazette quoted in the Workingman's Advocate, September 10, 1831.

  50 CFA, “A Chapter of Erie,” NAR, July 1869; Henry Clews, Fifty Years in Wall Street (New York: Irving Publishing, 1908), 121; Smith, 131; Fowler, 127. It should be noted that this book will not cite the often-cited Book of Daniel Drew, a 1910 publication which purports to be a secret autobiography. I agree with Drew's biographer, Clifford Browder, who argues it is a fraud; see Browder's The Money Game in Old New York: Daniel Drew and His Times (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986). The Book of Daniel Drew was a hoax, and should be shunned by historians. Drew's son denounced the book on its publication, and declared that he had never seen his father write anything more than his signature; NYW, April 25, 1910.

  51 Walter Blair v. Daniel Drew, March 10, 1831, file 1831-#87, Court of Common Pleas, and Fitz G. Halleck v. Daniel Drew, March 15, 1820, file 1820-#479, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC. Drew's overlordship of the livestock market is demonstrated by a report he sent to the New York Farmer for its 1831 issue.

  52 HW, March 5, 1859; EP, August 12, 1831; Heyl, 3: 337–8. On Drew, see Browder, esp. 32–9, and J. M'Clintock, “Daniel Drew, Esq. of New York,” Ladies' Repository, September 1859. See entries for Water Witch, September 20, 1831, May 26, 1832, and Fanny, June 14, 1831, Abstracts of Licenses Enrolled, January 1, 1830, to September 30, 1832, vol. 13044, New York Custom House Records, RG 41, NA.

  53 Charles S. De Forest v. Tunis Egbert, Francis Perkins, Preston Sheldon, and Helmus M. Wells, March 5, 1852, box SI-68, Supreme Court, Richmond County, NYMA; entries for July 5, September 12, 15, 18, Hiram Peck Diary, NYHS; NR, July 28, 1832; EP, January 17, May 1, 2, 1832; NYS, November 14, 1877; NYW, November 14, 1877.

  54 Entries for July 5, September 12, 15, 18, Hiram Peck Diary, NYHS.

  55 Charles Hoyt v. John Brooks Jr., May 8, 1833, Court of Chancery, BM 2163-H, NYCC; Heyl, 5: 293–4.

  56 EP, June 12, 13, and 15, 1833; Trollope, 345; American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine, December 1833; Hone, 42. On CVs manner, see the testimony of Dr. Jared Linsly NYS, November 14, 1877. On New York's new elite, see Burrows & Wallace, 452–72.

  57 Ariel, April 16, 1831; NR, September 28, 1833. On December 18, 1832, Hone found it worth recording that the Camden & Amboy was complete; Hone, 85. On the early craze for railroads, see especially Taylor, 74–94.

  58 John H. White Jr., The American Railroad Passenger Car (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 3–6, 8; EP, November 9, 11, 13; NR, September 28, November 16, 1833; Hazard's Register, November 16, 1833; NYS, November 14, 1877; NYW, November 14, 1877. On early locomotives used by the Camden & Amboy (including, most famously, the John Bull), see John H. White Jr., American Locomotives: An Engineering History, 1830–1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968).

  Four Nemesis

  1 In addition to other sources cited below, see NYT, August 7, 1876.

  2 NYW, November 14, 15, 1877; NYS, November 14, 15, 1877.

  3 Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 373–95; see also Charles Sellers, The Market
Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 313–32. Historians long debated whether Jackson and Jacksonian Democrats favored entrepreneurial capitalism or desired a primitive agrarian economy. The Consensus School claimed that Americans across the political spectrum were essentially in agreement that a market economy was good, as best argued by Bray Hammond in the still-valuable Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 326–457. Other scholars from the same era depicted Jackson as a forefather of New Deal policies; see especially Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950), 74–131. A later wave of scholarship claimed that Jacksonians resisted the market economy; see especially John Ashworth Sellers, “Agrarians” and “Aristocrats”: Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837–1846 (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1983), and, with more specific focus, Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). More recent scholarship has to some degree returned to the view that Jacksonians favored a market economy, though with greater subtlety than the Consensus School. See in particular Michael J. Connolly, Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Jacksonian New England (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003), as well as John M. McFaul, The Politics of Jacksonian Finance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 1–15, and Peter Temin, The Jacksonian Economy (New York: Norton, 1969). I am very much in agreement with Howe, 364, who writes, “Economic enterprise generally became controversial only when government became involved.” For sources that document Jackson's financial policies, and his personal hostility to banking, see Herman E. Krooss, ed., Documentary History of Banking and Currency in the United States (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1965), 982–93, 1055.