The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

by T. J. Stiles

  4 NYH, May 29, 1857; Atlantic Monthly, December 1859. For newspaper coverage of Spencer's raid, see any New York newspaper starting January 16, 1857, especially NYT, January 28, 1857. For examples of the “war of the commodores” reporting, see NYH, November 29, 1856, January 27, 1857; NYT, March 17, 1857.

  5 Manning, 4:719, 768; NYH, January 28, 1858.

  6 LT, February 23, 1857.

  7 CM's letter quoted in Baughman, 83; RGD, NYC, 316:83, 1G; Deposition of Benjamin F. Voorhees, MacDonald Lawsuit; Texas State Gazette, March 7, 1857; NYTr, March 9, 1857.

  8 HW, April 4, 1857.

  9 HW, March 5, 1859.

  10 Francis Gerry Fairfield, The Clubs of New York (New York: Henry L. Hinton, 1873), 151.

  11 NYH, April 9, 1857; CV to Ezekiel Williams Jr., February 12, 1857, WFP. Letters in Vanderbilt's own hand are rare after 1837, when first Daniel Allen and then Lambert Wardell assumed the physical chore of putting pen to paper.

  12 HC, March 11, 1857; NYW, December 20, 1877.

  13 NYTr, March 9, 1857; McPherson, 174–8.

  14 Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 699–702; McPherson, 156, 161–3; Kenneth M. Stampp, America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 47–9.

  15 NYH, February 14, 1858; NYT, September 8, 1857, July 2, 1858; USMDR, December 1857; Stampp, 72, 76; Jerome Mushkat, Tammany: The Evolution of a Political Machine, 1789–1865 (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1971), 264, 267–9, 300, 303, 315; Francis Schell, Memoir of the Hon. Augustus Schell (New York: privately printed, 1885). For more on Wood, see Burrows & Wallace, 831–41. For a story showing Clark and Schell practicing law together, see NYT, March 21, 1854. As political allies, see NYT, October 5, 1854, June 23, 1857, April 6, 1858. For more commentary on violence in New York elections, see NYTr, June 7, 1852. For insight into the many ways the collector of the port could profit from his position, see SR 227, part 1, 42nd Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 4.

  16 Washington Evening Star, December 6, 1858; JB to Alexander Dimitry November 1, 1859, reel 50, JBP.

  17 David Colden Murray, Receiver of the ATC, v. CV, November 3, 1859, file PL 1859-M V74, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC; NYT, May 5, 1857; NYH, May 6, 21, 1857.

  18 SctDP; Sylvanus M. Spencer Deposition, David Colden Murray Memorial, fold. 1, box 1, CRCC. On Webster, see NYT, January 29, June 3, 11, July 4, 1857. Not only did CV repudiate Webster, but Webster's name appears nowhere in the extensive investigations of the CRCC.

  19 NYT, August 30, 1855.

  20 Burns, 4, 42, 221; NYT, August 26, 1857, April 24, July 1, 1858; NYH, March 1, 1858.

  21 CT, December 11, 1857, February 28, 1859; HED 47, 35th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 9; John A. Butler, Atlantic Kingdom: America's Contest with Cunard in the Age of Sail and Steam (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 2001), 220; Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt, American Steamships on the Atlantic (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1981), 137–8.

  22 National Era, April 23, 1857; CT, April 24, 1857; NYT, April 28, May 6, 1857; HC, May 14, 1857; SA, June 6, 1857; Albany Evening Journal, quoted in NYT, June 11, 1857. NYT, June 15, 1857, lists Mrs. C. Vanderbilt as one of the Americans registered with a bank in Paris.

  23 HC, May 14, 1857; LT, June 4, 1857.

  24 On the speed of crossing, see Liberator, July 17, 1857; NYT, July 15, 21, August 3, 25, 1857. For the bankruptcy of the Bremen line, see National Era, July 2, 1857; CT, December 11, 1857; HED 47, 35th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 9; Ridgely-Nevitt, 137–9. For an astute analysis of CVs method, see NYT, October 26, 1857.

  25 Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders, 1845–1890: The Business Mind in Action (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965, orig. pub. 1953), 22–3.

  26 NYT, January 21, 1857; CV v. HRR, July 16, 1858, file LJ-1858-N-41, Supreme Court Judgments, NYCC.

  27 Directors' Minutes, June 15, 24, 1857, HRR, reel 27, box 242, NYCRR (cited hereafter as HRR Minutes). I do not mean to say that CVs only contact with the HRR was through the Schuyler fraud; the same source shows, in the list of voters at the annual stockholders' meeting, April 22, 1853, that CV owned 1,500 shares of stock, out of 50,897 total, at a time when Robert Schuyler was president. For details of the dispute, and the HRR's refusal to accept CVs terms, see the HRR Minutes, July 18, 19, 20, 1854. There is a fine summary of these events in a NYTr report quoted in HC, August 15, 1876.

  28 NYT, May 20, 1857; NYH, May 20, 1857; According to the HRR Minutes, CV owned 1,001 shares (alongside Clark's three hundred), yet he won 79,124 votes, the most of any candidate; Report of the Inspectors of Election, May 19, 1957, see entry for May 18, 1858, HRR Minutes. See also Hudson C. Tanner, “The Lobby” and Public Men from Thurlow Weed's Time (Albany: George MacDonald, 1888), 226. Tanner claimed to be quoting unpublished minutes of CVs testimony before a committee of New York's legislature that he took as official stenographer, material that was suppressed in official publications. Given the close correlation between Tanner's account and the minutes of the HRR, I believe he wrote truthfully. Tanner later swore before Congress that the suppressed testimony was given on March 3, 1869, to a committee of the New York State Assembly, reported in NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869; see NYTr, March 6, 1871. I accept Tanner's account in “The Lobby” as accurate.

  29 Entries for June 15, 24, 1857, HRR Minutes. I am extrapolating a figure of $6.5 million, based on the commissions reported in the minutes and CVs comment in Tanner, 226, that he and Drew took a commission of one-half of 1 percent on their endorsements.

  30 Entries for June 24, 25, 1857, HRR Minutes; Tanner, 224.

  31 Tanner, 225–6.

  32 September 9, 1857, HRR Minutes.

  33 NYH, June 17, 1857; Farmer's Cabinet, June 25, 1857.

  34 BE, June 22, 1857; NYH, quoted in National Era, July 23, 1857; JB to Isaiah Rynders, September 14, 1859, reel 50, JBP. The BE and the NYH said that JB told CV nothing; the latter part of the NYH report suggests that he did, as does a letter from CV to General José María Cañas, August 5, 1857, in Manning, 4:638. Robert E. May observes that historians have “unfairly stigmatized” Buchanan as a supporter of filibustering; “The Slave Power Conspiracy Revisited: United States Presidents and Filibustering, 1848–1861,” in David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson, eds., Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1997), 7–28. It was thought that CM and CKG were helping Walker; in fact, they purchased a transit contract from Webster that led nowhere; NYT, July 31, 1857; AltaC, September 16, 1857; Kemble, 77.

  35 NYT, August 26, December 19, 1857, April 24, July 1, 1858; NYH, March 1, 1858, May 2, 1859; Manning, 4:594–5, 623n, 625–6, 637–8; H W, November 21, 1857; CV to JB, October 20, 1857, roll 33, JBP; Folkman, 94–8; Burns, 4, 42, 221. A distinctly irritated secretary of state wrote that CV was “deserving of censure” for his attempts to prevent the recognition of Yrisarri; Lewis Cass to Mirabeau B. Lamar, January 2, 1858, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906: Central American States, vol. 15, May 29, 1833, to July 25, 1858, roll 27, Microfilm Publication M77, NA-CP.

  36 SED 13, 35th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 1; Robert E. May, The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire: 1854–1861 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989), 113.

  37 Strong, 2:211; Burrows & Wallace, 666–70.

  38 NYH, June 17, 1857, Liberator, July 17, 1857; Burrows & Wallace, 836–41.

  39 Stampp, 214–7, 221; Burrows & Wallace, 846–7; McPherson, 188–91; Tanner, 226.

  40 NYH, January 1, 1858; Strong, 2:351.

  41 NYT, September 3, 19, 1857; RGD, NYC, 342:290.

  42 Strong, 2:355–6; NYT, October 6, 1857.

  43 RGD, NYC, 316:81.

  44 This dialogue is taken from Tanner, 225–30.

  45 Tanner, 225–30; October 21, 1857, HRR Minutes; NYTr in HC, August 15, 1876. The crisis largely involved the coupons of the first-mortgage bonds, which the company lacked the funds to pay.

  46 Tanner, 225–30;
RGD, NYC, 340:47. As mentioned earlier, Tanner's quotation strikes me as accurate. It closely fits the HRR Minutes and RGD, which records a mortgage to Drew issued on September 30, 1857. I believe this unpublished testimony was given on March 3, 1869, to a committee of the New York State Assembly; see NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869, in which CV and Horace Clark testified that CV took the bonds at a 50 percent discount.

  47 November 11, 20, 28, 1857, January 30, February 10, 1858, HRR Minutes. On the HRR's improved condition in 1858, see NYH, May 19, 1858; NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869.

  48 HW, November 21, 1857. For a discussion of Thanksgiving's spread, see JoC, November 30, 1837.

  49 NYH, February 23, 1868; CT, January 13, 1867, February 11, 1868.

  50 H W, November 28, 1857. For more information about CV's racing and the carriages of the wealthy, see NYH, June 18, December 5, 1859; Melvin L. Adelman, “The First Modern Sport in America: Harness Racing in New York City, 1825–1870,” Journal of Sport History 8, no. 1 (spring 1981): 5–32. Adelman notes that Thoroughbred racing was considered a sport of the older, aristocratic elite, and that harness racing—both formal and informal—was championed by a rising wealthy class that lacked social pedigree. On Frank Work's role as CVs broker, see NYS, March 7, 1878.

  51 SED 13, 35th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 1; NYT, December 28, 1857; Strong, 2:378–9; May, Southern Dream, 113–25; Folkman, 95–6.

  52 NYH, January 28, March 1, 1858; Manning, 4:660–1; Burns, 221–4. Webster tagged along with Allen, to his apparent annoyance. On the attitude of the Nicaraguans toward the White contract, see NYH, April 28, 1858.

  53 Pacific Mail had stopped its subsidy during the operation of CKG and CM's Nicaragua line, but resumed when they suspended operations. NYH, February 4, 5, 1858; NYT, February 6, March 27, April 21, 1858; Independent, February 11, 1858; Kemble, 78, 92.

  54 NYT, April 10, 1858; National Era, April 15, 1858; SctDP; ATC v. CKG, September 13, 1858, file 1858–53, Superior Court, NYCC A year later, the receiver for Accessory Transit asked for the decision to be set aside “on the ground of collusion between Vanderbilt and Garrison;” NYT, September 26, 1859.

  55 RGD, NYC, 374:97; NYT, March 14, 18, 1854, April 28, 1858; CV v. JLW, November 7, 1860, file 1860-#985, Superior Court, NYCC. On White's private opera box, see NYH, December 25, 1855.

  56 HW, March 8, 27, 1858; NYH, April 2, 1858; NYT, May 26, 27, 1858; Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt, American Steamships on the Atlantic (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1981), 169–70.

  57 David Colden Murray, Receiver of the ATC, v. CV, November 3, 1859, file PL 1859-M V74, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC.

  58 NYT, March 27, July 1, 5, 1858.

  59 NYH, May 30, 1858; NYT, June 28, July 15, 16, 31, 1858; SctDP; Manning, 4:686; Burns, 231. See also Cyril Allen, “Felix Belly: Nicaraguan Canal Promoter,” HAHR 37, no. 1 (February 1957): 46–59, to understand the role of Felix Belly, a French canal promoter who intrigued against CV.

  60 McPherson, 163–7.

  61 NYT, July 2, 1858. See also CT, March 22, 1858; NYT, February 9, 1858.

  62 Daniel E. Sickles to JB, September 29, 1857, roll 33, JBP For more on JB's coldness toward CV because of his hostility to Clark, see NYT, September 2, 1858.

  63 BE, August 18, 1858; NYT, April 6, July 2, September 2, 1858.

  64 Burrows & Wallace, 847–51; NYT, August 9, 13, 1858.

  65 Strong, 2:411–3; NYT, January 28, September 6, 7, 27, October 7, 1858.

  66 NYT, October 15, 29, 30, 1858; National Era, November 4, 1858; Strong, 2:419.

  67 NYH, September 5, October 5, 1859; Washington Evening Star, December 6, 1858; NYH, September 5, 1859; NYTr, September 8, 1859; SED 45, 36th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 11; Kemble, 83.

  68 NYT, June 11, December 13, 1858; Washington Evening Star, December 13, 1858; Manning, 4:862.

  69 NYT, June 2, 1860; HW, February 12, 19, March 5, 1859; NYH, April 29, 1859; LT, March 2, 1859; PS, July 28, 1859. There are signs of an early start to negotiations with Samuel L. M. Barlow, a prominent figure in Pacific Mail; see CV to Samuel L. M. Barlow, May 7, 1859, BW box 30 (47), Samuel L. M. Barlow Collection, HL; CV to John T. Wright and William S. Freeman, October 19, 1859, CV-NYHS.

  70 New York Observer and Chronicle, April 7, 1859; NYT, November 28, 1859; NYH, September 10, October 3, 1859, January 1, 1860; NYTr, September 7, 1859; Pacific Mail Steamship Co., Proceedings in Connection with Negotiations with C Vanderbilt, November 30th, 1859 (New York: G. F. Nesbitt & Co., 1859), copy in BL; Kemble, 83–5. Though incorporated in April, the Atlantic & Pacific Steamship Company advertised for stock subscriptions in NYT, September 23, 1859, and was mistakenly derided as simply an attempt to drive down the Pacific Mail share price.

  71 Washington Evening Star, December 6, 1858; NYH, September 5, 1859; NYTr, September 8, 1859; SED 45, 36th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 11; Kemble, 83. CV's correspondence with Holt appears in SED 45.

  72 CV to Pliny Miles, June 8, 1859, NYSL.

  73 CV to JB, August 30, 31, November 1, 1859, reel 38, JB to Alexander Dimitry November 1, 1859, reel 50, JBP.

  74 SED 45, 36th Cong., 1st sess.; NYT, September 27, October 13, 1859; NYH, October 3, 1859; HW, September 24, 1859; October 1, 1859. On CVs purchase of CKG's stake, see NYT, October 10, 1859; NYH, October 10, 1859; CT, October 14, 1859; NYTr, March 2, 1860. CKG continued to serve as agent until Vanderbilt's new agents arrived from New York; CV to John T. Wright and William S. Freeman, October 19, 1859, CV-NYHS. Kemble, 93, reported that an examination of Pacific Mail's books showed that it lost money.

  75 NYH, October 5, 6, 7, 1859; CT, October 8, 1859; NYT, October 25, 1859; SED 45, 36th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 11; SED 44, 41st Cong., 3rd sess., vol. 1.

  76 HW, December 18, 1858.

  77 NYH, October 17, 1859.

  78 NYH, July 10, 1859; HW, October 1, 1859; Strong, 2:454.

  79 NYH, December 5, 1859. On the symbolic nature of the CV-Bonner rivalry, and the social implications of the rise of trotting, see Adelman, “The First Modern Sport.”

  80 HW, February 26, 1859.

  81 Burrows & Wallace, 697–705, 845–6, 849–51 (Harper's quoted on 697).

  82 Burrows & Wallace, 847–51; NYT, August 9, 13, 1858.

  83 NYH, March 5, 1879; NYTr, March 18, 1878; NYW, November 14, 1877. William's love of driving fast horses would later be well publicized; see, for example, NYS, January 26, 1878.

  84 NYH, March 5, 1879; NYT, April 6, 1857, August 20, 1860; NYSAD 75, February 15, 1861.

  85 HW, September 3, 1859; SED 2, part 2, 36th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 2.

  86 CV to Oliver Williams, May 5, 1860, WFP.

  87 McPherson, 206; Strong, 2:473–4.

  88 McPherson, 200–1; CT, December 19, 1859.

  89 Letters and excerpts from minutes reprinted in Pacific Mail Steamship Co., Proceedings.

  90 NYH, December 1, 1859. For discussions of these negotiations in the press, see the New York newspapers for November 26 through December 5, 1859. On the vagueness of distinctions between shareholders and corporations, see Naomi R. Lamoreaux, “Partnerships, Corporations, and the Limits on Contractual Freedom in U.S. History: An Essay in Economics, Law, and Culture,” in Kenneth Lipartito and David B. Scilia, eds., Constructing Corporate America: History, Politics, Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 29–65; Gregory A. Mark, “The Personification of the Business Corporation in American Law,” University of Chicago Law Review 54, no. 4. (autumn 1987): 1441–83.

  91 SctDP.

  92 NYTr, January 30, February 2, 1860; NYT, January 25, 1860; HFC to Samuel L. M. Barlow, January 16, 1860, BW box 36 (14), Samuel L. M. Barlow Collection, HL.

  93 NYTr, February 16, 17, 21, 29, 1860; NYH, August 12, 1859, February 16, 17, 20, March 1, 1860; Seventh Annual Report of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, May 1861 (New York: G. F. Nesbitt & Co., 1861); Proceedings in Connection with Negotiations with C Vanderbilt, BL; CV to Samuel L. M. Barlow, February 20, 1860, BW box 36 (14), Samuel L. M. Barlow Collection, HL; Kemble, 93–7.

/>   94 Kemble, 93–7; NYTr, February 29, 1860.

  95 CT, July 12, 1858. With five thousand shares with a par value of $100 each, CV owned one-eighth of the forty thousand shares of Pacific Mail, with a total par value of $5 million; NYSAD 210, 90th sess., 1867.

  96 NYT, June 23, July 3, 4, 9, 10, November 15, December 8, 1860; NYH, June 30, July 11, 12, September 13, October 17, 1860; RT, January 7, 1860; Edward Harold Mott, Between the Ocean and the Lakes: The Story of Erie (New York: Ticker Publishing, 1908), 129–36. Congress did retroactively pay him $175,000 for his service during the remainder of 1860, followed by payments of $61,249.99 and $113,750 in 1861, and finally $58,725 for the rest of his career in steamships to California, making a total federal subsidy to CV of $596,224.99 for the California mail; SED 44, 41st Cong., 3rd sess., vol. 1.

  97 Manning, 4:762; HW, October 13, 1860; Cyril Allen, “Felix Belly: Nicaraguan Canal Promoter,” HAHR 37, no. 1 (February 1957): 46–59.

  98 NYT, February 4, 1861.

  99 NYT, November 9, 1859. The paper reprinted the article at issue on October 18, 1859. It was full of errors and innuendo; it claimed, for example, that Walker would depart for Central America on the Philadelphia, saying it was one of Vanderbilt's “mail steamers.” It was not.

  100 NYT, May 26, 1858.

  101 Burrows & Wallace, 679.

  102 HW, February 19, 1859.

  103 HW, March 5, 1859.

  104 For an example of CV's approach to management of a geographically sprawling enterprise, see his instructions to his San Francisco agents, CV to John T. Wright and William S. Freeman, October 19, 1859, CV-NYHS. Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), argues that the failure of the federal government to develop bureaucratic regulatory competence turned Northern capitalists in an antistate direction. James L. Huston, Securing the Fruits of Labor: The American Concept of Wealth Distribution, 1765–1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1998), 144–9, argues that only after 1880 did Americans abandon their belief in the essentially horizontal nature of the economy, and abandon older Jack-sonian mental constructs. As early as 1859, however, we see public intellectuals struggling with the problem of bigness, in the form of CV My discussion of CVs role is informed by John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).