The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

by T. J. Stiles

  A month after Sophia Vanderbilt's return from Canada, her husband dispatched her to an insane asylum run by a Dr. McDonald in Flushing, Long Island. Shortly afterward, in November 1846, Vanderbilt and his family settled into the house at 10 Washington Place—along with a new governess, the twenty-five-year-old cousin of Billy's wife.41

  The meaning of all this should not be overblown. It is doubtful that Billy actually exerted any dire “influence” on the old man through the new governess. Allen saw no impropriety in their relationship; indeed, Billy may well have intended to flush scandal out of the household by replacing his father's mistress with a pious minister's niece. What's more, Sophia joined her family on Washington Place after her discharge from the asylum a few months later.*

  And yet, the children's byzantine plotting does illustrate the strain placed on the family by its patriarch, a man who grew more imposing with every million. This unhappy family was unhappy in a way that only wealth and power (more specifically, a will to power) could bring. The very qualities that made Vanderbilt a formidable businessman—his ferocity, his obsession with control—left him unable to manage the murkier negotiations of love, affection, and fatherhood.

  AT THE SAME MOMENT THAT Vanderbilt moved to Washington Place, the finest boat he had ever built was swallowed by the Sound. Shortly after midnight on November 27, the Atlantic picked up the Norwich Railroad passengers at its Allyn Point terminal and set out for New York. Then the boiler burst just as a “perfect gale” blew in, seizing the vessel from Captain Isaac Dustan. For long hours he made frantic efforts to save it. He put out multiple anchors and pulled down the smokestacks to reduce wind resistance, but nothing worked. The howling storm drove the steamer upon the rocks of Fishers Island, killing at least fifty of perhaps seventy passengers and crew, including Captain Dustan, a Staten Islander and past commander of many of Vanderbilt's boats.42

  There is no evidence that Vanderbilt paid attention to the wreck of his creation, any more than he noticed the agonizing within his household. Ever awkward in his own home, he did not dwell in the domestic interiors of family, but rather in the outer world of men of affairs. It was said as a teenage ferry master that he slept in his periauger; as captain of the Bellona, he rose before dawn and returned after dark; as a “well-known steamboat proprietor,” he spent his life in his office, shipyard, or on the docks, when not in the stables with his horses. What his family thought of him apparently mattered little to him; but among his business peers, Courtlandt Palmer had observed, “He is very desirous of being considered a man of honor and integrity.”

  In early 1847, he launched a new steamer—the second craft he named Cornelius Vanderbilt. “She is a magnificent structure,” the New York Herald declared. “The model of the Vanderbilt differs from all others, and it is pronounced, by old and experienced shipmasters, peculiarly adapted to rough navigation.” It became the very embodiment of his reputation.43

  On May 25, 1847, Vanderbilt joined his brother Jacob on the Bay State for a social gathering of the leading steamboat men of New York. The Bay State itself was a beautiful new Long Island Sound steamer belonging to the Navigation Company; the host of this little party was Captain Com-stock, the corporation's gruff general agent. But who wasn't gruff in this gathering? In addition to the notoriously rough-edged Vanderbilts, Isaac Newton was there, along with George Law, owner of the extraordinarily fast Oregon. The only missing men were Drew himself and Charles Handy, the Navigation Company's outgoing president.

  No body of men could have better exemplified the ironies of the American economy in the 1830s and ′40s. Steamboat proprietors were famous for their competitiveness, symbols of a hotly individualistic society in which hatred of monopoly was a pillar of politics. On the other hand, perhaps no other businessmen had worked so hard to construct mechanisms to limit or even eliminate competition. They made agreements to divide up routes, split profits, and punish those who violated their unwritten code. The business culture they created demonstrates how the impulse to stifle competition arose inseparably from competition itself in the American economy, with sometimes bewildering consequences. The banker Lewis Palmer, for example, was exasperated when he tried to sell the Eureka because he was told that, if it went into opposition on some line, her sale would be considered a hostile act and lead to retaliation. “But whither would this doctrine lead?” he asked. “If the boat is only to be sold so as to interfere with nobody's route, who then would like to buy her?”44

  The contradictory fact was, if one wanted to enforce monopolies, one had to be a master of competition. Such was each of those who sat in the saloon of the Bay State—good businessmen who divided markets to maximize profits, and ruthless warriors who savored triumph. And Jacob Vanderbilt spoke proudly of the most ruthless of them all, his older brother, and that brother's greatest achievement, the Vanderbilt, “new, strong, and elegant,” as Scientific American called it, “first rate in every respect.” Jacob suggested a race against the others' fastest steamers, Newton's Hendrick Hudson, Comstock's Bay State, and Law's Oregon. They could start at the Battery, he suggested, run up the Hudson to Haverstraw Bay, where the river widened enough for four large boats to turn, then drive back to the city. He suggested a wager of $500.

  Why only $500? Cornelius asked. “I say, I will run the C. Vanderbilt, untried as she is, against any boat afloat to any place they name where there is sufficient water to float her, for any sum from $ 1,000 to $ 100,000.” Newton sat silent, and Comstock said something about consulting with Handy first. But George Law took the bet. Twice before he had challenged Vanderbilt steamers (most recently the Atlantic) to race his Oregon. Now he would get his wish. The prize would be $1,000. They agreed to June 1, during the regatta of the New York Yacht Club.45

  Law had emerged as a leader in transportation only three years earlier. Like Daniel Drew, he had no practical experience in navigation, and had moved into steamboats purely as an investment. Born near Saratoga in 1806, he had started his career by digging canals, working as a contractor on several major projects. From 1839 to 1842 he had built the mighty High Bridge over the Harlem River, the most impressive piece of the most important work of civil engineering in a generation, the Croton Aqueduct. He had proved as gifted at finance as at construction; he had set up a retail canteen for his bridge workers, for example, and soon put many of them in his debt. In 1842, he had taken over the troubled Dry Dock Bank, where he now made his office, as well as the nearly worthless Harlem Railroad; in short order, he had turned both businesses around. In 1843 he had bought his first steamboat; two years later he had launched the Oregon and begun to compete on the Hudson (where he forced Drew to pay him $4,000 to leave the river) and Long Island Sound.46

  War filled the columns of the newspapers on June 1—detailed accounts of the American triumph over the Mexicans at Buena Vista three months earlier. Though that new invention, the telegraph, could carry news as fast as light, the wires had been strung only as far south as Maryland, so information from the battlefield trickled back slowly. Between the victory and the race, a holiday air breezed through the city. Crowds began to gather at ten o'clock in the morning, filling the Battery, the piers, and “every elevated position in the neighborhood of the Battery, as well the rigging of the various vessels lying at anchor,” according to the New York Evening Post.

  At eleven o'clock the Oregon and Vanderbilt were seen opposite Castle Garden, near the Jersey shore… and then both started off on the race. For a few moments they kept side by side, and neither boat appeared to have the advantage of the other, but soon the Vanderbilt sheered off for the east shore, and the Oregon took the western side of the river, so that it was impossible to tell whether either boat was ahead of the other.

  Vanderbilt commanded his steamer in person as the two great vessels, each more than three hundred feet long, thrashed up the Hudson, smoke trailing from their funnels, the furious splashing of the enormous side-wheels echoing inside their arching wooden cases. For thirty-five miles t
hey raced bow by prow with no discernible lead. At one point, the Hendrik Hudson drew close with a boatload of spectators; Vanderbilt ran to the rail and shouted at it to “fall back.” He returned to the pilothouse, only to see the Oregon pour on steam and gradually pull ahead. As they drew near the designated turning point, the “flag-boat” anchored in Haverstraw Bay, Vanderbilt ordered a cut in speed in order to make a short, inside turn. His steamer promptly smashed its bow into the starboard paddlewheel housing of the Oregon.

  Then the Vanderbilt suddenly slowed to a near dead stop. It would later be said that her anxious proprietor interfered with the pilot, but the Herald reported that “the engineer of the Vanderbilt made a mistake in answering the bell from the wheel house, and instead of reducing the speed so as to allow the boat to turn quicker, stopped the engine entirely, which retarded her progress very materially.” The Oregon kept up its velocity, taking a wide turn of a full mile, but precious minutes passed as the Vanderbilt painfully regained its momentum. The Oregon pulled ahead and kept the lead down the river as they approached the northern tip of Manhattan.

  Just as Law's boat passed the mouth of the Harlem River, its engine room ran out of coal. Desperate to win, Law ordered his crew to burn anything at hand. The firemen ripped out berth slats and doors, broke apart settees, tables, and chairs, and threw it all into the fire. The Vanderbilt rapidly gained on her—but it was too late. The Oregon steamed over the finish line two minutes ahead. “The river as far as Yonkers was crowded with people,” the New York Tribune reported, “and when the boats hove in sight on their return the wharves of the city were a mass of spectators. As the Oregon swept in she was greeted with a continuous huzza from Hammond st. to the Battery”47

  “Captain Vanderbilt was beaten for once,” Philip Hone wrote in his diary. Hone's tone of surprise underscores the formidable reputation that Vanderbilt had made for himself. The “enterprising proprietor,” as Hone called him, was expected to win. Indeed, the race only seems to have enhanced his stature. At the end of the month, President Polk began a triumphal tour of the northeastern states, a kind of political counterpart to the military thrust that General Winfield Scott was making from Veracruz to Mexico City For the journey from South Amboy New Jersey, to New York, the presidential party traveled in the Vanderbilt, dubbed “the pride of the rivers” by the Herald. “She was in charge of Capt. Vanderbilt himself, who performed the double duty of commander and pilot. Every subordinate was in his place, and every waiter punctual in the performance of his duty… Nothing could exceed the completeness of the arrangements on board.” Despite his admiration for Clay, Vanderbilt had laid any partisanship aside after Polk's victory in 1844—though throughout the president's speech at South Amboy, the vessel loudly let off steam, “rendering it almost impossible to hear a word of what was said at two paces distant from the speakers.”48

  This was the year that the general public promoted Vanderbilt from the rank of captain. In court testimony taken in September, a man casually referred to him as “Commodore Vanderbilt,” a title even his family began to use in everyday conversation. When not escorting presidents, he hobnobbed with Philip Hone's set at the yacht club and bought up Manhattan real estate. In business, he continued to display his ability. He sold his Long Island Railroad shares shortly before it became obvious that the railroad suffered grave difficulties. After taking over as president of the Stonington, he immediately set to work to improve the long-troubled line's prospects. Soon he launched a new steamer to run to Stonington in conjunction with the Vanderbilt. He called it the Commodore.49

  At almost the same moment that Vanderbilt ascended to the presidency of the Stonington, General Scott occupied Mexico City On March 10, 1848, the Senate would ratify the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which would strip 500,000 square miles from Mexico (roughly a third of that republic) and annex them to the United States, in return for $15 million. Even in the clamor of joy over the great victory, however, hints of future trouble could be heard. As popular as the war was, a significant group of Northerners—from Congressman Abraham Lincoln to Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant—had opposed it, fearing that it would primarily enlarge the territory of slavery. Hardly had the fighting started in 1846 when Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania attached an amendment to an appropriations bill prohibiting the expansion of the “peculiar institution” into any land acquired from Mexico. Though the “Wilmot Proviso” failed to pass, it sparked abiding outrage across the South.

  Perhaps Vanderbilt little imagined that the war and its foreboding aftermath would ever affect him. And yet, he had always existed in curious synchronization with the republic, living the larger struggles of the day in pursuit of his selfish interests. In his youth, he had helped to throw down the culture of deference, with its aristocratic privileges and mercantilist policies. He had risen to wealth and power by battling monopolies on the primary lanes of commerce as he vocally championed competitive individualism. Now he was coming to embody the rise of corporations in his railroad directorships and presidency of the Stonington. He worked toward a kind of synthesis between competition and incorporation that reflected gradual changes in the nation's culture. In early 1848, the American Railroad Journal, a periodical devoted to an industry consisting entirely of corporations, would declare, “It would be much more for the prosperity of business—much more for the credit of the people, and much more in accordance with the spirit of the age—to allow and encourage competition.”

  Even his ambiguity—his stubborn, irreducible ambiguity—mirrored these trickster times, the eternal ambivalence of the free market: he who drove down fares and improved service, yet demanded bribes to abandon competition; who praised free trade yet enforced his own monopolies; who celebrated the people yet summered in Saratoga and knocked knees with old knickerbockers. Dickens had noted with irritation the smug self-satisfaction of most Americans; the Commodore must have shared it when he contemplated his kingdom from his castle on Washington Place. He was “reputed to be worth some millions,” the press reported. Almost everyone who traveled between New York and Boston took a Vanderbilt boat or a Vanderbilt train.50

  An observer on December 31, 1847, would have found it absurd to think that all this would one day be half forgotten, that obituary writers would dismiss in a few sentences these fifty years of fistfights and Supreme Court cases, steamboat races and stock market machinations. But already forces were in motion that would upend the population of the continent, launch the nation toward civil war, and unleash an ambition in Vanderbilt greater than anyone could have imagined.

  * Edward J. Renehan Jr. claims, in his book Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 155, to have discovered the privately held diary of Dr. Jared Linsly, asserting that it shows that Vanderbilt contracted syphilis in 1839. In light of significant contradictory evidence and subsequent developments that cast doubt on Renehan's credibility I must discount the validity of such a diary and Renehan's claims for it. See the bibliographical essay, pages 581–4, for a full discussion.

  Chapter Seven

  PROMETHEUS

  Prophets, it is written, find no honor in their own countries. Certainly Lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman paid little heed to the two emissaries who loomed over his desk, carrying with them a sign that the earth was about to open and swallow them all. What they held in their hands would even transform the life of a steamboat proprietor and railroad president now three thousand miles away.

  It was March or April of 1848, in the Pacific coastal village of Monterey, in the recently conquered Mexican province of Alta California. The two men had ridden down from the settlement of Johann Augustus Sutter to speak to California's military governor, Colonel Richard B. Mason. They had found their way to this simple two-story adobe building, climbed the exterior staircase, and stepped into the upper level, where they now spoke to Lieutenant Sherman in the North American accents of U.S. citizens. Sutter had sent them, they announced, “on special business, and they wanted
to see Governor Mason in person,” Sherman recalled. He waved them into Mason's office; before long the governor came to the door and asked Sherman to join them.

  On Mason's desk, in the wrinkles of some sheets of paper that had been folded and unfolded, sat a few yellow, metallic lumps. Mason gestured to them and asked of Sherman, “What is that?” The young lieutenant picked up a couple of the larger pieces, unusually heavy for their size, and turned them over, peering closely at them. “Is it gold?” he asked in return. The governor responded with yet another question: Had Sherman ever seen “native gold”—that is, unrefined gold ore?

  He had, in fact, though never in such large chunks. He polished a piece—“the metallic lustre was perfect,” he remembered—and bit down on it. It yielded, as gold would. Shouting through the door to his own assistant, he called for a hatchet from the backyard. When the soldier returned with one, Sherman raised it up and with the blunt end proceeded to hammer the biggest lump flat. Without question, it was gold.1

  Sherman saw little significance in the nuggets he battered down on Governor Mason's desk. He was a tall twenty-eight-year-old, his head bristling with red hair, not to mention ambition, as might be expected of an intelligent West Point graduate. A little over a year earlier, he had landed at Monterey Bay after 198 days at sea, eager to win glory. He would not win it in California. The province had fallen to U.S. forces almost without resistance. When his academy classmates would tell one day of their bravery in the war, he wrote, “I will have to blush and say I have not heard a hostile shot.”