The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

by T. J. Stiles

  In the middle of June he sent Daniel Allen to Nicaragua with a final proposal and $80,000 in gold. On arriving in Greytown, Allen encountered Joseph Scott, who still guarded the Accessory Transit ruins on Punta Arenas, refusing to let go until he was repaid his advances of years before. Scott was fierce: when one of White's agents had tried to seize a steamboat, he had forced him off. “Webster afterwards attempted to take possession,” Scott recalled. “I prevented him by threatening to shoot him, and he retreated.” He threatened to shoot Allen too, but Allen merely asked for a lift in one of the few functioning steamers. On his arrival at Managua, the new capital, President Tomás Martínez exploded any notion of reopening the transit. Allen returned home with the gold and without a contract.59

  PRESIDENT BUCHANAN SENT WORD to Congressman Horace Clark that he would like to see him at the White House. Clark's political senses had been honed in a decade of infighting in New York's treacherous Democratic Party; surely he knew that the president wished to speak to him about Lecompton.

  In the political jargon of 1858, “Lecompton” stood for the proposed constitution for Kansas, now petitioning to join the Union as a slave state. It was in the town of Lecompton that a convention of delegates had written the document, which had been submitted to the voters for ratification. The election of delegates had been “rigged,” however, as historian James M. McPherson writes, to ensure a pro-slavery majority; and the referendum on the constitution had seen thousands of illegal pro-slavery ballots. Free-soil voters (who were a majority) had boycotted both elections, and Lecompton had passed, against the will of the electorate. Outrage swept the North. Senator Stephen Douglas, the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, railed against Lecompton as a rape of democracy. Even Kansas's governor Walker, a Southerner himself, denounced the constitution and its so-called ratification as “a vile fraud.”

  President Buchanan chose to make Lecompton a test of party loyalty. Southern Democrats insisted that Kansas be admitted as a slave state, and he believed that the survival of the Union might well depend upon appeasing them. On February 2, 1858, he asked Congress to accept Lecompton and admit Kansas as a slave state.60

  Clark loudly opposed him. So he answered the president's call and endured the full weight of Buchanan's displeasure. In his high, thin voice, the president warned “that it would be impossible for Mr. Clark to be reelected if the federal patronage in his District were arrayed against him,” it was later reported. Clark replied that he “was not a professional politician; that he was an independent man, not hoping for anything from place or patronage; and that therefore, if his Excellency wished to obtain his support, he… must use arguments more pertinent to the merits of the measure.”61

  Clark's principled stand made him one of a handful of influential “antiLecompton Democrats” who blocked Kansas's admission as a slave state. But his claim to care nothing for patronage did not ring true. He stood at the center of an interwoven lattice of business and politics that trembled with every decision in Washington. Clark's rival in New York's Democratic Party, Congressman Daniel E. Sickles, wrote to Buchanan that Vanderbilt—in defiance of the president's wishes—wanted the Nicaragua transit to remain closed in order to retain the subsidy paid by Pacific Mail. “This interest is represented by his son-in-law H. F. Clark, one of my colleagues,” he added.62

  Clark's defiance also compromised his close friend and ally, Collector of the Port Augustus Schell. Schell steadily worked his way into Vanderbilt's circle (which already included his brother Richard), and was seen socializing with the Commodore at Saratoga Springs. The collector had allowed Clark to name many of the officers at the Custom House, which gave him a valuable patronage network. In the storm over Lecompton, though, Schell had to save himself from Buchanan's wrath, which required “the sacrifice of Horace F. Clark and his numerous appointees in the Custom House,” the Times reported.63

  Clark's alienation from the administration gravely complicated his father-in-law's life. Until this dispute, his political position and connections had been immensely useful to the Commodore. Vanderbilt's vast interests constantly intersected government affairs; he needed friendly relations with policy makers, but he also tried to remain above partisan politics. He took no part, for example, in Fernando Wood's fall from power in 1857, when Tammany Hall rejected him as a gang-connected rabble-rouser and replaced him with Daniel F. Tiemann. Yet Vanderbilt also called on the aid of the police in August 1858 to bring nonunion men onto his steamships.64

  As if Vanderbilt's relationship with government were not delicate enough, his brother Jacob dragged him indirectly into a gruesome incident known as the Quarantine War. For years, the people of Staten Island had resented the presence of a hospital, near Vanderbilt's Landing, where sick immigrants were quarantined. In January, William H. Vanderbilt had served on a committee that petitioned for the Quarantine's removal. An outbreak of yellow fever on the island proved to be the final provocation. On the nights of September 1 and 2, a large body of Staten Island's most distinguished citizens—led by Jacob Vanderbilt, among others—burned the hospital to the ground. Jacob was arrested, and William and his father came to the jail to bail him out. Augustus Schell secured the services of one hundred U.S. Marines to stand guard on the island; Governor John A. King declared Richmond County to be in a state of insurrection, and dispatched militia to the scene. But no aspersions were cast on the Commodore; he was far too important a businessman for politicians to slight. When the governor began to look for a new location for the Quarantine, he asked for Vanderbilt's advice.65

  For all his efforts, Buchanan would not be rid of Clark. Clark won reelection in 1858 as an independent, anti-Lecompton Democrat.66 In time, the president would realize that he could not afford a grudge against Clark's father-in-law—not when the Commodore was needed to protect the strategic interests of the United States.

  “TEN YEARS AGO,” the New York Herald asked in 1859, “who would have said that San Francisco, when but seven years old, would on the score of tonnage rank as the fourth city of this Union?” With a population of nearly 57,000, San Francisco had grown into a true metropolis, thanks to the gold that poured out of California's mountains to the value of tens of millions of dollars each year. Loaded onto steamers at the city's piers, the precious metal flowed down to Panama and up to Manhattan, where it helped power the American economy and reinforce New York's dominance over the financial nation.

  Vanderbilt had done much to build up both New York and San Francisco, but he had never attained the lucrative postal contract to California. That contract finally would expire on September 30, 1859. On April 7, Postmaster General John Holt announced that he would accept bids for a new, temporary contract, lasting only nine months. The federal subsidy was in play again at last.67

  Unfortunately for Vanderbilt, he was barred from the bidding for it by his noncompetition agreement with Pacific Mail and U.S. Mail, which paid him $56,000 per month to keep his ships at their moorings. But the siren call of Nicaragua obsessed both President Buchanan and Joseph White, and that would force Vanderbilt to enter the business for the last time.

  After all his calumnies and lies, White had finally started his Nicaragua line under the Yrisarri contract. On November 6, 1858, he had dispatched a creaking old steamship from New York for Greytown. Vanderbilt knew that it was just another fraud. For one thing, White was broke; he had never repaid Vanderbilt's loan, and he would never pay for the lease of the ship. For another, the Nicaraguans would never reopen the transit as long as Walker remained free to plot a fresh invasion. Most of all, they had learned to detest White. President Martínez told Alexander Dimitry, the latest U.S. minister, “that the government could not entertain any proposition from the ‘White… company’” Dimitry reported “that Nicaragua had been hum bugueado—the word is his—humbugged by them.” Nothing could say more about the Nicaraguans' experience with White than their adoption of the slang verb “humbug”—to swindle. When his steamship arrived, they refused to let the pa
ssengers land.68

  But Pacific Mail saw White's latest gambit as a reason to stop paying $56,000 per month to Vanderbilt. The Commodore disagreed; indeed, the dispute went to arbitration, resulting in an award to Vanderbilt of $30,000. But this time there would be no renewal of the subsidy. Rather, in March 1859, Vanderbilt launched his final war for the steamship traffic to California. In partnership with Cornelius Garrison, he dispatched the Northern Light for Aspinwall and readied the ships not otherwise occupied on the line to Europe: the North Star, the Daniel Webster, the Uncle Sam, the Orizaba, the Sierra Nevada, and the Cortez. He also ordered the first iron steamship ever built in the United States, the fittingly named Champion. The London Times saw “every prospect of the contest, owing to the wealth and tenacity of Mr. Vanderbilt, being carried to a most damaging extent.” This war would not end until one side accepted the other's terms for good.69

  By midsummer Vanderbilt's California line was operating at full capacity Together with Marshall Roberts, Moses Taylor, sons-in-law James Cross and Daniel Allen, and his old enemy Charles Morgan, he incorporated the Atlantic & Pacific Steamship Company to conduct the business. The Panama Railroad happily sold tickets to his passengers, but it joined with Pacific Mail to form the North Atlantic Steamship Company to run against him on the Atlantic. Both sides slashed fares; despite a dramatic rise in the number of passengers, both sides lost money. But Vanderbilt lived up to his reputation for controlling costs, economizing in everything from coal consumption to amenities for the passengers. He lost less.70

  White's gambit, then, drove Vanderbilt back into the California steam ship trade just in time to compete for the postal contract. His beleaguered friend Roberts planned to shut down U.S. Mail upon the expiration of the old contract, so the Commodore put in his own bid—though he found himself at a disadvantage. With Nicaragua closed, his only means of crossing the isthmus was the Panama Railroad, but it shared many stockholders and directors with Pacific Mail and the railroad's directors refused to speak to him. Instead the railroad and Pacific Mail made a joint bid of their own.

  In the end, the decisive factor in awarding this rich prize was Buchanan's intense desire to break the Panama monopoly. On May 9, to everyone's surprise, Postmaster General Holt gave the contract to Daniel H. Johnson, primarily because he claimed to possess a transit grant from Nicaragua. But who was Johnson? He owned no steamers and had no experience in shipping. And how did he get this supposed grant?

  Vanderbilt quickly learned that Johnson was a dummy—the last dummy in the dummy-filled history of the California mail—of Joseph White. The Commodore must have found White's maniacal persistence infuriating; on a human level, though, it was pathetic. Nicaragua had given White his only real taste of wealth and importance. In a meteoric flash of success, he had enjoyed the confidence of ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, and presidents as he indulged in luxury, only to fall into irrelevance, poverty and disrepute. And so he came back to Nicaragua again and again, long past the point of plausibility. For this latest ploy he formed a new company, the U.S. & Central America Transit, hoping that the mail contract (which Johnson duly assigned to him) would give him the credit he needed to obtain ships to restart the transit route, and trusting that his ties to Yrisarri would assuage President Martínez.71

  Vanderbilt quietly explained all this to Holt, hoping to convince him that Johnson should not be allowed to flip the contract to White. His words carried great weight with the postmaster general. For one thing, the Commodore already had agreed to carry the mail to Europe, from April to November, for no more compensation than the sea and inland postage. (Not that the business was very lucrative: in June, Vanderbilt offered to sell his Atlantic steamships—the Vanderbilt for $800,000, the Ocean Queen for $500,000, and the Ariel for $300,000.)72 And Vanderbilt enjoyed a direct connection to the White House. He negotiated personally with Buchanan, writing of “my willingness and desire to carry out your views as to opening Nicaragua,” and blaming White for “keeping this much desired route closed.”73

  Vanderbilt knew that it would remain closed, of course, but he managed to get a conditional contract: if Johnson could not come up with ships of his own by October 5, then Vanderbilt would carry the mail instead. Encouraged, he bought Garrison's interest in the Pacific steamers for $450,000 and spent another $50,000 repairing them. In September, the Champion steamed to New York from the Delaware River, where it had been built. The great iron sidewheeler measured 1,850 tons and 250 feet in length, and could carry 738 passengers. Vanderbilt claimed that it could be run as cheaply as any other ship afloat. The Pacific Mail directors began to reveal their anxiety by spreading patently false rumors on Wall Street. They claimed to be making a profit, while Vanderbilt lost money, and said they would carry the mail after all on October 5.74

  On the fated day, the Post Office loaded the mail onto Vanderbilt's Northern Light. White was left sputtering about “a certain damned old sea pirate” who had taken away the contract “by some hocus pocus.” Vanderbilt would receive $187,500 for his nine months of postal service. And Pacific Mail continued to lose money75

  ON DECEMBER 18, 1858, Mrs. Nancy Dobley asked Harper's Weekly “to say a word to the ladies exclusively… [in] reference to the mud—to walking in the mud and slush—to crossing the streets in the mud and slush.… Are we aware, ladies, that we have a habit, in these days, of lifting our skirts very high indeed when we cross the street?” All this flashing of ankles was unseemly. “To watch a well dressed and careful woman wade across Broadway is a favorite occupation of men whose admiration is not flattering.”76 Of course, such extreme concern for modesty in public only masked Americans' sexuality. On October 17, 1859, the New York Herald reported on the prosecution of importers of “indecent stereoscopes” that showed men and women in various states of nudity. “The sale of these articles is immense, and New York bids fair to vie with France in the manufacture of this description of artistic invention.”77

  Like those hidden stereoscopes, a vivid, three-dimensional world of passion and appetites certainly played out in Vanderbilt's private, unseen spaces. The inner lives of his wife and daughters in particular remain invisible to us, as hidden as a respectable lady's knees. His girls were wives and mothers now. They often gathered at 10 Washington Place, spending hours in parlors and dining rooms, waited upon by servants. They attended concerts and went to the theater; they visited Saratoga and Staten Island; they talked, they joked, they laughed; but they did not commit their experiences to paper.

  What discussions went into the construction of a family vault in the Moravian churchyard on Staten Island in 1857, with its Corinthian columns, marble statue of “Grief,” and a twenty-foot shaft inscribed “VANDERBILT”? Did the women debate the likelihood of secession, should the Republicans win the White House in 1860, or did they gossip about Robert Schuyler and his wife? Did they order a driver to take them through Central Park, now rapidly approaching completion? Did they go out in the “close-quarter carriage,” each costing $1,000 or more, so favored by wealthy women? Or did they prefer an open-air coupé or barouche, recently introduced from France? (“They are made large and luxuriant, as lounging carriages,” the Herald wrote of barouches, “and seem to be all but indispensable in the present style of ladies' dresses.”)78

  The carriage was the great recreational institution of New York's rich. Any afternoon would see expensive affairs pulled by fancy horses, carrying William B. Astor, Hamilton Fish, Watts Sherman, or even Daniel Drew through “the pleasant drives of the Central Park,” as the Herald remarked on December 5, 1859. Vanderbilt, of course, was one of the “fast men” who held his own reins and hungered for speed. For decades, harness racing had been the plebeian alternative to the aristocratic sport of Thoroughbreds; but Vanderbilt led a rising elite, lacking any social pedigree, that championed trotters in both formal races at dedicated tracks and informal contests on the road. To garner respectability for the sport, he helped organize the Elm Park Pleasure Ground Association, a club
“of many of the best people in the city,” to race on or near Bloomingdale Road above Ninetieth Street. Four hundred men belonged, with a combined investment of nearly $i million in horseflesh.

  The Commodore's great rival was Robert Bonner, editor of the Ledger. He rarely beat the skillful Bonner—but it was Vanderbilt who drew the admiration of onlookers. “What fine looking man is that,” the Herald rhetorically asked,

  with a segar in his mouth, who is passing all those roadsters on the right? He dashes past everybody but Bonner. His bays must be well trained; he handles the ribbons as though he was used to it. That gentleman with a white cravat on, you mean? Yes, sir. That is Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who has four of the best horses that appear on the road, every one of them exceedingly fast. He never gives up to anyone but Bonner; is always in good spirits, and takes great comfort in his $10,000 worth of horse flesh; is one of the coolest drivers on the road.79

  August Belmont and William Aspinwall created a stir in 1859 by opening the first private art galleries New York had ever seen—large, specially designed spaces for paintings by Europe's old masters, including Velázquez and van Dyck. By contrast, Vanderbilt's only notable work of art was a bust of himself.80