The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

by T. J. Stiles

  Important as it is, this book also suffers serious flaws. As of this writing, it is nearly seven decades old. A great deal of historical research and analysis has been conducted in the interim, rendering Lane's account obsolete. His narrative of Vanderbilt's career through 1848 is gravely incomplete, particularly with reference to his involvement with Daniel Drew and in New England's early railroads. His discussion of the Nicaragua years fails to identify the great divide that opened early on between Vanderbilt and Joseph L. White, or the true nature of the relationship between the steamship magnates and William Walker. His narrative of Vanderbilt's creation of the New York Central empire better stands the test of time, but it, too, is incomplete, missing much of the Commodore's patient diplomacy and the extent to which Horace F. Clark operated on his own at the end of his life.

  In terms of construction, Lane's book is a narrowly conceived piece of business history, paying limited attention to Vanderbilt's personal life, and often none at all to the larger historical context, such as the political and cultural issues that have occupied so much space in these pages. It segments Vanderbilt's different ventures by chapter, so that the reader is left without an understanding of his career's intensity as he engaged in multiple operations—and battled multiple foes—simultaneously. Finally, it frustratingly offers no endnotes. Rather, it provides bibliographic summaries for each chapter in the backmatter. Numerous quotes appear throughout the narrative without a clue as to what source they came from. Even worse, it frequently relies on unsourced and unreliable accounts, uncritically reprinting anecdotes and dialogue from Parton, Croffut, and Henry Clews, as well as obituaries and other apocryphal sources. That said, it remains the touchstone for any study of Vanderbilt's life.

  Since Lane's work, there has been only one adult biography dedicated to the Commodore alone (as opposed to accounts of the Vanderbilt family as a whole). It is Edward J. Renehan Jr.'s Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Basic Books, 2007). I had completed a draft of my own manuscript when this work appeared, and drew nothing from it; any similarities are entirely coincidental. I find Commodore to be a problematic work at best, based almost entirely on secondary sources, largely lacking annotation, and suffering numerous factual errors. I cannot verify many of the primary sources that Renehan does cite, and find that he mischaracterizes a number of those that I could locate.

  Renehan writes that he discovered the privately held diaries of sleeping-car manufacturer Webster Wagner and Dr. Jared Linsly, Vanderbilt's personal physician. Renehan claims that Linsly's diary reveals that Vanderbilt contracted syphilis in 1839, began to suffer syphilitic dementia in 1868, and died of the disease. He further asserts, citing both these diaries, that William H. Vanderbilt used his father as a figurehead from 1868 on, treating the demented and uncomprehending Commodore as a puppet while William secretly ran his affairs.

  I feel compelled to discount the validity of these diaries, and I find Renehan's assertions to be untenable. First, Renehan's claims are contradicted by an immense body of evidence, both medical and historical. There is no room here for a full discussion of the body of scientific knowledge of syphilis, but suffice it to say that Renehan's account conflicts with both recent medical literature and that written before effective treatment, when many patients were studied through the full life cycle of the disease. A doctor in 1839 would likely not have distinguished syphilis from gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted diseases, so any diagnosis would have meant little. Even if Vanderbilt did contract syphilis, he never developed syphilitic dementia, or “general paresis,” to use the technical term (which only afflicted a small minority of syphilis victims). General paresis follows a well-documented course that is completely out of keeping with Vanderbilt's late-life history. Most important is the total lack of corroboration for Renehan's claims. Vanderbilt was a national celebrity, in the public eye on an almost daily basis; no observers noticed the distinctive abnormalities caused by general paresis, or even the loss of mental acuity. Both private and public records show him in full command of himself and his businesses, except as he chose to delegate to others. And William traveled to Europe more than once during his father's final decade, which he hardly would have done if he were secretly manipulating a demented father as his puppet.*

  Second, Renehan has not allowed verification of his sources. I asked to examine his copy of the diaries, and offered to sign a written agreement to protect his right to first publication of any findings. He declined. When I asked the names of the owners, he refused to provide them. He claimed that he had promised each of them confidentiality an arrangement I had never heard of before with holders of historic papers. He promised to contact them for me, but told me they were all very old. I heard no more from him.

  Claims based on unauthenticated papers cannot be considered information. The most basic scholarly standards require that sources be available for scrutiny and verification by independent parties before they can be accepted. Renehan has chosen to make that impossible.

  Finally, Renehan's credibility has been impeached by subsequent developments. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to two felonies, a federal charge of transporting stolen property across state lines, and a New York State charge of third-degree grand larceny, and was sentenced to eighteen months in federal prison. These criminal convictions stemmed from the theft of letters written by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt from the Theodore Roosevelt Association, during the period when Renehan was acting director of the organization. According to press reports, state and federal authorities believe that he forged a document to establish his ownership of the stolen letters, sold three of them through an auction house for nearly $100,000, and came under suspicion when he attempted to sell a fourth. (See Newsday, March 22, 27, April 21, June 14, September 20, 2008.) Renehan explained his conduct by claiming that he suffered from untreated bipolar disorder during this period, saying that he felt “invulnerable and answerable to no one.” (See Providence Journal, May 29, 2008; also New York Sun, June 23, 2008.) Though his crimes do not pertain directly to Commodore, he committed them at the time he was writing that book. Together with the untenable nature of his claims for his sources, his insistence on keeping them secret, and his own description of his state of mind, this affair raises serious doubts about these purported diaries.

  THIS BOOK RELIES ON numerous manuscript collections, many of which have never been cited in a Vanderbilt biography before. I will review only a few of the most significant, beginning with Part One of this book.

  I am convinced that no history of American business in the first half of the nineteenth century (and perhaps the second half as well) that touches in any way on New York can be written without consulting the Old Records Division of the New York County Clerk's Office, 31 Chambers Street, 7th floor. It was central not only to my discovery of raw facts about Vanderbilt and his friends and allies, but also to the portrait I paint of America's emerging economic culture. I happened upon it by accident, and ended up spending many months conducting research there. I was helped by the highly professional archivists, Joseph Van Nostrand, Bruce Abrams, David Brantley Robert Soenarie, Eileen McAleavey, and Annette Joseph, who have in their care the four-hundred-year legal history of New York City. Since legal papers find their way to the Old Records Division willy-nilly, the historian works alongside citizens in search of certified copies of divorce decrees from a few years before, lawyers seeking filings from long-running lawsuits, and the occasional private investigator. The papers I examined showed the inner workings of many of Vanderbilt's operations, from his takeover of the Staten Island Ferry in 1838 to conversations with angry passengers who had been stranded in Nicaragua. More than that, they revealed a time when insider trading, noncompetition deals, and market-division agreements were not only legal but sometimes enforced by the courts. Not all the documents are so rich; many are simple lawsuits over unpaid promissory notes. But it is worth the effort to find the gems.

  Another essential
collection, one that is already well known, is the Gibbons Family Papers at Drew University Madison, New Jersey. This collection includes the largest number of letters in Vanderbilt's own hand, many of which were not cited by Lane or subsequent writers. It also sheds light on the crumbling culture of deference, and the failure of Thomas Gibbons's son William to come to grips with the competitive culture that his father and Vanderbilt had contributed to so notably. This episode is also illuminated by the Livingston Family Papers at the New-York Historical Society (NYHS).

  My exploration of Vanderbilt's move into Long Island Sound, and his consequent assumption of the presidency of the Stonington railroad, owes much to the Comstock Papers at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. But I relied in particular on the William D. Lewis Papers at the New York Public Library (NYPL). Lewis, an official of the Girard Bank of Philadelphia, was the trustee of the Stonington railroad, and often corresponded with its senior officers. It was a delight to read letters labeled “Burn This” or “Destroy Immediately”—a sign of the rare glimpse into the secret world of antebellum business afforded by these papers. They offer the most acute look at Vanderbilt in the 1830s and 1840s available (including a transcription of a conversation with him by the line's chief engineer), and illuminate the complex relationship between steamboat proprietors and early New England railroads.

  In Part Two, covering Vanderbilt's Central America operations and Atlantic steamship line, I also drew heavily on the Old Records Division of the New York County Clerk's Office. I found invaluable the published correspondence of the State Department (as well as originals at the National Archives, College Park, Maryland) and the congressional reports that reprinted numerous primary sources related to the “transit question.” The William L. Marcy and John M. Clayton collections at the Library of Congress contain many important letters, not only from Vanderbilt but from Joseph L. White as well, a figure long overlooked in histories of this period. The Baring Brothers archive, on file in microfilm at the Library of Congress, was invaluable to my understanding of the fate of the Nicaragua canal project, and I am grateful to the ING corporation for granting me permission to view it. The archive of R. G. Dun & Co., Baker Library, Harvard Business School, proved equal to its great reputation. By looking up reports for many of Vanderbilt's businesses, relatives, allies, and enemies, I was able to develop a much fuller picture of both Vanderbilt and his contemporaries.

  Two little-used sources in particular allowed me to write a substantially new account of the activities of Vanderbilt, Cornelius K. Garrison, and Charles Morgan during William Walker's rule of Nicaragua. First, the files of the Costa Rican Claims Convention, housed at the National Archives, College Park, contain eyewitness testimony about the final campaign that brought Walker down, as well as a copy of the lengthy deposition of Joseph N. Scott, taken from the lawsuit Murray v. Vanderbilt. Second, the papers of lawyer Isaiah Thornton Williams, NYPL, contain extensive depositions from the lawsuits that sprouted out of the collapse of the Nicaragua transit. These depositions contain everything from discussions of relative fuel costs of the transit routes to the nature of Garrison's and Vanderbilt's relationships with Walker. In addition, the papers of H. L. Bancroft, held by the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, include important documents, including William Walker's own deposition in one of the transit lawsuits and an invaluable interview with Lambert Wardell. The Williams Family Papers at Trinity College, Hartford, shed important new light on a long-disregarded side of Vanderbilt's personality, as he fondly corresponded, often in his own hand, with his daughter-in-law's family. Finally, the miscellaneous NYHS manuscripts relating to Vanderbilt add significant details.

  For Part Three, various congressional reports reveal Vanderbilt's role in the Civil War, as do the Stanton Papers at the Library of Congress and the well-worn but still-essential Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. To follow Vanderbilt's career as he moved into railroads, the New York Central Railroad papers in the PennCentral Collection, NYPL, is irreplaceable. This collection includes the directors' minutes for all the railroads that would eventually make up the Vanderbilt system, as well as financial records that show Vanderbilt's personal support for his corporations' finances. (It also sheds light on Vanderbilt's early involvement in railroads, as the minutes of the Long Island Railroad illustrate how his control of steamboats naturally led to his entrance onto the boards of connecting railways.)

  The reports and testimony published by the New York State Assembly and Senate comprise another oft-cited but critical source. These prove particularly important for understanding Vanderbilt's relationship with the New York Central when he was head of the Harlem and Hudson River railroads. So, too, are the papers of Erastus Corning, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, New York. This rich collection builds an understanding of Vanderbilt as corporate diplomat. More than that, it includes many letters from John M. Davidson, a business partner of Corning's who played the stock market and mingled with such Tweed cronies as Judge Barnard, shedding abundant light on the dim world of Wall Street through 1870. Vanderbilt's notes to James H. Banker, NYHS, reveal his concern for secrecy when it came to the financial markets. The James F. Joy Papers, Detroit Public Library (with some copies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), also offer insight into Vanderbilt's role as railroad chief, and are suggestive of how other railroad officials differentiated between the management styles of the Commodore and his son William. The Joy papers (along with those of Frank Crawford Vanderbilt) are the only case in which I was forced to resort to paid research assistants. I regret being unable to travel to conduct the research myself, and accept that much of importance may have been missed.

  Some important collections also shed light on Vanderbilt's intimate world in the last period of his life. Frank Crawford Vanderbilt's letters, at the Detroit Public Library, and her diary, NYHS, paint a complex portrait of Vanderbilt as controlling, temperamental, and yet still loving. The many letters of Cornelius J. Vanderbilt and his wife, Ellen, to Horace Greeley, in the Greeley Papers, NYPL, illuminate the complicated relationship between the Commodore and his son. The Colt Family Papers, University of Rhode Island, contain the papers of George Terry, which include numerous letters from Cornelius J. Vanderbilt and legal documents related to his settlement with his brother William and his final bankruptcy. Numerous other collections, such as the Samuel J. Tilden Papers, NYPL, also offer occasional items that throw light on the Commodore as a man.

  Finally, there is the abundant testimony of the Vanderbilt will case, much of it (but far from all) collected in scrapbooks and microfilm at NYPL. This is a treacherous source. Many of the witnesses and theories offered by the attorneys of Mary La Bau and Cornelius J. Vanderbilt were simply incredible. They claimed, for example, that William H. Vanderbilt hired someone to impersonate Corneil and engage in disreputable behavior. The notion is absurd, not because William was a saint, but because it was so unnecessary; and William proved willing to alter the will in the end. Unfortunately, the more outrageous claims of the testimony continue to color the imagination of writers who address the Commodore. So, too, do the self-serving assertions (and outright lies) told by Tennessee Claflin and Victoria Woodhull. I have found no evidence of Vanderbilt's business involvement with them (as opposed to medical or supernatural), except from the mouths of Woodhull and Claflin themselves. They were impressive individuals, no doubt—even admirable, as they brashly battled strictures on women. They were also veteran confidence artists who were pulling off the biggest con of their lives when they opened their “brokerage house,” which is not known to have conducted any business on Wall Street.

  The testimony of magnetic healers and the declamations of Woodhull and Claflin need not be dismissed in their entirety (Vanderbilt did hire such healers, and he did have a friendship with the sisters, especially Claflin), but they need to be treated skeptically, with an insistence on more evidence. The image of the Commodore has been shaped by prejudice from
the early years of his life—when he drew sneers for his claim to be a man of honor—to the present, when he is often dismissed as a brutal, uncharitable vulgarian. The prejudice is in itself interesting, but it is no substitute for investigation.

  * General paresis is progressive, marked by wild behavioral aberrations and rapid loss of motor control. When untreated it leads to total paralysis and finally death within three or four years of its manifestation. Private letters, newspaper reports, and the directors' minutes of Vanderbilt's railroads show him to have been active, in character, and intelligent up to his final illness, often presiding at meetings where William H. Vanderbilt was not present. See Deborah Hay-den, Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 29–37, 54–9, 317–8; Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 9–13; Edward W. Hook III and Christina M. Marra, “Acquired Syphilis in Adults,” New England Journal of Medicine 326, no. 16 (April 16, 1992): 1060–9; Catherine M. Hutchinson and Edward W. Hook III, “Syphilis in Adults,” Medical Clinics of North America 74, no. 6 (November 1990): 1389–1454; Roger P. Simon, “Neurosyphilis,” Archives of Neurology 42, no. 6 (June 1985): 606–13; John H. Stokes, Modern Clinical Syphilology: Diagnosis, Treatment, Case Studies (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1926), 906–7; Loyd [sic] Thompson, Syphilis (Philadelphia: Lea & Febriger, 1916), 58–9; H. Houston Merritt, Raymond D. Adams, and Harry C. Solomon, Neurosyphilis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 3–4; D'Arcy Power and J. Keogh Murphy, eds., A System of Syphilis, vol. 4: Syphilis of the Nervous System (London: Oxford University Press, 1910), 259. For examples of William's travels to Europe, see Chicago Tribune, June 9, 1869, and the New York Times, July 4, 1872.