The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

by T. J. Stiles

  5 For details on TG'S many holdings in New Jersey and Georgia, see a copy of TG'S will, Thomas Gibbons Papers, NYHS. TG described his move as a matter of climate and health; TG to Crawford Davison, June 1, 1818, GP. Various correspondence in the GP adumbrate the story of his illegitimate child, which he attempted to deny, against the advice of some of New York's leading attorneys. On New York's emerging role as creditor to Southern planters, see Philip S. Foner, Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants and the Irrepressible Conflict (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), 5–10; Albion, 95–121.

  6 Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); Nancy Isenberg; Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York: Viking, 2007), 255–404. See also Saul Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788–1828 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

  7 Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 302; Frederic Cople Jaher, The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 3, and, for an insightful discussion of the New York patricians before the Civil War, see 160–250. See also Wood.

  8 Wood, 254–5, 269–70, 299–300; Martin Bruegel, Farm, Shop, Landing: The Rise of a Market Society in the Hudson Valley, 1780–1860 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 15–6, 36–8, 206; Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 64–5; 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), 9–10. See also Edward Countryman, “From Revolution to Statehood,” in Milton M. Klein, ed., The Empire State: A History of New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 242–56, 264–8, 295–7; Dixon Ryan Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1919), 58–65.

  9 Countryman, “From Revolution,” 242–68; Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels Through the United States of North America, the Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada, in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797; with an Authentic Account of Lower Canada (London: R. Phillips, 1799), 587–8; Blumin, 58–64; Wood, 271–86. Particularly insightful is Gunn, esp. 70, 80–3. As Gunn writes, 83, New York before the end of the War of 1812 remained “a society in which public and private roles were virtually indistinguishable.” An amusing illustration of the Jeffersonian view of elite rule in the election of 1800 can be found in Eric Homberger, Mrs. Astor's New York: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 37. See also Edward Countryman's A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), which analyzes the radicalism of the Revolution and the conservative reaction.

  10 Countryman, “From Revolution,” 369; Edward Countryman, The American Revolution (New York: Hill & Wang, 1985), 224–5; Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and the New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 5, 14–5, 20–2, 46–50, 54–5, 88.

  11 On Livingston's life, see especially Cynthia Owen Philip, Robert Fulton: A Biography (New York: Franklin Watts, 1985); Cynthia A. Kierner, Traders and Gentlefolk: The Livingstons of New York, 1675–1790 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); George Dangerfield, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of New York, 1746–1813 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960); EP, February 26, 1802. Jaher, 160–96, discusses the intermingling of proprietary with mercantile wealth and the legal profession. Albion, 230–59, discusses the “merchant princes,” noting the relative decline of the old families after 1815. I do not mean to suggest that British gentry or nobility did not engage in trade; I am specifically referring to the image in fiction. Washington quoted in Larson, 9.

  12 Countryman, “From Revolution,” 369; Countryman, American Revolution, 224–5; Appleby, 5, 46–55, 88. Gunn, 70, notes, “New York politics [had] a reputation for personalism and corruption unsurpassed in any other state.” See also pages 1–22, 99–143. Appleby has elaborated on the rising opposition to mercantilism in other works, including “The Vexed Story of Capitalism Told by American Historians,” Journal of the Early Republic 21, no. 1 (spring 2001): 1–18, and Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). See also Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 145–7. The idea that the rise of a commercial society joined hands with political radicalism to undermine the culture of deference is central to Wood's thesis, 243–347. See also Kierner, 201–22, 236–8; Dorothy Gregg, “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), 121–6; Charles W. McCurdy The Anti-Rent Era in New York Law and Politics, 1839–1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 2–4; David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), and Fox's much older, often challenged, but still useful Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York. The most important discussion of the changing law regarding monopolies and government franchises is Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), xii–xv, 110–30. Also of interest is Pauline Maier, “The Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation,” WMQ, 3rd ser., vol. 50, no. 1 (January 1993): 51–84. As she notes, Adam Smith criticized corporations as vehicles of mercantilist monopoly; see, for example, book 1, chap. X, part II of The Wealth of Nations. On monopolies in American tradition, see Herbert Hovenkamp, “Technology, Politics, and Regulated Monopoly: An American Historical Perspective,” Texas Law Review 62, no. 7 (April 1984): 1263–1312; Thomas P. Campbell Jr., “Chancellor Kent, Chief Justice Marshall, and the Steamboat Case,” Syracuse Law Review 25 (1974): 497–534; W. Howard Mann, “The Marshall Court: Nationalization of Private Rights and Personal Liberty from the Authority of the Commerce Clause,” Indiana Law Journal 38, no. 2 (winter 1963): 117–238; Albert S. Abel, “Commerce Regulation Before Gibbons v. Ogden: Interstate Transportation Enterprise,” Mississippi Law Journal 18, no. 3 (May 1947): 335–80.

  13 Larson discusses at length “a kind of state-level mercantilism” that drove the internal-improvement projects of the “monied gentry” (quote on 25). “New York's heritage of mercantilist ideology” is stressed by Nathan Miller, The Enterprise of a Free People: Aspects of Economic Development in New York State During the Canal Period, 1792–1838 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), 10–19.

  14 The ensuing discussion of Livingston, Fulton, and the steamboat monopoly owes much to Maurice G. Baxter, The Steamboat Monopoly: Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 3–25; Philip, Robert Fulton; and Dangerfield, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston. For Livingston's own defense of a monopoly as a just reward for his public-spirited investment, see Dangerfield, 414. New York State first granted a steamboat monopoly to John Fitch, who committed suicide in 1798. I am grateful to Maury Klein for pointing out that Fitch, among others, was unaware of Watts's work on the steam engine.

  15 Baxter, 3–25; Philip, 119–53, 194–219. Philip also notes Livingston's absurd engineering notions; see, for example, 208. See also Morrison, 20–33. Fulton and Livingston, who shared the New York monopoly, also won a monopoly on the Mississippi in 1811, which they were never able to enforce.

  16 Baxter, 25–31; John Niven, Martin Van Buren and the Romantic Age of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 11–13; Mann, 117–238; Gregg, 120–41; Thomas Campbell Jr., “Chancellor Kent, Chief Justice Marshall, and the
Steamboat Case,” Syracuse Law Review 25 (1974): 497–534. Ogden paid $600 to $800 a year, depending on the schedule; see Jonathan Dayton to TG, February 23, 1815, and Copy of Articles of Agreement between JRL and AO, May 5, 1815, GP It should be noted that Ogden fought the New York monopoly by securing his own monopoly from the New Jersey legislature when he was the sitting governor. Fulton went to New Jersey to lobby the legislature (successfully) to rescind Ogden's grant, and then fell ill after he pulled his lawyer out of a crack in the ice on the Hudson. He died on February 24, 1815.

  17 J. M. Trumbull to TG, November 18, 1814, TG to Mrs. Ann H. Gibbons, May 13, 1816, TG to AO, May 30, 1816, John M. Trumbull to Mrs. TG, August 14, 1818, GP; AO v. TG, Supreme Court of Judicature of the State of New Jersey (February Term, 1819), 2 South. 5, 612–36, 1005–15. See also Baxter, 3–15, 19–31, and Philip.

  18 TG to AO, Copybook, September 25, 1814, TG to General Dayton, June 23, 1812, TG to Mrs. Ann H. Gibbons, May 13, 1816, TG to Ellet Tucker, January 3, 1816, TG to David B. Ogden, June 1, 1816, AO to TG, June 1, 1816, Jonathan Dayton to TG, February 23, 1815, TG to AO, August 4, 1815, Statement of Mrs. Trumbull, 1815, AO to TG, December 23, 1815, Jonathan Dayton to TG, 1816, TG to WG, April 3, 1816, J. M. Trumbull to TG, November 18, 1814, TG to AO, May 30, 1816, GP; AO v. TG, Supreme Court of Judicature of the State of New Jersey (February Term, 1819), 2 South. 5, 612–36, 1005–15; The State v. TG, Supreme Court of Judicature of the State of New Jersey (February Term, 1818), 1 South. 4, 45–64; EP, September 22, 1818.

  19 EP, February 4, 1818. The EP story referred to “Mr. Vanderbilt's packet ferry boat Dread,” leaving the possibility that someone else commanded it; the narrative reflects my belief that this is extremely unlikely, given the storm, the skill with which the boat was handled, and the incident that followed at Sandy Hook, in which CV clearly piloted the Dread in person.

  20 EP, February 27, 1818; New York Commercial Advertiser, February 27, 1818; New York Daily Advertiser, February 28, 1818. On the world of the countinghouses, see Albion, 260–86.

  21 Lawrence & Sneden to TG, February 21, 1818, CV to TG, February 24, 1818, Thomas P. Allaire to TG, March 16, 1818, Alex B. Allaire to TG, March 19, 1818, TG to Brewster, Collector of the Port of Amboy August 29, 1818, GP; Morrison, 41–5, 170; John H. Morrison, History of New York Ship Yards (New York: Wm. F. Sametz & Co., 1909), 22–49; Burrows & Wallace, 441–3; Den D. Trumbull et al. v. Gibbons, April 10, 1849, 22 NJ L 117, 17. On TG'S afflictions, see, for example, TG to P. J. Munro, January 28, 1819, GP, in which TG wrote, “Old age is sensible of its weaknesses. And now I am severely afflicted with disease. I have been but twice beyond my front door for 4 weeks. And more than all this my eyes refuse their office. I am set down a stranger amidst a host of enemies.” CV was seen as a leader of Staten Island's boatmen; see TG to Alderman Buckmaster, September 6, 1818, GP; and Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784–1831, vol. 9 (New York: City of New York, 1917), 766 (copy in NYMA).

  22 Memorandum of Agreement, June 26, 1818, GP; CV in Account with the Steamboat Bellona, July 1 to August 1, 1821, CV in Account with the Steamboat Bellona, August 1 to September 1, 1821, GP-R; W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).

  23 On CVs own vessels, see Enrollment Number 248, July 16, 1817, vol. 12139, and Enrollment Number 361, December 22, 1820, and Number 21, February 26, 1821, vol. 12148, Port of New York Certificates of Enrolment [sic], Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, RG 41, NA.

  24 TG to John Randolph, March 20, 1816, TG to WG, November 19, 1816, TG to Peter Munro (Draft), January 21, 1819, GP.

  25 TG to Seth D. Staples, May 11, 1822, Thomas Gibbons Papers, Misc. Files, NYPL. It is difficult to know why no commerce clause cases had come before, but the answer seems to lie in the fact that there was such little interstate commerce before the boom that followed the War of 1812.

  26 Herbert A. Johnson, “Gibbons v. Ogden Before Marshall,” in Leo Hershkowitz and Milton M. Klein, eds., Courts and Law in Early New York (Port Washington, N.Y: National University Publications, 1978), 105–13; Aaron Burr, “Of the Validity of the Laws Granting Livingston & Fulton the Exclusive Right of Using Fire and Steam to Propel Boats or Vessels,” Document GLC06183, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, NYHS.

  27 Philip, 200, 229–30, 252, 289–94, 315; Dangerfield, 415–7; Charles H. Rhind, Accounts of the North River Steam Boat Company, December 2, 1819, JRL to Robert L. Livingston, September 9, 1821, LFP Regarding the North River's profits, it must be remembered that accounting remained primitive, and the company did not calculate depreciation; see Thomas Cochran, “The Business Revolution,” AHR 79, no. 5 (December 1974): 1449–66. For an idea of how large these sums were, $100,000 represented the total capital investment of James P. Allaire's extensive steam engine works, one of the largest employers in New York with as many as one hundred workmen; James P. Allaire to TG, January 10, 1822, GP.

  28 Memorandum of General Dayton, October 16, 1815, Memorandum of WG, December 5, 1817, GP. On Livingston's New Brunswick line, see NBF, November 6, 1817. For a description of the Atalanta, see EP, June 1, 1822.

  29 On the entanglements of DDT, TG, CV, AO, and the Livingstons, see TG to AO, December 10, 1818, WG Memorandum, December 11, 1818, AO to TG, December 12, 1818, TG to Peter Jay Munro, December 27, 1818, TG to Peter Jay Munro, January 21, 1819, TG to Peter Jay Munro, January 28, 1819, CV to TG, February 2, 1819, CV to TG, February 24, 1819, James P. Allaire to TG, January 4, 1818, DDT to TG, May 21, 1818, GP; Gibbons v. Ogden, Court of Errors, January 1820, 17 Johns., 488–510; Agreement of DDT, Adam Brown, and Noah Brown, October 11, 1817, Staten Island Papers, NYHS; DDT to Edward P. Livingston, October 5, 1818, LFP On DDT himself, see Niven, 11–29, 76–7; Ray W. Irwin, Daniel D. Tompkins: Governor of New York and Vice President of the United States (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1968), 213–33. In various court records, it appears that JRL sold to DDT the rights to steam to Staten Island (see JRL v. DDT, June 1, 1820, New York Court of Chancery, 4 Johns. Chancery, 413–32); his frequent complaints, however, suggest that he had been pressured into it; see JRL to Robert L. Livingston, September 9, 1821, LFP.

  30 Rachel Stevens to R. Stevens, October 12, 1819, Stevens Family Papers, New Jersey Historical Society (copy in GP).

  31 TG to AO, October 31, 1817, TG to Peter Jay Munro, October 3, 1818, GP; AO v. TG, December 4, 1819, file O-109, Court of Chancery, NYCC; Ogden v. Gibbons, 4 Johns. Chancery, 150, and Gibbons v. Ogden, Court of Errors, January 1820, 17 Johns., 488–510; NBF, November 3, 1817; EP, September 22, 1818; Johnson, “Gibbons v. Ogden Before Marshall.” See also Baxter.

  32 Sworn statements of John G. Dusenberry June 21, 1819, DDT to TG, July 14, 1819, James Ward to TG, October 22, 1819, GP; In the Matter of Vanderbilt, July 1, 1819, New York Court of Chancery, 4 Johns. Chancery, 57–62; Affidavit of CV, AO v. TG, December 4, 1819, file O-109, Court of Chancery, NYCC; Johnson, “Gibbons v. Ogden.”

  33 Allan R. Pred, Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information: The United States System of Cities, 1790–1840 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 143–77; Margaret G. Meyers, The New York Money Market, vol. 1: Origins and Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 3–9; Sidney Ratner, James H. Soltow, and Richard Sylla, The Evolution of the American Economy: Growth, Welfare, and Decision Making (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 121–4, 222–6; and see especially Diane Lindstrom, Economic Development in the Philadelphia Region, 1810–1850 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977). CV to TG, February 2, 1819, CV to TG, February 24, 1819, TG to JRL, April 22, 1819, Agents of the Union Line to TG, June 14, 1819, Articles of Agreement, April 22, 1822, GP; Gibbons v. Ogden, Court of Errors, January 1820, 17 Johns., 488–510.

  34 On JRL'S New Brunswick line, see NBF, November 6, 1817. His monopoly was immensely unpopular in New Brunswick; see Petition from Citizens of New Brunswick, February 26, 1819, Sworn statements of John G. Dusenberry, June 21, 1819, TG to Isaac Pi
erson, Samuel Tooker, Edmund Smith et al., May 13, 1822, GP. The complicated tactical maneuvering of this struggle defies description, as TG sought ways around the injunctions that barred his boat from New York. For example, JRL actually sought injunctions against both AO and TG, because the two had come to a temporary arrangement to connect with one another, since New Brunswick was the natural destination of passengers from New York, but AO was barred from going there under the terms of his license. In addition, DDT subdivided the rights he had purchased from the monopoly, and sold TG the right to travel between Staten Island and New Jersey, which allowed the Bellona to connect to the Nautilus. Affidavit of Wm. B. Jacques, April 27, 1819, Proposed Agreement between TG and JRL, drafted by Livingston, April 1, 1819, JRL to TG, April 21, 1819, TG to JRL, April 22, 1819, Agreement between DDT and TG, May 13, 1819, GP; DDT to Edward P. Livingston, October 5, 1818, LFP See also Affidavit of CV, AO v. TG, December 4, 1819, file O-109, Court of Chancery, NYCC.

  35 NBF, September 30, 1819; CV to TG, January 5, 1820, TG to Daniel Webster, December 13, 1819, GP; Johnson, “Gibbons v. Ogden,” 109–11; Robert V. Remini, Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), 201. An excellent summary of the legal conflict appears in Andrew J. King, ed., The Papers of Daniel Webster: Legal Papers, 3: The Federal Practice, Part I (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989), 255–9. TG also sought a repeal of the monopoly in the state legislature, but Martin Van Buren declined an offer of $100 to push the cause; TG to William Price, March 1, 1819, James Ward to TG, October 22, 1819, TG'S memorandum with John W. Patterson, March 18, 1819, GP.

  36 New York Daily Advertiser, February 7 and 8, 1820; New York Commercial Advertiser, February 7, 1820; EP, February 7, 1820; Lane, 39; P. J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 55–8. For CVs address, see TG to CV, January 25, 1821, GP.