by T. J. Stiles
45 Nestor Houghton v. CV, August 10, 1837, file BM V016-H, James Guyon and CV v. Moulton Bullock, James W. Otis, and Jonathan Prescott Hall, March 16, 1838, file BM 1404-G, CV v. John Martineau and Eliza, His Wife, and Anna B. Cook, Executrix of Richard M. Cook, Deceased, September 13, 1839, file D CH 100-V CV v. John W. DeGrauw and Jane, His Wife, Walter N. DeGrauw, John J. Stephens, and Others, May 30, 1839, file D CH 104-V, Court of Chancery, NYCC; Hone, 247.
46 ProvJ, March 17, 20, 22, 1837; EP, March 21, 1837; NYH, April 1, 1837; Hone, 250.
47 Strong, 1:16–7.
48 NYH, April 1, 1837; Hone, 256; Taylor, 341–5.
49 The New York Courier and Enquirer noted, as quoted in the ProvJ, May 13, 1837, “The banks will not discount under present circumstances freely to good and safe men. They are afraid of each other.… Nearly every transaction is for cash.” CV accumulated specie because it appears that passengers largely paid in coin. In part, this was because of his low fares—most banknotes were for denominations higher than a dollar (though “shinplasters,” small-denomination banknotes, did proliferate during the panic). Comstock, it should be noted, complained that the Transportation Company's clerks were accepting too much “bad money” (WmC to COH, July 17, 1841, fol. vol. 2, CFP), but coin seems to have been demanded in most cases. NYH, June 13, 1845, observed that “railroad tickets… must be paid in specie.”
50 For Allen's new office, see an ad in NYH, July 1, 1837. For details on his management of daily routine, see a lawsuit filed by a merchant who regularly shipped goods to customers in Connecticut by way of the Cleopatra, Joseph Tobey v. CV, October 15, 1839, file 1839–1291, Superior Court, NYCC.
51 NYT, February 6, 1910; LW Dictation.
52 NYH, July 1, 1837; EP, July 15, 1837.
53 JoC, October 25, 1837; Norfolk Herald quoted in JoC, November 30, 1837. Phillpot Woolfe was fare collector for the Staten Island Ferry in 1838; testifying in court in 1847 about Oorandates Mauran, the company president, he said, “We always understood him to be the general agent as well as the president. That is what we call ‘Commodore.’ His word was will there.” See Oliver Vanderbilt v. the Richmond Turnpike Company, July 17, 1848, file 1848–1238, Superior Court, NYCC. JWR to CV, January 24, 1837, RWG. Elihu Bunker, a pioneer in the steamboat trade, was given the title “Commodore” in the press; ProvJ, June 15, 1836; Moses Beach, Wealth and Pedigree of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City, 3rd ed. (New York: New York Sun, 1842), 5.
Five Sole Control
1 NYS, March 9, 1878; NYTr, June 26, 1878; NYT, March 9, 1878. The descriptions of WHV and CJV appear in the NYS, November 15, 1877.
2 Alfred D. Chandler Jr., “Patterns of American Railroad Finance, 1830–50,” BHR 28, no. 3 (September 1954): 248–63; Stonington Reports, 12, 22; WGM, Memorandum of Interview with CV in Relation to Steamers, November 14, 1840, fold. 1, box 3, WDLP; Edward Chase Kirkland, Men, Cities, and Transportation: A Study in New England History, 1820–1900, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), 246–8, 258. On early stockholder anxiety over the company's debts, see Alexander Hamilton to WDL, January 1, 1838, fold. 2, box 2, WDLP. Hone took the Stonington soon after its opening, and highly approved of it; Hone, 358. Lane, who has a weakness for repeating unsubstantiated anecdotes, includes the claim that CV hated railroads, 58–9, 73, following Croffut, 71.
3 EP, January 22, 1840; JoC, November 30, 1837.
4 NYS, November 13, 1877, December 9, 1885; NYW, November 14, 15, 1877; LW Dictation.
5 NYTr, December 9, 1885; Morrison, 54; Clifford Browder, The Money Game in Old New York (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986), 42–4. Two letters clearly show that Drew had become a dominant figure in the Hudson River monopoly: Jonas C. Heartt [Toy] to CtP, September 10, 1840, CtP to Jonas C. Heart, September 12, 1840, fold. 8, box 2, WDLP. I am making a judgment that CV and Drew made an agreement to invest in each other's businesses based on evidence relating to numerous shared enterprises over the next three decades, as will be shown below.
6 NR, November 2, 1833; New York Courier and Enquirer quoted in ProvJ, May 13, 1837; New-Yorker, March 31, 1838; NYS, December 9, 1885; NYTr, December 9, 1885. For detailed examples of the sort of financial transactions that Drew, Robinson & Co. engaged in, see Daniel Drew v. Bates Cooke, September 8, 1840, file BM 1233-D, Court of Chancery (a case involving Drew's demand that the state of New York's safety fund sell bonds in order to redeem notes of the Millers' Bank), Isaac Schuyler v. Daniel Drew, Nelson Robinson & Co., October 27, 1841, file BM S-476, Court of Chancery, Isaac Spencer Jr. v. Daniel Drew, Nelson Robinson, Robert W. Kelley, and Daniel B. Allen, March 20, 1848, file 1848-#951A, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC. CVs investment in the People's Line, and the relationship between the various steamboat proprietors on the Hudson, is detailed in Curtis Peck v. Daniel Drew, January 7, 1850, file PL-1850-P-3, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC. When the People's Line reorganized as a joint-stock association in 1843, CV held $11,500 out of $360,000 in the company's shares; Drew owned $108,500. Though this case does not confirm CVs earlier involvement, circumstantial evidence points to his participation as early as 1838. For additional commentary on William's place in Drew, Robinson & Co., see a letter from CJV to CV, August 25, 1874, quoted in New York Sunday News, January 6, 1878, Vanderbilt Will Trial Case Clippings, NYPL.
7 Boston Advertiser and Patriot, quoted in Maine Farmer, July 31, 1838; Frederick Gardiner to Charles Gill, September 6, 1838, Rare Book and Manuscript Collections, Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University.
8 CtP to WDL, March 26, 30, April 1, 4, 1838, fold. 2, box 2, WDLP.
9 Entry for Courtland Palmer in James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: D. Appleton, 1887–89); CtP to WDL, April 18, 22, 26, May 3, 1838, fold. 2, box 2, WDLP; LW Dictation; Stonington Reports, 13.
10 CtP to WDL, January 9, 1839 (misdated 1838), June 6, 1838, fold. 2, CtP to WDL, November 22, 1838, fold. 3, box 2, CtP to WDL, August 13, 28, September 5, October 1, 22, 1838, Richard M. Blatchford to WDL, December 15, 1838, fold. 4, box 2, CtP to WDL, February 11, 1839, Joseph Cowperthwait to WDL, January 10, 1839, fold. 5, box 2, CtP to WDL, July 16, 1839, fold. 6, box 2, WDLP; Stonington Reports, 15–7; EP, January 20, 21, 1840.
11 CtP to COH, July 28, 1841, fold. 5, box 3, WDLP; WmC to COH, July 31, 1841, fol. vol. 2, CFP The full sentence reads, “I had no confidence in him at the time the Lexington was purchased, and so stated.”
12 Richmond Turnpike Company v. Oliver Vanderbilt, July 24, 1841, file BM 4–42, Court of Chancery, and Oliver Vanderbilt v. the Richmond Turnpike Company, July 17, 1848, file 1848-#1238, Superior Court, NYCC. These sources provide the quotations and incidents in the paragraphs that follow.
13 Enrollment No. 387, Port of New York Certificates of Enrolment [sic], vol. 12150, October 4, 1819, to February 26, 1820, Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, RG 41, NA NYH, January 3, 1839; Richmond Turnpike Company v. Oliver Vanderbilt, July 24, 1841, file BM 4–42, Court of Chancery, and Oliver Vanderbilt v. the Richmond Turnpike Company, July 17, 1848, file 1848-#1238, Superior Court, NYCC; Petition of C Vanderbilt for Confirmation of Letters Patent, Issued April 3, 1816 (New York: S. S. Chatterton, 1852), NYPL.
14 ProvJ, November 3, 1837; Hone, 261; BE, April 21, 1842; NR, May 17, 1845; John Ashworth, “Agrarians” and “Aristocrats”: Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837–1846 (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1983), 151–65. The key work to consult in regard to this point is Gunn, 112–3, 141.
15 Richmond Turnpike Company v. Oliver Vanderbilt, July 24, 1841, file BM 4–42, Court of Chancery, NYCC; Richmond Turnpike Company v. Oliver Vanderbilt, July 11, 1842, file L.J.-1842-N-66, Supreme Court Law Judgments, NYCC; Petition of C Vanderbilt. On Westervelt, see RGD, NYC, 544:13.
16 NYT, January 4, 1882.
17 Hone, 403.
18 Francis J. Grund, Aristocracy in America (London: Richard Bentley 1839), 20–4.
19 Dickens, 267–8.
20 Hone, 410
; Moses Beach, Wealth and Pedigree of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City, 3rd ed. (New York: New York Sun, 1842), 3, 7, 12, 17. Beach relied on rumors to make estimates of his subjects' wealth, placing CVs at $250,000, Drew's at $200,000, Mauran's at $150,000, Hone's at $100,000, and John Jacob Astor's at $14 million. In the case of CV, this estimate is certainly much below his actual wealth; his steamboats alone were likely worth substantially more. On Jacksonian attitudes toward entrepreneurship and stockjobbing, see Michael J. Connolly, Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Jacksonian New England (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 1–19. Karen Halttunen is particularly enlightening on the moral meaning given the phrase “self-made man” in a society that had lost the traditional rules of conduct under the culture of deference; Confidence Men, 15–25.
21 CtP to WDL, August 11, 1841, fold. 5, box 3, WDLP; Hone, 415.
22 NYT, February 2, 1885.
23 Liberator, December 8, 1837. For Thorn (sometimes spelled “Thorne”) as CVs attorney, see Richmond Turnpike Company v. Oliver Vanderbilt, July 24, 1841, file BM 4–42, Court of Chancery, NYCC.
24 NYT, January 4, 1882; NYTr, March 7, 1878; Ladies' Companion, February 1840; Hone, 453; SEP, January 18, 25, 1840; EP, January 20, 21, 25, 1840. On the Lexington tragedy, see almost any newspaper from the northeastern states from January 18 through 25, 1840, and Edwin B. Dunbaugh, Night Boat to New England, 1815–1900 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992), 60–4.
25 R. M. Whitney to WDL, November 12, 1840, fold. 1, box 3; CtP to WDL, August 4, 1841, fold. 5, box 3; WGM, “Memorandum of Interview with C.V in relation to Steamers,” November 14, 1840, fold. 1, box 3; WDLP; Kirkland, 121.
26 CtP to WDL, October 22, 1835, fold. 1, box 2; CtP to WDL, October 21, 1840, fold. 1, box 3; E. R. Biddle to WDL, May 9, 1844, fold. 5, box 4; J. Sherman to WDL, September 7, 1840, CtP to WDL, September 10, 1840, CtP to WDL, September 12, 1840, Jonas C. Heartt to CtP, September 10, 1840, CtP to Jonas C. Heart, September 12, 1840, fold. 8, box 2; CtP to WDL, January 24, 1841, fold. 2, box 3; WDLP. CtP remarked to WDL, “Our transfer clerk is not permited [sic] in any case to transfer stocks, unless the parties transfering [sic] have it in their names & it is never done;” CtP to WDL, October 5, 1840, fold. 1, box 3, WDLP.
27 MM, May 1840. On the cultural ramifications of, and sources of, the confidence man, see Halttunen's fine study. I am hardly the first to comment on the relationship between the new commercial world and Melville's fiction; see, for example, Steve Fraser, Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 67–9. I wrote this commentary without reference to other works, however.
28 NYT, December 9, 1885; NYTr, April 13, 1878. In addition to a previous home at 173 East Broadway, CV owned a three-story brick “dwelling house” at 165 East Broadway, which he rented out in the early 1840s; CV v. Henry N. Caldwell, March 4, 1845, file 1845-#1669, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC.
29 State of Indiana v. Daniel Drew, Nelson Robinson, Eli Kelly, Milton Stapp, William S. Dunham, and David Leavit, August 20, 1841, file BM 19-I, Court of Chancery, NYCC; NYH, September 9, 1841; 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), 210–7, 226, 229, 233. Drew and Robinson sold far more than the canceled bonds without proper authorization; the Herald put the total at $629,000.
30 NYT, December 9, 1885; NYTr, April 13, 1878.
31 WGM to WDL, November 13, 1840, fold. 1, box 3, WDLP; Stonington Reports, 21–6.
32 Grund, 7–8; EP, January 25, 1840; SEP, June 1, 1839; Army and Navy Chronicle, April 25, August 1, 1839. The interview that follows is recorded in WGM to WDL, November 13, 1840, fold. 1, box 3, WDLP.
33 WGM to WDL, November 13, 1840, fold. 1, box 3, WDLP.
Six Man of Honor
1 Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972), 594–617.
2 Chase Kirkland, Men, Cities, and Transportation: A Study in New England History, 1820–1900, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), 234–7, 246–9; CtP to WDL, August 12, 1841, fold. 5, box 3, WDLP. The William D. Lewis Papers offer abundant accounts of the turmoil within the corporation and deep resentment among the railroad's officers at the New Jersey Steam Navigation Company.
3 CtP to WDL, March 14, 1840, fold. 7, box 2, CtP to WDL, May 8, 1841, fold. 4, box 3, Courtland Palmer to WDL, July 3, 1841, fold. 5, box 3, WDLP; WmC to COH, May 8, 1841, fol. vol. 2, CFP; Edwin L. Dunbaugh, Night Boat to New England, 1815–1900 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992), 68–73. WmC wrote, “No doubt his object is to be bought off.” Dunbaugh's book is generally useful, but due to his lack of research into correspondence of the different companies' officers he misses much of the maneuvering and payoffs behind the placement of boats on different routes.
4 Morrison, 328; Dunbaugh, 68–73; Francis B. C. Bradlee, Some Account of Steam Navigation in New England (Salem: Essex Institute, 1920), 89; CtP to WDL, May 19, 1841, WGM to CtP, June 7, 1841, CtP to WDL, June 18, 1841, fold. 4, box 3, CtP to WDL, August 4, 1841, fold. 5, box 3, WDLP; WmC to COH, June 24, 1841, fol. vol. 2, CFP. On CV's connection to the Hartford & New Haven Railroad, see an advertisement in EP, May 6, 1840.
5 WmC to COH, July 17, 29, 31, 1841, fol. vol. 2, CFP; CtP to WDL, August 4, 1841, fold. 5, box 3, WDLP.
6 WmC to COH, July 29, 1841, January 19, 26, 1842, fol. vol. 2, CFP; CtP to WDL, July 28, 1841, fold. 5, box 3, WGM to WDL, November 29, 1842, fold. 8, box 3, WDLP; BE, April 21, 1842. For reflections on the ongoing debate over corporations, see James Willard Hurst, The Legitimacy of the Business Corporation in the Law of the United States, 1780–1970 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1970), 30–43.
7 CtP to WDL, September 23, 1841, fold. 5, box 3, and December 16, 1841, fold. 6, box 3, WDLP; ProvJ, September 3, 13, 1842.
8 For an idea of how fuel costs loomed over other categories, see CtP to WDL, November 9, 1840, fold. 1, box 3, WDLP. This letter gives the monthly figure for fuel expenditures for a steamer to Stonington at $2,600, far above the next largest item (“wear & tear,” at $1,000). On the unusual reliance on tips and incidental charges on this route, see an amusing complaint in the Anglo-American, September 11, 1847. For the quotations and other details, see WmC to COH, July 17, 29, 31,1841, January 19, 26, February 2, 10, 23, March 1, 18, 19, April 12, 18, 19, May 19, fol. vol. 2, CFP.
9 WmC to COH, July 17, 29, 31, 1841, January 19, 26, February 2, 10, 23, March 1, 18, 19, April 12, 18, 19, May 19, 1842, fol. vol. 2, CFP; CtP to WDL, January 18, February 18, March 3, 6, 19, 29, June 26, 1842, WGM to WDL, April 9, 1842, fold. 7, box 3, WDLP. CV's maneuvers did not draw traffic away from the Hartford & New Haven, because that railroad did not yet have a through connection to Boston.
10 Hugh McLaughlin v. CV, December 12, 1843, Judgements, 1838–1848, box SI-66, Staten Island Court Papers, NYMA.
11 Meeting of February 16, 1842, Minute Book of the Elizabethport and New York Ferry Company, box 4, Central Railroad Company of New Jersey Papers, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Del.
12 NYH, September 22, 1841, October 24, 1842; Lane, 71; WmC to COH, August 29, 1842, fol. vol. 2, CFP; WGM to WDL, October 20, 1842, fold. 8, box 3, WDLP; Morrison, 328; Bradlee, 89–95. CV continued to call his line “Vanderbilt's Independent Line” through the end of September; ProvJ, September 13, 1842; EP, September 27, 1842.
13 Minutes for March 1, July 29, 1844, Minute Book of the Elizabethport and New York Ferry Company, box 4, Central Railroad Company of New Jersey Papers, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Del.; Anglo-American, June 22, 1844 (which shows Daniel Allen also selling tickets for steamboats to the Norwich Railroad at 34 Broadway).
14 ARJ, September 1844, February 20, 27, 1845; Long Island Railroad Company Directors' Minutes Book 1, 325, 344–50, 354, Long Island Railroad Company Directors' Minutes Book 2, 1, box
305, PennCentral Collection, NYPL. ARJ, February 27, 1845, discussed CVs sale of the three steamboats to the Long Island Railroad, and noted, “the former successful and experienced proprietor of these boats has taken a large interest in the company and participated in its management.”
15 Anglo-American, April 19, 1845; meeting of April 8, 1845, Long Island Railroad Company Directors' Minutes Book 2, 16–7, box 305, PennCentral Collection, NYPL; CtP to WDL, April 16, 1843, fold. 2, box 4, WDLP. Immediately after completion, the Long Island Railroad did connect to the Stonington; however, director Elihu Townsend warned Lewis about a change that “seems to alter the state of feeling so far as relates to the former association;” Elihu Townsend to WDL, August 21, 1844, fold. 6, box 4, WDLP.
16 WGM to WDL, January 7, 1843, CtP to WDL, January 23, 1843, fold. 1, box 4, S. Jaudon & Co. to WDL, April 5, 1843, fold. 2, box 4, Richard M. Blatchford to WDL, July 23, 1843, WDL to H. G. Stebbins, July 31, 1843, fold. 3, box 4, WDLP; Stonington Reports, 32–9.
17 New York, Providence, and Boston Rail Road Company v. Elisha Peck, Richard M. Blatchford, James Foster Jr., Henry G. Stebbins, Matthew Morgan, Samuel Jaudon, and William S. Wetmore, January 3, 1848, file PL-1848-N-4, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC.
18 Samuel R. Brooks to WDL, October 9, 1845, fold. 6, box 4, WDLP; Stonington Reports, 41; WmC to COH, April 18, 19, 1842, fol. vol. 2, CFP. Though WmC's report was made three years earlier, its truth regarding the events of 1845 and 1846 were clearly born out. For contemporary evidence of Drew's partnership with Newton in Hudson River steamboats, see Daniel Drew and Isaac Newton v. New York and Erie Rail Road Company, September 10, 1842, file 1842-#331, Superior Court, and Caleb F. Lindsley and George E. Cock v. Daniel Drew and Isaac Newton, March 20, 1848, file 1848-#951A, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC (the latter referring to an incident in 1846); also entries for August 1846, pages 336–6, in vol. 2 of the William D. Murphy Account Books, NYHS.
19 Curtis Peck v. Daniel Drew, January 7, 1850, file PL-1850-P 3, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC; Curtis Peck v. Daniel Drew, January 31, 1848, file PL-1848-P 256, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC.
