The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

by T. J. Stiles

  97 Summers, 61. My statement of this paradox is to some extent a rephrasing of Summers's own conclusion. For another view of the causes of the diminishing of free-labor ideology, see Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 176–7.

  98 HC, June 11, 1868.

  99 Ellen W. Vanderbilt to HG, June 19, 1868, reel 2, HGP; CJV to George Terry, June 12, 1871, fold. 24, box 59, ser. 13, Colt Family Papers, Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Rhode Island

  100 CV to Andrew Johnson, June 27, 1868, in Paul H. Bergeron, ed., The Papers of Andrew Johnson, vol. 14 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 278, 279n; AtlC, October 6, 1871; CV v. Jeremiah Simonson, August 13, 1868, file L. J. 1858-S-574, Supreme Court Law Judgments, NYCC

  101 NYT, July 19, August 18, 1868; NYTr, August 18, 1868; Troy Times, August 15, in NYT, August 18, 1868. On Drew's stays at the Union Hotel, see NYT, August 11, 1865.

  102 NYTr, August 18, 1868. See also CT, August 30, 1868. Previous biographers have written that CV remained in Saratoga until Sophia died; the evidence shows otherwise.

  103 NYTr, August 20, 1868.

  104 1868 Annual Income Tax List, Collection District 6, Division 12, page 249, box 429, New York Tax Assessment Lists, 1867–1873, RG 58, National Archives, New York, NY.

  105 NYH, March 5, 1879.

  Seventeen Consolidations

  1 CT, October 11, 1868.

  2 SA, January 2, 1865.

  3 Foner, 460–2; Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 188–306.

  4 John D. Rockefeller to Laura S. Rockefeller, April 19, 1868, fold. 270, box 36, RG 1.2, Rockfeller Archives Center, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.; Directors' Minutes, February 11, 1868, NYC, vol. 5, box 34, NYCRR; Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York: Random House, 1998), 98–115. Chernow dates the letter from Rockefeller cited here as August 19, 1868; I read it differently, but the difference is insignificant. On railroads and the oil business, see Rolland Harper Maybee, Railroad Competition and the Oil Trade, 1855–1873 (Mount Pleasant, Mich.: Extension Press, 1940), esp. 207, 223–4, 238–46, 254–5, 263–9, 280.

  5 John D. Rockefeller to Laura S. Rockefeller, April 19, 1868, fold. 270, box 36, RG 1.2, Rockfeller Archives Center, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y; Directors' Minutes, December 11, 1867, NYC, vol. 5, box 34, NYCRR.

  6 WHV to JFJ, May 14, 1868; Memorandum of Agreement, December 17, 1868; JFJP; CT, December 21, 1868.

  7 Prenuptial Agreement, CV and Frank Armstrong Crawford, August 20, 1869, CV-NYHS. (Martha was sometimes mistakenly called Mary in newspaper accounts.) In the trial over CVs will, the opposing counsel would claim that CV put Frank and Martha up in a house in New York before Sophia's death, and dashed away from her funeral to see them, but he offered no evidence to support this; NYTr, March 30, 1878.

  8 NYT, May 5, 1885; NYH, August 25, 1869, March 5, 1879; Toronto Christian Guardian in NYT, September 11, 1869.

  9 CV to Frank Armstrong, October 24, 1868, CV-NYHS. On CVs pride in her Southernness, see Frank A. Vanderbilt to Ma, August 26, 1869, CV-NYHS.

  10 NYS, November 27, 1872. CVs comments should not be seen as idiosyncratic. Phrenology remained a mainstream system of reading one's inner state from the surface; and, as John F. Kasson observes in Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Hill & Wang, 1990), “Etiquette books express this intense new interest in reading character from appearances.”

  11 NYS, November 28, 1872; testimony of Jay Gould, NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869.

  12 NYS, November 28, 1872; NYT, March 18, 1870; Klein, 90–1. On O'Conor, see HW, June 1, 1867; CT, February 29, 1868, August 7, 1872. For rumors that CV colluded in the Belmont lawsuit, see CT, November 22, 1868.

  13 NYT, December 1, 1868, March 18, 1870; HC, December 7, 1868; Klein, 91.

  14 NYT, December 7, 1868; CT, December 15, 1868; Klein, 91.

  15 NYTr, in RT, October 10, 1868; J. Edgar Thomson to J. F. Lavien, April 27, 1868, Thomas A. Scott to Samuel J. Tilden, May 4, 1868, fold. 6, box 6, Samuel J. Tilden Papers, NYPL; HC, December 7, 1868; Klein, 92–3.

  16 JMD to EC, January 8, 1868, fold. 5, box 90, ECP; BE, November 30, 1868; NYH, December 3, 5, 22, 1868.

  17 NYH, January 20, 1869; NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869; Directors' Minutes, December 19, 1868, NYC, vol. 3, box 34, NYCRR; Hudson C. Tanner, “The Lobby” and Public Men from Thurlow Weed's Time (Albany: George MacDonald, 1888), 218–23; NYS, December 22, 1868, in Flake's Bulletin, December 31, 1868.

  18 NYH, December 22, 1868, January 20, 1869; NYSAD 114, 90th sess., 1867; NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869; Directors' Minutes, December 19, 1868, NYC, vol. 3, box 34, NYCRR; Tanner, 216–7. In yet another lawsuit, Judge Ingraham issued an injunction barring the payment of any dividend on the scrip; Edward Hunger-ford, Men and Iron: The History of the New York Central (New York: Thomas Y. Crow-ell, 1938), 219.

  19 John M. Forbes to Green, January 8, 1869, Letterbooks, vol. 5, C. B. & Q. Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.

  20 NYS, December 22, 1868, in Flake's Bulletin, December 31, 1868; CT, January 21, 1869. In the ultimate pragmatic response, the New York Stock Exchange threw up its hands and allowed trading in the scrip; Minutes for December 21, 22, 1868, February 27, 1869, New York Stock & Exchange Board Minutes: 1867–1871, New York Stock Exchange Archives.

  21 NAR, January 1869; Henry V. Poor, Manual of the Railroads of the United States for 1869–70, quoted in BM, August 1869. See also a description of Central dividends as “exorbitant interest on all this manufactured and fictitious capital and cost,” in RT, June 19, 1869, and RRG, June 4, 1870.

  22 NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869; Tanner, 221–2.

  23 John Steele Gordon, The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street: Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Erie Railway Wars, and the Birth of Wall Street (New York: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1988), 224.

  24 NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869; Tanner, 215–30.

  25 NYH, April 9, 27, May 21, 1869.

  26 Directors' Minutes, June 11, 1869, HR, oversize vol. 248; Directors' Minutes, June 9, 30, 1869, NYC, vol. 3, box 34; all in NYCRR; RT, June 19, 1869. In Isaac Jenks v. New York Central, the lawsuit in which Barnard issued his injunction, Jenks said that a close friend of CVs told him that CV owned (directly and indirectly) 130,000 shares of Central; NYH, January 22, 1869.

  27 RGD, NYC 364:100Q; NYT, March 20, 23, 1870, August 9, 1872; Promissory Note, March 17, 1869, Misc. Papers, Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., NYPL; NYS, December 20, 1877.

  28 Executive Committee Minutes, February 1, HR, oversize vol. 249, NYCRR; Strong, 4:244; BE, April 21, 1869.

  29 BE, May 26, 1869; Smith, 263, 271.

  30 For my portrait of Woodhull and Claflin, I will rely wherever possible on primary sources. I am informed by Mary Gabriel, Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Wood-hull, Uncensored (Chapel Hill, N.C: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1998), Louis Beachy Underhill, The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull (Bridgehampton, N.Y: Bridge Works Publishing, 1995), and the essays of Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, “Victoria Woodhull, Anthony Comstock, and Conflict over Sex in the United States in the 1870s,” JAH 87, no. 2 (September 2000): 403–34, and “A Victory Woodhull for the 1990s,” Reviews in American History 27, no. 1 (1999): 87–97. By contrast, Barbara Goldsmith's Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), strikes me after close investigation as unreliable. I have consulted some sources cited by other writers (for example, the Victoria Woodhull-Martin Papers at the Boston Public Library) that I will not cite because I found them to contain nothing reliable or useful.

  31 NYTr, March 21, 1878; NYT, February 6, 1870; Anne Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 23, 145–8; Stiles, 32. See also Robert C. Fuller, Alternative Medicine and Am
erican Religious Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

  32 NYH, May 16, 17, 1871; NYTr, May 17, 1871; Horowitz, “Victoria Woodhull, Anthony Comstock;” NYH, February 22, 1871. For an example of Tennie's flirting by letter, see Tennie C. Claflin to Whitelaw Reid, February 6, 1870, reel 192, Reid Family Papers, LOC.

  33 NYS, November 14, 1877; see also NYW, November 14, 1877. I have never seen or found a source for claims by Edward J. Renehan Jr. and Goldsmith that CV drank heavily, chewed tobacco, and spat on his hosts' carpets. Indeed, such tales fly in the face of all evidence, such as the LW Dictation, the diary of Frank Crawford (see next chapter), or various press accounts.

  34 NYTr, March 21, 1878.

  35 NYH, February 24, 1869.

  36 William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991), 23–93; George H. Miller, Railroads and the Granger Laws (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971), 6–16; George Rogers Taylor and Irene D. Neu, The American Railroad Network, 1861–1890 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956), 74; Foner, 464.

  37 Taylor and Neu, 68–74; Edward Chase Kirkland, Men, Cities, and Transportation: A Study in New England History, 1820–1900, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), 501–3. An excellent history of fast-freight lines and trunk line competition appears in Maybee, 114–22, 131–35. For a discussion of the forces driving consolidation, see Julius Grodinsky, Railroad Consolidation: Its Economics and Controlling Principles (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1930). Curiously, Alfred D. Chandler Jr. confuses fast-freight lines with express companies, in The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 127–8, 129, 145, 153, 210. As noted in RRG, May 7, 1870, the Michigan Central drew freight from a vast network controlled by Joy, which CV could not ignore.

  38 Chandler, Visible Hand, 148–51.

  39 Cincinnati Gazette in NYH, February 10, 1869; Klein, 93–4; Maybee, 141–2, 150–60, also 51, 101–11.

  40 RRG, May 14, 1870; Articles of Agreement of Consolidation, April 6, 1869, LS&MS, reel 65, box 243, NYCRR; Toledo Commercial, April 7, 1869, in CT, April 9, 1869; First Annual Report of the President and Directors of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company, to the Stockholders, for the Fiscal Year Ending December 31, 1870 (Cleveland: Fairbanks, Benedict & Co, 1871), copy in Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

  41 NYH, June 2, 1869; RRG, May 14, 1870; Fowler, 221; New World, June 18, 1842; BM, June 1862, March 1872; HC, February 22, 1865; New York Observer and Chronicle, November 21, 1867; Flag of Our Union, July 25, 1868; New York Observer and Chronicle, February 29, 1872.

  42 Directors' Minutes, June 2, 3, 1869, LS&MS, reel 65, box 242, NYCRR.

  43 Cleveland Herald, June 22, 1869, in NYT, June 27, 1869; BE, July 10, 1869; NYH, July 15, 1869; E. C. Deavan to EC, August 2, 1869, fold. 1, box 94, ECP; NYT, August 11, 1869.

  44 NYH, August 18, 27, 1869; Running Arrangement and Narrow Gauge Contract between the Erie Railway Company and the LS&MS, August 16, 1869, and Directors' Minutes, LS&MS, August 18, 19, 1869, reel 65, box 242, NYCRR.

  45 E. C. Deavan to EC, August 19, 1869, fold. 1, box 94, ECP; Prenuptial Agreement, CV and Frank Armstrong Crawford, August 20, 1869, CV-NYHS; London Free Press, August 23, 1869, in NYT, August 25, 1869; Syracuse Journal, August 23, 1869, in NYH, August 25, 1869.

  46 Marriage Certificate, August 21, 1869, CV-NYHS; McPherson, 516–7, 676; Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Diary 2, 1876–1878, Misc. Microfilms, reel 72, NYHS; London Free Press, August 23, 1869, in NYT, August 25, 1869; Toronto Christian Guardian in NYT, September 11, 1869.

  47 London Free Press, August 23, 1869, in NYT, August 25, 1869; Syracuse Journal, August 23, 1869, in NYH, August 25, 1869; Frank A. Vanderbilt to Ma, August 23, 1869, CV-NYHS.

  48 NYH, August 25, 1869; Frank A. Vanderbilt to Ma, August 23, 1869, CV-NYHS; NYTr, March 30, 1878; NYS, March 6, 1878.

  49 Frank A. Vanderbilt to Ma, August 23, 26, 1869, CV-NYHS; NYT, August 24, 1869; HW, September 11, 1869.

  50 RGD, NYC 374:1, 10; JMD to EC, April 2, August 12, 1870, fold. 1, box 95, ECP.

  51 NYH, September 2, 18, 19, 20, 30, October 1, 2, 1869; New York Stock and Exchange Board Minutes: 1867–1871, October 1, 1869, New York Stock Exchange Archives. See also JMD to EC, October 1, 1869, fold. 3, box 94, ECP.

  52 This narrative of the gold market panic of 1869 relies primarily on Klein, 100–15, still the single best account. See also William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 320–31; Kenneth D. Ackerman, The Gold Room: Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, and Black Friday, 1869 (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1988); and Julia Grant's and Boutwell's memoirs, excerpted in T. J. Stiles, ed., Robber Barons and Radicals (New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, 1997), 217–9.

  53 McFeely, 320–31; JMD to EC, October 2, 1869, fold. 3, box 94, ECP.

  54 Klein, 100–5.

  55 Directors' Minutes, September 23, 1869, HR, oversize vol. 248, vol. 3, box 34, NYCRR; JMD to EC, October 1, 1869, fold. 3, box 94, ECP. The account of the panic that follows is largely derived from the following newspaper accounts: NYS, September 27, 1869, in CT, September 30, 1869; NYT, September 30, 1869; NYH, September 18, October 1, 2, 3, 18, 1869; NYTr, September 25, 1869; NYW, October 1, 2, 4, 1869; see also JMD to EC, September 23, 24, 30, October 4, 16, 20, 1869, fold. 2, JMD to EC, October 1, 1869, fold. 3, box 94, ECP.

  56 JMD to EC, September 23, 24, 30, October 4, 16, 20, 1869, fold. 2, box 94, ECP. For commentary on the fear that CV could not control the Central's stock price, see RGD, NYC 342:262.

  57 NYW, October 2, 1869. The press reported that CV borrowed $10 million against HR stock, but letters in BB suggest the loan was much smaller, with NYCRR stock as collateral. See S. G. Ward to Baring Brothers, October 2, 1869, reel 37, and (in code) Duncan to Baring Brothers, October 5, 1869, reel 42, BB. For further commentary on Vanderbilt's role in stemming the panic, see Medbery 156; JMD to EC, October 1, 1869, fold. 3, box 94, ECP. Other quotes and information can be found in the newspaper issues listed previously.

  58 NYH, October 13, 1869; CT, October 15, 1869; Directors' Minutes, October 4, 5, 14, 15, 23, 1869, Finance Committee Minutes, October 16, 23, 24, November 4, 1869, LS&MS, reel 65, box 242, NYCRR.

  59 Chandler, Visible Hand, 151–7.

  60 H. E. Sargent to JFJ, May 16, 1874, JFJP; NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867. For a discussion of the Michigan Central and other “Joy Roads,” see RRG, June 11, 1870. Chandler, Visible Hand, 157–9, recognizes this cautious policy, noting, “The Commodore did little to integrate the operations of that road [the Lake Shore] with those of the New York Central”—though he mistakenly writes that James H. Devereux managed it after 1873.

  61 H. E. Sargent to JFJ, May 16, 1874, JFJP; NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867.

  62 Mark Twain, “Open Letter to Com. Vanderbilt,” Packard's Monthly, March 1869; Victor Fischer and Michael B. Frank, eds., Mark Twain's Letters, vol. 4 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 125n.

  63 John G. Sproat, “The Best Men”: Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 6.

  64 Sproat, 144–5; CFA, “Railroad Inflation,” NAR, January 1869. Examples of editorials that follow Adams's critique abound; see, for example, Nation, June 30, 1870.

  65 Warner quoted in Sproat, 255; see also 46–7, 205–6; Galaxy Magazine, June 1868; Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, vol. 2 (New York: Viking, 1946), 23; Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (New York: Penguin, 1995), 229; T. J. Stiles, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 220; Parkman quoted in Foner, 489–90; see also 488–511. I am interpreting the basis of Twain's friendship with Carnegie from David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (New York: Penguin, 2006), 645–6, 691–2, 722–3. Social prejudice deeply informed the influential writings of CFA. His biographer observes, “It is hard to see how Adams's way of making a fortune greatly differed from that he censured. He borr
owed and he gambled on the price of stocks, sometimes outrageously;” Edward Chase Kirkland, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., 1835–1915: The Patrician at Bay (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 77. For other uses of the term “robber baron,” see RRG, November 13, 1875.

  66 NYT, November 11, 1869; NYTr, November 10, 11, 1869. On the statue, see NYT, September 2, 8, 1869.

  67 Nation, November 18, 1869; Jerome Mushkat, “Hall, A(braham) Oakey,” in Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 517.

  68 NYT, September 2, 8, 1869; CT, November 25, 1871; HW, February 3, 1872; Directors' Minutes, November 3, December 16, 1869, HRR, reel 27, box 242, NYCRR.

  69 Burrows & Wallace, 944–5; CT, November 25, 1871; HW, February 3, 1872; Directors' Minutes, November 3, December 16, 1869, HRR, reel 27, box 242, NYCRR.

  70 NYH, January 22, 1870.

  71 NYH, February 6, 1870; NYS, February 7, 8, 1870.

  72 NYS, February 8, 1870; NYH, February 9, 1870; Victoria Woodhull to Whitelaw Reid, January 26, 1870, Tennie C. Claflin to Whitelaw Reid, February 6, 1870, reel 192, Reid Family Papers, LOC. See also NYH, February 3, 1870, in CT, February 8, 1870.

  73 NYH, February 6, 1870.

  74 “Memoir of Alva Murray Smith Vanderbilt Belmont,” Matilda Young Papers, Duke.

  75 Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, “A Victoria Woodhull for the 1990s,” Reviews in American History 27, no. 1 (1999): 87–97, and “Victoria Woodhull, Anthony Comstock, and Conflict over Sex in the United States in the 1870s,” JAH 87, no. 2 (September 2000); Mary Gabriel, Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1998), 92; see also Amanda Frisken, Victoria Woodhull's Sexual Revolution: Political Theater and the Popular Press in Nineteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Burrows & Wallace, 981–5; Foner, 446–9, 472–4.