The First Tycoon

by T. J. Stiles

  46 In the Supreme Court of the United States between Cornelius Vanderbilt and John R. Livingston (New York: Edwin B. Clayton, 1823), copy in GP; Paul A. Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 275–7; A. E. Costello, Our Police Protectors: History of the New York Police from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, 2nd ed. (New York: n.p., 1885), 92–3, 98.

  47 D. O. Price to TG, October 27, 1821, GP.

  48 CV in Account with Steamboat Bellona, August 1, 1821, GP-R; Memorandum of Agreement between TG and Lawrence & Sneeden, October 16, 1821, CV to TG, November 16, 1821, GP; NBF, November 9, 1820.

  49 Lane, 37; Firth Haring Fabend, “The Synod of Dort and the Persistence of Dutch-ness in Nineteenth-Century New York and New Jersey,” NYHis 77, no. 3 (July 1996): 273–300; CV to TG, March 1, April 12, 1822, Abraham DeGraw to TG, June 22, 1822, Thomas Hill Rental Receipt, November 1, 1822, GP; Copy of TG'S Will, October 26, 1825, Thomas Gibbons Papers, NYHS; TG to ?, March 12, 1822, GP-R; MacDowell, 22. It appears from DeGraw's letter that TG initially rented, or planned to rent, the building to DeGraw, but CV occupied it before the end of 1822. For CVs salary, see CV in Account with Steamboat Bellona, August 1, 1821, GP-R. Details about the education of the children emerged during the trial over CVs will; see the testimony of Daniel B. Allen, NYS, November 13, 1877.

  50 EP, March 28, 1822; James P. Allaire to TG, January 11, 1822, Petition of the Ship-Builders of the City of New-York, February 1, 1822, Statement of Isaac Brown, June 21, 1822, Instructions to Mr. Parkman, August 6, 1822, TG to AO, March 22, 30, 1822, GP. On the state of New York–Philadelphia trade during this time, see Trenton Federalist, August 26, 1822.

  51 Countryman, “From Revolution,” 369–75; Wood, 268–70, 287–305; Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 88–98; Cynthia A. Kierner, “Patrician Womanhood in the Early Republic: The ‘Reminiscences’ of Janet Livingston Montgomery,” NYHis 73, no. 4 (October 1992): 389–407; see especially Fischer.

  52 R. M. Livingston to TG, June 14, 25, 27, August 31, 1822, WG to TG, September 8, 1822, GP.

  53 EP, August 26, 31, November 5, 1822; Memorandum of TG, September 18, 1822, William B. Jaques to TG, September 12, 1822, WG to TG, September 8, 1822, Memorandum of TG, November 27, 1822, GP.

  54 CV to TG, November 4, 1822, GP; Countryman, “From Statehood,” 369; Gunn, 26–8; Wood, 325–47; Andrew Burstein, America's Jubilee (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), esp. 34–5. See also Burstein's Sentimental Democracy: The Evolution of America's Romantic Self-Image (New York: Hill & Wang, 1999), which examines “the Americanization of sensibility,” and Confidence Men, 56–60, 94. Bruegel is also very illuminating on the penetration of the market into the private sphere. A reference to CV as an “economic man” appears in Edward J. Renehan Jr., Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Basic Books, 2007), but I wrote this passage in 2003, several years before Renehan began work on his book.

  55 CV to TG, March 1, November 4, 1822, Robert Arnold to TG, May 23, 1822, GP.

  56 TG also claimed that CV had plotted to cheat a Griswold, probably a stage operator or boatman, by running directly to South Amboy; TG to WG, December 12, 1822, GP; Lane, 40; Den D. Trumbull et al. v. Gibbons, April 10, 1849, 22 NJ L 117. Regarding CVs partnership with Allaire in the Fanny, see Conference abt. Fanny, undated memorandum, GP; EP, March 31, April 1, 1822; NYS, November 13, 1877. Though CV would later be renowned for his harness racing, the horses discussed by TG almost certainly were Thoroughbreds, as harness racing remained an informal sport with inexpensive horses; see Melvin L. Adelman, “The First Modern Sport in America: Harness Racing in New York City, 1825–1870,” Journal of Sport History 8, no. 1 (spring 1981): 5–32.

  57 CV to TG, April 1, 1823, TG to WG, April 4, 1823, GP; New York Daily Advertiser, March 31, 1823.

  58 CV to WG, March 25, 1823, GP.

  59 JRL v. CV, December 28, 1822, file L J-1822-V-18, Supreme Court Judgments, NYCC.

  60 Lane, 34–5, 40–1; TG to WG, May 2, 4, 5, 17, 1823, GP.

  61 James Day and Jacob Vanderbilt appear in the November 1823 receipts in GP-R. Regarding the New Brunswick dock maneuver, see CV to TG, April 11, 1823, GP. The two CV letters quoted (cited in Lane, 34–5, 40–1) no longer appear in the GP, and appear to have been lost, misfiled, or stolen. As will be deduced, CVs parents had had a second son named Jacob.

  62 Baxter, 37–9; King, 270; for a marvelous portrait of the now-forgotten Wirt, see Burstein, America's Jubilee, 34–58.

  63 Wood, 287–305; Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 88–98; Cynthia A. Kierner, “Patrician Womanhood in the Early Republic: The ‘Reminiscences’ of Janet Livingston Montgomery,” NYHis 73, no. 4 (October 1992): 389–407; Baxter, 23–31; TG to WG, January 23, 1823, CV to TG, January 22, 1823, William Talmage to TG, January 20, 1823, In the Supreme Court of the United States, Between Cornelius Vanderbilt and John R. Livingston (New York: Edwin B. Clanton, 1823), GP; JRL to Robert L. Livingston, December 15, 1823, LFP.

  64 Statement of Interview between Walter Livingston and WG, January 27, 1824, GP.

  65 Baxter, 40; Remini, 8–9.

  66 See especially Horwitz, 110–34, and Appleby Inheriting the Revolution, 56–8, 88–9. Appleby powerfully argues that economic and political liberalization were linked, though I would stress that the link between government intervention and elite politics was most marked at the state level in the case of New York; see Miller, 10–19. Some of Hamilton's federal policies democratized the economy in ways that he did not intend, as women and artisans bought shares and took loans; see Robert E. Wright, “Bank Ownership and Lending Patterns in New York and Pennsylvania, 1781–1831,” BHR 73, no. 1 (spring 1999): 40–60.

  67 Baxter, 40–57, 70–1, 80; Remini, 202–8; King, 270–91; 9 Wheaton U.S. 1; EP, March 5, 1822; see also NR, March 27, 1824.

  Three A Tricky God

  1 Receipt of Thomas Richards from Capt. Vanderbilt for Steamboat Thistle, March 31, 1824, Receipt of Blossom, Smith, & Demon to Steamboat Thistle, April 14, 1824, GP-R; Enrollment Number 16, Thistle, April 3, 1824, Perth Amboy Custom House, Certificates of Enrollment, 1824–26, vol. 2196, Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, RG 41, NA; EP, April 23, 1824; Wheaton J. Lane, From Indian Trail to Iron Horse: Travel and Transportation in New Jersey, 1620–1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939), 203.

  2 EP, March 13, 1823, March 5, 16, 18, 26, 1824; NBF, March 11, 1824; NR, March 27, 1824; New York Daily Advertiser, March 6, 8, 1824; Maurice G. Baxter, The Steamboat Monopoly: Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 70–1, 80.

  3 Leonard W. Levy, Seasoned Judgments: The American Constitution, Rights, and History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1995), 439; R. Kent Newmeyer, John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 269–71, 302–15; Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), 481. On the erosion of state franchises and “exclusionary privileges of first entrants” in American law, see Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 34, 110–39. On the popular enthusiasm for laissez-faire, see the works of Joyce Appleby, such as “The Vexed Story of Capitalism Told by American Historians,” JER 21, no. 1 (spring 2001): 1–18. In Capitalism and the New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (New York: New York University Press, 1984), Appleby explicitly argues that the free market came to be seen as a natural force. For a contemporary discussion along these lines of Gibbons v. Ogden and monopolies, see Workingman's Advocate, August 16, 1834.

  4 Baxter, 61–133, discusses the evaluations of the decision and its many legal consequences, and includes the Beveridge quote. See also Albert J. Beveridge, Life of John Marshall, vol. 4 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947, orig. pub. 1919), 44
5–8; Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, vol. 2 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1922), 58–86, John Randolph quoted on 71. See also G. Edward White, The Marshall Court and Cultural Change: 1815–35 (New York: Macmillan, 1988). To understand Marshall's decision in the larger legal context of the era, one must consult Horwitz's discussion of the emerging acceptance of competition and the declining primacy of state franchises, 109–39.

  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), 80, notes that the Erie Canal so solidified New York's position that the city captured railroads, instead of having railroads divert trade elsewhere.

  6 The registration figures compare 1825 with typical prior years (the 1825 number reflects the number of vessels built in 1824, after Gibbons v. Ogden). See Bureau of Navigation, Merchant Steam Vessels of the United States, 1807 to 1856 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Commerce, 1931), 5–7. NR cited in Smith, 481.

  7 Baxter, 62–8, 70; Paul G. E. Clemens, “Aaron Ogden,” ANB. For an inside look at the rising tensions between JRL and his nephews, see the correspondence between Charles H. Rhind and Robert L. Livingston, April 26, July 16, 31, September 4, 1824, LFP On the transformation of the old patricians, see David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), and Wood, 325–47.

  8 Bill of Jacob Wyckoff to TG, March 1, 1824, TG in Account with CV, September 1, 1824, Statement of the Union Line Way-Bills on the Noon Line, 1826 and 1827, GP-R.

  9 EP, April 29, May 17, 19, 1824; CV to TG, April 30, 1824, GP; Anne Royall, Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the United States (New Haven: n.p., 1826), 239; Harlan I. Halsey “The Choice Between High-Pressure and Low-Pressure Steam Power in America in the Early Nineteenth Century,” JEH 41, no. 4 (December 1981): 723–44. In slightly more than a decade, on March 14, 1836, Philip Hone was able to write in his diary: “The loss of life from steamboat explosions, railroad accidents, falling walls, etc. has gotten to be a matter of every-day occurence, and no longer occasions surprise or excites sympathy” And yet his frequent comments on deadly steam disasters shows how troubling they were to Americans; Hone, 203, 261.

  10 William Benedict, New Brunswick in History (New Brunswick, N.J.: n.p., 1925), 178; CV to TG, April 27, 1824, GP; EP, May 27, 1824. On the New Brunswick investors behind the ferry business, see the NP. CV's insight is all the more remarkable because corporations at this time were thought of as a kind of partnership in which ownership and management were one and the same. See, for example, Gregory A. Mark, “The Personification of the Business Corporation in American Law,” University of Chicago Law Review 54, no. 4 (autumn 1987): 1441–83; Naomi R. Lamoreaux, “Partnerships, Corporations, and the Limits on Contractual Freedom in U.S. History: An Essay in Economics, Law, and Culture,” in Kenneth Lipartito and David B. Scilia, eds., Constructing Corporate America: History, Politics, Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 29–65.

  11 New York Daily Advertiser, June 4, 1824; EP, June 5, 1824; Sam S. Griscom, “Journal of a Tour thro N. Jersey, Penn and N. York with occasional remarks on the people, Literary characters Ladies Institutions &c. &c. &c.,” 1824, NYHS. For details on the Legislator's company, the Exchange Line, and transportation across New Jersey in general at this time, see Lane, From Indian Trail, 200–5.

  12 Anne Royall, Sketches, 239: On the speed between New York and Philadelphia, see NR, December 10, 1825.

  13 John Adams, Treasurer of New York Hospital, v. CV, June 27, 1826, file 1826–20, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC. See also Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784–1831, vol. 9 (New York: City of New York, 1917), for a reference to the Legislator's owners requesting permission to extend the Market-field Street dock (the one shared by the two boats) on June 21, 1824; CV filed a petition opposing the request on July 1. The dock was constructed in 1808 by none other than AO; see AO to Peter Dobbs, August 23, 1808, Aaron Ogden Papers, Misc. Files, NYPL.

  14 EP, June 3, 1825.

  15 Andrew Burstein, America's Jubilee (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 3, 8–14; A. Levasseur, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825; or, Journal of Travels in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: White, Gallagher & White, 1824), 8–10. For another fine study of this transition between generations, see Joyce Appleby Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).

  16 Benedict, 270.

  17 Burstein, America's Jubilee, 50. Cornelius Jeremiah was born in 1830, the first George Washington in 1832, the second (the first died in infancy) in 1839; Verley Archer, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, Sophia Johnson Vanderbilt, and Their Descendents (Nashville: Vanderbilt University, 1972), iv.

  18 See the correspondence for 1824 and 1825 in GP; for examples of the Union Line recordkeeping, see the GP-R; see also the toll books of the Trenton and New Brunswick Turnpike Company, folds. 9B and 10, box 3, NP. CVs testimony appears in Den D. Trumbull et al. v. Gibbons, April 10, 1849, 22 NJ L 117, 16.

  19 On Gibbons's death, see the Account Book, 1826, GP; EP, May 17, 1826. On the completion of the canal and subsequent celebrations, see Burrows & Wallace, 429–32; Edward Countryman, “From Revolution to Statehood (1776–1825),” in Milton M. Klein, ed., Empire State: A History of New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 229–305. On the deaths of Adams and Jefferson and the Jubilee celebrations, see Burstein, America's Jubilee, 228–86.

  20 Den D. Trumbull et al. v. Gibbons, April 10, 1849, 22 NJ L 117, 16, 32–3. For evidence of CVs ongoing management of Union Line business, see GP-R and the Trenton and New Brunswick Turnpike Company Toll Books, folds. 9B and 10, box 3, NP. For insight into WG, see WG to CV, March 14, 1832, WG to George Jenkins, June 30, 1827, WG to James Parker, October 26, 1827, WG to George Jenkins, October 30, 1827, WG to Elias Van Arsdale, November 15, 1827, WG to Robert L. Stevens, October 26, 1828, WG to Robert Baylies, November 23, 1828, WG to E. A. Stevens, November 30, 1828, WG to William Halsted, December 2, 1828, WG to Phineas Withington, January 30, 1829, WG to E. Hall, February 6, 1829, WG to Robert L. Livingston, February 18, 1829, WG to Thomas J. J. Lefevre, Matthew C. Jenkins, and James T. Watson, February 23, 1829, GP On Americans' still-emerging views of corporations, see Pauline Maier, “The Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation,” WMQ, 3rd ser., vol. 50, no. 1 (January 1993): 51–84; Naomi R. Lamoreaux, “Partnerships, Corporations, and the Limits on Contractual Freedom in U.S. History: An Essay in Economics, Law, and Culture,” in Kenneth Lipartito and David B. Scilia, eds., Constructing Corporate America: History, Politics, Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 29–65.

  21 EP, August 27, 1825, June 2, 1826 (the description of the Emerald appears in a Union Line ad); Robert T. Thompson, Colonel James Neilson: A Business Man of the Early Machine Age in New Jersey, 1784–1862 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1940), 269–72; entries for August 1828, May 3–6, 1829, Farm Diary, box 14, NP.

  22 EP, November 6, 1826; SEP, November 11, 1826; Entries 162 and 252, April 28, 1826, Abstracts Licenses Enrolled, July 1, 1825, to December 31, 1829, vol. 13041, New York Custom House Records, RG 41, NA.

  23 NYT, November 13, 1877; NYW, November 13, 1877. On CVs continuing obsession with horses, see WG to Samuel B. Parkman, March 16, 1827, GP.

  24 NYW, November 13, 14, 1877.

  25 Alexis de Tocqueville (George Lawrence, trans.), Democracy in America (New York: HarperCollins, 1988, orig. pub. 1966), vol. 2, part 3, chap. 6, 580.

  26 CV v. Patrick Rice, November 26, 1827, file 1827-#1360, Court of Common Pleas, Patrick Rice v. CV, November 26, 1827, file 1827-#1671, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC.

  27 NBF, July 29, 1829 (which shows Jacob Vanderbilt as captain of the Citizen); New-York and Richmond Free Press, July 6, 1833; Entry 37, July 10, 1828, Enrollments, 1818–1821, vol. 2169, Perth Amboy Cu
stom House Records, RG 41, NA subscriber list, New Brunswick Coal Association, Rariton Coal Mining Company, fold. 47, box 4, NP. For CVs dealings with William Gibbons, see citations from GP, next endnote.

  28 Lane, 52; EP, July 8, 1828; NBF, July 29, 1829; New-York and Richmond Free Press, July 6, 1833; Entry 37, July 10, 1828, Enrollments, 1818–1821, vol. 2169, Perth Amboy Custom House Records, RG 41, NA WG to CV, March 14, 1832, WG to George Jenkins, June 30, 1827, WG to James Parker, October 26, 1827, WG to George Jenkins, October 30, 1827, WG to Elias Van Arsdale, November 15, 1827, WG to Robert L. Stevens, October 26, 1828, WG to Robert Baylies, November 23, 1828, WG to E. A. Stevens, November 30, 1828, WG to William Halsted, December 2, 1828, WG to Phineas Withington, January 30, 1829, GP. On the view of corporations as trade-restricting organizations, see Maier, “The Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation,” and WG to E. Hall, February 6, 1829, WG to Robert L. Livingston, February 18, 1829, WG to Thomas J. J. Lefevre, Matthew C. Jenkins, and James T. Watson, February 23, 1829, GP. Lane, 49, repeats a tale popularized by Croffut, 34, that CV decided to leave the line to become an independent operator, to Gibbons's protest; when CV refused an offer to become his partner in the Union Line, Gibbons then sold the boats. For early renderings of this story, see HW, March 5, 1859, and MM, January 1865. The Gibbons Papers show there is no truth to it.

  29 Lane, 49; NBF, July 29, 1829; Trenton Emporium and True American, July 11, 1829 (which appears to show that the Emerald, which had been sold and rebuilt, now operated on the Delaware). CV began to pay tolls on the Trenton and New Brunswick Turnpike for the Dispatch Line as early as May 1829; see the Trenton and New Brunswick Turnpike Company Toll Book, fold. 11, box 3, NP.

  30 The Gazette story was quoted in the SEP, May 2, 1829. On the heavy-handed ways of captains and the shifty world of the waterfront, see a story about freelance porters in EP, September 23, 1824. CV did not move out of New Brunswick until some time in 1830, contrary to Lane's account; see the farm diary and James Neilson to George Able, January 28, 1830, fold. 17, box 3, NP. CV's ownership of bank stock is notable, a sign of his interest in investment opportunities and ease with banks and corporations; but it should be noted that New York was far in advance of the rest of the country in abandoning exclusive practices in both lending and stock ownership, with women and artisans trading shares and receiving loans (though bank chartering remained highly political). See Robert E. Wright, “Bank Ownership and Lending Patterns in New York and Pennsylvania, 1781–1831,” BHR 73, no. 1 (spring 1999): 40–60; Naomi R. Lamoreaux, “Banks, Kinship, and Economic Development: The New England Case,” JEH 46, no. 3 (September 1986): 647–67; Naomi R. Lamoreaux and Christopher Glaisek, “Vehicles of Privilege or Mobility? Banks in Providence, Rhode Island, During the Age of Jackson,” BHR 65, no. 3 (autumn 1991): 502–27.