by T. J. Stiles
44 Burns, 2–7, 34–5, 39, 59, 67; Squier, 136–8.
45 Burns, 147–8, 156, 158, 161–2; Mary Wilhelmine Williams, ed., “Letters of E. George Squire to John M. Clayton, 1849–1850,” HAHR 1, no. 4 (November 1918): 426–34; Manning, 3:534. See also Squier, 262, 268.
46 USMDR, November-December 1849.
47 Burns, 161–2; Richard W. Van Alstyne, “British Diplomacy and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty 1850–60,” JModH 11: no. 2 (June 1939): 149–83; USMDR, November–December 1849.
48 Manning, 7:49.
49 Robert A. Naylor, “The British Role in Central America Prior to the Clayton-Bulwer TREATY of 1850,” HAHR 40, no. 3 (August 1960): 361–82; Richmond F. Brown, “Charles Lennox Wyke and the Clayton-Bulwer Formula in Central America, 1852–1860,” The Americas 47, no. 4 (April 1991): 411–45; G. F. Hickson, “Palmerston and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty,” Cambridge Historical Journal 3, no. 3 (1931): 295–303; Mario Rodriguez, “The ‘Prometheus’ and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty,” JModH 36, no. 3 (September 1964): 260–78; Squier, 263. For Squier's views of Chatfield, see Mary Wilhelmine Williams, ed., “Letters of E. George Squire to John M. Clayton, 1849–1850,” HAHR 1, no. 4 (November 1918): 426–34; Manning, 3:534. The Nicaraguans communicated to the canal company their plans to move against the British in San Juan del Norte; see JLW to JMC, August 22, 1849, vol. 6: Letters Received, August 15 to October 20, 1849, JMC-P.
50 George L. Bernstein, “Special Relationship and Appeasement: Liberal Policy towards America in the Age of Palmerston,” Historical Journal 41, no. 3 (September 1998): 725–50; Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), 273.
51 PS, December 6, 1849; National Era, December 27, 1849; Richard W. Van Alstyne, “British Diplomacy and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 1850–60,” JModH 11, no. 2 (June 1939): 149–83; Mario Rodriguez, “The ‘Prometheus’ and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty” JModH 36, no. 3 (September 1964): 260–78; JLW to Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, New York, January 16, 1850, vol. 8: Letters Received, January 1 to April 9, 1850, JMC-P.
52 Allan Nevins, The Ordeal of the Union, vol. 1: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847–1852 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947), 221, 255; JMC to [John J.] Crittenden, February 10, 1850, Clayton Misc. Mss., NYHS. On JLW's belief that he dictated the resulting treaty, see NYH, June 25, 1850. For insight on the political fever of the moment, see diary entry for January 26, 1850, Strong, 2:5. For Whig attitudes toward “British encroachments and aggressions in Central America,” see American Review, February 1850.
53 Kemble, 36–9, 46–50.
54 Stonington Reports, 53. One possible reason for CV's loss of interest in the Stonington was the completion in 1848 of a continuous rail connection between Boston and New York, when the New York & New Haven connected to the HRR. Though the Stonington still offered faster and more comfortable transportation between the two cities, it was already clear that railroads had a tendency to drive out steamboats; see Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders, 1845–1890: The Business Mind in Action (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965, orig. pub. 1953), 23.
55 RGD, NYC, 374:193; BE, May 1, 1850; NYTr, October 1, 1850; Heyl, 6:259. On the organization and elaboration of the canal company and its successors, see NYTr, March 26, 1852. CV did not complete purchase of the shipyard until April 8, 1850, when he mortgaged the property for $43,680; New York Life Insurance & Trust Co. v. CV, Freeman Campbell and Mary Ann, His Wife, Rutherford Moody and Eunice P., His Wife, Jacob J. Van Pelt and Sarah, His Wife, and Jay Jarvis, President of the Citizen's Bank, September 25, 1855, file PL 1855-N14, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC For a discussion of the steamships first built for the California business, see Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt, American Steamships on the Atlantic (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1981), 103–14.
56 NYH, December 14, 1849.
57 Allan Pred, Urban Growth and City-Systems in the United States, 1840–1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 150.
58 NYH, December 17, 1849; Baughman, 6–g, 12–3, 44–63; Theodosius F. Secor and CM v. George Law, May 22, 1861, file 1861–832, Superior Court, NYCC. See also Squier's report on the progress made by the canal company, Manning, 3:510.
59 NYTr, January 5, 1850; NYH, January 9, March 10, 1850.
60 CM's reluctance to discuss his affairs was a subject of comment in the newspapers. See, for example, a transcription of an amusingly unenlightening interview, NYT, July 31, 1857.
61 CV to Hamilton Fish, February 7, 1850, vol. 18, Hamilton Fish Papers, LOC. For a reference to Robert Kelly, see Strong, 2:173.
62 NYH, February 22, 1850.
63 NYH, February 24, 1850; NYTr, April 24, May 25, 1850; Charter and Act of Incorporation of the American Atlantic and Pacific Ship Canal Company and Treaty of Protection Negociated Between the United States and Great Britain (New York: Globe Job, 1850), copy in NYPL; George L. Bernstein, “Special Relationship and Appeasement: Liberal Policy towards American in the Age of Palmerston,” Historical Journal 41, no. 3 (September 1998): 725–50; G. F. Hickson, “Palmerston and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty,” Cambridge Historical Journal 3, no. 3 (1931): 295–303; Burns, 178–9. JLW even irritated Bulwer; see JLW to Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, February 25, 1850, vol. 8: Letters Received, January 1 to April 9, 1850, JMC-P.
64 Ephraim G. Squier to JMC, May 8, 1850, quoted in Mary Wilhelmine Williams, ed., “Letters of E. George Squire to John M. Clayton, 1849–1850,” HAHR 1, no. 4 (November 1918): 426–34. JLW let it be known in the United States as well that he had drafted the treaty himself; see NYH, June 25, 1850.
65 NYTr, April 25, October 1, 1850; BE, May 1, 1850; see also entries for June 22 and July 10, 1850, William D. Murphy Account Books, vol. 3: 1849–185 i, NYHS; NYH, July 9, 12, 1850.
66 CV v. Jesse P. Wilson, March 19, 1856, file 1856–2735, Superior Court, and CV v. Mark Wadleigh and Calvin E. Knox, June 24, 1857, file LJ-1857-W-173, Supreme Court Judgments, NYCC; entry for November 7, 1850, William D. Murphy Account Books, vol. 3: 1849–1851, NYHS; RT, September 19, 1850; Stonington Reports, 58.
67 Nevins, 1:333–5; Strong, 2:17.
68 NYTr, October 1, 1850. For a ship-by-ship review of all of CVs operations on the Atlantic, see Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt, American Steamships on the Atlantic (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1981), 222–49.
69 Richard W. Van Alstyne, “British Diplomacy and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 1850–60,” JModH 11, no. 2 (June 1939): 149–83; Mario Rodriguez, “The ‘Prometheus’ and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty,” JModH 36, no. 3 (September 1964): 260–78.
70 Ralph W. Hidy “The Organization and Functions of Anglo-American Merchant Bankers,” JEH 1 (Supplement: The Tasks of Economic History) (December 1941): 53–66; Ralph W. Hidy, “The House of Baring and American Trade,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 9, no. 5 (October 1835): 71–5.
71 JLW and H. L. Routh to Baring Brothers, Rothschild & Sons, Finlay Hodgson & Co., Capel & Co., Sir J. H. Pelly, George Peabody Esq., London, July 21, 1852, vol. 10: Letters Received, January 1851 to August 1853, JMC-P; Baring Brothers to Thomas W. Ward, October 15, 1850, reel 63: Letterbook, April 1848 to April 1851, BB.
72 JLW and H. L. Routh to Rothschild & Sons, July 17, 1852, vol. 10: Letters Received, January 1851 to August 1853, JMC-P; LT, October 15, 16, 1850.
73 Baring Brothers to Thomas W. Ward, October 15, 1850, reel 63: Letterbook, April 1848 to April 1851, BB.
74 Ibid., and James G. King to Messrs Baring Bros. & Co., October 29, 1850, reel 41: Letters Received from New York, BB. On August Belmont and New York society, see Eric Homberger, Mrs. Astor's New York: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 174–8.
75 Edward Harold Mott, Between the Ocean and the Lakes: The Story of Erie (New York: Ticker Publishing, 1908), 460; entry for February 3, 1849, Hone ms.
76 James G. King to Messrs Baring Bros. & Co, October 29, 1850, reel 41: Letters Received from New York, BB.
77 NYH, November 15, 1850; Farmers' Cabinet, October 31, 1850
.
Eight Star of the West
1 Zion's Herald and Wesleyan Journal, October 8, 1850; Strong, 2:15–16.
2 New York Evangelist, January 3, 1850; SA, January 5, 1850; Zion's Herald and Wesleyan Journal, October 8, 1850.
3 McPherson, 64–77; Strong, 2:21–2.
4 Littell's Living Age, November 2, 1850.
5 SED 50, 32nd Cong., 1st sess., vol. 8; LW Dictation.
6 NYH, December 26, 27, 1850; entry for December 26, 1850, Joseph N. Allen Diary (Allen Diary), BL. See also LT, January 21, 1851.
7 See Allen's obituary, NYT, March 15, 1883.
8 Allen Diary; Ephraim George E. Squier, Nicaragua: Its People, Scenery, Monuments, and the Proposed Interoceanic Canal (New York: D. Appleton, 1856), 56, 72–4; Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1854. On CVs selection of Punta Arenas, see NYH, August 15, 1854.
9 Allen Diary. The Orus would soon be wrecked on the river; as a result, the vessel that CV piloted on this occasion has regularly been misidentified as the Director. See Lane, 92, and Folkman, 26. However, the Allen Diary makes clear that the Director was already on the lake.
10 Allen Diary; HW, March 5, 1859; SA, February 8, 1851; NYH, January 22, 1851.
11 Allen Diary; NYTr, March 21, 1851.
12 Squier, 136–8; Allen Diary.
13 Allen Diary; NYTr, March 21, 1851.
14 Allen Diary; NYTr, February 10, 1851; NYH, February 1, 27, 1851.
15 Allen Diary.
16 John Guthrie, A History of Marine Engineering (London: Hutchinson Educational, 1971), 17, 44, 60; Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt, American Steamships on the Atlantic (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1981), 69, 98–101, 105–6, 153, 223; LT, March 18, 1851.
17 NYH, February 23, 1851; LT, March 18, 1851; SA, March 29, 1851. A Darius Davison supposedly accepted the bet; no more was ever heard of him.
18 SED 50, 32nd Cong., 1st sess., vol. 8; Congressional Globe, January 17, 1851.
19 NYH, March 6, 1851.
20 NYT, February 7, 1856; SED 50, 32nd Cong., 1st sess., vol. 8. Law also became a heavy investor in Aspinwall's Panama Railroad, the largest buyer of the company's bonds; see NYTr, June 16, 1851. For Law's efforts to improve the speed of the mail delivery under such threats as Vanderbilt's, see George Law to N. K. Hall, July 21, 1851, SR 326, 35th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 2. For details on the U.S. Mail and Pacific Mail assets and operations, see SR 292, 36th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 1.
21 Daniel T. Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850–1920 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974), 19, notes, “As late as 1850 the centers of manufacturing remained the home and workshop.”
22 RGD, NYC, 316:48, 81.
23 Heyl, 1:123, 219, 307, 331; NYTr, February 10, 25, May 27, 1851; LT, June 30, July 16, 23, 1851; P. T. Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs; or, Forty Years' Recollections of P. T. Barnum (Buffalo, N.Y: Warren, Johnson, 1873), 362–3; John A. Butler, Atlantic Kingdom: America's Contest with Cunard in the Age of Sail and Steam (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 2001), 177–8. Tonnage figures tend to vary by source, and should be viewed as approximate.
24 LT, August 28, 1851; AltaC, August 31, September 2, 1851; Folkman, 29–30.
25 LT, August 28, 1851; AltaC, August 31, September 2, 1851; Folkman, 29–30. A debate raged over the Nicaragua route in the San Francisco newspapers in early September. Rabe's fellow passenger, Harris T. Fitch, found the crossing entirely satisfactory, and said that Rabe's complaints only started after he was forced to pay for the second half of his journey to California.
26 NYTr, August 1, 1851. Diplomat John Bozman Kerr confirmed that in July 1851 the Nicaraguan government was discussing a plan to annul the charter of the canal company; Manning, 4:265.
27 Burns, 43, 47; NYTr, September 5, 6, 24, October 7, 1851; Manning, 4:228–9, 235.
28 NYTr, October 7, 9, 1851. The bribe figure is from NYTr, December 2, 1851. Newspaper reporters in the mid-nineteenth century were not particularly exacting, but these accounts fit with other reports of White's methods. See also White's testimony, NYH, October 17, 1856.
29 Compilation of Executive Documents and Diplomatic Correspondence Relative to a Trans-Isthmian Canal in Central America, vol. 2 (New York: Evening Post Printing, 1900), 714–7; Manning, 4:235–6; NYTr, September 5, 1851. Kerr's official correspondence is rife with racial judgments of the Nicaraguans; on March 15, 1852, for example, he wrote of “the ill-blood against each other, natural to mixed races;” Manning, 4:267.
30 NYTr, September 26, 1851.
31 NYT, November 15, 1851; NYTr, October 9, December 15, 1851; Manning, 4:256–7, 266-7; James H Quimby v. CV, November 21, 1855, file 1855–1313, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC. On CVs percentage as ATC agent, see JLW's explanation in George S. Salls v. CV, November 17, 1856, file 1855-#1226, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC.
32 Soulé, 359–64, 379–85.
33 MM, December 1854; NYT, July 3, 1860; Memoirs of William T. Sherman (New York: Da Capo, 1984, orig. pub. 1875), 95–105, 118–24; Soulé, 626–30; Kemble, 71, 152–3, 206; Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 123–40.
34 James P. Delgado, To California by Sea: A Maritime History of the California Gold Rush (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), 76–7.
35 CV to Jonas Winchester, October 15, 1851, Winchester Papers, California Historical Society. It is reported by two of William C. Ralston's biographers that CV asked him in 1851 to investigate a railroad proposed by a group of Californians; see David Lavender, Nothing Seemed Impossible: William C Ralston and Early San Francisco (Palo Alto: American West, 1975), 58, and Julian Dana, The Man Who Built San Francisco: A Study of Ralston's Journey with Banners (New York: Macmillan, 1936), 41.
36 People of the State of New York v. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Anthony Bird, Stephen Williams, Elias Butler, Jacob Van Cleef and Jacob Arnold, November 22, 1851, New York Supreme Court, box SI-68, NYMA; NYT, March 16, 21, 1853, February 12, 1855; Lane, 71.
37 A Sketch of Events in the Life of George Law (New York: J. C. Derby, 1855), 46; Kemble, 46–52, 55.
38 Kemble, 46, 54–7. As Kemble shows, the mail monopoly was immensely lucrative. In July 1850, Pacific Mail paid a dividend of 50 percent ($50 per share, with the par value of each share being $100). CVs competition cut fares from a high of $300 for first cabin to as low as $80.
39 CV v. the New York and Staten Island Steam Ferry Company, William B. Townsend, George Law, John J. Boyd, Levi Cook, Robert C Wetmore, Jeptha B. Parks, John Burgher, David Marfleet, Gottlieb Kiesele, and Henry M. Western, August 23, 1851, New York Supreme Court, fold. 10, box 1, Ferry and Railroad Collection, Staten Island Institute of Arts & Sciences; CV v. George Law and Others, August 16, 1851, file CV-V-20, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC. The report of retaliation was published three decades later in an obituary of Jeremiah Simonson, NYT, February 13, 1887, which claimed that Simonson led the attack on Law's pier.
40 SR 326, 35th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 2; LT, October 25, 1851; Lane, 97; Kemble, 61.
41 NYT, November 27, 1851; Folkman, 33–4. Kemble, 61, who displays a clear bias in favor of Pacific Mail, shows that workers on the Panama route genuinely believed that the Nicaragua route was much worse. It was not, at least until the completion of the Panama Railroad in 1855. For an example of passengers publicly protesting conditions on the Nicaragua route, see AltaC, January 15, 1852. See also the testimony in James H Quimby v. CV, November 13, 1854, file 1854-#1242, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC, and James H Quimby v. CV, November 21, 1855, file 1855-#1313, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC.
42 LT, December 4, 1851.
43 NYTr, October 23, 1851.
44 LW Dictation; LT, December 4, 1851; NYTr, December 2, 1851.
45 LT, December 4, 1851; NYTr, December 2, 1851.
46 LT, January 2, 1852; Manning, 7:420; Mario Rodriguez, “The ‘Prometheus’ and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty,” JModH 36, no. 3 (September 1964): 260–78.
47 CV quoted in Rodriguez, “The ‘Prometheus’ and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty;” Mary Wilhelmine Williams, Anglo-American Isthmian Diplomacy: 1815–1915 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), 119–20.
48 SED 6, 32nd Cong., 1st sess., vol. 4; LT, December 17, 1851, January 2, 1852.
49 LT, December 17, 30, 1851, January 2, 1852; NYT, December 17, 1851, February 14, 1852; SED 6, 32nd Cong., 1st sess., vol. 4; SED 30, 32nd Cong., 1st sess., vol. 7; Manning, 7:73–4; NYH, December 6, 1851; Williams, 120–2.
50 LT, January 29, 1852; Manning, 7:448; Richmond F. Brown, “Charles Lennox Wyke and the Clayton-Bulwer Formula in Central America, 1852–1860,” The Americas 47, no. 4 (April 1991): 411–45; Williams, 120–3. Rodriguez, in “The ‘Prometheus’ and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty,” notes that one reason the British recoiled so quickly is that the cabinet received a report that Greytown had become largely American in population, which made the dispute something of an internal U.S. affair.
51 New York Evangelist, August 28, 1873; HC, June 7, 1851; entry for August 4, 1851, Strong, 2:60. For evidence of Clark's early law practice, see Horace F. Clark to Lauristen Hall, July 20, 1839, Hall Papers, HL, and HFC Misc. File, NYPL. See also the entry for Charles Antonio Rapallo, National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White & Co., 1904). HFC's name appears in a list of Democratic leaders, USMDR, June 1851. I am indebted to Maira Liriano of the New York Public Library for finding the wedding date, which had long eluded me; see EP, April 7, 1848. For a vivid description of a typical fashionable New York wedding, see Eclectic Magazine, July 1850.
