The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

ALSO BY T. J. STILES

Jesse James:
Last Rebel of the Civil War

To Jessica and Dillon
,
for giving me the future

To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.

—SALMAN RUSHDIE,
Midnight's Children

Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

Part One
CAPTAIN
1794–1847

1
The Islander

2
The Duelist

3
A Tricky God

4
Nemesis

5
Sole Control

6
Man of Honor

Part Two
COMMODORE
1848–1860

7
Prometheus

8
Star of the West

9
North Star

10
Ariel

11
Vanderbilt

12
Champion

Part Three
KING
1861–1877

13
War

14
The Origins of Empire

15
The Power to Punish

16
Among Friends

17
Consolidations

18
Dynasty

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Bibliographical Essay

Notes

Primary Source Bibliography

Illustrations

INSERT FOLLOWING PAGE 106

Phebe Vanderbilt

The Quarantine, Staten Island

Sophia Johnson Vanderbilt

Battery Park

The Fly Market

Tontine Coffee House

Thomas Gibbons

Bellona Hall

Destruction of the
Lexington

A view of New York

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Daniel Drew

George Law

William H. Vanderbilt's farmhouse

Cornelius Vanderbilt

San Francisco, 1848

INSERT FOLLOWING PAGE 298

Abandoned ships, San Francisco, 1849

Greytown Harbor

San Juan River

San Carlos

Virgin Bay

San Juan del Sur

San Francisco, 1851

The Narrows

Steamship Row

Cornelius K. Garrison

William Walker

Execution of Ponciano Corral

Hipp's Point

Merchants' Exchange

The steamship
Vanderbilt

George W. Vanderbilt

William H. Vanderbilt

The steamship
Champion

The
Merrimack
vs. the
Monitor

INSERT FOLLOWING PAGE 531

USS
Vanderbilt

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Sighting the
Alabama

Capture of the
Ariel

Harlem Railroad Station, Twenty-sixth Street and Fourth Avenue

Commodore Vanderbilt
locomotive

Hudson River Railroad Station, Chambers Street

Horace F. Clark

Augustus Schell

The Albany Bridge

Henry Keep

Erastus Corning

Jay Gould

James Fisk Jr.

Thomas A. Scott

St. John's Park Freight Depot

The Vanderbilt statue

Stock watering (cartoon)

Racing Fisk (cartoon)

Grand Central Depot under construction

Grand Central Depot

Grand Central Depot car house, exterior view

Grand Central Depot car house, interior view

Fast train to Chicago

New York Central & Hudson River Railroad

Fast trotters on Harlem Lane

Mountain Boy

Congress Hall veranda, Saratoga Springs

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Tennessee Claflin

Victoria Woodhull

Horace Greeley

Frank Crawford Vanderbilt

Ethelinda Vanderbilt Allen

Sophia Vanderbilt Torrance

Mary Vanderbilt La Bau

Going to the Opera

The run on the Union Trust

Vanderbilt at rest

Death of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Funeral of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Burial of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Dr. Jared Linsly at the will trial

New York, 1880

Maps