The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (117 page)

20
Lambert, 2:49.

21
Albion, 19, 30, 220–1; Lambert, 2:63–4; Bayrd Still, “New York City in 1824: A Newly Discovered Description,”
NYHSQ
46, no. 2 (April 1962): 137–70.

22
Diary of John Adams, excerpted in T. J. Stiles, ed.,
Founding Fathers
(New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1999), 42; Wallace, “From the Windows.”

23
Guernsey, 32–9, 47–8; Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 227–30; Lambert, 2:56, 63; Burrows & Wallace, 359–60, 371–4;
Blunt's Stranger's Guide
, 34–41, 43, 45; Tyler Anbinder,
Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum
(New York: Free Press, 2001), 14–15; Sean Wilentz,
Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 25; Howard B. Rock, “A Delicate Balance: The Mechanics and the City in the Age of Jefferson,”
NYHSQ
43, no. 2 (April 1979): 93–114.

24
Taylor, 3–14; Ratner et al., 212–3; Robertson, 82–4; Nettels, 292–304; Naomi R. Lamoreaux, “Banks, Kinship, and Economic Development: The New England Case,”
JEH
46, no. 3 (September 1986): 647–67; Burrows & Wallace, 338; Doug lass, 73–9; John Denis Haeger,
John Jacob Astor: Business and Finance in the Early Republic
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 62–6; Geoffrey Gilbert, “Maritime Enterprise in the New Republic: Investment in Baltimore Shipping, 1789–1793,”
BHR
58, no. 1 (spring 1984): 14–29; Janet A. Riesman, “Republican Revisions: Political Economy in New York after the Panic of 1819,” 1–44, and Gregory S. Hunter, “The Manhattan Company: Managing a Multi-Unit Corporation in New York, 1799–1842,” 124–46, in William Pencack and Conrad Edick Wright, eds.,
New York and the Rise of American Capitalism: Economic Development and the Social and Political History of an American State, 1780–1870
(New York: New-York Historical Society, 1989); Wilentz, 23–35. Stuart M. Blumin notes the highly personal nature of the eighteenth-century urban economy in
The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 26.

25
Herman A. Krooss, ed.,
A Documentary History of Banking and Currency in the United States
(New York: Chelsea House, 1965), 90, 1059.

26
Taylor, 56–7; Pred, 14, 20–77, 112–4; Licht, xv–xvii; Sidney Ratner, James H. Soltow, and Richard Sylla,
The Evolution of the American Economy: Growth, Welfare, and Decision Making
(New York: Basic Books, 1979), 105–7; Nathan Miller,
The Enterprise of a Free People: Aspects of Economic Development in New York State During the Canal Period, 1792–1838
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), 67; Curtis P. Nettels,
The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775–1815
(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1962), 292; Kulikoff, 30–3; W. T. Newlyn and R. P. Bootle,
The Theory of Money
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 1–18; Leslie V. Brock,
The Currency of the American Colonies, 1700–1764: A Study in Colonial Finance and Imperial Relations
(New York: Arno Press, 1975), 2–37, 75–6; Jack Weatherford,
The History of Money: From Sandstone to Cyberspace
(New York: Crown, 1997), 112–36; Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick,
The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 235–6; Ross M. Robertson,
History of the American Economy
, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 82, 127–8, 144; Charles Sellers,
The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1820
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3–23. Lindstrom, 1, argues that household manufacturing peaked in 1815. Margaret G. Myers discusses bills of exchange and the personal nature of credit in
The New York Money Market
, vol. 1:
Origins and Development
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 46–57. Robert E. Wright,
The Wealth of Nations Rediscovered: Integration and Expansion in American Financial Markets, 1780–1850
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 318–21, discusses the inherent problems with bills of exchange. Edwin J. Perkins,
American Public Finance and Financial Services, 1700–1815
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1994), 261–73, discusses the transition from informal relationships to formal institutions in credit and finance, and the lack of interstate institutions. Bruegel offers an excellent discussion of book debt and personal relationships in trade, 42–3. On the shilling, Spanish money, and money of account in general, see
MM
, April 1852. The New York County Clerk's office abounds with lawsuits over unpaid promissory notes; see, for example,
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.

27
Fritz Redlich and Webster M. Christman, “Early American Checks and an Example of Their Use,”
BHR
41, no. 3 (autumn 1967): 285–302; Elkins and McKitrick, 114–61; Burrows & Wallace, 310–2; Myers, 1:8–17; Miller, 78–9. It should be stressed that Hamilton remained immersed in mercantilistic thinking; he sought to harness the merchant economy to the new federal government to enhance national power, and failed in his attempt to create a manufacturing sector through federal direction; see Wood, 262–4.

28
Thomas Cochran, “The Business Revolution,”
AHR
79, no. 5 (December 1974): 1449–66; Pauline Maier, “The Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation,”
WMQ
, 3rd ser., vol. 50, no. 1 (January 1993): 51–84; Shaw Livermore, “Advent of Corporations in New York,”
NYHis
16, no. 3 (July 1935): 245–98; Oscar Handlin and Mary F. Handlin, “Origins of the American Business Corporation,”
JEH
5, no. 1 (May 1945): 1–23; Morton J. Horwitz,
The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 110–11; 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; Ronald E. Seavoy, “Laws to Encourage Manufacturing: New York Policy and the 1811 General Incorporation Statute,”
BHR
46, no. 1 (spring 1972): 85–95; Robert E. Wright, “Bank Ownership and Lending Patterns in New York and Pennsylvania, 1781–1831,”
BHR
73, no. 1 (spring 1999): 40–60; Nettels, 289–94; Douglass, 46; Bray Hammond,
Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 146–7; James Willard Hurst,
The Legitimacy of the Business Corporation in the Law of the United States, 1780–1970
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1970), 13–32. On the centrality of the financial sector, see especially Perkins and Wright,
Wealth of Nations
, who argue with great clarity that a financial revolution was central to the other revolutions in the American economy, including that in transportation.

29
Parton, 378;
NYT
, January 5, 1877;
NYTr
, January 5, 1877; Lane, 10–11. Regarding CV's strength and endurance, see the reminiscences of his assistant, LW Dictation. On New York City's role as the center of a large hinterland of market farming, see Countryman, 314.

30
For CVs early writing, see the following letters from CV to TG: February 2, 1819; February 24, 1819; January 5, 1820; November 16, 1821; March 1, 1822; November 4, 1822; all in GP; see also CV to JWR, n.d., RWG. A Staten Island historian speculated that CV “got his three months' education” at a Moravian academy;
Staten Island Advance
, June 29, 1907.

31
Lane, ion.

32
Lane, 11–14; Parton, 378;
NYT
, January 5, 1877;
NYTr
, January 5, 1877;
HW
, March 5, 1859;
MM
, January 1865.

33
NYTr
, November 10, 1869; Paul A. Gilje, “On the Waterfront: Workers in New York City in the Early Republic, 1800–1850,”
NYHis
77, no. 4 (October 1996): 395–426.

34
Lambert, 2:64.

35
This anecdote was often repeated in various forms in biographical material (see, for example, Croffut, 17). This version is taken from a brief memorandum of a conversation with
CV
, written by an unknown party, in the VFP The memorandum reflects some confusion, as do most anecdotes (it refers to CV being sixteen in 1812), but it appears to be the authentic record of a story told by CV himself.

36
V. S. Naipaul,
The Enigma of Arrival
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 77.

37
VFP; Croffut, 17; Lane, 13.

38
Croffut, 17–18; Lane, 13–14; Parton, 378–9;
NYT
, January 5, 1877;
NYTr
, January 5, 1877;
HW
, March 5, 1859;
MM
, January 1865.

39
SA
, June 18, 1853.

40
Croffut, 17–18; Lane, 13–14; Parton, 378–9;
NYT
, January 5, 1877;
NYTr
, January 5, 1877;
HW
, March 5, 1859;
MM
, January 1865;
SA
, June 18, 1853.

41
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 587.

42
HW
, March 5, 1859;
MM
, January 1865; John Komlos, “The Height and Weight of West Point Cadets: Dietary Change in Antebellum America,”
JEH
47, no. 4 (December 1987): 897–927. CV was described as running a “packet” ferry in
EP
, February 4, 1818.

43
HW
, March 5, 1859;
MM
, January 1865; Parton, 376–80; Lane, 15–17; Croffut, 19–21;
Blunt's Stranger's Guide
, 207n, 223; Guernsey, 1:53. On CVs temper, see
NYTr
, March 27, 1878;
NYW
, November 13, 14, 1877.

44
Burrows & Wallace, 409–23; Edward L. Beach,
The United States Navy: A 200-Year History
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 51–71.