The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (120 page)

28
Memorandum of General Dayton, October 16, 1815, Memorandum of WG, December 5, 1817, GP. On Livingston's New Brunswick line, see
NBF
, November 6, 1817. For a description of the
Atalanta
, see
EP
, June 1, 1822.

29
On the entanglements of DDT, TG, CV, AO, and the Livingstons, see TG to AO, December 10, 1818, WG Memorandum, December 11, 1818, AO to TG, December 12, 1818, TG to Peter Jay Munro, December 27, 1818, TG to Peter Jay Munro, January 21, 1819, TG to Peter Jay Munro, January 28, 1819, CV to TG, February 2, 1819, CV to TG, February 24, 1819, James P. Allaire to TG, January 4, 1818, DDT to TG, May 21, 1818, GP;
Gibbons v. Ogden
, Court of Errors, January 1820, 17 Johns., 488–510; Agreement of DDT, Adam Brown, and Noah Brown, October 11, 1817, Staten Island Papers, NYHS; DDT to Edward P. Livingston, October 5, 1818, LFP On DDT himself, see Niven, 11–29, 76–7; Ray W. Irwin,
Daniel D. Tompkins: Governor of New York and Vice President of the United States
(New York: New-York Historical Society, 1968), 213–33. In various court records, it appears that JRL sold to DDT the rights to steam to Staten Island
(see JRL v. DDT
, June 1, 1820, New York Court of Chancery, 4 Johns. Chancery, 413–32); his frequent complaints, however, suggest that he had been pressured into it; see JRL to Robert L. Livingston, September 9, 1821, LFP.

30
Rachel Stevens to R. Stevens, October 12, 1819, Stevens Family Papers, New Jersey Historical Society (copy in GP).

31
TG to AO, October 31, 1817, TG to Peter Jay Munro, October 3, 1818,
GP; AO v. TG
, December 4, 1819, file O-109, Court of Chancery, NYCC;
Ogden v. Gibbons
, 4 Johns. Chancery, 150, and
Gibbons v. Ogden
, Court of Errors, January 1820, 17 Johns., 488–510;
NBF
, November 3, 1817;
EP
, September 22, 1818; Johnson,
“Gibbons v. Ogden
Before Marshall.” See also Baxter.

32
Sworn statements of John G. Dusenberry June 21, 1819, DDT to TG, July 14, 1819, James Ward to TG, October 22, 1819, GP; In the Matter of Vanderbilt, July 1, 1819, New York Court of Chancery, 4 Johns. Chancery, 57–62; Affidavit of CV,
AO v. TG
, December 4, 1819, file O-109, Court of Chancery, NYCC; Johnson,
“Gibbons v. Ogden.”

33
Allan R. Pred,
Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information: The United States System of Cities, 1790–1840
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 143–77; Margaret G. Meyers,
The New York Money Market
, vol. 1:
Origins and Development
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 3–9; Sidney Ratner, James H. Soltow, and Richard Sylla,
The Evolution of the American Economy: Growth, Welfare, and Decision Making
(New York: Basic Books, 1979), 121–4, 222–6; and see especially Diane Lindstrom,
Economic Development in the Philadelphia Region, 1810–1850
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1977). CV to TG, February 2, 1819, CV to TG, February 24, 1819, TG to JRL, April 22, 1819, Agents of the Union Line to TG, June 14, 1819, Articles of Agreement, April 22, 1822, GP;
Gibbons v. Ogden
, Court of Errors, January 1820, 17 Johns., 488–510.

34
On JRL'S New Brunswick line, see
NBF
, November 6, 1817. His monopoly was immensely unpopular in New Brunswick; see Petition from Citizens of New Brunswick, February 26, 1819, Sworn statements of John G. Dusenberry, June 21, 1819, TG to Isaac Pierson, Samuel Tooker, Edmund Smith et al., May 13, 1822, GP. The complicated tactical maneuvering of this struggle defies description, as TG sought ways around the injunctions that barred his boat from New York. For example, JRL actually sought injunctions against both AO and TG, because the two had come to a temporary arrangement to connect with one another, since New Brunswick was the natural destination of passengers from New York, but AO was barred from going there under the terms of his license. In addition, DDT subdivided the rights he had purchased from the monopoly, and sold TG the right to travel between Staten Island and New Jersey, which allowed the
Bellona
to connect to the
Nautilus
. Affidavit of Wm. B. Jacques, April 27, 1819, Proposed Agreement between TG and JRL, drafted by Livingston, April 1, 1819, JRL to TG, April 21, 1819, TG to JRL, April 22, 1819, Agreement between DDT and TG, May 13, 1819, GP; DDT to Edward P. Livingston, October 5, 1818, LFP See also Affidavit of
CV, AO v. TG
, December 4, 1819, file O-109, Court of Chancery, NYCC.

35
NBF
, September 30, 1819; CV to TG, January 5, 1820, TG to Daniel Webster, December 13, 1819, GP; Johnson,
“Gibbons v. Ogden,”
109–11; Robert V. Remini,
Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), 201. An excellent summary of the legal conflict appears in Andrew J. King, ed.,
The Papers of Daniel Webster: Legal Papers, 3: The Federal Practice, Part I
(Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989), 255–9. TG also sought a repeal of the monopoly in the state legislature, but Martin Van Buren declined an offer of $100 to push the cause; TG to William Price, March 1, 1819, James Ward to TG, October 22, 1819, TG'S memorandum with John W. Patterson, March 18, 1819, GP.

36
New York Daily Advertiser
, February 7 and 8, 1820;
New York Commercial Advertiser
, February 7, 1820;
EP
, February 7, 1820; Lane, 39; P. J. Staudenraus,
The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 55–8. For CVs address, see TG to CV, January 25, 1821, GP.

37
“The New Jersey Monopolies,”
NAR
, April 1867, 428–76 (see esp. 434);
TG v. JRL
and
TG v. AO
, 1 South. 6, 236–300; Affidavit of CV July 24, 1820, GP. It should be noted that the flurry of injunctions did not cease. The legal conflict was staggeringly complicated, but the general thrust was that the
Bellona
was regularly allowed to run to New York.

38
On the
Bellona's
connection to the city, and the Philadelphia route, see
NBF
, May 11, November 9, 1820;
EP
, January 3, April 29, November 25, 1820; Anne Royall,
Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the United States
(New Haven: n.p., 1826), 239; entry for May 22, 1824, Samuel S. Griscom Diary, May to June 1824, NYHS; Frances Trollope,
Domestic Manners of the Americans
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 335–6. Philip Hone, in a diary entry for March 13, 1832, recorded that the steamboat passage between New York and New Brunswick took four and a half hours; Hone, 58.

39
Enrollment Number 53, October 10, 1818, Perth Amboy Custom House Enrollments, 1818–1821, vol. 2169, Custom House Records, RG 41, NA. For illustrations of early steamboats, see Morrison, and the five volumes of Erik Heyl's very useful work. An excellent capsule description of steamboat patterns in the East and the development of the industry can be found in Taylor, 56–61.

40
NBF
, March 11, 1819; Memorandum Signed by TG and John Lisle, March 5, 1819, Roster of
Bellona
crew, October 1828, John Hunt Receipt, September 1, 1818, Inventory of Bellona Articles, December 19, 1825, J. & S. Fischer Receipt, August 22–9, 1821, George H. Cooper Receipt, August 31, 1821, Receipt of John Hutchings, May 31, 1822, GP-R; Archibald Douglass Turnbull,
John Stevens: An American Record
(New York: Century Company, 1928), 443; Trollope, 335.

41
Enrollment Number 361, December 22, 1820, New York Custom House Enrollments, November 14, 1820, to May 29, 1821, vol. 12148, RG 41, NA;
SA
, June 18, 1853;
EP
, March 8, 1820, January 8, 1821; Heyl, 2:27–8; Heyl, 5:41–2; Agreement for Sale of the
Mouse
, March 18, 1820, GP.

42
TG to Peter Jay Munro, December 27, 1818, TG to Peter Jay Munro, January 21, 1819, TG to Peter Jay Munro, January 28, 1819, CV to TG, February 2, 1819, CV to TG, February 24, 1819, James P. Allaire to TG, January 4, 1818, GP.

43
CV to TG, December 25, 1820, Nath. Shuff & Co. to TG, December 25, 1820, TG to Isaac Brown, copy by CV January 5, 1821, CV to TG, January 13, 1821, Isaac Brown to TG, January 21, 1821, TG to D. B. Ogden, February 15, 1821, Receipt of William Wirt, February 27, 1821, Receipt of Daniel Webster, February 28, 1821, TG to Daniel Webster, April 2, 1821, GP; CV to TG, January 25, 1821, CV-NYHS;
Gibbons v. Ogden
, March 8, 1821, 6 Wheaton, 448–50. See also Daniel Webster to TG, May 9, 1821, GP.

44
Lane writes that CV now moved to a house on Renwick Street in New York, citing an agreement between CV and J. S. Watkins & Brothers, February 13, 1821, and an agreement with David Fenton and J. S. & L. S. Watkins, February 13, 1821, CV-NYPL. However, the signature on these papers does not match that of
CV
, and there was at least one other Cornelius Vanderbilt in New York at the time, as shown by NYCC records. For a convenient listing of CVs progeny, see Dorothy Kelly MacDowell,
Commodore Vanderbilt and his Family
(Hendersonville, N.C.: n.p., 1989), 22.

45
Charles H. Rhind, Accounts of the North River Steam Boat Company, December 2, 1819, JRL to Robert L. Livingston, September 9, 1821, LFP; Robert Montgomery Livingston to AO, October 3, 1820, Aaron Ogden Papers, Rutgers University. Dangerfield, 414, discusses Chancellor Livingston's calculations that there was a limit on the traffic to Albany.

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.