The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (129 page)

10
RGD, NYC, 374:1, 341: 184; Medbery, 312; Minutes of the New York Stock and Exchange Board, vol. 4: 1851–1858, 248, New York Stock Exchange Archives. Decades later, Drew testified that he had often seen CV at Robinson's office;
NYW
, March 9, 1878. Medbery's excellent account vividly and clearly describes practices on the early stock exchange; see especially pages 21–8. On the cultural impact of commercial abstractions, see
Confidence Men, 6
–
y
.

11
For an excellent summary of the emergence of the corporation in antebellum America, see Gunn, 49.

12
For an important discussion of the vagueness and permeability of the distinction between corporations and partnerships, see 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. Gregory A. Mark notes that nineteenth-century courts refused “to recognize a corporate personality separate from the summed interests of the individuals who made up the corporation;” see “The Personification of the Business Corporation in American Law,”
University of Chicago Law Review
54, no. 4 (autumn 1987): 1441–83.

13
This discussion derives from a full reading of the evidence presented throughout this book. My interpretation of the profound shift in culture produced by the corporation and other commercial abstractions is informed by James L. Huston,
Securing the Fruits of Labor: The American Concept of Wealth Distribution, 1765–1900
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1998), but I differ with his conclusion that “nothing that occurred in the years 1765 to 1880 drastically revised the revolutionary heritage” (149). I believe that the emergence of the business corporation, and the corresponding reaction, did drastically revise the revolutionary heritage, and did so long before “industrialization” fully arrived. In a broader cultural sense, Halttunen captures this anxiety over the hidden—an anxiety closely tied, I believe, to the emergence of commercial abstractions. Joseph A. Schumpeter discusses the “evaporation of the substance of property” in
Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942), 156–8.

14
Morton J. Horwitz,
The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 136–7; Adam Smith,
The Wealth of Nations
(New York: Modern Library, 2000), book 1, chap. 6, 70.

15
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), 225–55, esp. 243. See also Daniel Walker Howe,
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 557–69.

16
Soulé, 172, 174, 202, 214; H. W. Brands,
The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream
(New York: Doubleday 2002), 62.

17
Sherman, 46.

18
Ibid., 56–60.

19
MM
, April 1847.

20
Entries for March 22, September 6, 1848, Minute Book of the Elizabethport and New York Ferry Company, box 4, Central Railroad Company of New Jersey Papers, Hagley Museum and Library;
Petition of C Vanderbilt for Confirmation of Letters Patent, Issued April 3, 1816
(New York: S. S. Chatterton, 1852), NYPL. On joint real estate holdings, see, for example,
Oroondates Mauran and CV v. Morris Wolf
, May 11, 1843, file 1843-#814, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC. I am indebted to Mr. Frank Mauran of Providence, Rhode Island, for information from Oroondates Mauran's account books.

21
NYW
, November 14, 1877; entry for March 23, 1845, Strong, 1:257.

22
Polk quoted in T. J. Stiles,
Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 24; Strong, 1:337; Brands, 70.

23
Strong, 1:344; James G. King to Messrs Baring Bros. & Co., January 22, 1849, reel 41: Letters Received from New York, BB; James P. Delgado,
To California by Sea: A Maritime History of the California Gold Rush
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), 19, 27;
NYH
, April 19, 1849.

24
My guess that Daniel B. Allen created the scheme is based on the fact that he took the largest number of shares (three). See
Daniel B. Allen, Jeremiah Simonson, William McLean, Alexander H Britton, WHV, Nathaniel Hayward, Henry Anderson, John Peck, and the Said Daniel B. Allen, Jacob H Vanderbilt, and James Brady, Trustees of the California Navigation Company of New York, v. James H Fisk and CV
, January 24, 1851, file PL-1851-A 17, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC. I will use the spelling “Corneil” for the diminutive for Cornelius J., as this was the spelling his wife later used; see
NYW
, December 22, 1877.

25
NYTr
, March 28, 1878.

26
Larson, 240; John G. B. Hutchins,
The American Maritime Industries and Public Policy, 1789–1914
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941), 358–63; Leonard D. White,
The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829–1861
(New York: Macmillan, 1954), 458. White notes, 450, that enthusiasm for federal subsidies for steamships that could be converted to naval use predated Polk's administration.

27
Kemble, 3, 7–19; Joseph B. Lockey “A Neglected Aspect of Isthmian Diplomacy,”
AHR
41, no. 2 (January 1936): 295–305. For a review of federal subsidies for steamships overall during this period, see Hutchins, 348–68. Richard R. John notes in
Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 94–9, 242–3, that the Post Office Department had long subsidized stagecoach lines, to the extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year; in 1845, though, Congress cut off such subsidies. As John's work makes clear, the Post Office is no small exception to the rule that the federal government largely left the economy alone prior to the Civil War. Though it had its critics in the Locofoco movement, essentially all parties embraced its expansive role, and the Democrats made it a tool of party building (see 213–4, 236–40). In size and in scale of corruption, however, the steamship subsidies appear to have dwarfed the stagecoach subsidies.

28
Mark W. Summers,
The Plundering Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849–1861
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 134; Kemble, 14–5, 19–20, 22–5; SED 50, 32nd Cong., 1st sess., vol. 8; SR 292, 36th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 1;
Theodosius F. Secor and CM v. George Law
, May 22, 1861, file 1861–832, Superior Court, NYCC;
Western Journal of Civilization
, September 1852. The federal subsidies, and Sloo's assignment of his rights, were much more complicated than perhaps is suggested by this brief description. For example, the navy supervised construction of the vessels, which were on call for national service; and Sloo actually assigned his rights to a trusteeship run by Law, Roberts, and a representative of Sloo's interests. Sloo was to receive 10 percent of the annual profits of the five ships on the Atlantic.

29
Theodosius F. Secor and CM v. George Law
, May 22, 1861, file 1861–832, Superior Court, NYCC; RGD, NYC, 342:300D;
A Sketch of Events in the Life of George Law
(New York: J. C. Derby, 1855).

30
Curtis Peck v. Daniel Drew
, January 31, 1848, file PL-1848-P 256, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC. See also Summers's descriptions of Law's government dealings, 37, 159–60, and
NYT
, March 13, 1852.

31
Strong, 1:272, 348, 2:253;
NYT
, January 19, 1875; see also Moses Beach,
Wealth and Pedigree of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City
, 3rd ed. (New York: New York Sun, 1842), 3.

32
NYT
, January 19, 1875;
New York Observer
, January 21, 1875.

33
Folkman, 14. On published accounts of the Nicaragua route, see, for example,
MM
, March 1847.

34
Ephraim George Squier,
Nicaragua: Its People, Scenery, Monuments, and the Proposed Interoceanic Canal
(New York: D. Appleton, 1856), 81, 98–9, 107; Orville W. Childs,
Report of the Survey and Estimates of the Cost of Construction of the Inter-Oceanic Ship Canal
(New York: William C. Bryant, 1852), 5.

35
Report of Robert Mills, HsR 145, 30th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 2.

36
The quotes and descriptions of San Francisco are from Soulé et al., 214–26, 243–4; other information from
Daniel B. Allen, ors., v. James H Fisk and CV
, January 24, 1851, file PL-1851-A 17, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC;
NYH
, December 29, 1877. See also Kevin Starr,
Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 49–63, and Delgado, 75–81.

37
Soulé et al., ibid.;
Daniel B. Allen, ors., vs. Fisk, ibid.; NYT
, December 29, 1877.

38
EP
, June 4, 1847;
CT
, February 11, 1861;
NYT
, December 27, 1855, February 4, 1861; Folkman, 16–7. The Mercantile Agency first reported on JLW in December 1853; see RGD, NYC, 374:97.

39
Minutes for March 24, 1849, Minute Book of the Elizabethport and New York Ferry Company, box 4, Central Railroad Company of New Jersey Papers, Hagley Museum and Library; JLW to JMC, March 29, 1849, vol. 3: Letters Received, January 15 to March 29, 1849, JMC-P.

40
JLW to JMC, April 3, 1849, vol. 4: Letters Received, March 30 to May 11, 1849, JMC-P; JMC to Ephraim G. Squier, May 1, 1849, HED 75, 31st Cong., 1st sess., vol. 10; Folkman, 17–8; Richard W. Van Alstyne, “British Diplomacy and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 1850–60,”
JModH
11, no. 2 (June 1939): 149–83.

41
Groesbeck later testified that he had been Drew's broker since about 1848;
NYH
, March 26, 1868. He also stated that he had known Drew since about 1842;
NYT
, April 24, 1868.

42
Dispatch dated April 16, 1849, Manning, 3:316.

43
Manning, 3:360–5; HED 75, 31st Cong., 1st sess., vol. 10;
Terms of Contract Between the State of Nicaragua and the Atlantic & Pacific Ship Canal Company: Proposed by the Commissioners of the State of Nicaragua, at the City of León, in the State of Nicaragua, on the 27th Day of August, 1849
(New York: William C. Bryant & Co., 1849), copy in NYPL. The rival firm signed an agreement on March 14, 1849, but it was never ratified; see Squier, 262, 268. Interestingly, the rival firm attempted to sell its contract to CVs company; JLW to JMC, August 22, 1849, vol. 6: Letters Received, August 15 to October 20, 1849, JMC-P.