The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (134 page)

63
CV v. William C. Moon
, June 7, 1854, file L J-1854-M-398, Supreme Court Judgments;
CV v. Reuben C Stone
, September 12, 1854, file L J-1854-S-19, Supreme Court Judgments;
CV v. John C Thompson and Minthorne Tompkins
, September 26, 1854, file J L-1854-T-172, Supreme Court Judgments;
CV v. Spring Valley Shot & Lead Manufacturing Company
, April 21, 1855, file L J-1855-S-206, July 26, 1855, file L J-1855-S-208, May 2, 1855, file L J-1855-S-212, Supreme Court Judgments; all NYCC. See also Loan Agreement from CV to Mary Parmelisa M. Van Winkle, April 1, 1854, CV-NYPL; LW Dictation. On Vanderbilt's openness to callers, see Smith, 123–4.

64
John P. Hale to Charles Sumner, March 18, 1854, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, NYHS; Henry Clews,
Fifty Years in Wall Street
(New York: Irving Publishing Company, 1908), 375–6; McPherson, 121–30.

65
NYS
, December 19, 1877;
NYTr
, March 30, 1878.

66
NYW
, November 14, 1877;
NYT
, May 31, 1854;
NYTr
, March 28, 1878. For Clark's settlement of the
North America
lawsuits, see a set of 128 cases with identical outcomes, such as
George J. Lathrop v. CV and Daniel Drew
, May 4, 1854, file LJ. 1854-v-131, Supreme Court Law Judgments, NYCC.

67
EP
quoted in the
NYT
, June 1, 1854;
NYT
, July 7, 1854;
NYTr
, March 30, 1878. Much later, Cornelius J. Vanderbilt testified that this internment was “partially voluntary,” and that it was his father who sent him;
NYW
, December 20, 1877.

68
NYS
, December 19, 1877, March 2, 1878.

69
Strong, 2:178; Smith, 169–70. Halttunen writes,
Confidence Men
, 166, “In the 1850s and 1860s, polite hypocrisy was achieving cultural legitimacy.”

70
EP
quoted in
HC
, July 3, 1854;
BM
, July 1854.

71
NYT
, July 4, 1854;
EP
, quoted in
HC
, July 7, 1854.

72
United States Magazine of Science, Art, Manufactures, Agriculture, Commerce
, July 15, 1854;
NYT
, July 6, 1854;
EP
, quoted in
HC
, July 7, 1854;
Circular
, July 8, 1854.

73
United States Magazine of Science, Art, Manufactures, Agriculture, Commerce
, July 15, 1854; Strong, 2:178–9;
PS
, July 13, 1854.

74
NYT
, February 3, 1855;
CV v. HRR
, July 16, 1858, file LJ-1858-N-41, Supreme Court Judgments, NYCC. See also entry for June 9, 1857, Directors' Minutes, HRR, reel 27, box 242, NYCRR. See also CVs letter to the
HC
, August 3, 1854.

75
BM
, March 1856;
HC
, August 13, 1857; Smith, 171. See also
NYT
, March 11, 1856, and
New York Observer and Chronicle
, March 27, 1856.

76
Indianola Bulletin
quoted in
Texas State Gazette
, May 27, June 17, 1854;
San Antonio Ledger
, June 15, 1854. See also
Texas State Gazette
, July 29, 1854; Baughman, 81. See also James P. Baughman, “The Evolution of Rail-Water Systems of Transportation in the Gulf Southwest, 1836–1890,”
Journal of Southern History
34, no. 3 (August 1968): 357–81.

77
NYT
, July 18, 1854, February 7, 1856, July 12, 1860;
Home Journal
, April 8, 1854; RGD, NYC, 342:300. Kemble, 88, mistakenly places the time of Law's departure from the company in March 1853. Roberts also stood as the Whig candidate for mayor in 1852;
NYT
, October 30, 1852.

78
RGD, NYC, 374:118. The song, “Humbug Steamship Companies,” is quoted in Kemble, 68; see also 69–71.

79
NYH
, August 30, 31, September 1, 1854;
NYTr
, November 11, 21, 1855;
JoC
, November 21, 1855;
NYT
, February 7, 1856;
AltaC
, October 2, 1854; RGD, NYC, 374: 118; Folkman, 56–7.

80
NYTr
, December 25, 1854.

81
Weekly AltaC
, October 7, 1854.

Ten Ariel

1
LW Dictation.

2
For a complaint about the Staten Island Ferry, see
NYT
, February 12, 1855.

3
The story of the Erie is an oft-told tale. See John Steele Gordon,
The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street: Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Erie Railway Wars, & the Birth of Wall Street
(New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988), 94–107; Edward Harold Mott,
Between the Ocean and the Lakes: The Story of Erie
(New York: Ticker Publishing, 1908); CFA, “A Chapter of Erie,”
NAR
, July 1869.

4
Mott, 105, 114–5; Alfred D. Chandler,
The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 81–94.

5
NYH
, August 30, 31, 1854;
NYT
, September 5, 1854. On the lack of distinction between a corporation and its members and officers, 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.

6
RGD, NYC, 341:184;
Daniel Drew and Isaac Newton v. New York & Erie Rail Road Co
., September 10, 1842, file 1842-#331, Superior Court, NYCC.

7
NYH
, August 30, 1854.

8
NYT
, August 30, September 4, 5, October 16, 1854;
PS
, September 7, 1854; RGD, NYC, 340:13; Mott, 115, 125.

9
NYT
, October 4, 1854;
NYH
, February 13, 1855.

10
John Steele Gordon,
A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable
(New York: Walker & Company, 2002), 18–27; CV to Cyrus W. Field, [December 2?], 1855, Cyrus W. Field Collection, Morgan Library.

11
Croffut, 113.

12
John A. Butler,
Atlantic Kingdom: America's Contest with Cunard in the Age of Sail and Steam
(Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 2001), 206–8. On
the Arctic
sinking, see
NYT
, October 12, 1854, and press coverage in general surrounding this date. The Collins Line was formally called the New York & Liverpool United States Mail Steamship Company.

13
NYH
, quoted in
LT
, January 1, 1855.

14
EP
, quoted in
NYT
, February 2, 1855; Croffut, 109–10. As noted above, CV estimated his own fortune at $11 million at the beginning of 1853. On wages, see
NYT
, August 9, 1858.

15
NYT
, March 9, 1855.

16
Mark W. Summers,
The Plundering Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849–1861
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 104–6, 262; John G. B. Hutchins,
The American Maritime Industries and Public Policy: 1789–1914
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941), 348–58.

17
Summers, 104–6, 262; Hutchins, 348–58; Butler, 175–6;
Western Journal of Civilization
, September 1852;
NYH
, February 28, 1855;
National Era
, March 8, 1855; Benjamin B. French to Henry F. French, September 5, 1852, reel 5, Benjamin B. French Papers, LOC; David Budlong Tyler,
Steam Conquers the Atlantic
(New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1939), 209–10. For a thorough discussion of the Collins Line's steamships, see Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt,
American Steamships on the Atlantic
(Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1981), 147–71.

18
My discussion is informed by John Lauritz Larson's analysis of the early fights over the transcontinental railroad,
Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 243–55.

19
Circular
, February 8, 1855;
SA
, February 10, 1855.

20
For a review of these events, see T. J. Stiles,
Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 48–55; McPherson, 145–62.

21
NYT
, February 16, 1855.

22
NYT
, February 28, 1855;
NYTr
, March 9, 1855; Lane, 144–6.

23
NYTr
, March 3, 1855.

24
NYT
, March 2, 6, 1855.