The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (138 page)

Twelve Champion

1
NYTr
, January 27, 1857.

2
“The Experience of Samuel Absalom, Filibuster,”
Atlantic Monthly
, December 1859; HED 24, 35th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 7; Walker, 371–84. Walker admitted to the demoralization of his men. A filibuster force landed at Greytown and tried to fight its way through, but a Costa Rican ruse held them off at Castillo Viejo until Mora could send reinforcements; then Goicouria arranged for a steamship to pick up the retreating filibusters at Greytown;
NYH
, April 30, 1857; Manning, 7:703–4.
NYT
, December 24, 1856, and
NYTr
, June 1, 1857. Goicouria was now on the ATC payroll, taking a total of $15,000 from it; see
David Colden Murray, Receiver of the ATC, v. CV
, November 3, 1859, file PL 1859-M V74, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC. Note also that Charles J. MacDonald asked the U.S. Navy to intervene to recover the steamboats for CKG and CM; C. J. Macdonald to Captain Charles Henry Davis, U.S. Sloop of War
St. Mary's
, February 23, 1857, Affidavit of C. J. Macdonald, February 23, 1857, Letter Books of U.S. Naval Officers, March 1778 to July 1908: Correspondence of Rear Admiral William Mervine, July 1836 to August 1868, vol. 4, entry 603(15), RG 45, NA.

3
NYH
, May 29, 1857; Charles Henry Davis to Commodore William Mervine, March 4, 19, 1857, Letter Books of U.S. Naval Officers, March 1778 to July 1908: Correspondence of Rear Admiral William Mervine, July 1836 to August 1868, vol. 4, entry 603(15), RG 45, NA; Walker, 419–28; Burns, 206; William O. Scroggs,
Filibusters and Financiers: The Story of William Walker and his Associates
(New York: Macmillan, 1916), 286–301.

4
NYH
, May 29, 1857;
Atlantic Monthly
, December 1859. For newspaper coverage of Spencer's raid, see any New York newspaper starting January 16, 1857, especially
NYT
, January 28, 1857. For examples of the “war of the commodores” reporting, see
NYH
, November 29, 1856, January 27, 1857;
NYT
, March 17, 1857.

5
Manning, 4:719, 768;
NYH
, January 28, 1858.

6
LT
, February 23, 1857.

7
CM's letter quoted in Baughman, 83; RGD, NYC, 316:83, 1G; Deposition of Benjamin F. Voorhees, MacDonald Lawsuit;
Texas State Gazette
, March 7, 1857;
NYTr
, March 9, 1857.

8
HW
, April 4, 1857.

9
HW
, March 5, 1859.

10
Francis Gerry Fairfield,
The Clubs of New York
(New York: Henry L. Hinton, 1873), 151.

11
NYH
, April 9, 1857; CV to Ezekiel Williams Jr., February 12, 1857, WFP. Letters in Vanderbilt's own hand are rare after 1837, when first Daniel Allen and then Lambert Wardell assumed the physical chore of putting pen to paper.

12
HC
, March 11, 1857;
NYW
, December 20, 1877.

13
NYTr
, March 9, 1857; McPherson, 174–8.

14
Sean Wilentz,
The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 699–702; McPherson, 156, 161–3; Kenneth M. Stampp,
America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 47–9.

15
NYH
, February 14, 1858;
NYT
, September 8, 1857, July 2, 1858;
USMDR
, December 1857; Stampp, 72, 76; Jerome Mushkat,
Tammany: The Evolution of a Political Machine, 1789–1865
(Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1971), 264, 267–9, 300, 303, 315; Francis Schell,
Memoir of the Hon. Augustus Schell
(New York: privately printed, 1885). For more on Wood, see Burrows & Wallace, 831–41. For a story showing Clark and Schell practicing law together, see
NYT
, March 21, 1854. As political allies, see
NYT
, October 5, 1854, June 23, 1857, April 6, 1858. For more commentary on violence in New York elections, see
NYTr
, June 7, 1852. For insight into the many ways the collector of the port could profit from his position, see SR 227, part 1, 42nd Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 4.

16
Washington Evening Star
, December 6, 1858; JB to Alexander Dimitry November 1, 1859, reel 50, JBP.

17
David Colden Murray, Receiver of the ATC, v. CV
, November 3, 1859, file PL 1859-M V74, Supreme Court Pleadings, NYCC;
NYT
, May 5, 1857;
NYH
, May 6, 21, 1857.

18
SctDP; Sylvanus M. Spencer Deposition, David Colden Murray Memorial, fold. 1, box 1, CRCC. On Webster, see
NYT
, January 29, June 3, 11, July 4, 1857. Not only did CV repudiate Webster, but Webster's name appears nowhere in the extensive investigations of the CRCC.

19
NYT
, August 30, 1855.

20
Burns, 4, 42, 221;
NYT
, August 26, 1857, April 24, July 1, 1858;
NYH
, March 1, 1858.

21
CT
, December 11, 1857, February 28, 1859; HED 47, 35th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 9; John A. Butler,
Atlantic Kingdom: America's Contest with Cunard in the Age of Sail and Steam
(Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 2001), 220; Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt,
American Steamships on the Atlantic
(Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1981), 137–8.

22
National Era
, April 23, 1857;
CT
, April 24, 1857;
NYT
, April 28, May 6, 1857;
HC
, May 14, 1857;
SA
, June 6, 1857;
Albany Evening Journal
, quoted in
NYT
, June 11, 1857.
NYT
, June 15, 1857, lists Mrs. C. Vanderbilt as one of the Americans registered with a bank in Paris.

23
HC
, May 14, 1857;
LT
, June 4, 1857.

24
On the speed of crossing, see
Liberator
, July 17, 1857;
NYT
, July 15, 21, August 3, 25, 1857. For the bankruptcy of the Bremen line, see
National Era
, July 2, 1857;
CT
, December 11, 1857; HED 47, 35th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 9; Ridgely-Nevitt, 137–9. For an astute analysis of CVs method, see
NYT
, October 26, 1857.

25
Thomas C. Cochran,
Railroad Leaders, 1845–1890: The Business Mind in Action
(New York: Russell & Russell, 1965, orig. pub. 1953), 22–3.

26
NYT
, January 21, 1857;
CV v. HRR
, July 16, 1858, file LJ-1858-N-41, Supreme Court Judgments, NYCC.

27
Directors' Minutes, June 15, 24, 1857, HRR, reel 27, box 242, NYCRR (cited hereafter as HRR Minutes). I do not mean to say that CVs only contact with the HRR was through the Schuyler fraud; the same source shows, in the list of voters at the annual stockholders' meeting, April 22, 1853, that CV owned 1,500 shares of stock, out of 50,897 total, at a time when Robert Schuyler was president. For details of the dispute, and the HRR's refusal to accept CVs terms, see the HRR Minutes, July 18, 19, 20, 1854. There is a fine summary of these events in a
NYTr
report quoted in
HC
, August 15, 1876.

28
NYT
, May 20, 1857;
NYH
, May 20, 1857; According to the HRR Minutes, CV owned 1,001 shares (alongside Clark's three hundred), yet he won 79,124 votes, the most of any candidate; Report of the Inspectors of Election, May 19, 1957, see entry for May 18, 1858, HRR Minutes. See also Hudson C. Tanner,
“The Lobby” and Public Men from Thurlow Weed's Time
(Albany: George MacDonald, 1888), 226. Tanner claimed to be quoting unpublished minutes of CVs testimony before a committee of New York's legislature that he took as official stenographer, material that was suppressed in official publications. Given the close correlation between Tanner's account and the minutes of the HRR, I believe he wrote truthfully. Tanner later swore before Congress that the suppressed testimony was given on March 3, 1869, to a committee of the New York State Assembly, reported in NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869; see
NYTr
, March 6, 1871. I accept Tanner's account in
“The Lobby”
as accurate.

29
Entries for June 15, 24, 1857, HRR Minutes. I am extrapolating a figure of $6.5 million, based on the commissions reported in the minutes and CVs comment in Tanner, 226, that he and Drew took a commission of one-half of 1 percent on their endorsements.

30
Entries for June 24, 25, 1857, HRR Minutes; Tanner, 224.

31
Tanner, 225–6.

32
September 9, 1857, HRR Minutes.

33
NYH
, June 17, 1857;
Farmer's Cabinet
, June 25, 1857.

34
BE
, June 22, 1857; NYH, quoted
in National Era
, July 23, 1857; JB to Isaiah Rynders, September 14, 1859, reel 50, JBP. The
BE
and the
NYH
said that JB told CV nothing; the latter part of the
NYH
report suggests that he did, as does a letter from CV to General José María Cañas, August 5, 1857, in Manning, 4:638. Robert E. May observes that historians have “unfairly stigmatized” Buchanan as a supporter of filibustering; “The Slave Power Conspiracy Revisited: United States Presidents and Filibustering, 1848–1861,” in David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson, eds.,
Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era
(Kent: Kent State University Press, 1997), 7–28. It was thought that CM and CKG were helping Walker; in fact, they purchased a transit contract from Webster that led nowhere;
NYT
, July 31, 1857; AltaC, September 16, 1857; Kemble, 77.

35
NYT
, August 26, December 19, 1857, April 24, July 1, 1858;
NYH
, March 1, 1858, May 2, 1859; Manning, 4:594–5, 623n, 625–6, 637–8;
H W
, November 21, 1857; CV to JB, October 20, 1857, roll 33, JBP; Folkman, 94–8; Burns, 4, 42, 221. A distinctly irritated secretary of state wrote that CV was “deserving of censure” for his attempts to prevent the recognition of Yrisarri; Lewis Cass to Mirabeau B. Lamar, January 2, 1858, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906: Central American States, vol. 15, May 29, 1833, to July 25, 1858, roll 27, Microfilm Publication M77, NA-CP.