The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (145 page)

8
Railroad track nationwide grew by less than a thousand miles per year during the war; the rate of construction would more than double within twelve months of Appomattox. Chandler,
The Railroads
, 13, 43; Executive Committee Minutes, February 16, 1865, HR, oversize vol. 249, Directors' Minutes, February 7, 1865, HR, oversize vol. 248, NYCRR; NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867; Edward Hungerford,
Men and Iron: The History of the New York Central
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1938), 196–8. In Missouri, among other states, local counties issued bonds to fund local railroads, which often went bankrupt and were absorbed by larger lines; T. J. Stiles,
Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 230–9.

9
Beckert, 136–7, 148; James A. Ward,
J. Edgar Thomson: Master of the Pennsylvania
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 93–6; Chandler,
Visible Hand
, 90–4, 105.

10
Executive Committee Minutes, February 16, 1865, HR, oversize vol. 249, NYCRR; NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867.

11
MM
, January 1865.

12
NYT
, December 9, 1864.

13
Strong, 3:409, 565.

14
Henry Clews,
Fifty Years in Wall Street
(New York: Irving Publishing, 1908), 3–7, 110. For an example of how this mistaken notion that CV hated trains has taken hold in popular thinking, see John Steele Gordon,
An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power
(New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 212.

15
Cochran, 178–9; John V. L. Pruyn Journal, April 28–30, 1864, box 2, John V. L. Pruyn Papers, NYSL (to be referred to hereafter as “Pruyn Journal”).

16
NYT
, August 28, 1866;
CT
, August 30, 1866; Pruyn Journal, November 10, 1864; Directors' Minutes, August 29, 1866, NYC, vol. 4, box 34, NYCRR; Cochran, 178–9; Hungerford, 193–4. For examples of EC's need for transcriptions of Richmond's letters, see fold. 5, box 38, ECP.

17
Stiles, 141–2. For insight into the trunk line diplomacy that would ensue in 1865, see Dean Richmond to J. Edgar Thomson, June 22, 1865, J. Edgar Thomson to Dean Richmond, September 15, 1865, J. Edgar Thomson to Samuel J. Tilden, August 13, 1865, fold. 3, box 6, Samuel J. Tilden Papers, NYPL.

18
Another factor in their relationship was the railroads' co-ownership of the Albany bridge, which required a further infusion of $400,000 for completion; Pruyn Journal, November 10, 1864, December 12, 1866; NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867; Directors' Minutes, February 7, 1865, HR, oversize vol. 248, NYCRR. For more evidence of JHB's role as CV's messenger at this time, see CV to Edwin D. Morgan, February 7, 1865, CV to Edwin D. Morgan, June 4, 1866, fold. 2, box 13, Edwin D. Morgan Papers, NYSL.

19
NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867.

20
Ibid. The fast steamboats of the People's Line remained reasonably competitive in terms of speed with the HR passenger trains, which averaged twenty-five to thirty miles per hour, including stops; see HR Annual Reports, oversize vol. 241, NYCRR.

21
NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867.

22
Ibid.; Chauncey M. Depew,
My Memories of Eighty Years
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922), 37.

23
NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 186.

24
NYT
, February 10, 1865.

25
McPherson, 838–40, 845–6.

26
Strong, 3:573–5.

27
McPherson, 847–9; Philip H. Sheridan,
Personal Memoirs of P. H Sheridan
, vol. 2 (New York: C. L. Webster, 1888), 195–7; John B. Gordon,
Reminiscences of the Civil War
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904), 441.

28
Pruyn Journal, April 15, 18, 1865; McPherson, 853.

29
McPherson, 854.

30
McPherson, 853. As McPherson also notes, 484–9, disease was far more deadly to soldiers than enemy weaponry. On the social response to the war, see David W. Blight,
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001); and Drew Gilpin Faust,
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008).

31
Strong, 4:25;
NYTr
, September 25, 1878; Faust, 180–5; Anne Braude,
Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 2–6.

32
NYTr
, October 16, 24, 1878;
NYS
, November 14, 1877.

33
Directors' Minutes, June 6, 1865, HR, oversize vol. 248, NYCRR.

34
Directors' Minutes, June 12, 13, 1865, HR, oversize vol. 248, Executive Committee Minutes, December 8, 1865, May 5, 1866, HR, oversize vol. 249, NYCRR;
RT
, August 19, 1865. See also Directors' Minutes, December 6, 1864, HR, oversize vol. 247, NYCRR, and
HW
, August 12, 1865.

35
Directors' Minutes, April 26, 1865, Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad Company, reel 67, box 243, NYCRR; Medbery 176–7; Fowler, 176, 256–60. CV reportedly held $7 million in Erie bonds;
CT
, January 10, 1865.

36
Pruyn Journal, June 19, 20, 21, 1865.

37
NYH
, August 23, 1865; Hungerford, 196; NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867.

38
Lib to Cornele, n.d., Family Record, WFP.

39
CV to Oliver E. Williams, September 2, 1865, WFP.

40
PS
, October 26, 1865;
NYS
, December 19, 1877. Harlem Lane later became St. Nicholas Avenue;
NYT
, October 2, 1872.

41
NYH
, November 21, 1865;
Atlantic Monthly
, May 1868. Apart from a horse named Commodore Vanderbilt, there was no sign that CV attended these events.

42
NYTr
, February 6, 1879; John Y Simon, ed.,
The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant
, vol. 16 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1988), 79–80. WHV had already met Grant, having escorted him in a Harlem Railroad train to Albany in July, and was an admirer of the general;
NYT
, July 6, 1865.

43
Round Table
, November 25, 1865;
NYT
, September 7, 1871; Francis Gerry Fairfield,
The Clubs of New York
(New York: Henry L. Hinton, 1873), 138–43;
HW
, July 11, 1868.

44
Fairfield, 138–43; LW Dictation. CV resigned from the New York Yacht Club on February 13, 1850; Book of Minutes, box 1: July 30, 1844, to March 18, 1891, New York Yacht Club Library and Archives.

45
NYTr
, February 26, December 5, 1867;
New York Observer and Chronicle
, November 23, 1865; Depew, 14–5.

46
NYH
, December 14, 1866. In January 1867, Henry Keep would testify, “We suppose that Mr. Vanderbilt has managed the NY. Central for the last two years, through men in his interest.” See NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867. Keep was wrong, but the quote demonstrates how Banker was perceived.

47
NYS
, December 22, 1877.

48
NYS
, December 19, 27, 1877, March 13, 1878,
NYTr
, March 6, 1878.

49
CJV to HG, February 26, n.d., reel 3, HGP This letter, though dated without a year, was written from Litchfield, Conn.; as will be seen, CJV went into the asylum in Litchfield in December 1865, showing that this letter must have been written in 1866.

50
NYS
, December 27, 1877;
NYW
, December 22, 1877.

51
NYS
, December 27, 1877; CJV to HG, February 26, n.d., reel 3, HGP.

52
NYS
, December 27, 1877;
Henry S. Thatcher and George Buckland v. CJV
, April 2, 1867, LJ-1867-V-192, Supreme Court Law Judgments, NYCC.

53
NYS
, December 19, 1877.

54
CJV to HG, February 26, n.d., reel 3, HGP.

55
HW
, March 17, 1866;
SA
, July 6, 1867.

56
NYT
, January 25, 1866;
Commercial and Financial Chronicle
, January 27, 1866.

57
Smith, 119; RGD, NYC 374:1.

58
NYT
, March 19, 1866; NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867.

59
RT
, August 3, 1867.

60
NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867.

61
Strong, 4:77; McKay, 218–9; Beckert, 173; Burrows & Wallace, 986–8.

62
Directors' Minutes, June 25, 1866, HRR, reel 27, box 242, NYCRR. At the annual election on May 15, CV personally voted 60,647 of the 75,560 shares represented. Tobin voted 31,500, and WHV 10,600.

63
NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867.

64
NYH
, January 20, 1869; SED 46, 39th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 2.

65
HW
, January 6, September 15, 1866;
Nation
, June 5, 1866.