The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (80 page)

A few years later, Vanderbilt asked a minister what he thought of séances. “I expressed emphatically my disbelief in modern spiritualism,” the preacher reported. “He said, ‘I think so too.’ He said nevertheless that there was skill and acuteness in it, and he felt interested.” The subject may have been introduced to the Commodore by his daughter, Mary La Bau, a devoted spiritualist. Medium James B. Mansfield would later testify that Vanderbilt approached him as early as 1864. Vanderbilt would write questions for the dead and put them in sealed envelopes, and Mansfield would write replies without reading the inquiries. (According to the medium, Vanderbilt initially tried to contact his father and John De Forest; since the latter had died in 1829, the mention of his name lends credibility to Mansfield's account.) If the answers made any sense, they would have impressed Vanderbilt, who recognized skill and acuity when he saw it.
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If the mournful and curious Commodore tried to speak to the dead, he was hardly unusual in that age of empty chairs and missing men, but he gave no sign that the spirits influenced a single decision he made. And he had many decisions to make in the months after Appomattox, decisions that could affect the lives of millions. Peace had come to the nation, and war would inevitably come to the railroads.

ON JUNE 6, 1865, TOBIN INFORMED
the Hudson River Railroad board of directors “that he could not under any circumstances become a candidate for reelection as President,” the secretary recorded. Everyone at the table knew that Tobin was stepping down because Vanderbilt had undercut his authority—and that Vanderbilt would succeed him.
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One week later, after the annual stockholders' meeting, the board duly voted in the Commodore as president and his son William as vice president. But perhaps the ascension was not as predictable as it seems. The Commodore has been caricatured as a bloody-minded tyrant, yet his methods as a railroad executive often proved subtle. He preferred to hide his hand not only from his enemies, but from a public increasingly wary of the growing size and power of railroads. Vanderbilt put his son in operational control of both the Hudson River and the Harlem, but he kept the companies organizationally separate. Indeed, the two corporations—managed by a nearly identical slate of directors and senior executives—signed a contract under which the Hudson River paid the Harlem at least $10,000 a month in return for cooperation in setting rates. Perhaps it was simply a legal mechanism for subsidizing the weaker line; even if that was the case, it demonstrated the Commodore's caution as he widened his grasp.
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In his relations with other lines, too, he usually chose to exert influence quietly rather than resort to financial combat. In April, for example, he put James Banker on the board of the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana, a key link in a chain of railways that gave the New York Central access to Chicago. Vanderbilt merely wanted a voice in its management, such as he had in the Erie and the Hartford & New Haven.
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In his role as railroad diplomat, the Commodore took a train to Albany less than six days after his election. By special invitation, he joined his friend Richmond and his lieutenant Banker on the directors' annual inspection of the New York Central line. In the afternoon of June 19, they boarded a special train amid thick heat for their westward journey. In cars outfitted with upholstered comforts and abundant food, they rattled through Syracuse and Rochester, visited Niagara Falls, inspected the Great Western of Canada, and chuffed back to Buffalo. “Commodore Vanderbilt,” John V. L. Pruyn noted in his diary, “had not been west in thirty years. Seemed to enjoy the trip very much.”
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That was good news for Richmond. He needed Vanderbilt's cooperation as he dueled with the other trunk lines. Despite the buoyant economy, tensions between the major railroads simmered. Richmond competed more aggressively than Corning had; at the same time, his relations with J. Edgar Thomson, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, grew prickly, then broke down altogether. Desperate to keep rates low, Richmond again sent passengers and freight on Drew's People's Line. By summer's end, William H. Vanderbilt testified, “the Hudson River road felt itself very much aggrieved.” The Commodore understood the pressure on Richmond, but he made clear “that it was impossible for them to continue under their arrangement.” Richmond eventually agreed to give the Hudson River Railroad all of the “state freights” (those originating in New York, and not subject to competition from other trunk lines).
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As the Commodore engaged in these wearisome negotiations, he received news that Elizabeth Williams had died on August 31. “Libbie” was the older sister of his daughter-in-law Ellen, wife of Corneil, and a favorite member of a family that Vanderbilt loved deeply. Cheerful, even effervescent, she had liked to gossip about who was rising or falling in fashionable society, and had been openly jealous of her sister Ellen's invitation to the Vanderbilt golden wedding celebration. (“I trust mother will have her black satin dress converted into a fashionable one,” she slyly had written to Corneil before the event.) She was only forty-two when she died.
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“The dispatch I received yesterday from Corneil stating the death of our
Dear Dear
and much beloved Libbie completely unmanned me,” the Commodore wrote to Oliver Williams, Elizabeth and Ellen's father. “And I did not dare to say a word on paper, until this morning. And even now, I have no language to express my feelings; nor will I attempt it here.” In the context of Vanderbilt's earlier writings to the family (those in his own hand), there can be little doubt that this letter reflected his sincere emotions. Indeed, it briefly opens a window into the way this man, who owned so much and ruled so many, grappled with loss. It left him desperately vulnerable, and grasping for the faith that he had largely relinquished for most of his life.

It has pleased the great ruler of all things to take her away from us while in the enjoyment of
health, beauty
and
usefulness;
and as Christians we are bound to submit. But my dear Colonel I feel that I dare not trust myself to see her, for fear that my manhood may give way; therefore dare not attend the funeral.

The moment I have recovered from the shock, I will make the family a short visit.

Please give my love to all, and tell them to try and bear up with their irrecoverable loss.

I can say so no more at this moment. I feel too much depressed. Truly Yours,

C. VanDerbilt
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Vanderbilt's use of the words “unmanned” and “manhood” are significant. It is only natural, of course, that he should value a muscular masculinity; during his long career, he had gone from fistfighting sailor to boat-racing captain, from rapids-shooting Commodore to Wall Street warrior. But here he equated “manhood” with dignity reserve, self-control. His refusal to go to the funeral for fear that he would not be able to maintain his mastery over his emotions is telling. This sort of manhood, this self-possession, he clearly saw as a social as well as a business virtue.

These few lines may not be proof of how Vanderbilt conducted himself in private, but they call into question the image of him as an unmannered brute. In this letter, we see the man who dined with Daniel D. Tompkins, negotiated with Lord Palmerston, cooperated with William H. Aspinwall, and consulted with presidents Buchanan and Lincoln. And we see him vulnerable.

But he was still combative. On October 24, this most manly old man drove his rig out for a brush on Bloomingdale Road, or perhaps nearby Harlem Lane, where the new generation of fast men preferred to race. Again, the wheels of his wagon cracked into those of a rival; again, he pitched headlong to the ground, and had to be carried back to his bed, where he lay, helpless, as his family gathered around. “He did not seem conscious. His head was cut,” recalled his nurse, Margaret Cadwell. Then William, the diligent and trusted son, bent forward to fix the pillows, and his father snapped awake. “The Commodore told him to let them alone, that I would do them,” Cadwell added. “I suppose he thought I would be more gentle.”
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Perhaps he did—or perhaps family relations are simply more fraught than any other kind. His aggravation may have been all the worse because he was going to miss a special reception for General Grant at Dubois's Club House on Harlem Lane, on November 16, hosted by the owners of the fastest horses in New York. The general in chief, like the Commodore, was passionate about horses, and seemed to enjoy that afternoon far more than the “Gathering of the Wealth and Fashion of New York” that feted Grant at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, as the
New York Herald
reported, on the evening of November 20.
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Vanderbilt did eventually meet the general some weeks later. In February 1866, General Daniel Butterfield took Grant to 10 Washington Place. Vanderbilt descended the stairs from the second floor and exclaimed, “Why, General, you're nothing but a boy!” Grant and Vanderbilt, both direct and honest, struck up an instant rapport. Butterfield recalled, “The Commodore took him over the house, and then invited him out to lunch. Not long afterward they went down to the stables and… ‘talked horse.’” Grant liked nothing better.
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Vanderbilt's social life centered on cards almost as much as horses—particularly whist, the ancestor of bridge, which he liked to play with other men of wealth, power, and influence. He spent countless hours at Saratoga playing cards, and soon would in New York as well. “Let the women wail, for another club-house is about to be opened on Fifth Avenue,” announced the
Round Table
on November 25, 1865. “A company of gentlemen who combine democratic principles with aristocratic taste have bought one of the very few really handsome and well-built private houses of which… the Fifth Avenue can boast, and propose to install themselves therein, under the style and title of the ‘Manhattan Club.’” It had been organized the year before by the fashionable Democratic Party leaders—the “silk-stocking sachems”—including August Belmont, Samuel L. M. Barlow, Horace Clark, and Augustus Schell. They intended to establish a rival headquarters to Tammany Hall, which increasingly fell under the sway of William Tweed and his circle. In the summer of 1865, the club founders purchased a palatial building at 96 Fifth Avenue, at Fifteenth Street, for $110,000. By the time the
Round Table
published its story, all the marble and dark wood was in place.
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Vanderbilt was a charter member. Though he belonged to the Union Club and others, he began to spend most evenings in the Manhattan Club with his friends, railroad directors, and sons-in-law, playing whist for money, always for money. Eight years later an author would record, “The club has always been the headquarters of the Vanderbilt coterie.”
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The club's political tone served a valuable purpose. The Commodore, though thoroughly nonpartisan, could not avoid constant contact with the political world, for railroads remained the most political of businesses, constantly subject to criticism and legislation. The Manhattan Club gave him a social setting where he could interact with powerful Democratic leaders associated with his own followers, Clark and Schell, without seeming to be partisan himself. He soon would be talked of as a supporter of Grant for the presidency, for example, yet in December 1865 he asked the former secretary of state for New York, Democrat Chauncey M. Depew, to be the Harlem's attorney. President Andrew Johnson had nominated the thirty-one-year-old Depew to be minister to Japan, and the Senate had already confirmed him. “When I said this to the Commodore,” Depew recalled, “he remarked: ‘Railroads are the career for a young man; there is nothing in politics. Don't be a damned fool.’ That decided me.” It was a curious comment, if Depew remembered it accurately, because politics was a key reason for his selection. The lawyer was a rising Democratic leader, and Vanderbilt relied on his influence in Albany
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On December 13, it seemed that the Commodore's patient politicking in the business world finally achieved success. On that day, Dean Richmond sealed their alliance in the New York Central's annual election of directors. With Richmond's support, Horace Clark now joined the board. Banker, meanwhile, continued to serve as Vanderbilt's personal envoy, and came to be seen as the most influential director. But Corning fell off the board entirely. A split emerged between the Central's current and former presidents as Richmond pursued his own path. Thoroughly marginalized, Corning went into exile and plotted his return.
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“I WAS IN THE HABIT OF
entertaining a good deal at my house the public leading men of the country,” Corneil would say, “and my expenses were very large, inasmuch as it was expected of me to sustain the honor of my family name as far as I could.” When asked precisely which “name” he meant, he loftily replied, “The name of my father, which was also my own. I maintained the honor of it in the State and city where I lived.”
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This statement revealed more than he probably intended. He equated “honor” with a lavish lifestyle, and the only one who “expected” it was Corneil himself. The Commodore gave him $100 per month, increasing the allowance to $150 after his marriage—more than the monthly salaries of many men, but hardly an income on which to entertain “the public leading men of the country.” Corneil could not escape the hope that he might suddenly multiply that amount with a hand of cards or a spin of the roulette wheel. He returned again and again to an ever-lengthening list of saloons: Portland's, at 139 Broadway; Charley Ransom's, on Twenty-fifth Street; John Daly's, on Broadway between Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets; Zachariah E. Simmons's policy bank, on Broadway near Fourth Street; and George Beers's place, on University Place at Thirteenth Street. At Beers's saloon, it was said, Corneil conveniently collapsed in an epileptic fit if he held a losing hand.
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