Vanderbilt claimed that he was abandoning "the run between the city of New York and Norwalk because he considered it a hazardous run and not desirable in itself." There was some truth to this: in April, the Citizen Citizen had struck a rock off New Rochelle, sank, and had to be raised. But the money came at a critical moment. had struck a rock off New Rochelle, sank, and had to be raised. But the money came at a critical moment.
With the General Jackson General Jackson sitting on the bottom of the Hudson, Vanderbilt quickly leased the sitting on the bottom of the Hudson, Vanderbilt quickly leased the Flushing Flushing to take its place. Meanwhile he built a new steamboat, the to take its place. Meanwhile he built a new steamboat, the Cinderella Cinderella, to take over the route permanently. It seems he chose the name to charm a public disenchanted with the Vanderbilt family. "A fine little steamboat, of the fairy order, and appropriately ycleped [called] the 'Cinderella' was tried in our waters," the New York Gazette New York Gazette reported in September. "She sat buoyantly on the stream, gaily decked out in her best attire, and... she is 'swift as the flash.' The new Cinderella is decidedly in the field as a resolute competitor." reported in September. "She sat buoyantly on the stream, gaily decked out in her best attire, and... she is 'swift as the flash.' The new Cinderella is decidedly in the field as a resolute competitor."49 By the time the Cinderella Cinderella began to run, she already faced a rival, and a big one: the 207-ton, 134-foot began to run, she already faced a rival, and a big one: the 207-ton, 134-foot Water Witch Water Witch. Even more dangerous than the boat was the leading spirit behind it. He was a grim-faced man of thirty-four, with dark hair parted on one side, narrow eyes, and such a crimped jaw and sharp cheekbones that it looked as if his collar had compressed the lower half of his head-but then, he did make an art of keeping his mouth shut. His name was Daniel Drew.
A native of landlocked Carmel, New York, Drew had started his working life by driving cattle down to the meat markets of Manhattan. It would later be said-inaccurately-that he invented the "watering" of livestock, the trick of preventing them from drinking on the drive to market, then encouraging them to gorge, once they arrived, to inflate their weight. Incorrect as the attribution was, it speaks to the formidable reputation Drew developed for sharp dealing-which stood in odd juxtaposition with his eventual standing as a devout Methodist in an age of revivalism. Drew was "shrewd, unscrupulous, and very illiterate," Charles F. Adams Jr. would later write, "a strange combination of superstition and faithlessness, of daring and timidity-often good-natured and sometimes generous." Sly, silent, and stoop-shouldered, he seemed to take pleasure in passing down the street unnoticed by the crowd. One man thought that he resembled "a cross between a cartman and a small trader." But if you should catch his eye, "you will observe a sharp, bright glance in it, with a look penetrating and intelligent." As a another writer later remarked, "We have said his intellect was subtle. The word subtle subtle does not altogether express it. It should be does not altogether express it. It should be vulpine." vulpine."50 Drew's peculiar character, and his background in cattle, led to his rise as a figure of street-level finance. In 1830, he took over the Upper Bull's Head Tavern, located on Third Avenue at the Two-Mile Stone (according to the street grid plotted in 1811, this was at Twenty-fourth Street, still far above the settled portion of the city). A large three-story wooden building, the Bull's Head was described by one stagecoach driver as "the common resort for all travellers (and particularly drovers)" on the main route down Manhattan. Drew became a central figure in the cattle business, trading promissory notes and lending money, establishing himself as "a man of sufficient and ample means," in the driver's words.51 It was natural enough, then, that an old friend, circus proprietor Heckaliah Bailey, should approach him in the summer of 1831 to ask him to buy a share in the It was natural enough, then, that an old friend, circus proprietor Heckaliah Bailey, should approach him in the summer of 1831 to ask him to buy a share in the Water Witch Water Witch, and to take charge of its affairs on behalf of himself and a group of Westchester investors who had built it.
Vanderbilt soon realized that he faced a worthy foe in Drew. Inevitably, a rate war erupted, driving fares down to a shilling-only now, unlike his war against the Livingstons, the public was against him. "In the midst of the storm of indignation" over the General Jackson General Jackson, "the very name of Vanderbilt aroused execrations deep and loud all along the North River," declared Harper's Weekly Harper's Weekly in an 1859 profile. "The exasperated river towns and villages... would not allow his boat to make fast to their piers.... When he ran to a wharf he could get no hand to take the ropes he threw ashore to make fast. As to business, it is recorded that more than once his daily receipts did not exceed in an 1859 profile. "The exasperated river towns and villages... would not allow his boat to make fast to their piers.... When he ran to a wharf he could get no hand to take the ropes he threw ashore to make fast. As to business, it is recorded that more than once his daily receipts did not exceed $0.12 $0.12. When a solitary passenger did take passage in his boat he hid himself from the public gaze, as though he had been doing a guilty thing." The Water Witch Water Witch, on the other hand, "was welcomed daily with huzzas and uproar from the thronging crowds at the landings," according to another 1859 profile-this one of Drew.
Drew, it was later said, often slouched on the dock as the Cinderella Cinderella steamed up, Vanderbilt looming tall at its bow, confidently riding out the public's rage. "You have no business in this trade," Vanderbilt told him. "You don't understand it, and you can't succeed." But Drew understood it all too well. He didn't need to make a profit; he simply had to make his opponent suffer to the point that he was willing to make a deal. The same tactics that Vanderbilt had employed against Hoyt and Peck-to drive down fares until the established line bought him out of the market-now worked against him. If he wanted the steamed up, Vanderbilt looming tall at its bow, confidently riding out the public's rage. "You have no business in this trade," Vanderbilt told him. "You don't understand it, and you can't succeed." But Drew understood it all too well. He didn't need to make a profit; he simply had to make his opponent suffer to the point that he was willing to make a deal. The same tactics that Vanderbilt had employed against Hoyt and Peck-to drive down fares until the established line bought him out of the market-now worked against him. If he wanted the Water Witch Water Witch to go away, he would have to purchase it at a hefty premium. And so, in 1832, the people of Westchester were startled to discover that their champion boat had been bought by Vanderbilt, who promptly raised the fare again. to go away, he would have to purchase it at a hefty premium. And so, in 1832, the people of Westchester were startled to discover that their champion boat had been bought by Vanderbilt, who promptly raised the fare again.
It was the beginning of a long and peculiar friendship. For the first time in Vanderbilt's life, he had been forced to pay for what was already his, and he couldn't help admiring the man who had done it to him. Over the course of their lives, these starkly contrasting businessmen would mix partnership and rivalry in a bewildering dance of mutual respect and self-interest.52 ON MAY 20, DEATH HAUNTED the Vanderbilt family. Three years before, on May 20, 1829, Cornelius's brother-in-law and old partner, Captain John De Forest, had died, leaving his sister Charlotte a widow. Now, on May 20, 1832, Cornelius Vanderbilt senior died, pulling his son back to Staten Island for the Moravian Church funeral, the settlement of the will, and attendance on his bereaved mother. the Vanderbilt family. Three years before, on May 20, 1829, Cornelius's brother-in-law and old partner, Captain John De Forest, had died, leaving his sister Charlotte a widow. Now, on May 20, 1832, Cornelius Vanderbilt senior died, pulling his son back to Staten Island for the Moravian Church funeral, the settlement of the will, and attendance on his bereaved mother.
Death defined not only the date, but the year as well. Rumors began to spread of an epidemic. "Some considerable said about the Cholera," noted Hiram Peck in his diary on July 5. Soon the newspapers began to track the disease's daily harvest-one hundred dead on July 20, 104 on July 21, ninety on July 22-as quarantines and a general panic shut down intercity travel. Then a fever struck Vanderbilt himself in September. Dr. Jared Linsly treated him with quinine, but the "ague," as the doctor called it, forced him to bed repeatedly for three months.53 Bankruptcies shadowed Vanderbilt as well-though this was not entirely a bad thing. Like Drew, he lent money to his fellow businessmen, drawing on reserves created by his cash-based steamboat trade; bankruptcies brought him collateral. In September, one debtor handed the keys to a store over to Vanderbilt, who thought of young Hiram Peck. For two years he had cultivated the friendship of this earnest churchgoer; now he had just the right use for him. "I have also today been negotiating with Capt. C. Vanderbilt to take charge of the business assigned to him by Mr. John Coten," Peck wrote in his diary on September 12. "Was at his house at noon and down to the store in the afternoon and at his house in the evening." Three days later he added, "Attended at the store again and came to the conclusion to have the business transacted in my name and Capt. Vanderbilt is to endorse for me. I am to get books and such things as necessary. I have not quite finished bargain about my salary but am to be liberally paid.... We commence taking an inventory this afternoon." Ultimately Vanderbilt granted him a salary of a thousand dollars a year, plus $250 if he returned "a good profit."54 Peck, then, served as the front man, while Vanderbilt lurked behind as the silent partner. It was hardly an unusual arrangement, but it underscored the uncertainties and suspicions that now ran through every business transaction. On March 29, 1833, for example, Vanderbilt sold his steamboat Westchester Westchester for $30,000 to John Brooks, former captain of the for $30,000 to John Brooks, former captain of the Citizen Citizen, and two other men; they put the boat on Vanderbilt's old line to Connecticut. The move outraged Charles Hoyt, who believed that Vanderbilt was using Brooks as a front man. Even Curtis Peck was ready to think the worst of the man whose word had been good enough a year before. The two filed a lawsuit, asking the court to enforce their unwritten understanding that Vanderbilt would not compete against them on this route.
Vanderbilt indignantly denied that he was behind Brooks's move, but it is difficult to know the truth. He proudly imagined himself to be a man who stood by his agreements, but he also possessed a Gibbons-like streak of self-righteousness that looked suspiciously like duplicity to others, when he interpreted agreements in what appeared to be self-serving ways. Was he a force for businesslike order or competitive anarchy? Even his contemporaries struggled to understand him.55 Vanderbilt's proud idea of himself soon clashed again with his public image. On June 12, 1833, President Jackson visited New York, sparking what the Evening Post Evening Post called "one of the most striking public ceremonies ever witnessed by the people of this city.... The inhabitants of the city seemed to have deserted all the other quarters for the Battery and Broadway." On June 14, he toured northern New Jersey, and returned to New York on the called "one of the most striking public ceremonies ever witnessed by the people of this city.... The inhabitants of the city seemed to have deserted all the other quarters for the Battery and Broadway." On June 14, he toured northern New Jersey, and returned to New York on the Cinderella Cinderella, commanded by Vanderbilt himself.
It was a striking moment, this convergence of two iron-willed men, one who gave his name to the age and the other who in many ways typified it. But Vanderbilt was merely Jackson's pilot, not his peer. In New Jersey, the president met with the still-famous Aaron Ogden, and most likely with Colonel Stevens and his sons, but he probably had no idea who Vanderbilt was.
Pride is often the door to humiliation. The contrast between the captain's ambitions and his actual status must have scraped his thin skin like sandpaper. Frances Trollope had come away highly impressed by New York's refined, wealthy elite-the "Medici of the Republic," as she called them-but Vanderbilt was not one of them. Though always unpretentious, he sorely wanted respect. On October 30, for example, he entered a four-year-old colt in races at the Union Course in Long Island against horses belonging to the patriarchs of transportation, past, present, and future: William Gibbons, Robert L. Stevens and his brother John, and Robert F. Stockton. It was a symbolic race-and Vanderbilt's horse was disqualified.56 If he had been disposed to dwell, he might have stewed gloomily on all that had happened in the previous two years: the death of his father, his defeat by Drew, his humiliation at the racetrack. By temperament and necessity however, he was given not to reflection, but to movement. The Legislator Legislator had exploded in his face, and he had gone ahead; his brother had barely survived a steamboat explosion, and he had gone ahead; he himself had narrowly overcome a deadly fever, and he had gone ahead. He saw no point in mulling over dangers when a world of competition demanded that he seize the next opportunity. Like one of his paddlewheelers caught in the currents of Hell Gate, he had to drive forward or be wrecked. had exploded in his face, and he had gone ahead; his brother had barely survived a steamboat explosion, and he had gone ahead; he himself had narrowly overcome a deadly fever, and he had gone ahead. He saw no point in mulling over dangers when a world of competition demanded that he seize the next opportunity. Like one of his paddlewheelers caught in the currents of Hell Gate, he had to drive forward or be wrecked.
Fortunately for Vanderbilt, whose entire business was transportation, transportation was precisely where the next opportunity appeared. The first rattling, chuffing, clanking trains of steam-drawn railway cars captured the public imagination-and no better example could be found than the Camden & Amboy the special project of the Stevens family. It set off what one magazine called a "fever," for both the faster travel and the rich profits it promised to bring. "If any doubt existed as to the excitement about railroads," it argued in 1831, "it could have been removed by a view of the crowds thronging for stock to the... Camden." With the line now complete, the national press breathlessly reported that it carried passengers thirty-five miles in one hour and forty-six minutes, cutting the passage from New York to Philadelphia to just seven hours and forty-five minutes.57 On November 8, 1833, Vanderbilt sailed over to South Amboy to examine it for himself. The locomotive resembled an oversize barrel with a smokestack in front; the engineer and fireman stood on a rear platform with no shelter from the elements. Three passenger carriages trailed behind, linked by heavy chains. Each car looked as if three stagecoaches had been fused together, with three compartments, each of which had a side door, topped by one continuous flat roof for baggage. The whole rested on a leaf spring, set high above the large cast-iron wheels with wooden spokes-two pairs of wheels connected by iron axles. Vanderbilt stepped up into the middle car (the last being reserved for baggage). The engine began to chug, building to twenty-five miles per hour.
For Vanderbilt, as for almost all of the twenty-four passengers in his car, this was an entirely new sensation. The startling speed and relatively smooth ride (compared to stagecoaches) must have thrilled them-the woman from Washington, D.C., who cradled her baby, the minister from Pennsylvania, the gentleman from North Carolina. Just the day before the railroad had broken its own record, cutting the time between New York and Philadelphia to six hours and thirty-five minutes. The countryside slipped past them in a blur as they moved at a rate never known on land before.
Without warning, an axle broke in the lead car. With only two axles per car, the result was catastrophic. The lead car jumped off the tracks; sitting in the one behind it, Vanderbilt saw its roof and walls suddenly spin. His car pitched down the embankment, then tumbled and bounced heavily on its side as the locomotive dragged it farther before the engineer could stop the train.
Vanderbilt found himself at the bottom of the embankment. His clothes had been shredded, and his knees oozed blood where the skin had been torn off. He took a breath, and stopped at the knifing pain where his ribs had pierced his lungs, then suffered even greater agony when he convulsively coughed, blood filling his mouth. His body felt crushed, his back broken. Turning his eyes to the bodies splayed around him, he saw a man's thigh bone jutting through his pants; the woman from Washington, her arm broken, her baby motionless; a man with arms and legs mangled; and the North Carolina fellow, his rib cage driven over his face. The uninjured staggered past-including former president John Quincy Adams, who had been in the lead car.
As Vanderbilt lay at the bottom of the ditch, unable to move, one thought overwhelmed all others: He was going to die.58
Chapter Four.
NEMESIS.
On November 9, 1833, a messenger arrived at the home of Dr. Jared Linsly, a young physician who lived and worked in the four-story forest of buildings that was New York City There had been an accident; the cars of the Camden & Amboy Railroad had overturned. One of the doctor's patients had been severely injured-a Captain Van-derbilt.1 Linsly pulled on his coat, gripped his bag, and rushed to the steamboat pier. The doctor had treated Vanderbilt's intermittent fever the year before, but he did not exactly look forward to seeing this difficult patient again. Linsly thought him "constitutionally irritable" and "dyspeptic." He found Vanderbilt to be an overbearing man under the best of circumstances-as Linsly later put it, "He never would take direction from anyone." And then there was the flatulence. "A great trouble," he would muse, and "apparently constitutional, as others of his family had it."
After crossing the bay, Linsly found his way to the crash site and was directed to a small cottage nearby. There he discovered two other doctors already in attendance. Edging his way to the bed, he saw the familiar leathery face of the thirty-nine-year-old Vanderbilt. His body had been shattered. Linsly noted the injuries as he examined his patient: "External bruises and the ribs badly fractured in the front and back on the right side. The knees were torn and bruised." Then the captain began coughing, an act that clamped him in pain; when somone wiped his mouth, the cloth ran red. "The ribs penetrated the lungs, as I knew by the escape of air under the skin and from his coughing up blood," Linsly explained later. "He suffered very much at that time trying to clear his lungs from the clotted blood."
Then Vanderbilt spoke, calmly, evenly. "Rational," the doctor noted. Rational indeed, from the very moment Vanderbilt had opened his eyes at the bottom of the embankment the day before, with boiling water and steam still spilling out of the overturned locomotive, the cars upended and broken, the people who had sat next to him almost all dead and mangled. Vanderbilt explained to Linsly that he had not wanted to die anonymously, so he had called out to a bystander and told him his name. That simple act of self-assertion had seemed to clear his brain. He noticed the cottage they were now in, and had choked through his mouthful of blood to order the fellow to carry him here. Then he had sent for help.
The thirty-year-old Linsly was just four years out of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, but it occurred to him that he had never seen anyone with such self-possession while in the gnawing jaws of pain. Lying in the mud with shattered bones and a punctured lung, Vanderbilt had organized his own rescue, taking command of those around him as surely as if he were ordering about the crew on the Cinderella Cinderella.
Close encounters with death have a reputation for transforming lives, for starting dramatic new departures. Vanderbilt's near extinction concentrated his existing qualities-his decisiveness, his will to dominate, his ability to rapidly assess a chaotic situation. Indeed, it could be argued that this gruesome accident had nothing to do with the transformation that he would undergo in the next decade, from obscure captain to fearsome commodore, whose name alone would terrify hardened businessmen. But as he lay there impatiently in that cottage over the next four weeks, slowly healing under Linsly's care, the incident took on iconic significance for him. For one thing, Vanderbilt became an ardent admirer of the young doctor. You saved my life, he would often tell him. "If I had died in Jersey in 1833," he would add, decades later, "the world would not have known that I had lived. But I think I have been spared to accomplish a great work that will last and remain."2 AS THE CAPTAIN SLEPT IN HIS BED, the general waged war on the monster. Not just any monster-the Monster, as President Andrew Jackson called it. Without a doubt, General Jackson (as everyone called him) saw himself as St. George in arms against the dragon, an infernal, demonic entity that must be destroyed. The Monster, he told Martin Van Buren, "is trying to kill me, but I will kill it I will kill it." This political battle would define not only American politics for the next generation, but also Vanderbilt's new and increasingly public role as a businessman. Coming at the moment of his brush with death, it would prove to be, in many ways, his resurrection.
The Monster, formally known as the Second Bank of the United States (and more commonly as the Bank), originated as the brainchild of Alexander Hamilton. He had desired a counterpart to the famed Bank of En gland: a federally chartered but privately owned institution to hold the government's funds, extend loans to private merchants, facilitate longdistance transfers of money, regulate the flow of credit from state-chartered banks, and provide a stable national paper currency. Jeffersonians had thought a federal bank unconstitutional, and had destroyed the original Bank of the United States in 1811, only to revive it under the fiscal strain of the War of 1812. Jackson despised it. On July 10, 1832, he had vetoed a bill to recharter the Bank, and had run for reelection that year on the promise to permanently eradicate it.3 So began the Bank War, the result not merely of Jackson's obsessions, but the cultural crisis of the times. It broke out because two great waves now crashed into one another: the individualistic, anti-aristocratic, competitive impulse fostered by the Revolution, and the instinct to organize, amalgamate, develop, and bring order to the chaos of the marketplace. The first impulse was both radical and traditional, combining a suspicion of the wealthy elite with an outlook shaped by this world of small farms, stores, and workshops, where factories were few and self-employment was the standard. The second was both commercially advanced and highly conservative, as wealthy men both organized banks and corporations and tried to tamp down competition. Neither impulse was hostile to the market economy itself; indeed, out of this conflict would emerge a new American economic outlook, a culture that embraced equality of opportunity and fierce competition, as well as sophisticated business institutions.4 But not yet. The Bank War revealed the vast distance still between these two views of the world. When Jackson vetoed the recharter of the Bank, he complained that it "enjoys an exclusive privilege of banking under the authority of the General Government, a monopoly of its favor and support." But it was a very useful monopoly, protested Senator Daniel Webster. "In the absence of a Bank of the United States, the State banks become effectually the regulators of the public currency. Their numbers... give them, in that state of things, a power which nothing is competent to control." Where Jackson saw danger in a government-granted monopoly, Webster saw the danger of an unregulated marketplace, the anarchy of unchecked competition.5 To the president, Webster missed the entire point. As he wrote to Nicholas Biddle, the Bank's gifted chief, "I do not dislike your Bank more than all banks." Jacksonians condemned banks, and corporations in general, with a particularly damning word: they were "artificial." After all, what did banks do? In the best cases, they accumulated reserves of gold and silver coin, paid in by their shareholders, and made loans by issuing paper money, printed by the bank itself. The notes could be redeemed at the bank for gold and silver, but it was more convenient for people to continue to pay each other with the paper, keeping it in circulation. Even a conservatively run bank would issue notes worth at least three times its holdings in precious metals.
To Jacksonians, this was a fraud: banks were loaning what they did not have. Paper money was a dangerous shell game that only worked as long as everyone agreed not to look for the pea. "Real money," wrote William Gouge in an influential book of 1833, "is a commodity commodity." Gold and silver had intrinsic value; no special trust had to be placed in anyone before precious-metal coin was accepted in payment. By contrast, paper money had replaced "the old standard of value" with "the new standard of bank credit," one that was subject to bank failures, to counterfeiting, to deliberate manipulation by greedy corporate officials. By 1833, Americans had already suffered panics in which note holders rushed to a bank all at once, forcing it to suspend specie payments, thus rendering its paper money virtually worthless.6 Even worse, banks could only perpetrate this supposed fraud because of their government-granted monopolistic powers. Most states outlawed private banking; to issue paper money, a bank had to obtain a charter from a state legislature-"by certain arts of collusion, bribery, and political management," declared William Leggett, radical editor of the New York Evening Post New York Evening Post. "It is a matter of utmost notoriety that bank charters are in frequent instances obtained by practises of the most outrageous corruption." And that struck at the heart of the Jacksonian ideal: the equality of opportunity for every individual, and the hatred of any government-favored class (or aristocracy, in the rhetoric of the day), especially men with corporate charters.7 "Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions," Jackson observed in his veto message. "But when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions... the humble members of society... have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government." He and his followers accepted natural inequality-even celebrated the rise to wealth through hard work and intelligence-but hated anything that smacked of the artificial artificial.
In the Jacksonian mind, the fear of monopoly and aristocracy was intertwined with a deep anxiety over the mysterious abstraction of commercial institutions. Features that were gradually emerging as standard for all corporations-their legal character as artificial persons, immortality and limited immunity which protected shareholders from liability for a corporation's acts-they saw as strange and alarming special privileges granted through political favoritism. "All corporations are liable to the objection that whatever powers or privileges are given to them, are so much taken from the government or the people," wrote Leggett. And so government had given rise to a race of man-made monsters, with the Bank merely chief among them. "If a man is unjust, or an extortioner, society is, sooner or later, relieved from the burden, by his death," glowered Gouge. "But corporations never die." The implications were frightful. Since they "live forever," fretted Massachusetts governor Marcus Morton, their property was "holden in perpetual succession"-unlike individuals, whose estates were divided upon death. Eventually corporations would own everything.8 This idea rested on the notion that the amount of property was constant (rather than growing in a growing economy), and that only physical things-land, goods, animals-could be property, never shares in corporations. Stock and paper money had no value of their own, Jacksonians believed; they were a conjuration that transferred wealth from real producers to stockjobbers who made nothing (except potentially money). Such a fundamentalist mind-set deeply frustrated the president's opponents, especially the Yankee businessmen who were learning to use the sophisticated devices of commerce. Daniel Webster argued that banknotes were were money, that the definition of "currency" should include "all that adjusts exchanges and settles balances in the operations of trade and business," from precious metals to bills of exchange. The corporation was a "truly republican institution," declared John Quincy Adams, "of which every class of the community may share in the benefit, proportionate to their means and their resources." Jacksonians saw corporations as the grasping of rich men for special privileges; but one bank president argued that America's money, that the definition of "currency" should include "all that adjusts exchanges and settles balances in the operations of trade and business," from precious metals to bills of exchange. The corporation was a "truly republican institution," declared John Quincy Adams, "of which every class of the community may share in the benefit, proportionate to their means and their resources." Jacksonians saw corporations as the grasping of rich men for special privileges; but one bank president argued that America's "absence "absence of large capitalists [had] been remedied by corporate associations, which aggregate the resources of many persons." of large capitalists [had] been remedied by corporate associations, which aggregate the resources of many persons."
This was the birth of a kind of abstract thinking never before required in everyday life. It sparked a fierce resistance. On a daily basis, most Americans rarely interacted with corporations; they still lived in a society of farms, small businesses, and independent proprietors. Jacksonians viewed corporations in much the same way that the evangelists of the Second Great Awakening saw the Masons or popery: as a corrupt conspiracy, a mysterious encrustation on the beautiful simplicity of the true religion. As artificial beings, Gouge intoned, "corporations have neither bodies to be kicked, nor souls to be damned."9 Jackson's veto of the Bank recharter marked only the beginning of the Bank War. The Bank still had six years left under its original authorization; its president, Biddle, still hoped to survive. He elected to systematically corrupt Congress by handing out loans and legal fees, and even bribed newspaper editors for friendly articles. Furious, Jackson launched a plan to withdraw the federal government's deposits and place them in friendly state banks, nicknamed the Pet Banks. Biddle retaliated, calling in loans, returning state banknotes for specie, and curtailing new credit. "All the other Banks and all the merchants may break," he growled, "but the Bank of the United States shall not break."
"The subject of the removal of the bank deposits increases daily in interest," wrote a New York merchant on January 11, 1834. "Nobody talks or thinks of anything else." Nobody, of course, but Vanderbilt, lying broken in that Jersey cottage, spitting up blood within earshot of the trains of the Camden & Amboy. They were weeks of torment for the country and himself. As merchants and brokers along Wall Street pushed back their top hats and worried aloud, he had himself carried up to the railroad tracks, then placed in a special horse-drawn car he had ordered. Each rattle along the rails must have been agony, but it was better than one of the famously uncomfortable carriages that bounced down the turnpike. At South Amboy his crewmen lifted him out and placed him in one of his steamboats for the return to New York.
There the city's businessmen fretted over their own casualties. One of those worriers was Philip Hone, a former mayor of New York, a wealthy merchant, and a member of the old Anglo-Dutch elite. His life would repeatedly intersect Vanderbilt's, despite their sharply contrasting social backgrounds. Most nights he sat at his desk and wrote in his diary in a tidy cursive script, recording the events of the day in eloquent, highly opinionated prose that makes him an ideal witness to Vanderbilt's world. "Wall Street was thrown into consternation this morning by the failure of John G. Warren & Son," Hone wrote on January 31. Like most of the city's conservative merchants, he blamed the president, not Biddle. "If Gen. Jackson had visited Wall Street this morning, he might have been regaled with a sight similar to that of the field of battle at New Orleans. His killed and wounded were to be seen in every direction, and men enquiring with anxious solicitude, 'Who is to fall next?'"10 The Bank War spun American politics in a centrifuge, concentrating the two impulses of the day into distinct parties. On one side were Jackson's followers, the Democratic Party-or the Democracy, as they called it-the party of individual equality and limited government. Under the slogan "Jackson, Commerce, and Our Country," they celebrated a market economy of real persons and republican simplicity. In opposition arose the Whigs, who were more trusting in the beneficial role of active government. At the time, the division between the two seemed as natural as a canyon. The Democrats had emerged out of the resistance to the eighteenth-century patricians and their culture of deference, out of battles against the limited franchise, aristocratic privileges, and mercantilist monopolies. Though their elected leaders often would make use of the government's economic power, the most radical among them-especially New York's "Locofoco" faction (nicknamed after the brand of matches they used when their rivals at a tumultuous party meeting doused the lights)-championed laissez-faire as their definition of equal rights. The Whigs (such as Hone) inherited some of the ordering, top-down outlook of the old elite, and a deeply moral vision of the role of the state. They believed that measures to assist the most enterprising, such as corporate charters or public works, would grace everyone; as historian Amy Bridges writes, they believed "the state should guide interdependent interests to a common good." As development-minded modernizers in a young and growing country, they saw competition as a destructive force that punished entrepreneurship.11 For months the nation endured the crisis, as Biddle squeezed, bankers and merchants gasped, and Jackson grimly held to his plan for removing federal deposits. Vanderbilt followed the war through the newspapers in his bed at 134 Madison Street, confined under Dr. Linsly's orders and the necessities of pain. Meanwhile Whig congressmen came to the painful conclusion that Biddle had gone too far. His retaliation against Jackson seemed to have proved the president's argument that the Bank threatened democracy.
As spring wrestled loose from the grip of winter, scooping the ice from the harbor's waters and snow out of the streets, Americans realized that they had survived the Bank War. Biddle was beaten; in the end, he was forced to obtain a state charter from Pennsylvania for the Philadelphia-based Bank. And, by the end of 1834, Americans would discover that the prospering, dyspeptic, overbearing Vanderbilt had become a champion of the radical Jacksonian creed.12 IN THE SUMMER OF 1834, not many weeks had passed since Vanderbilt had first emerged from his house on Madison Street, his skin pale from lack of sunlight, his legs shaky from lack of use. It had been a difficult winter. He was a man who charged ahead by instinct, by calculation, by the metaphor of the time; instead he had been confined to a single room until the onset of spring, struggling to simply hold steady as he managed his boats from his sickbed. He had ordered the new 1834, not many weeks had passed since Vanderbilt had first emerged from his house on Madison Street, his skin pale from lack of sunlight, his legs shaky from lack of use. It had been a difficult winter. He was a man who charged ahead by instinct, by calculation, by the metaphor of the time; instead he had been confined to a single room until the onset of spring, struggling to simply hold steady as he managed his boats from his sickbed. He had ordered the new Union Union, for example, to be put on his lower Hudson River line, but Heyward, its captain (a "blockhead" or "blatherskite" or worse in Vanderbilt's extensive vocabulary of abuse), had allowed a shipment of thirty-eight crates of cotton prints to get so wet that the colors ran. Now Vanderbilt faced a lawsuit that would eventually cost him $5,000, plus $360 in court costs. At least his reliable brother Jacob had managed the Water Witch Water Witch well on its route to Hartford. well on its route to Hartford.13 Now there was this Westchester Westchester business. Three men confronted Vanderbilt in his office, angrily reminding him that, on March 15, 1834, the boat, which he had sold the year before, had started to run between New York and Albany at a fare of $2 per person. The men believed, as Hoyt and Peck had previously, that Vanderbilt was the real owner of the business. Three men confronted Vanderbilt in his office, angrily reminding him that, on March 15, 1834, the boat, which he had sold the year before, had started to run between New York and Albany at a fare of $2 per person. The men believed, as Hoyt and Peck had previously, that Vanderbilt was the real owner of the Westchester Westchester, and it infuriated them. They had taken pains to put the fare up to $3 on their own Albany-bound boats, and were grimly determined to do whatever was necessary to keep it there.
When Vanderbilt later discussed this meeting in the press, he neglected to mention the names of his visitors. No matter-the public would not have recognized them. They were all-but-anonymous members of the Hudson River Steamboat Association, an organization of businessmen who maintained a monopoly on traffic between New York and Albany. The most famous among them, Robert L. Stevens, had sold out to the rest in 1832. They had paid Stevens the enormous sum of $80,000 for his boat, the North America North America, but the physical vessel was only one part of the purchase. They also had bought his agreement to not run any boat on the Hudson for ten years.14 The stiff price-probably double the original construction cost-showed how difficult it was to maintain a monopoly on the Hudson, and how lucrative that monopoly proved to be. After the opening of the Erie Canal, traffic had boomed between Albany and New York, thanks to the passengers and freight coming from the West and the fast-growing towns along the Hudson and the canal. More and more entrepreneurs jumped in to meet this demand, forcing the monopoly to either buy them off or include them. By 1834, it had swollen to an overstretched alliance of three steamboat companies: the Hudson River, the North River, and the Troy.
This confrontation, Vanderbilt recognized, was a dangerous moment. In this age of the cunning Yankee, of strangers and professional thieves, suspicion reigned; no one knew how far to trust appearances. He insisted (quite truthfully) that he no longer had anything to do with the Westchester Westchester. "As further evidence of my unwillingness to appear as if joining in or promoting an opposition to the combined companies," he explained shortly afterward, "I [had] refused a liberal offer for a charter of my steamboat Union Union, to run as an opposition boat between New York and Albany, and this I did for the purpose of keeping myself entirely aloof from all contest and competition." The monopoly men didn't believe him. The question was settled: it would be war.15 The problem was, it was war by proxy. A competitor soon appeared on Vanderbilt's lower Hudson route-his old Citizen Citizen, captained by Curtis Peck, steaming to Sing Sing at what Vanderbilt called "the paltry and pitiful price of 12 cents." Like his enemies, he saw a hidden hand at work-their hand. "It may be said that the Citizen Citizen does not belong to the combined companies," he announced in the press. "To that I answer-she has been started in opposition to me at their suggestion, and is running under their sanction, protection, and patronage, and therefore the act is theirs." The language was a bit too orderly to have come straight from his mouth, but the ferocity was pure Vanderbilt. does not belong to the combined companies," he announced in the press. "To that I answer-she has been started in opposition to me at their suggestion, and is running under their sanction, protection, and patronage, and therefore the act is theirs." The language was a bit too orderly to have come straight from his mouth, but the ferocity was pure Vanderbilt.
His language was also pure radicalism. It appeared on the front page of the New York Evening Post New York Evening Post, in an announcement of his retaliation against the monopoly.
TO THE PUBLIC.-Having established a line of Steamboats on the North River, for the conveyance of passengers between New York and Albany, called the People's Line People's Line, in opposition to the great triangular monopoly great triangular monopoly composed of the North River Steamboat company, the Hudson River Steamboat company, and the Troy Steamboat company, I deem it proper to say a few words by way of appeal to a generous public, which, I feel persuaded, will sustain a single individual in an attempt to resist the overbearing encroachments of a composed of the North River Steamboat company, the Hudson River Steamboat company, and the Troy Steamboat company, I deem it proper to say a few words by way of appeal to a generous public, which, I feel persuaded, will sustain a single individual in an attempt to resist the overbearing encroachments of a gigantic combination gigantic combination. Competition in all things promotes the public convenience; and although the step I have taken may prove advantageous to the public, yet to me it may be far otherwise.16 The brilliance of this appeal could be heard in its echo of the Evening Post's Evening Post's radical brand of Jacksonianism, as advocated by editor William Leggett. Two days before, Leggett had attacked corporations for "combining larger amounts of capital than unincorporated individuals can bring into competition." He had called for laissez-faire to allow individuals to defeat "the grasping, monopolizing spirit of rapacious capitalists," as expressed in corporate charters. "Even now, how completely we are monopoly-governed!" he had written. "How completely we are hemmed in on every side, how we are cabined, cribb'd, confined, by exclusive privileges!" radical brand of Jacksonianism, as advocated by editor William Leggett. Two days before, Leggett had attacked corporations for "combining larger amounts of capital than unincorporated individuals can bring into competition." He had called for laissez-faire to allow individuals to defeat "the grasping, monopolizing spirit of rapacious capitalists," as expressed in corporate charters. "Even now, how completely we are monopoly-governed!" he had written. "How completely we are hemmed in on every side, how we are cabined, cribb'd, confined, by exclusive privileges!"
Vanderbilt's declaration mimicked this rhetoric, which celebrated commerce and entrepreneurship but blasted corporations. He went on to explain how the monopoly had instigated the Citizen's Citizen's run against him, and concluded: run against him, and concluded: Thus, fellow citizens, has this aristocratic monopoly, secure as they think themselves in wealth and power, wantonly attacked an individual whose constant endeavor has been to avoid a contest with them. The gauntlet has been thrown by them, and not by me; and the question now is, will the public countenance the combined companies in an act of overbearing oppression, or will they patronize and encourage one who is determined to resist aggression and injustice, although the odds is vastly against him. The North River is the great highway of the people, and does not belong exclusively to the Monopolists.17 Leggett himself could not have written a more vehemently Jacksonian statement.
A more deliberately manipulative man probably would have been more careful in his argument. Vanderbilt praised the benefits of competition, for example, then wrote that he was challenging the Hudson River association only after trying to avoid avoid "all contest and competition." He attacked his enemies for being monopolists, but his outrage stemmed from their attack on "all contest and competition." He attacked his enemies for being monopolists, but his outrage stemmed from their attack on his his monopoly between New York and Peekskill. This inconsistency speaks of inflamed self-righteousness as much as cold cunning. He was undoubtedly opportunistic, and there is no evidence he was a Democrat (or a Whig, for that matter). But the political debate over monopolies and corporations went to the heart of his existence, leaving a deep impression that he believed his rhetoric: he was the people's rebel, a challenger of the mighty. monopoly between New York and Peekskill. This inconsistency speaks of inflamed self-righteousness as much as cold cunning. He was undoubtedly opportunistic, and there is no evidence he was a Democrat (or a Whig, for that matter). But the political debate over monopolies and corporations went to the heart of his existence, leaving a deep impression that he believed his rhetoric: he was the people's rebel, a challenger of the mighty.
And the people loved it-the drama, the slap in the face of the monopoly, and, especially, the low prices. Vanderbilt put the Nimrod Nimrod and the and the Champion Champion on the line to Albany for a $ on the line to Albany for a $i fare. "Our river-boats are long, shallow, and graceful," wrote one passenger, "and painted as brilliantly and fantastically as an Indian shell. With her bow just leaning up from the surface of the stream, her cut-water throwing off a curved and transparent sheet from either side, her white awnings, her magical speed, and the gay spectacle of a thousand well-dressed people on her open decks, I know of nothing prettier." Serving fine food and abundant alcohol, these incessantly churning sidewheelers traveled a river renowned for beauty slipping between the wooded bluffs of upper Manhattan and the stunning cliffs of the New Jersey Palisades. On reaching West Point, the same writer found it almost impossible "to give an idea of the sudden darkening of the Hudson, and the underground effect of the sharp, overhanging mountains as you sweep first into the Highlands." fare. "Our river-boats are long, shallow, and graceful," wrote one passenger, "and painted as brilliantly and fantastically as an Indian shell. With her bow just leaning up from the surface of the stream, her cut-water throwing off a curved and transparent sheet from either side, her white awnings, her magical speed, and the gay spectacle of a thousand well-dressed people on her open decks, I know of nothing prettier." Serving fine food and abundant alcohol, these incessantly churning sidewheelers traveled a river renowned for beauty slipping between the wooded bluffs of upper Manhattan and the stunning cliffs of the New Jersey Palisades. On reaching West Point, the same writer found it almost impossible "to give an idea of the sudden darkening of the Hudson, and the underground effect of the sharp, overhanging mountains as you sweep first into the Highlands."18 Vanderbilt's mind was not on beauty, but the pain he inflicted on his opponents. Even a fare of $i-half that charged by the Westchester Westchester, the ostensible cause of this war-did not strike him as ruthless enough. Within days, he reduced it to fifty cents. Meanwhile he ordered his captains to beat the monopoly's boats at all costs.
Philip Hone witnessed the resulting struggle on the Hudson. "We left Albany at past 6 this morning in the Steam Boat Champlain," Champlain," he wrote in his diary on September 14. "There is a violent opposition between two lines of boats." He meant he wrote in his diary on September 14. "There is a violent opposition between two lines of boats." He meant violent violent literally. The rival crews hated each other, and public opinion was inflamed. "We were contending with the literally. The rival crews hated each other, and public opinion was inflamed. "We were contending with the Nimrod Nimrod all the way down, and for five or six miles before we reached Hyde Park Landing, the boats were in contact, both pushing furiously at the top of their speed. And we and our trunks were pitched ashore like bundles of hay. The people at the landing being all in favour of the opposition... nobody would take a line, and we might have drowned without an arm being reached to save us." all the way down, and for five or six miles before we reached Hyde Park Landing, the boats were in contact, both pushing furiously at the top of their speed. And we and our trunks were pitched ashore like bundles of hay. The people at the landing being all in favour of the opposition... nobody would take a line, and we might have drowned without an arm being reached to save us."
Hone was a commercially savvy merchant, yet he loathed such cutthroat competition, even when he had no personal interests at stake. Two days later, he took Vanderbilt's Champion Champion to New York; the experience caused his social prejudices to rise up in his throat like bile. "Our boat had three or four hundred passengers, and such a set of rag-tag & bobtail I never saw on board a North River Steam Boat-the effect of the 50 cent system," he sniffed into his diary. "If the people do not rise in their might and put a stop to the racing & opposition it will be better to return to the primitive mode of travelling in Albany sloops." to New York; the experience caused his social prejudices to rise up in his throat like bile. "Our boat had three or four hundred passengers, and such a set of rag-tag & bobtail I never saw on board a North River Steam Boat-the effect of the 50 cent system," he sniffed into his diary. "If the people do not rise in their might and put a stop to the racing & opposition it will be better to return to the primitive mode of travelling in Albany sloops."
If the people do not rise? Against what-cheap travel? Hone saw firsthand the popularity of Vanderbilt's fierce competition, but he did not believe his own eyes. Indeed, his visceral distaste illuminates America's social and political divisions. The Democrats derided Hone and his fellow Whigs as "aristocrats," and not entirely without cause. Though political and economic institutions no longer depended upon distinctions in social rank, New York's old patrician families had carried on into this more competitive, egalitarian era, carrying their wealth and prejudices with them. Their elitism blended with the Whig faith in an entreprenurial but orderly economy. Hone's disgust at being forced to mingle with his social inferiors was inseparable from his disaste for competitive anarchy. After complaining of the "rag-tag and bobtail," he added, "I would rather consume three or four days in the voyage than be made to fly in fear and trembling, subject to every sort of discomfort, with my life at the mercy of a set of fellows whose only object is to drive their competitors off the river." Against what-cheap travel? Hone saw firsthand the popularity of Vanderbilt's fierce competition, but he did not believe his own eyes. Indeed, his visceral distaste illuminates America's social and political divisions. The Democrats derided Hone and his fellow Whigs as "aristocrats," and not entirely without cause. Though political and economic institutions no longer depended upon distinctions in social rank, New York's old patrician families had carried on into this more competitive, egalitarian era, carrying their wealth and prejudices with them. Their elitism blended with the Whig faith in an entreprenurial but orderly economy. Hone's disgust at being forced to mingle with his social inferiors was inseparable from his disaste for competitive anarchy. After complaining of the "rag-tag and bobtail," he added, "I would rather consume three or four days in the voyage than be made to fly in fear and trembling, subject to every sort of discomfort, with my life at the mercy of a set of fellows whose only object is to drive their competitors off the river."19 Vanderbilt pressed the war into November. He added the Union Union to the line. He offered overnight service. He ran ads in Albany newspapers headlined " to the line. He offered overnight service. He ran ads in Albany newspapers headlined "PEOPLE'S LINE.-FOR NEW-YORK.-NO MONOPOLY." He battled on until fingertips of ice began to poke down the Hudson, until finally the freeze clasped its hands shut over the river.20 In the spring, steamboats began to churn again to Albany-and again charged $3 per person. The war was over; Vanderbilt had withdrawn. The public, which had cheered Vanderbilt's boats at every dock and landing, must have been mystified. Where had he gone? The answer would not come for another five years, when a careful investigation by the New York Herald New York Herald revealed that Vanderbilt had fought not for a principle, but for revenge. On those terms, he had won a resounding victory. He had forced the "odious monopoly," as the revealed that Vanderbilt had fought not for a principle, but for revenge. On those terms, he had won a resounding victory. He had forced the "odious monopoly," as the Herald Herald called it, to call Peck off the Sing Sing route and to pay Vanderbilt the astronomical fee of $100,000 to leave the line to Albany, plus an annual payment of $5,000 to stay away called it, to call Peck off the Sing Sing route and to pay Vanderbilt the astronomical fee of $100,000 to leave the line to Albany, plus an annual payment of $5,000 to stay away21 It was becoming a pattern with him. In the emerging code of conduct for steamboat men, the first proprietor to occupy a line assumed a sort of natural right to the route. A challenger who lasted long enough could expect an offer of a bribe to abandon the market and, should he accept it, would be expected to abstain from further competition. Vanderbilt had now repeatedly preyed on existing lines-to New Brunswick, to western Long Island Sound, and now to Albany-and each time had taken money to stay away. Like his late mentor Thomas Gibbons, he often acted out of a sense of self-righteous outrage, but always in ways that suited his material interests. To say that his Jacksonian rhetoric was deliberately deceitful is, perhaps, to suggest that he was more self-aware than he actually was. He made himself his first and last cause, but never the subject of study.
The public, however, had no inkling of who Vanderbilt was as a man, or why he had left the Albany line. The people looked for his next fare-cutting offensive as he unerringly hunted out the next great channel of commerce. To them, he was not a self-serving capitalist, but a lone proprietor, an avenging entrepreneur, the monopolists' nemesis.
VANDERBILT PRESENTED THE MODEL to Joseph Bishop and Charles Simonson in their office down by Corlears Hook. The two men were among New York's most experienced shipbuilders, but-as Bishop remarked as he pored over the model-they had never seen a design quite like it. On this winter day of early 1835, Vanderbilt could boast of seventeen years in the steamboat business. He had built or owned perhaps fifteen paddlewheelers, and had worked closely with almost every steamboat man but Fulton himself. All his experience had led him to this new departure-the first of "an entirely new class of steam vessels," as one expert would declare. to Joseph Bishop and Charles Simonson in their office down by Corlears Hook. The two men were among New York's most experienced shipbuilders, but-as Bishop remarked as he pored over the model-they had never seen a design quite like it. On this winter day of early 1835, Vanderbilt could boast of seventeen years in the steamboat business. He had built or owned perhaps fifteen paddlewheelers, and had worked closely with almost every steamboat man but Fulton himself. All his experience had led him to this new departure-the first of "an entirely new class of steam vessels," as one expert would declare.22 "Make her as strong as possible," Vanderbilt ordered. Bishop and Simonson could only nod; it would have to be very strong indeed. The captain wanted the twin paddlewheels enlarged dramatically from any previous design, to twenty-four feet in diameter. To drive them, he would have a new engine constructed, more powerful than any ever put into a steamboat. The piston in the North America North America, Robert L. Stevens's famous "rather-faster-than-lightning steamer," pulsed at a rate of 384 feet per minute; Vanderbilt envisioned one that would pound away at six hundred feet per minute. He foresaw a single engine that could do the work of two, saving as much as 50 percent on fuel while driving the wheels around at twenty-three revolutions per minute.
"Her shape was very peculiar," Vanderbilt later remarked. The hull was unusually long and narrow-205 feet from stem to stern post, with a beam of only twenty-two feet, less than the diameter of her wheels (though the guards outside the wheels extended her deck to forty-six feet). She was literally built for speed. The problem was that such a narrow, extended hull would "hog," or bend in the middle. To correct it, he called for an arched deck, "built on the plan of [a] patent for bridges," as he explained his inspiration, to shift the pressure to the ends of the deck planks.
Bishop and Simonson agreed to build it. "There was no written contract, no price agreed upon beforehand," Bishop recalled. Simonson was Vanderbilt's brother-in-law, and the three trusted one another implicitly. In the days that followed, as Bishop erected the gallows frame in their shipyard, Vanderbilt decided on a name: the Lexington Lexington, after the place where the Revolution began.23 He ordered the Lexington Lexington for a very simple reason: cotton. As the 1830s rushed past, cotton powered the American economy forward. Demand from British textile mills had already caused a westward-moving land rush across the South by cotton planters, dramatically expanding slavery into new territories. Slave-owning Americans had even settled the Mexican province of Texas. "Funds from the Northeast and England financed the transfer of slaves, purchase of land, and working capital during the period of clearing the land," writes economic historian Douglass C. North. Once cultivated, harvested, and pressed into bales, the cotton enriched not only the planters, but also the merchants, shippers, and financiers of New York. Much of it was transshipped to Britain through Manhattan; even after most of it came to be exported directly from the South, it was in New York-based ships that would return to Manhattan with cargoes of British goods. Then there were loans, commissions, and insurance charges, until one committee of Southern legislators concluded that one-third of each dollar paid for cotton went to New York-a percentage that continued to rise. for a very simple reason: cotton. As the 1830s rushed past, cotton powered the American economy forward. Demand from British textile mills had already caused a westward-moving land rush across the South by cotton planters, dramatically expanding slavery into new territories. Slave-owning Americans had even settled the Mexican province of Texas. "Funds from the Northeast and England financed the transfer of slaves, purchase of land, and working capital during the period of clearing the land," writes economic historian Douglass C. North. Once cultivated, harvested, and pressed into bales, the cotton enriched not only the planters, but also the merchants, shippers, and financiers of New York. Much of it was transshipped to Britain through Manhattan; even after most of it came to be exported directly from the South, it was in New York-based ships that would return to Manhattan with cargoes of British goods. Then there were loans, commissions, and insurance charges, until one committee of Southern legislators concluded that one-third of each dollar paid for cotton went to New York-a percentage that continued to rise.24 But not all of it crossed the Atlantic. Every year, ever more thousands of dirty white bales were unloaded on New York's slips, then reloaded onto vessels bound for New England. That cotton fed the first real factories in the United States, the waterwheel mills that increasingly crowded the rivers and streams of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, in a great arc centered on Boston. New York took back much of the finished fabric, to be made into clothing in the city's workshops and distributed by the city's merchants. By the time the Lexington Lexington took shape in its shipyard, New York had emerged as capital of the commercial revolution, Boston as capital of the industrial. Businessmen, craftsmen, and messengers, cargoes of cotton and kegs of gold, all passed between them in rising numbers. It was the aorta of the American economy took shape in its shipyard, New York had emerged as capital of the commercial revolution, Boston as capital of the industrial. Businessmen, craftsmen, and messengers, cargoes of cotton and kegs of gold, all passed between them in rising numbers. It was the aorta of the American economy25 The question of transportation between the two cities attracted the attention of the nation's greatest minds and richest men. In 1830, those rich men organized corporations to construct railroads radiating out of Boston. If ever corporations were necessary, it was now, for railways were far more costly and far more complex than textile mills (almost all of which were owned by individual proprietors or partnerships). Curiously, their organizers never wanted to create those corporations in the first place. Historian John Lauritz Larson argues that New England's first railroad promoters initially planned their lines as public works, to be built and owned by the state (as they sometimes were in other regions, as in the case of the Michigan Central). But the state governments refused, due to the failure of various canals and turnpikes to replicate the success of New York's Erie Canal. "Thus it was in frustration (not appreciation for the corporate form) that Massachusetts's railroad pioneers turned to private corporations," Larson writes. This very specific political history set the pattern for American railroads nationwide. Though they were public works in the broadest sense-increasingly important as the common carriers of commerce-they were also private property, owned by individuals who pursued their own interests. In the end, these circumstances would define Vanderbilt's historical role as public figure and private businessman.26 A group of influential New Yorkers organized one of the first of these pioneering railways: the Boston & Providence Railroad, a forty-three-mile line that would link its eponymous cities and allow passengers and freight from Boston to connect to Long Island Sound steamboats, bypassing the long sea trip around Cape Cod. It would prove typical of New England's railroads: short, and specifically designed as part of a combined land-sea route to New York. A continuous railway between Boston and Manhattan was just too expensive to build with the available capital.
In early 1835, the construction crews on the Boston & Providence worked steadily southward. Their destination was the India Point dock in Providence, where the trains would meet the steamboats of the Boston & New York Transportation Company. "The stockholders in both are principally the same," Philip Hone observed in his diary; he himself owned $6,000 in shares in the railroad, and $5,000 in the Transportation Company. The railway connection would cement the latter's near monopoly on steamboat traffic down the length of Long Island Sound.27 The Lexington Lexington threatened that imperium. With the sleek vessel nearing completion, the Transportation Company's directors decided to build a new steamer, the threatened that imperium. With the sleek vessel nearing completion, the Transportation Company's directors decided to build a new steamer, the Massachusetts Massachusetts, in order to defeat it. They also dispatched Captain William Comstock, their general agent, to examine the Lexington Lexington more closely. A tough-minded forty-eight-year-old veteran of the trade, Comstock had to be careful in sneaking aboard, as Vanderbilt himself constantly prowled the yard. ("My instructions in building the more closely. A tough-minded forty-eight-year-old veteran of the trade, Comstock had to be careful in sneaking aboard, as Vanderbilt himself constantly prowled the yard. ("My instructions in building the Lexington Lexington were given from day to day," Vanderbilt explained. "All my boats were thus built under my directions.") Comstock waited until just after the engine was installed, then slipped in to take a quick look around. were given from day to day," Vanderbilt explained. "All my boats were thus built under my directions.") Comstock waited until just after the engine was installed, then slipped in to take a quick look around.
He viewed the Lexington Lexington with skepticism-"I did not like her build," he said-but he had to admit that it represented a remarkable departure. "I had no doubts of her strength and of the plan of securing her deck," he confessed. "In the structure of her keelsons [beams lining the hull to strengthen it], I think them stronger than any boat I ever saw." It was perfectly suited to the rough seas around Rhode Island's Point Judith. Hurrying back to the shipyard of Brown and Bell, Comstock modified the design of the with skepticism-"I did not like her build," he said-but he had to admit that it represented a remarkable departure. "I had no doubts of her strength and of the plan of securing her deck," he confessed. "In the structure of her keelsons [beams lining the hull to strengthen it], I think them stronger than any boat I ever saw." It was perfectly suited to the rough seas around Rhode Island's Point Judith. Hurrying back to the shipyard of Brown and Bell, Comstock modified the design of the Massachusetts Massachusetts accordingly. The new boat would be the same length as the accordingly. The new boat would be the same length as the Lexington Lexington, but far bigger (676 tons to 488), and he wanted it just as strong and fast.
That would prove difficult. When the Lexington Lexington finally slid into the East River in April 1835, Vanderbilt had good reason to exult. He had spent some $75,000 on it, to brilliant effect. He had insisted on "first-rate materials-chestnut, cedar, oak, yellow and white pine," he boasted. "I think she has 30 percent more fastenings than any other boat." Bishop, who was well acquainted with the Transportation Company's steamers, thought "none of them are stronger than the finally slid into the East River in April 1835, Vanderbilt had good reason to exult. He had spent some $75,000 on it, to brilliant effect. He had insisted on "first-rate materials-chestnut, cedar, oak, yellow and white pine," he boasted. "I think she has 30 percent more fastenings than any other boat." Bishop, who was well acquainted with the Transportation Company's steamers, thought "none of them are stronger than the Lexington." Lexington." Theodosius F. Secor said, after helping to install the vast new piston (measuring eleven feet by two), "I consider her as perfect an engine as ever was built." Vanderbilt put it simply: "I should have thought her one of the best boats in New York.... I had so much confidence in her strength, that I always instructed my captains never to stop for foul weather, but if they could see to go ahead, to always go." Theodosius F. Secor said, after helping to install the vast new piston (measuring eleven feet by two), "I consider her as perfect an engine as ever was built." Vanderbilt put it simply: "I should have thought her one of the best boats in New York.... I had so much confidence in her strength, that I always instructed my captains never to stop for foul weather, but if they could see to go ahead, to always go."28 On June 1, the Lexington Lexington embarked on its maiden voyage with streamers flying, its enormous wheels thrashing at the water on either side, its sharp nose slicing through the turbulent currents of Hell Gate into Long Island Sound. It made the 210-mile voyage to Providence in twelve hours-a marvel to travelers who regularly devoted eighteen hours or more to the trip. " embarked on its maiden voyage with streamers flying, its enormous wheels thrashing at the water on either side, its sharp nose slicing through the turbulent currents of Hell Gate into Long Island Sound. It made the 210-mile voyage to Providence in twelve hours-a marvel to travelers who regularly devoted eighteen hours or more to the trip. "FASTEST BOAT IN THE WORLD," announced the Journal of Commerce Journal of Commerce. Though "elegantly fitted up," the paper commented, "her superiority is in her firmness and ease in the water, and above all, in her speed, in which we suppose it is safe to say, she surpasses any boat in the world, and has in fact reached a degree which was supposed two years ago impossible." The Journal Journal voiced a broad consensus that Vanderbilt had achieved one of the great technical triumphs of the day. "Her construction exhibits great knowledge of mechanical principles," it reported, "and a peculiarly bold and independent genius." voiced a broad consensus that Vanderbilt had achieved one of the great technical triumphs of the day. "Her construction exhibits great knowledge of mechanical principles," it reported, "and a peculiarly bold and independent genius."
The envious Captain Comstock watched it churn up the East River at the astonishing rate of twenty miles per hour. But his company had an advantage that Vanderbilt could not match. On June 15, precisely two weeks after the Lexington's Lexington's first trip, the Boston & Providence Railroad began service. It promptly gave the Transportation Company exclusive rights to land at the railroad dock in Providence, and established coordinated through fares and schedules. The contract was signed by Charles H. Russell, president of the steamboat company, and William W. Woolsey president of the railroad. Both men were directors of both companies. As Comstock would say, the Transportation Company had "done up" Cornelius Vanderbilt. first trip, the Boston & Providence Railroad began service. It promptly gave the Transportation Company exclusive rights to land at the railroad dock in Providence, and established coordinated through fares and schedules. The contract was signed by Charles H. Russell, president of the steamboat company, and William W. Woolsey president of the railroad. Both men were directors of both companies. As Comstock would say, the Transportation Company had "done up" Cornelius Vanderbilt.29 Except it hadn't. Vanderbilt prospered by drawing freight from the factories in and around Providence, but passengers were the most lucrative part of the trade-and passengers demanded speed, speed the Lexington Lexington had like no other boat. He slashed the fare, once as high as $10, to $3, and timed his arrivals in Providence to allow his customers time to walk from his dock and buy tickets for the Boston train. Philip Hone himself put the railroad together with Vanderbilt's boat as he marveled at the new swiftness of travel. "The time [of the first train trip] was 2 hours and a half, and the had like no other boat. He slashed the fare, once as high as $10, to $3, and timed his arrivals in Providence to allow his customers time to walk from his dock and buy tickets for the Boston train. Philip Hone himself put the railroad together with Vanderbilt's boat as he marveled at the new swiftness of travel. "The time [of the first train trip] was 2 hours and a half, and the Lexington Lexington steam boat goes from New York to Providence in 12 hours," he wrote in his diary, "so that persons leaving this city at 6 in the morning can unstrap their trunks at their lodgings in Boston by daylight on a summer day" steam boat goes from New York to Providence in 12 hours," he wrote in his diary, "so that persons leaving this city at 6 in the morning can unstrap their trunks at their lodgings in Boston by daylight on a summer day"30 Cheap fares and breathtaking speeds made steamboat travel on Long Island Sound a widely shared experience in the 1830s. The docks and decks of paddlewheelers began to turn up in stories, novels, and anecdotes. "The boat was ready to start-the second bell was ringing-every thing was in confusion," went a typical tale, from the Providence Journal in Providence Journal in 1836. "Disconsolate old gentlemen were searching in vain for their baggage, and terrified young ladies were trembling, lest half their party were left on shore. Porters were flying backwards and forwards with trunks and band-boxes, and stumbling over nursery maids, with children in their arms. The heavy arms of the engine moved slowly up and down, and the boat, impatient of restraint, swayed to and fro, gathering up her energies for a mighty plunge." 1836. "Disconsolate old gentlemen were searching in vain for their baggage, and terrified young ladies were trembling, lest half their party were left on shore. Porters were flying backwards and forwards with trunks and band-boxes, and stumbling over nursery maids, with children in their arms. The heavy arms of the engine moved slowly up and down, and the boat, impatient of restraint, swayed to and fro, gathering up her energies for a mighty plunge."31 "Directly you have left the wharf, all the life, and stir, and bustle of a packet cease," wrote Charles Dickens a few years later, after taking a Long Island Sound steamer. "The passengers, unless the weather be very fine indeed, usually congregate below.... There is always a clerk's office on the lower deck, where you pay your fare; a ladies' cabin; baggage and stowage rooms; engineer's room; and in short a great variety of perplexities which render the discovery of the gentleman's cabin a matter of some difficulty. It often occupies the whole length of the boat (as it did in this case), and has three or four tiers of berths [bunks] on each side." The more commonplace steamboat travel became, the more that customers demanded creature comforts. "Passengers are now-a-days expected to have every thing extravagant," grumbled Comstock. During the day, the crew set up two rows of long rectangular tables where stewards served drinks and luxurious meals.32 Transportation, not fledgling factories, captured Americans' imagination. It seemed to be the most strategic sector of the economy in this sprawling country, and Vanderbilt took a strategic view of it. His attack on the Transportation Company was only one part of an emerging campaign all along Long Island Sound. In the fall of 1835, for example, he shifted the Lexington Lexington to the run to Hartford to reinforce his assault on Menemon Sanford, another hard-edged steamboat captain who largely dominated shipping to New Haven and Hartford. Vanderbilt instinctively despised him, for he had a particularly untrustworthy reputation. "As to Sanford," Comstock declared, "I believe him to be a person void of truth and character." Vanderbilt advertised his offensive against him under the Jacksonian headline " to the run to Hartford to reinforce his assault on Menemon Sanford, another hard-edged steamboat captain who largely dominated shipping to New Haven and Hartford. Vanderbilt instinctively despised him, for he had a particularly untrustworthy reputation. "As to Sanford," Comstock declared, "I believe him to be a person void of truth and character." Vanderbilt advertised his offensive against him under the Jacksonian headline "OPPOSITION TO IMPOSITION: NO MONOPOLY-FREE TRADE & EQUAL RIGHTS TRADE & EQUAL RIGHTS."
With two business wars raging on Long Island Sound, he began to concentrate all his resources there. On August 27, 1835, he sold off the Water Witch Water Witch and the and the Cinderella Cinderella, along with his lucrative Elizabethtown ferry, to a group of six men for the hefty sum of $74,000-enough to build a fast and luxurious steamboat on the model of the Lexington Lexington, which he would christen Cleopatra Cleopatra.33 In 1836 he again sent the Lexington Lexington to Providence under the command of his brother Jacob. The Transportation Company retaliated with the to Providence under the command of his brother Jacob. The Transportation Company retaliated with the Rhode Island Rhode Island, the new Massachusetts Massachusetts, and in October the Narragansett Narragansett-all bigger but none so fast. Vanderbilt slashed his fare to $1 and added the beautiful new Cleopatra Cleopatra. But the Lexington Lexington remained the popular favorite. "The speed and excellence of this boat require no comment from us," the remained the popular favorite. "The speed and excellence of this boat require no comment from us," the Providence Journal Providence Journal observed. The observed. The Providence Courier Providence Courier called it "this far-famed water witch, which measures distances as fast as one can keep account of the miles." Even Comstock grudgingly allowed that it was "the fastest boat on the route." called it "this far-famed water witch, which measures distances as fast as one can keep account of the miles." Even Comstock grudgingly allowed that it was "the fastest boat on the route."34 Not everyone celebrated the Lexington Lexington. Philip Hone, for one, went aboard Comstock's prize Massachusetts Massachusetts and was moved to write, "She is decidedly the finest vessel I ever saw." He owned a large amount of stock in the Transportation Company, of course; but he was also a Whig. He and his party feared the destructive power represented by the and was moved to write, "She is decidedly the finest vessel I ever saw." He owned a large amount of stock in the Transportation Company, of course; but he was also a Whig. He and his party feared the destructive power represented by the Lexington Lexington. "The proprietors of steamboats... not unfrequently carry the spirit of competition to a ruinous and ridiculous extent," wrote another Whig, the editor of the New-York Mirror New-York Mirror. "Mr. Vanderbilt, a large capitalist, and doubtless an enterprising man, with a view of breaking down what has been denominated the 'odious eastern monopoly' has placed several swift and commodious steamers on the Boston line, and you may now take a trip from New-York to Providence for the trifling consideration of one dollar, lawful currency!" The editor feared that Vanderbilt would wipe out the established Transportation Company-annihilating its hard-to-come-by capital-and replace it with a chaotic world without social distinctions.
In a crowded steamer... whose deck and cabin are thronged with what the great bard calls "all sorts of people," there is no more comfort than there is said to be in a badly governed family... when, the old ballad tells us, all is topsy-turvy and most admired confusion. Yet we would not be understood as raising our feeble voice in defence of any monopoly under the sun; but more especially that of steamboats. Far be it from us.
A feeble voice indeed. Conservative Whigs felt themselves losing their struggle against laissez-faire, as both an economic and and a social phenomenon. As one paper declared, "OPPOSITION a social phenomenon. As one paper declared, "OPPOSITION is the very life of business is the very life of business.,"35 But the Transportation Company still had its exclusive contract with the Boston & Providence Railroad. During the winter of 183637, Vanderbilt's agent in Providence, a popular businessman named John W. Richmond, devised a plan to destroy that advantage. Richmond detested monopolies with the passion of a full-blooded radical Democrat. He believed that he could convince the Rhode Island legislature that the contract violated the railroad's state charter, and he eagerly shared his ideas with Vanderbilt.
The no-nonsense captain responded in November 1836 in his hasty, erratic scrawl. "Your application to your legislator is received," he wrote; "it looks well." But he was more concerned with securing fuel supplies for the coming season. "In speaking about pine wood think you may ingage from 1 to 2 thousand cords for next season only let us have as good contracts as our oponants," oponants," he scratched. Obsessed with information and control, he bombarded Richmond with a typical barrage of questions. "What progress have you made with your Legislator-how does the passengers get through on Sunday...-how does matters go ginerally-you did not say my preasance wood be nessessary theirfour I have made no calculation to go to your Place." he scratched. Obsessed with information and control, he bombarded Richmond with a typical barrage of questions. "What progress have you made with your Legislator-how does the passengers get through on Sunday...-how does matters go ginerally-you did not say my preasance wood be nessessary theirfour I have made no calculation to go to your Place."36 In January 1837, a committee of the legislature reported that, "by giving a preference to a line of steamboats, in which directors of said Rail Road company owning a controlling portion of the stock... [the Boston & Providence Railroad] departed from the spirit of their Act of Incorporation." Richmond fired off a joyous account to Vanderbilt, telling him that he would now "enjoy... a location at the depot, & also the same rights of having passengers taken in the cars."
Richmond saw the episode as part of the struggle against the tyranny of monopolistic corporations. The hearings attracted "an immense crowd of spectators," he wrote proudly. He hailed the result as "a great victory. It is not only so in the consequences to you, but there is also some pride in the manner & circumstances of its attainment. It is the result of individual exertion against a mass of corporate wealth.... You will now stand on ground of fair competition."
Vanderbilt's reply marked a subtle but profound turn in his life. It appeared in the careful penmanship of a clerk; its praise for Richmond's triumph marched in formulaic phrases that had the air of having been inserted by a more literate assistant, phrases that distanced the entire episode from Vanderbilt himself. "It must be extremely gratifying to you to succeed in spite of all the force of such a powerful combination of companies against you," it began. "It will be a stroke that your opponents will not forget shortly."
So much for Jacksonian platitudes. The rest of the letter was dedicated to practical business issues; though written in the clerk's hand, it breathed Vanderbilt's authentic voice. "I have not had any communication with the [Transportation Company] since my boats laid up [for winter], nor do I wish to have anything to do with them," he said. "I am now repairing my boats, fitting them with state rooms.... I do not wish to start my boats until wood [for fuel] can be procured by the cargo. This single cord business will not answer." The enemy, preparations for battle, logistics: these were Vanderbilt's obsessions. With the legal battle won, he brusquely dismissed it as Richmond's personal affair. When the lawyer who had argued before the legislature billed him, he refused to pay37 "Vanderbilt is building a splendid steamer to run on the Sound in opposition to the Transportation Company's boats to commence on the Ist of March," announced the New York Evening Post New York Evening Post on February 10, 1837. "He is the greatest on February 10, 1837. "He is the greatest practical practical anti-monopolist in the country." High praise, coming from William Leggett, the radical Jacksonian prophet-but he was wise to stress anti-monopolist in the country." High praise, coming from William Leggett, the radical Jacksonian prophet-but he was wise to stress practical practical. In the case of Cornelius Vanderbilt, circumstances made the idealist. When launching a high-speed raid on a fortified, established enemy, he very easily and naturally imagined his battles in the political terms of the day. It suited him to denounce his foe as an "aristocratic monopoly," to sail under the banner of "Free Trade & Equal Rights." He clearly believed it. But circumstances would change.
HE REALLY WAS GOING TO DIE THIS TIME, Linsly thought. Seated at the side of Vanderbilt's bed in his house, now at 173 East Broadway, in December 1836, the doctor observed his shallow breaths and intense pain. The ailment had seized him abruptly; but the doctor believed it had been lying in wait since the railroad accident three years before. He diagnosed "pleuro-pneumonia" in the lung that had been punctured then. Most likely it was an infection of the pleura, the membrane outside the lung, or else pneumothorax, an air pocket there that constricted or collapsed the lung. In any case, Linsly believed it would be fatal.
"I advised him to settle up his business, as I thought he could not live," the doctor later said. Vanderbilt sent for his attorney, and turned to Sophia. These were dark hours; a few weeks earlier, on November 16, their four-year-old son George had died. Nineteen-year-old Ethelinda was in the room with them as well, along with Daniel B. Allen, her husband of two years; the young couple had lived in the Vanderbilt house since their marriage. Allen listened to them discuss the will of Vanderbilt's late father, and saw them nod approvingly over its "equal distribution of property" But there was one provision of the will that Sophia did not approve of: the punitive one stipulating what would befall the widow if she remarried. Nonetheless, Vanderbilt would have the same terms in his own will.
Elsewhere in the house, James M. Cross waited anxiously with his wife, Phebe (Vanderbilt's eldest child), and their two-year-old son, Cornelius. They sat with the swarm of Vanderbilt's younger children and fretted. "We thought he would die," Cross said. Vanderbilt's lawyer arrived and hurried into the sickroom. When he left, they were all called to Vanderbilt's bedside. The prostrate patriarch confirmed their fears; he said he would not live long. "Don't be too anxious to make money," he told them. "There's enough for you all." As Cross recalled, "That was the whole of his conversation."38 It seemed as if the captain shared his flesh with his country-he quickened when it quickened, he struggled when it struggled. Just as three years before, he fell from a triumphant rise to a life-threatening illness as the country dropped from manic prosperity into crisis. From the East River to the Missouri River, from Boston to New Orleans, a financial panic now closed its grip on the nation. In Vanderbilt's house and out on the streets, no one believed in recovery. It appeared, as the evangelists of the Second Great Awakening had preached, that the end times had arrived.
It was so different a year earlier, when the island city was literally rising from the ashes. On December 16, 1835, a monstrous fire had burned out the commercial heart of New York. The ubiquitous Philip Hone saw everything. "When I arrived at the spot the scene exceeded all description," he wrote; "the progress of the flames, like flashes of lightning, communicated in every direction, and a few minutes sufficed to level the lofty edifices on every side." Afterward looters prowled the smoking ruins, getting drunk on recovered wine. "This will make the aristocracy haul in their horns!" they shouted. "Ah! They'll make no more five per cent dividends!"39 By the afternoon of December 17, though, gangs of workmen were "clearing the still warm rubble," historians Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace write. Rebuilding began at once. Banks, insurance companies, brokers, and merchants in the "burnt district" demolished brick shells and raised columned, classical structures along Wall Street. And so, Burrows and Wallace record, "the value of Manhattan real estate, registered at $143 million in 1835, mounted to $233 million within ten months."
Stock and bond trading continued undisturbed in the aftermath of the great fire; in fact, it scudded ahead on a surge of speculation. Booming British textile mills boosted America's cotton-dependent economy; land prices soared, especially in the South. The number of banks exploded. Buoyed by specie and bountiful credits from Britain (itself enriched by exporting opium to China), giddy with optimism and the demands of capital-hungry borrowers, bankers radically expanded their loans. In the most extreme cases, western "wildcat" banks (named after the design on the notes of a particularly reckless Michigan institution) issued notes with little or no coin in reserve. The money supply inflated from $172 million to $276 million in just two years. The nation was on a winning streak, and it kept on spinning the wheel.40 Spinning the wheel was a connection that seemed more than a metaphor even at the time. "'Sporting houses' are in every part of town," observed the New York Herald New York Herald on October 5, 1836. "Several faro banks on October 5, 1836. "Several faro banks* have just opened, which are much more replenished with real capital than half the banks in Michigan." Gambling preoccupied society from high to low in this year of exuberance. "Literature, philosophy, and taste, are beginning to frequent the faro bank, and woman also has found an have just opened, which are much more replenished with real capital than half the banks in Michigan." Gambling preoccupied society from high to low in this year of exuberance. "Literature, philosophy, and taste, are beginning to frequent the faro bank, and woman also has found an entree entree," the Herald Herald noted. noted.
Prostitution flourished openly, and it, too, seemed stitched into the fabric of the times. When courtesan Helen Jewett was murdered that year, the Herald Herald called her "the goddess of a large race of merchants, dealers, clerks, and their instruments," who hired whores to entertain clients. Her brothel, intriguingly was in a building owned by John R. Livingston. called her "the goddess of a large race of merchants, dealers, clerks, and their instruments," who hired whores to entertain clients. Her brothel, intriguingly was in a building owned by John R. Livingston.41 Livingston's social equals might not have frequented brothels, but they certainly were sporting with their money. Many entered their horses in the Union Course races on Long Island. John C. Stevens and Samuel L. Gouverneur offered a thousand dollars to any man who could run ten miles in an hour. On Wall Street, Hone observed "the gambling in stocks" as a fever for canals and railroads that seized men with capital, or simply access to someone else's capital-Vanderbilt's, for instance. Throughout 1836 the buoyant captain extended credit to New York's eager businessmen. On April 5, he loaned two Staten Islanders $8,000; on May 3, he loaned a city merchant $15,000; on October 29, he and James Guyon loaned another Staten Islander $35,000. These were large sums (Hone gloated about selling his prime Broadway lot for $60,000), and he probably loaned more. It revealed the demand for credit on one hand and the captain's prosperity on the other-for this was merely a sideline, a way to keep his surplus cash busy earning 6 or 7 percent. Yet he was careful in his agreements, demanding valuable real estate on Staten Island, Coenties Slip, and Warren Street as collateral.42 All this told Andrew Jackson that he had caged the Monster only to spawn a nation of speculators. "The present bloat in the paper system cannot continue," declared his ally, Senator Thomas "Old Bullion" Benton. "I did not join in putting down the paper currency of a national bank, to put up a national paper currency of a thousand local banks. I did not strike Caesar to make Anthony master of Rome." On July 11, 1836, Jackson issued the Specie Circular, requiring coin, not banknotes, in payment for federal lands. Westward-moving settlers began to demand gold for their banknotes, making everyone worry about how long the shell game could go on.
On November 12, four days before the death of Vanderbilt's son George, Hone made a nervous entry in his diary. "There has been for some time past a severe pressure for money," he wrote, "which continues, and I feel the effects of it. Stocks have fallen very much." Jackson's redistribution of federal deposits was about to begin. "By this unnatural process," Nicholas Biddle reported, "the specie of New York and other commercial cities is piled up in Western States... and while the West cannot use it-the East is suffering from the want of it.... Europe is alarmed and the Bank of England itself uneasy at the quantity of specie we possess." The Bank of England began to restrict credit in order to reserve more silver in its vaults, and the tightening soon squeezed the United States. The bottom of the bag was beginning to tear.43 As the grim, gray new year dawned in 1837, Vanderbilt planned for death. For the previous three years he had begrudged various clerical tasks to his son-in-law, Daniel Allen; now he had to delegate a few basic responsibilities. He called Allen to his bedside and gave instructions. Allen went out into the winter air to Vanderbilt's office on South Street, then sat down to write letters, asking for an accounting from his father-in-law's agents. "Mr. Allen wrote a week or ten days since for the bills to be forwarded to him," John W. Richmond informed Vanderbilt on January 24, 1837. "I have sent him a detailed statement of them." He promised to deliver the originals at "the first interview with you or him."44 For six weeks Vanderbilt was struggling, gasping, inert. Then there occurred something perhaps as straightforward as the response of his immune system, or the seeping of air out of the pocket outside his lung. Or perhaps the cliche applies-that he simply refused to die. There is no underestimating his force of will. Whatever the explanation, for the second time in three years he had avoided seemingly certain death. After a month and a half in bed, he found his feet again and wearily reentered the world of the living. There he discovered that the bottom had ripped out.
On February 25, a Wall Street broker named Joseph Hoxie visited Vanderbilt at his South Street office, where he sat, still weak, beside Daniel Allen. Hoxie explained that he came as an envoy from Nestor Houghton, one of the purchasers of the Elizabethtown ferry. Vanderbilt had just "lodged" (deposited for payment) Houghton's last promissory note for that transaction with his bank. There was a problem, however: Houghton couldn't pay it. Would the good captain be willing to renew the note?
Houghton's desperation marked a troubling shift in the wind. One by one, Vanderbilt's debtors began to default, forcing him to file lawsuits to seize the property they had mortgaged. Then, on March 13, the imposing new marble office building of I. & L. Joseph physically collapsed; at the end of the week, the firm stopped paying its bills, which "occasioned great consternation in Wall Street, for their business has been enormous," Philip Hone recorded on March 17. "The great crisis is near at hand, if it has not already arrived."45 That same day, Vanderbilt advertised the resumption of service on his People's Line to Providence, with his brother Jacob in command of the Lexington Lexington. On March 20, with its machinery repaired, galley stocked, and dishes replaced, the "far-famed" steamer eased out of Peck Slip, churned through Hell Gate, and sliced through the heavy seas of Long Island Sound. The Providence Journal Providence Journal announced its arrival, then went on to observe, "The announced its arrival, then went on to observe, "The money market money market in New York is still in a very precarious state." This was an understatement. As the in New York is still in a very precarious state." This was an understatement. As the Lexington Lexington tied up at the India Dock in Providence, Hone wrote in his diary, "The prospects in Wall Street are getting worse and worse.... The accounts from England are very alarming; the panic prevails there as bad as here. Cotton has fallen. The loss on shipments will be very heavy, and American credits will be withdrawn. The paper of the southern and western merchants is coming back protested." tied up at the India Dock in Providence, Hone wrote in his diary, "The prospects in Wall Street are getting worse and worse.... The accounts from England are very alarming; the panic prevails there as bad as here. Cotton has fallen. The loss on shipments will be very heavy, and American credits will be withdrawn. The paper of the southern and western merchants is coming back protested."46 Hone's analysis was sound. Americans had climbed upward on a pyramid of debts that ultimately rested on high expectations for cotton prices. Instead, the restriction of credit by the Bank of England had been followed by a collapse of the cotton market. It was a classic speculative bubble. Hone had invested hope, and his supply of hope was gone.
"Philip Hone has gone to the d-1, figuratively speaking, having lost pretty much everything by his son... and by some speculation moreover, all of which have eased him out of not much below $200,000," wrote another Wall Street diarist, the pious George Templeton Strong, in April. "Confidence annihilated, the whole community big and little, traveling to ruin in a body." On May 3, he exclaimed, "So they go-smash, crash. Where in the name of wonder is there to be an end of it? Near two hundred and fifty failures thus far!"47 "We are in the midst of a great revolution," the New York Herald New York Herald proclaimed. "Wall street, and its business neighborhood, from river to river, has been for a week in a terrible convulsion. The banks-the merchants-the brokers-the speculators, have been rolling onward together in one undistinguishable mass, down the stream of bankruptcy and ruin." A desperate mob attacked a warehouse where flour was stored, as radical Democrats rallied in the streets. "A deep and radical revolution for a year past has been ripening and ripening in politics as well as commerce," the paper added. On May 9, the Dry Dock Bank locked its doors and refused to redeem its notes in gold and silver coin. "Crowds of exasperated creditors collected and great alarm prevailed," Hone recorded. The other banks followed suit. proclaimed. "Wall street, and its business neighborhood, from river to river, has been for a week in a terrible convulsion. The banks-the merchants-the brokers-the speculators, have been rolling onward together in one undistinguishable mass, down the stream of bankruptcy and ruin." A desperate mob attacked a warehouse where flour was stored, as radical Democrats rallied in the streets. "A deep and radical revolution for a year past has been ripening and ripening in politics as well as commerce," the paper added. On May 9, the Dry Dock Bank locked its doors and refused to redeem its notes in gold and silver coin. "Crowds of exasperated creditors collected and great alarm prevailed," Hone recorded. The other banks followed suit.48 Vanderbilt slithered unsinged through the financial fire. He had no speculative embarrassments, no debts pledged against consignments of cotton. True, the stocks he owned may have lost some of their market value; their dividends may have been suspended; the promissory notes he held may have gone unpaid. But he had demanded premium real estate as collateral; his property consisted largely of state-of-the-art steamboats; and his was a business that remained in demand. Indeed, he had an abundance of that most valuable item in a deflationary panic: cold, hard cash-piles of silver shillings and gold dollars paid for fares.49 Even weakened by illness, Vanderbilt remained an instinctive predator, and, like every predator, he was drawn to the scent of the sick and the vulnerable. To him, the great Panic of 1837 was a time for the hunt. He left his son-in-law Allen to manage the humdrum daily affairs of the steamers. Allen ordered supplies and paid bills, coordinated with captains, and met with merchants who had freight to ship. The nature of a maritime business fortuitously gave the enterprise a neatly compartmentalized structure. With each captain managing the personnel and daily affairs of his boat, the rest of the operational details could be handled by Allen in New York and a single agent in each port.50 Vanderbilt also hired a personal clerk in 1837: a native of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, named Lambert Wardell, who would stay by his side until his death. Looking back decades later, Wardell vividly remembered the day when, as an inconspicuous, unambitious twenty-two-year-old, he began to work for Vanderbilt. Like everyone else, he was overwhelmed by Vanderbilt's physical presence. His new employer "was a man of striking individuality," he recalled, "as straight as an Indian, standing six feet in his stockings and weighing about two hundred pounds." By the time Wardell started work, Vanderbilt had recovered from his near-fatal ailment; the new clerk found him to be "very strong" with "great powers of endurance," a man who exuded raw energy. "His personal appearance was very neat.... He was very abstemious, being a light eater and never drank to any extent, not even at his meals, taking liquor only as medicine." His only vice was smoking; he "always had a cigar in his mouth, either lit or unlit." That iron self-control proved to be as important to his success as his ruthlessness; never did he let his emotions, or ambitions, get the best of him. "He never had a debt and never bought anything on credit," Wardell declared (with some exaggeration). "He was economical almost to extremes."51 Frugality was one of Vanderbilt's most potent weapons as he hammered his opponents in this year of desperation. The Lexington Lexington now formally connected with the trains of the Boston & Providence Railroad, which hit the Transportation Company hard. He dispatched two boats to smash Menemon Sanford at Hartford and New Haven. Not content to name merely a son after himself, he launched "the new and fast sailing Steam Boat C. VANDERBILT," as he advertised it. now formally connected with the trains of the Boston & Providence Railroad, which hit the Transportation Company hard. He dispatched two boats to smash Menemon Sanford at Hartford and New Haven. Not content to name merely a son after himself, he launched "the new and fast sailing Steam Boat C. VANDERBILT," as he advertised it.
As he added vessels, he pioneered new routes. "The mode of arriving at the eastern part of Long Island has hitherto been by means of small sailing vessels, or by stage coaches," the New York Evening Post New York Evening Post observed on July 15. "A more rapid and direct means of conveyance is now provided. Captain Vanderbilt has made arrangements for running the fine steamboats observed on July 15. "A more rapid and direct means of conveyance is now provided. Captain Vanderbilt has made arrangements for running the fine steamboats Cleopatra Cleopatra and and Clifton Clifton from this city to Oyster-Pond Point and Sag Harbor." The paper helpfully noted, "The east end of Long Island offers a quiet and agreeable retreat from the noise, heat, and polluted air of the town." from this city to Oyster-Pond Point and Sag Harbor." The paper helpfully noted, "The east end of Long Island offers a quiet and agreeable retreat from the noise, heat, and polluted air of the town."52 He also scanned the map for more distant targets. The panic may have disrupted the South's economy, he realized, but it would soon recover. Now was the time to strike at its coastal trade, while the market was vulnerable to a newcomer. "The new and elegant steam packet North Carolina North Carolina, Capt. Reynolds, recently built in New York, and owned by Commodore Vanderbilt, arrived here on Saturday night from that city on her way to Wilmington, N.C., between which place and Charleston she is to run," declared the Norfolk Herald Norfolk Herald on November 26. "The on November 26. "The North Carolina North Carolina is 170 feet in length.... Her furniture, accommodations, and equipments, are all of the best description, and admirably arranged for the comfort and convenience of the passengers." is 170 feet in length.... Her furniture, accommodations, and equipments, are all of the best description, and admirably arranged for the comfort and convenience of the passengers."
The Norfolk Herald Norfolk Herald was the first newspaper to give him the honorific title of "Commodore." At the time, it was the highest rank in the United States Navy, and had been given before to notable steamboat men. The nickname made little impact at the time; though reprinted in New York's was the first newspaper to give him the honorific title of "Commodore." At the time, it was the highest rank in the United States Navy, and had been given before to notable steamboat men. The nickname made little impact at the time; though reprinted in New York's Journal of Commerce Journal of Commerce, it came and went, a passing tribute to Vanderbilt's aggressiveness. Yet it was also a sign of a change in his disposition.53 The captain had always played a double role-that of creator and destroyer, provider and plunderer. He had built his wealth through piratical raids, scourging monopolies with a mastery of tactics and "an economy not known to your opponents," as John W. Richmond put it, until they paid him blackmail. He also had established his own lines, which he fiercely defended. But the balance within him subtly began to shift, as he formulated the words he would later say to Dr. Linsly: "I think I have been spared to accomplish a great work that will last and remain." His buccaneering days were far from over, but he rather liked the title of commodore. It spoke of a commander, not a despoiler. By the end of the next decade, it would be a title associated with no one else.
* Faro is a card game in which players bet against the dealer, or "banker," who draws two cards per turn. Faro is a card game in which players bet against the dealer, or "banker," who draws two cards per turn.
Chapter Five.
SOLE CONTROL.
On March 8, 1878, the murmuring and rustling of a crowded courtroom in lower Manhattan suddenly fell still. Eighty-year-old Daniel Drew rose from his seat and cautiously ascended to the witness chair. He had been in court more than once that winter, his fragile bones and papery skin "wrapped up in sealskins and mufflers," the press reported, lips tight and pinched as if they had been sewn shut. He sat slowly, settled his hands on the armrests, and "looked shrewdly at the lawyers with his small gray eyes." He had been called to testify in what newspaper headlines called "THE GREAT WILL CONTEST."
When prompted, he tersely admitted "that he knew Commodore Vanderbilt very well," according to the New York Sun New York Sun. He knew his sons, too, who now sat across the aisle from one another: William Henry Vanderbilt, plump and content, wearing a slight smile between the huge sideburns that clung to his cheeks like frightened monkeys, having "apparently inherited good health as well as nearly all the wealth of his father," a reporter commented; and Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt, "looking pale, thin, and meek," disinherited, epileptic, and unhappy. "Occasionally Cornelius cast a furtive glance at William, but William never noticed Cornelius."
Drew could have told stories of his secret cooperation with Vanderbilt over the decades, a partnership that had first blossomed at the end of the 1830s. But he did nothing of the sort. Yes, he told the court, he had had many conversations with Vanderbilt; unfortunately, he could not remember the substance of a single one of them. As the New York Times New York Times put it, "His testimony was of no importance." Vanderbilt would have been proud. If there was one trait that had led him to trust Drew, a man notorious for self-interest, it was his silence. And in the aftermath of the Panic of 1837, there had been much to be silent about. put it, "His testimony was of no importance." Vanderbilt would have been proud. If there was one trait that had led him to trust Drew, a man notorious for self-interest, it was his silence. And in the aftermath of the Panic of 1837, there had been much to be silent about.1 THE STONINGTON COULD CHANGE everything. On November 10, 1837, the first train had passed down its full fifty miles of track from Providence, where it connected to the Boston & Providence by ferry, to Stonington, Connecticut, a village seaport on Long Island Sound. Officially called the New York, Providence & Boston Railroad, and better known as the Stonington, it cut inside dreaded Point Judith, where steamboats ran into rough seas, which eliminated three hours and much seasickness from the trip between New York and Boston. everything. On November 10, 1837, the first train had passed down its full fifty miles of track from Providence, where it connected to the Boston & Providence by ferry, to Stonington, Connecticut, a village seaport on Long Island Sound. Officially called the New York, Providence & Boston Railroad, and better known as the Stonington, it cut inside dreaded Point Judith, where steamboats ran into rough seas, which eliminated three hours and much seasickness from the trip between New York and Boston.
Soon after that first locomotive opened the route, Cornelius Vanderbilt investigated the line for himself. His nearly fatal accident four years earlier had not made him hostile to trains, as some later claimed; he keenly understood that control of traffic on Long Island Sound lay in the strategic balance between steamboats and railroads-and between rival railroads, as this and other lines neared completion. So he took a steamer to Stonington, boarded a train, and rode up the line to Providence. "There's nothing like it," he told the line's chief engineer three years later. "The first time I ever traveled over the Stonington, I made up my mind." It was the fastest route to Boston, potentially the key to the entire battle for the Sound.
And yet, the Stonington was a crippled giant. Its exorbitant construction costs "were a scandal," according to one railroad historian. "Its fifty miles, through a far from forbidding territory, had taken $1,300,000 in stock and $1,300,000 in bonds." Everyone who looked into its affairs could see that the interest on that staggering debt would weigh heavily for years to come.2 Strategically situated, financially vulnerable, the Stonington gave Vanderbilt much to think about as he returned to New York. Strategically situated, financially vulnerable, the Stonington gave Vanderbilt much to think about as he returned to New York.
Back at his office, now at 169 South Street, he found Daniel Allen and Lambert Wardell waiting for him with bills and correspondence. His brother Jacob needed to speak to him concerning his plan to burn coal in the Lexington Lexington in an attempt to save fuel costs and deck space; the engineer had no experience with coal and had to be fired. in an attempt to save fuel costs and deck space; the engineer had no experience with coal and had to be fired.3 But perhaps most pressing of all was the problem of Billy. But perhaps most pressing of all was the problem of Billy.
Vanderbilt's oldest son, William, had now passed sixteen, the age when both Cornelius and Jacob had started out in life. Vanderbilt thought it was time for Billy (as he always called him) to make his own way. But the contrast between himself and his son distressed him. Vanderbilt radiated strength, and he grew more imperious every year. Wardell could not recollect a single instance of him admitting that he was wrong. "If he was interrupted when he was relating something," noted Dr. Linsly "he would stop and never say another word-never resume the subject." Allen later recalled, "He was always censorious towards people who differed with him."
Billy could not have been more different, Allen explained. "We were acquainted in our boyhood days, and the intimacy increased after I married his sister," he said. "He never in all that time made, to my knowledge, a single objection to anything his father suggested, either in business or in other matters. His father's will with him was absolute." Billy's lack of spine aggravated Vanderbilt, who expected more of his blood. He often pressed his "delicate" son, calling him a blatherskite and a blockhead. When he did, Allen saw Billy's face collapse into "a peculiar sort of expression-an expression peculiar to him-a falling down of his jaw, a sorrowful look and a whining sort of noise."4 After a brief education at the Columbia College grammar school, Billy had taken a job with a ship chandler, but the hard labor did not suit him. So Vanderbilt turned to Daniel Drew. This pious, deceitful, inn-keeping, cattle-dealing moneylender had adopted the People's Line name and competed against the Hudson River monopoly until he secured his own payoff in 1836. But Drew soon revived the line and assumed control of the monopoly himself. And that was why Vanderbilt and Drew grew so close, after so much enmity. They made an unwritten agreement to invest in the other's steamboats, precisely because neither had met a more dangerous opponent; giving a share to the other would make it in the interests of each to avoid competition.5 Vanderbilt wanted Billy to have a post in Drew's brokerage house. Together with Nelson Robinson and Eli Kelley (and later Kelley's son Robert), Drew worked at the center of Wall Street, trading stocks and bonds and serving as a "banknote shaver." The firm facilitated longdistance financial transactions by buying notes and bills of exchange of far-removed banks and merchants at a discount, securing payment from the issuer or reselling them at a profit. It was an extremely risky business, especially in the aftermath of the panic. "The banks will not will not discount under present circumstances freely to good and safe men. They are afraid of each other," declared the discount under present circumstances freely to good and safe men. They are afraid of each other," declared the New York Courier and Enquirer New York Courier and Enquirer. "Nearly every transaction is for cash." Drew, Robinson, & Co. were willing, but they demanded a stiff premium for their services.
This kind of financial tightrope act would make a man out of Billy and teach him the value of money, his father seemed to think. Drew accepted the teenager as his clerk, but wanted something for himself: the use of the speedy new C. Vanderbilt C. Vanderbilt for his People's Line on the Hudson, to run at the start of the season, in March 1838. Vanderbilt gladly let his secret partner use it, for he now took a share in the ownership of the People's Line as Drew established himself as the river's new monopolist. These former rivals were becoming close allies and friends. But Billy's fate was another matter entirely for his People's Line on the Hudson, to run at the start of the season, in March 1838. Vanderbilt gladly let his secret partner use it, for he now took a share in the ownership of the People's Line as Drew established himself as the river's new monopolist. These former rivals were becoming close allies and friends. But Billy's fate was another matter entirely6 "I DID SUPPOSE THAT ALL NAVIGABLE WATERS were public highways, and open to all," Vanderbilt declared; "therefore I do not complain at any gentlemen running their boat against those that I may see proper to run." The signed statement appeared in the were public highways, and open to all," Vanderbilt declared; "therefore I do not complain at any gentlemen running their boat against those that I may see proper to run." The signed statement appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser and Patriot Boston Daily Advertiser and Patriot in July 1838. By now there was nothing surprising about his Jacksonian rhetoric. In this case, he was replying to advertisements "signed by the Directors of the Steam boat in July 1838. By now there was nothing surprising about his Jacksonian rhetoric. In this case, he was replying to advertisements "signed by the Directors of the Steam boat Huntress... Huntress... [which] seem to aim at me and my boat, [which] seem to aim at me and my boat, the Augusta," the Augusta," he explained. "And why? because of my having chosen to put a boat on the route between Boston and Kennebec River [in Maine]. Of this newspaper controversy between the he explained. "And why? because of my having chosen to put a boat on the route between Boston and Kennebec River [in Maine]. Of this newspaper controversy between the Directors of incorporated Steamboat Companies Directors of incorporated Steamboat Companies, and individual owners of other boats... I leave the public to judge." Once again, he championed the lone individual against amalgamated wealth with special corporate charters.
But the rhetoric was wearing thin for those who glimpsed a self-serving opportunism beneath it. "We have had a great fuss here about Vanderbilt's boats," wrote a college student from Maine. "Vanderbilt's undisguised end is to drive the Huntress Huntress off the line and control it entirely himself." Wherever Vanderbilt had a chance to dominate a route, in fact, he tried to destroy his rivals. off the line and control it entirely himself." Wherever Vanderbilt had a chance to dominate a route, in fact, he tried to destroy his rivals.7 In April, for example, he had sat down with the president of the Stonington Railroad, Courtlandt Palmer, to offer his advice on how to defeat an opposition steamboat. Vanderbilt had put aside his competition on the Providence route to supply the railroad with the Lexington Lexington as a connecting boat, alongside one provided by his old foe, the Transportation Company. Now the as a connecting boat, alongside one provided by his old foe, the Transportation Company. Now the Kingston Kingston, owned by a party in Boston, was undercutting the fare, and he wanted to fight them face-to-face. "Capt. Vanderbilt is in favor of breaking up the regular line and leaving at the same hour with the opposition," Palmer wrote to William D. Lewis, senior officer of the Girard Bank in Philadelphia, a major holder of the company's stocks and bonds. "Capt. Vanderbilt, who has more experience than all of us united, says he is sure his plan is the right one for the interest of all concerned."8 Vanderbilt agreed with Palmer. In his July newspaper appeal, he saluted himself for his "20 years experience in steamboats;-it has been my whole study, and I have built and owned some twenty and can say, without any intention of boasting, that not one life has ever been lost in any of the number." that not one life has ever been lost in any of the number." (Only a steamboat owner in 1838 would make a point of pride out of never having killed anyone in the ordinary course of business.) It was getting difficult to think of this forty-four-year-old as an outsider. (Only a steamboat owner in 1838 would make a point of pride out of never having killed anyone in the ordinary course of business.) It was getting difficult to think of this forty-four-year-old as an outsider.
Vanderbilt ruthlessly pursued his interests at the expense of his would-be partners. He even used his old enemy as a foil. When the Transportation Company canceled its contract with the Stonington at the end of April, he followed suit. Instead, he offered to lease the Lexington Lexington for $4,000 a month (plus the income from meals and the bar), the same deal offered by the Transportation Company for its steamer, the for $4,000 a month (plus the income from meals and the bar), the same deal offered by the Transportation Company for its steamer, the Narragansett Narragansett. "His terms... are ruinous," Palmer wrote to Lewis. "Vanderbilt is anxious to sell the Lexington Lexington, and offers her for 70,000 dolls.," he added. "It is very desireable if we separate from the Transportation Co. to get Vanderbilt with us. If we do not take him, they will, & if we fight, we shall have to oppose both. But to pay 70,000 dolls. for the Lexington Lexington is buying him off at a price which is out of all reason." is buying him off at a price which is out of all reason."
It was "exorbitant," as Palmer put it, to demand $70,000 for a steamer that had cost $75,000 to build-before it had endured three years of battering and erosion on the rough, salty seas around Point Judith-especially now that steamers 25 percent larger had become the standard on the Sound. But Vanderbilt read his target well. Courtlandt Palmer was weak. This thirty-seven-year-old native of Stonington cringed and fawned before Lewis, the elite Philadelphia banker. He often made marvelously brave noises and then collapsed under pressure. When presented with the lease terms offered by Vanderbilt and the Transportation Company, he roared, "We had better however shut up the road than to accede to either proposal." Eleven days later, on May 3, he squeaked, "I think it for our interest to close with them [Vanderbilt and the Transportation Company] on the [lease] terms proposed. By doing so we avoid a collision."9 No man afraid of a collision could withstand Vanderbilt. No man afraid of a collision could withstand Vanderbilt.
The Stonington sank ever lower. During the summer, Vanderbilt's old agent, John W. Richmond, ran an opposition boat at reduced prices. "She is a sure scourge to us, causing us to lose heavily," Palmer noted. In October, Palmer negotiated a disastrous new contract with the Transportation Company, giving it 70 percent of the through fare between New York and Boston. Meanwhile the line issued more bonds, going deeper into debt.
In the middle of November, with the leasing agreement terminated, Vanderbilt approached Robert Schuyler, the president of the Transportation Company. If the company did not buy the Lexington Lexington, he declared, he would run it to Providence at a fare of $1. Even adding the cost of a ticket on the Boston & Providence Railroad, this would allow travelers to go from New York to Boston for far less than the $5 (or more) that the Stonington demanded. "Our losses will probably be $30,000 in consequence," Palmer fretted, "while the Trans. Co. would lose twice that or more." He and Schuyler immediately opened negotiations. All the while turmoil reigned within the Stonington, as stockholders angrily protested the extraordinary debt that would soon place the corporation in the bondholders' hands (as they held a mortgage on the railroad's physical stock of rails, locomotives, cars, and depots).
At the beginning of January, the Transportation Company agreed to pay $60,000 for the Lexington Lexington, and the Stonington added a $10,000 bonus, thus matching the original demand. No one had any illusions about the reason for the purchase. They were "buying off Vanderbilt," wrote banker Joseph Cowperthwait, a Stonington trustee. As Palmer put it, they were paying for the Lexington Lexington "to get rid of her as an opposition boat." He estimated her worth at $30,000, making a bribe, or "bonus," of some $40,000. "We found it unprofitable [to fight Vanderbilt]," explained Captain William Comstock, the Transportation Company's general agent, "and concluded that it was better to be at peace than at war, on any terms." "to get rid of her as an opposition boat." He estimated her worth at $30,000, making a bribe, or "bonus," of some $40,000. "We found it unprofitable [to fight Vanderbilt]," explained Captain William Comstock, the Transportation Company's general agent, "and concluded that it was better to be at peace than at war, on any terms."10 Such was Vanderbilt's reputation that he not only forced his enemies to buy his too-small boat, but extracted $10,000 from a railroad even as it went bankrupt-and all without a single trip at a reduced fare. But a reputation is a slippery thing. "Before paying it, I sent for Mr. Vanderbilt and received from him a most positive pledge pledge that he would never again in any way interfere with the Line," Palmer wrote. "I asked it in writing but this he declined to give, remarking that I knew his verbal promise could be fully relied on." The hard-bitten Captain Comstock, on the other hand, had "no confidence in him," as he told Schuyler. He was sure that, before long, Vanderbilt would be back that he would never again in any way interfere with the Line," Palmer wrote. "I asked it in writing but this he declined to give, remarking that I knew his verbal promise could be fully relied on." The hard-bitten Captain Comstock, on the other hand, had "no confidence in him," as he told Schuyler. He was sure that, before long, Vanderbilt would be back11 ON THE WARM SUNDAY AFTERNOON of September 2, 1838, a very angry man with the very peculiar name of Oroondates Mauran stepped aboard the of September 2, 1838, a very angry man with the very peculiar name of Oroondates Mauran stepped aboard the Samson Samson, a steam ferryboat as large and powerful as its namesake. The fare collector greeted him respectfully, perhaps with the salutation "Commodore." The Samson Samson belonged to the Richmond Turnpike Company, and Mauran was its president and largest stockholder, as he had been for the previous seven years. "We always understood him to be the general agent as well as the President," the collector explained. "That is what we call 'Commodore.' His word was will there." belonged to the Richmond Turnpike Company, and Mauran was its president and largest stockholder, as he had been for the previous seven years. "We always understood him to be the general agent as well as the President," the collector explained. "That is what we call 'Commodore.' His word was will there."12 Shrewd and tough, Mauran was a merchant with a long history at sea. Twenty years earlier, when Vanderbilt first had met Vice President Daniel D. Tompkins, the founder of the Richmond Turnpike Company, Mauran had owned a three-masted ship, the Maria Caroline Maria Caroline, and he still invested heavily in the Havana trade. But most of his money was in the Richmond Turnpike corporation, which ran a ferry between Staten Island and Manhattan's Whitehall Slip-as it had when John De Forest took command of the Nautilus Nautilus, the first steam ferry between the two islands, in 1817. Now he was having trouble with another of Vanderbilt's relatives: his cousin Oliver Vanderbilt.
Mauran stood on the deck of the Samson Samson as it floated at its Staten Island dock, and gave some last-minute instructions to its master, Captain Braisted. He wanted the boat to get an early start that day. Usually Oliver took the lead with his own ferryboat, the as it floated at its Staten Island dock, and gave some last-minute instructions to its master, Captain Braisted. He wanted the boat to get an early start that day. Usually Oliver took the lead with his own ferryboat, the Wave Wave, and delighted in taunting the Samson Samson. "She generally started first and she would often stop opposite our dock and ring her bell to coax us off," explained Braisted's son. "We would sometimes wait 15 minutes to let the Wave Wave get off." get off."
The harassment enraged Mauran-but then everything about Oliver Vanderbilt enraged him. Oliver had once been a Richmond Turnpike ferry captain and shareholder; on October 19, 1835, he had sold his stock with the explicit understanding that he would not compete against the corporation. "He meant to live on a farm," Cornelius remembered him saying, "and have nothing more to do with a life on the water on account of his health." Instead, Oliver had launched the Wave Wave and began carrying passengers for sixpence, half the company's shilling fare. The rivalry had rapidly escalated to much more than the typical racing, as the boats crowded and nudged each other. "It was a common occurrence for the boats to come together 3 or 4 times a day," one man observed. and began carrying passengers for sixpence, half the company's shilling fare. The rivalry had rapidly escalated to much more than the typical racing, as the boats crowded and nudged each other. "It was a common occurrence for the boats to come together 3 or 4 times a day," one man observed.
The collisions had grown more dangerous. In late August, just three or four days before this particular Sunday afternoon, Captain Braisted had come down to the deck to tell Mauran that the Wave Wave was "crowding him out of his course.... She was a much smarter boat than the was "crowding him out of his course.... She was a much smarter boat than the Samson." Samson." Mauran had glared back at him. "If she ever does that again," he had barked, "damn her, run into her, sink her." Mauran had glared back at him. "If she ever does that again," he had barked, "damn her, run into her, sink her."
On this day, September 2, Braisted took the Samson Samson out with a good head start, but the out with a good head start, but the Wave Wave came up fast on her starboard side. Belowdecks, the bartender heard an enormous crack; he ran out and discovered that Oliver had nosed his boat against the side of the came up fast on her starboard side. Belowdecks, the bartender heard an enormous crack; he ran out and discovered that Oliver had nosed his boat against the side of the Samson Samson, buckling wood for twelve feet behind the starboard paddlewheel. "This made the captain of the Samson Samson much excited," he blandly observed. much excited," he blandly observed.
On the return trip from Whitehall, Braisted angrily ordered his engineer to put on all the steam he could. As the Wave Wave passed Governors Island, passenger Stephen W. West looked over at the passed Governors Island, passenger Stephen W. West looked over at the Samson's Samson's pilothouse. "The pilothouse. "The Samson Samson was about twice her length ahead of the was about twice her length ahead of the Wave Wave when I noticed the Captain throw her wheel around," he recalled, "and the when I noticed the Captain throw her wheel around," he recalled, "and the Samson Samson run directly into the run directly into the Wave." Wave." The The Wave Wave was packed with passengers, including numerous women and children, who began screaming in terror as wood splintered in the collision. Only a last-minute maneuver by Oliver Vanderbilt prevented the blow from striking square amidships and likely sinking his boat. "The was packed with passengers, including numerous women and children, who began screaming in terror as wood splintered in the collision. Only a last-minute maneuver by Oliver Vanderbilt prevented the blow from striking square amidships and likely sinking his boat. "The Samson Samson turned round again and came for another attack," West added. "I saw he was determined to destroy the boat I was in.... I told the captain of the turned round again and came for another attack," West added. "I saw he was determined to destroy the boat I was in.... I told the captain of the Samson Samson he would have company in the wheelhouse if he came near enough to us. Myself and some 15 or 20 others made preparations to attack. We got hold of sticks of wood and what loose things we could, 15 or 20 of us to get aboard of her." he would have company in the wheelhouse if he came near enough to us. Myself and some 15 or 20 others made preparations to attack. We got hold of sticks of wood and what loose things we could, 15 or 20 of us to get aboard of her."
The Samson Samson sheered off before West and his boarding party could capture it, but on landing at Staten Island the sheered off before West and his boarding party could capture it, but on landing at Staten Island the Wave's Wave's frenzied passengers stormed the ferry house of the Richmond Turnpike Company. "Mr. Mau-ran was on the dock when the people were destroying the property and he was much excited as were also the people," declared the fare collector, "and I think if he had gone 10 feet further he would have been killed or thrown into the water." frenzied passengers stormed the ferry house of the Richmond Turnpike Company. "Mr. Mau-ran was on the dock when the people were destroying the property and he was much excited as were also the people," declared the fare collector, "and I think if he had gone 10 feet further he would have been killed or thrown into the water."
"Immediately after landing," West said, "when on the wharf at Staten Island, I asked Mr. Mauran whether he did not think it was unpardonable to allow his boat to run into and try to sink the Wave Wave, when so many people were on board of her." Mauran replied, "Damn him I wish he had sunk him." West had had his young son aboard the Wave Wave, and Mauran's heartlessness infuriated him.13 The steamboat trade had always been the most aggressively competitive business in America. Its fare wars, populist advertising, and highspeed racing embodied the nation's individualistic, unregulated society. It also embodied its mechanized, unregulated violence, with its deadly boiler explosions and reckless desperation to defeat the opposition. "ANOTHER, AND YET ANOTHER," declared one newspaper in late 1837. "It is hardly worthwhile to attempt keeping any account of the steamboat disasters which are daily and almost hourly occurring, for no one seems to feel any interest in the subject." Conservative Whigs such as Philip Hone found the mayhem "shocking in the extreme, and a stigma on our country. We have become the most careless, reckless, headlong people on the face of the earth," he wrote. "'Go ahead' is our maxim and password; and we do go ahead with a vengeance, regardless of consequences and indifferent about the value of human life." It was the Democratic newspapers that made a point of praising "the incalculable benefits of competition" which helped "the people at large, by causing great and permanent reductions of fare on several of the most important routes." The Whig press, on the other hand, warned that it could go too far, and lead not only to bloodshed, but to "the utter ruin of one or both the competitors. When this occurs, the community must of course suffer in turn."
Yet the Whigs were coming to terms with competition. In 1838, they won control of New York's state government under the leadership of a triumvirate composed of Governor William H. Seward, newspaper editor Horace Greeley, and Albany party boss Thurlow Weed, who sought to wed active government with equality of opportunity. In an Independence Day address in 1839, Seward attacked special privileges, saying it was the Whigs' mission to "break the control of the few over the many, extend the largest liberty to the greatest number." In other words, government would aid the enterprising but not protect the elite. Even the Whiggish Niles' Register Niles' Register admitted, rather reluctantly, that competition "has its advantages. Community is generally benefitted-monopoly is suppressed, and the utmost perfection and economy is insured." admitted, rather reluctantly, that competition "has its advantages. Community is generally benefitted-monopoly is suppressed, and the utmost perfection and economy is insured."14 Cornelius Vanderbilt, on the other hand, took a step in the other direction. He heard of the disastrous ramming of the Wave Wave almost immediately, for he maintained close ties to Staten Island, where his mother still lived and where he had many friends and business associates. He learned that Mauran's fellow stockholders-principally Dr. John S. Westervelt, a son-in-law of Daniel Tompkins-wanted out. Oliver's opposition and the terrible publicity had destroyed the value of their shares. Vanderbilt snapped them up, fully half of the total, "upon the express condition that he should have the sole control and management," according to Oliver. almost immediately, for he maintained close ties to Staten Island, where his mother still lived and where he had many friends and business associates. He learned that Mauran's fellow stockholders-principally Dr. John S. Westervelt, a son-in-law of Daniel Tompkins-wanted out. Oliver's opposition and the terrible publicity had destroyed the value of their shares. Vanderbilt snapped them up, fully half of the total, "upon the express condition that he should have the sole control and management," according to Oliver.
Sole control. It would be a recurring theme in Vanderbilt's life. Always dominating, he increasingly lost interest in investment unless he had power over what was done with his money. Sole control Sole control. Oliver differentiated it from "management," and for good reason. Cornelius wanted independence, not only from Mauran and the other directors, but from legal obligations and political authorities. The Richmond Turnpike Company's special charter was a relic of mercantilism, requiring it to provide ferry service at uneconomical times-a requirement Oliver, as an independent competitor, did not have to meet. Cornelius chose to ignore the mandate. "Cornelius Vanderbilt has frequently given out that he intends running the boats upon said ferry with the sole view of profit," Oliver complained, "and without regard to the rights or convenience of passengers."
And what was more convenient for passengers than competition? Oliver had cut the fare in half and doubled service. Cornelius got a bargain on the stock because of that competition, which he now meant to snuff out. On July 2, 1839, he filed suit against his cousin. The Richmond Turnpike Company owned the Staten Island property where Oliver kept his dock, he argued, and had exclusive rights to the "bridge, ferry house, and bulkhead" on Whitehall Slip that he also used. The company had "accepted and took the said lease [at Whitehall] with full confidence that no person was to be allowed to interfere with their right, immunities, & privileges." In short, "the greatest practical practical anti-monopolist in the country" claimed a legal monopoly anti-monopolist in the country" claimed a legal monopoly15 WHEN VANDERBILT STRODE through the portico, he passed between six fluted columns into the interior of his new mansion. Workmen crisscrossed the floor carrying mantels of Egyptian marble and balustrades of solid mahogany on their shoulders. A special crew of craftsmen from England hammered away at a grand spiral staircase recessed into an oval well, spinning upward forty feet to the top floor. The hustle resembled the bustle around Bellona Hall fifteen years earlier, but this grand house was a world away from that humble inn, even if it was just on the other side of Staten Island from the Raritan River. Here was French plate glass, rosewood parlor doors with silver knobs, and a stained-glass skylight at the top of the stairwell. Another English artisan placed a sheet of glass, painted with the steamboat through the portico, he passed between six fluted columns into the interior of his new mansion. Workmen crisscrossed the floor carrying mantels of Egyptian marble and balustrades of solid mahogany on their shoulders. A special crew of craftsmen from England hammered away at a grand spiral staircase recessed into an oval well, spinning upward forty feet to the top floor. The hustle resembled the bustle around Bellona Hall fifteen years earlier, but this grand house was a world away from that humble inn, even if it was just on the other side of Staten Island from the Raritan River. Here was French plate glass, rosewood parlor doors with silver knobs, and a stained-glass skylight at the top of the stairwell. Another English artisan placed a sheet of glass, painted with the steamboat Cleopatra Cleopatra, over the front door. The captain was building a home fit for a commodore.