The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (125 page)

15
Albany Argus
, March 15, 1834, November 23, 1835, April 16, 1836; Gunn, 30; Martin Bruegel,
Farm, Shop, Landing: The Rise of a Market Society in the Hudson Valley, 1780–1860
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 159–63; Morrison, 46, 68. CVs account appeared in a front-page advertisement in
EP
, August 30, 1834.

16
EP
, August 30, 1834.

17
EP
, August 28 and 30, 1834. On Leggett's new control of the
Post
and the Locofoco faction of Democrats with which he was aligned, see Burrows & Wallace, 518–22, 606–9, 621–5; Wilentz,
Chants Democratic
, 145, 235; Ashworth, 94–6. Connolly notes in his introduction that Jacksonian Democrats distinguished between enterprising businessmen, whom they favored, and “capitalists,” another word for stockjobbing speculators, whom they condemned.

18
Albany Argus
, July 17, 1834;
New-York Mirror
, September 27, 1834.

19
Albany Argus
, July 17, September 2, 1834;
New-York Mirror
, September 27, 1834; entries for September 14, 16, 1834, Hone ms.; Heyl, 5:203–5. Morrison, 68, reports that racing steamboats made “flying landings,” putting passengers in a boat attached to a line and then sheering off, giving the passengers seconds to get out of the boat at the dock before the line yanked it away. Hone's description casts doubt on this, though landings were clearly rushed. The
Albany Argus
, October 23, 1835, reported that the
Champlain
, on the fastest-ever trip between New York and Albany, lost an average of two minutes for each landing, enough for a hurried stop at a pier.

20
Albany Argus
, September 2, 3, 1834;
Albany Evening Journal
, November 7, 1834, March 27, 1835.

21
NYH
, May 3, 1839;
NYT
, February 9, 1859. As will be seen, Daniel Drew adopted the People's Line name in June 1835 and began his own attack on the monopoly, eventually becoming its chief. See
Cincinnati Mirror
, May 16, 1835, and advertisements in the
Albany Argus
and
Albany Evening Journal
through 1835.

22
EP
, June 4, 1835, January 20, 1840;
NYTr
, March 7, 1878;
New York Review
, July 1838.

23
EP
, June 4, 1835, January 20, 1840;
NYTr
, March 7, 1878;
New York Review
, July 1838; Heyl, 5:167–9. Bishop and Simonson's shipyard was at the foot of Walnut Street; John H. Morrison,
History of the New York Ship Yards
(New York: Sametz & Co., 1909), 59. For Charles Simonson's marriage to Mary Vanderbilt, Cornelius's oldest sister, see
Staten Island Church Records
, 174. For an excellent account of steamboat and steamship construction, and an explanation of “hog” and “sag” problems, see Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt,
American Steamships on the Atlantic
(Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1981), 105–6.

24
The most forceful advocate of the notion that cotton drove the American economy is Douglass C. North,
The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1966), 66–74; see also 102, 113–7, 122–9 (quote on 129). On the “cotton triangle” between New York, Southern ports, and Europe, see Philip S. Foner,
Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants and the Irrepressible Conflict
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), 6–14; Albion, 95–121. Wilentz,
Chants Democratic
, notes, 108, “the rising dominance of antebellum New York over American trade and finance is still staggering to contemplate.”

25
For a capsule history of the rise of manufacturing in Massachusetts, see Kinley J. Brauer,
Cotton Versus Conscience: Massachusetts Whig Politics and Southwestern Expansion, 1843–1848
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967), 8–11, and Taylor, 229–49. Banker William D. Lewis of Philadelphia wrote to James N. Paige and James K. Mills, two commission merchants of Boston, December 1839, “The South & West require a certain quantity of your fabrics. The two greatest points of distribution are New York & this city,” fold. 6, box 2, WDLP. New York also took large shipments of boots, shoes, and hats from New England; on March 18, 1842, WmC wrote to COH that “a large proportion of the freight is shoes and straw bonnets,” fol. vol. 2, CFP. On the rise of finished textile manufacturing in New York, see Wilentz,
Chants Democratic
, 107–16.

26
Larson, 225–9. For more on early railroads and government attitudes toward them, see Taylor, 72–101. Alfred D. Chandler Jr. and Stephen Salsbury note that, as of 1850, only forty-one factories had a capitalization of $250,000 or more, though railroads routinely were capitalized at over a million dollars; “The Railroads: Innovators in Modern Business Administration,” in Bruce Mazlish, ed.,
The Railroad and the Space Program: An Exploration in Historical Analogy
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965), 128–30. See also Edward Chase Kirkland,
Men, Cities, and Transportation: A Study in New England History, 1820–1900
, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), 111–4, 223–58;
MM
, December 1846.

27
Entry for April 11, 1836, Hone ms. Kirkland notes, 244, that in 1835, when the Boston & Providence was completed, four of its seven directors (including its president) were New Yorkers, and that 97 percent of its stock was held outside of Boston, most of it in New York. Hone noted in his diary on June 17, 1835, “A majority of the board are citizens of New York;” Hone ms. For details of the specie and bank bills carried by a typical Long Island steamboat, see a report on the loss of the
Lexington
in the
EP
, January 18, 1840, and stories about thefts,
ProvJ
, September 21, 1836, and
NYH
, October 3, 1836.

28
Kirkland, 121–6, 244; Morrison, 270;
ProvJ
, June 16, 1836;
EP
, January 20, 21, 24, 1840; Heyl, 2:139, 5:167–9. On the cost of the
Lexington
, see also CtP to WDL, April 22, 1838, fold. 2, box 2, WDLP.

29
EP
, June 4, 1835, January 21, 1840;
New York Review
, July 1838; Kirkland, 1:23, 244; Morrison, 270;
Statement by the Boston and Providence Rail Road Corporation in Explanation of their Proceedings in Relation to Steamboats
(Boston: John H. Eastburn, 1838);
A Replication to a “Statement by the Boston and Providence Rail Road Corporation in Explanation of their Proceedings in Relation to Steamboats”
(n.p., n.d.). To put the
Lexington's
speed in context, see Taylor, 71, who notes, “The average rate of speed even of the faster steamboats before the Civil War was seldom greater than fifteen miles an hour.”

30
Entry for June 17, 1835, Hone ms.; Kirkland, 1:23–4, 243–5;
BE
, April 21, 1842. The
Lexington
was also listed as a connecting boat to the railroad to Boston from New York in J. H. Colton,
Guide to Burr's Map of New York and Steam-Boat, Stage, Railroad, and Canal Register, &c., &c., &c., for the year 1835
(New York: J. H. Colton, 1835), 33. On the rise of Connecticut as a manufacturing state, see
MM
, December 1846. On fares, see
ProvJ
, April 8, May 28, October 4, 1836.

31
ProvJ
, July 2, 1836.

32
EP
, January 21, 1840;
ProvJ
, July 2, 1836; Charles Dickens,
American Notes for General Circulation
(New York: Penguin, 2000, orig. pub. 1842), 88. On interior accommodations of steamboats, see Kirkland, 1:24;
ProvJ
, October 13, 1836; and entry for April 11, 1836, Hone ms.

33
ProvJ
, June 15, 1836;
JoC
, October 25, 1837; WmC to COH, July 31, 1841, fol. vol. 2, CFP; Edwin L. Dunbaugh,
Night Boat to New England, 1815–1900
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992), 28–9, 41–2;
Nestor Houghton v. CV
, August 10, 1837, file BM V016-H, Court of Chancery, NYCC. The $74,000 price was equal to the net profits of the ferry for the preceding four and a half years. The purchasers, John H. Smith, Edward Kellogg, George Gault, Nestor Houghton, George Lock-wood, Robert T. Haws, and Ephraim Corning, paid $10,000 in cash, plus six-, ten-, and eighteen-month promissory notes at 6 percent interest. CV agreed to supervise the installation of new boilers, and received free passage for himself and his family on the boats. The agreement specified that the boats could not be run on the North River above New York, where CV had a line, but CV might have intended to prevent another conflict with the Hudson River monopoly.

34
ProvJ
, June 15, September 21, October 3, 4, 12, 13, 1836, March 20, 22, 1837;
EP
, March 21, 1837.

35
Entry for April 11, 1836, Hone ms.;
New-York Mirror
, November 12, 1836;
ProvJ
, July 14, 1837.

36
CV to JWR, November 1836, RWG; Kirkland, 276–9.

37
ProvJ
, January 23, 1837; JWR to
CV
, January 24, 1837, CV to JWR, January 30, 1837, CV to John Whipple, April 8, 1837, RWG;
Statement by the Boston and Providence Rail Road Corporation; A Replication;
Kirkland, 276–9.

38
NYW
, November 14, 1877;
NYS
, November 13, 14, 1877;
NYTr
, March 28, 1878. On CVs new address, see the return address on CV to JWR, November 1836, RWG. It was then a respectable neighborhood, despite its proximity to Corlears Hook; see
NYT
, January 11, 1886.

39
Hone, 185–9; Burrows & Wallace, 596–8.

40
Burrows & Wallace, 598–602; Peter Temin, “The Jacksonian Economy,” in Edward Pessen, ed.,
The Many-Faceted Jacksonian Era: New Interpretations
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977), 102–13; North, 198–201; Sellers, 338.

41
NYH
, October 5, 1836; Burrows & Wallace, 529–41; Patricia Cline Cohen,
The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 61, 66, 104–5. A reference to businessmen playing whist about this time appears in J. R. Ingersoll to WDL, May 7, 1841, fold. 2, box 1, WDLP.