The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (141 page)

26
George W. Cullum,
Biographical Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y
., vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1891), 766–7 (George's entry number, or “Cullum number,” in this authoritative guide is 1885);
Senate Journal
, March 28, 1861; Proceedings of the General Court Martial of Lt. George W. Vanderbilt, May 29, 1861, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), RG 153, NA.

27
Cullum, 766–7; Proceedings of the General Court Martial of Lt. George W. Vanderbilt, May 29, 1861;
NYT
, June 6, 1861. For an example of an unreliable account of George (described as capable of lifting nine hundred pounds), see
NYTr
, January 5, 1877.

28
McPherson, 324; Strong, 3:203.

29
McPherson, 373–6.

30
Howard K. Beale, ed.,
Diary of Gideon Welles
, vol. 1:
1861-March 30, 1864
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1960), 60–5, 473–4; McPherson, 374–6.

31
OR
ser. 1, vol. 9: 31.

32
Welles Diary, 473;
OR Navy
, ser. 1, vol. 7: 123.

33
OR
ser. 1, vol. 9: 31. A decade later, William B. Dinsmore hired the Pinkertons to capture Jesse James and his colleagues after the Gads Hill, Missouri, train robbery; see T. J. Stiles,
Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 249–52.

34
CV to William H. Seward, May 3, 1866, in SED 46, 39th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 2.

35
NYT
, November 24, 1870; CV to William H. Seward, May 3, 1866, in SED 46, 39th Cong., 1st sess.

36
JoC
, March 22, 1862; John Niven, ed.,
The Salmon P. Chase Papers
, vol. 1 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1993), 336–8;
OR
ser. 1, vol. 14: 25–6.

37
OR
ser. 1, vol. 8: 642, vol. 14:
29; JoC
, March 22, 1862; LT, May 5, 1862.

38
CV to EMS, March 31, 1862, reel 2, EMSP. Goldsborough's orders appear in
OR Navy
, ser. 1, vol. 7: 144–5. See also the report to Stanton by Assistant Secretary of War P. H. Watson, March 28, 1862,
OR
ser. 1, vol. 14: 46.

39
OR
ser. 1, vol. 14: 477;
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War
, vol. 1 (New York: Century Co., 1887), 707.

40
Salmon P. Chase Papers
, 1:338;
OR
ser. 1, vol. 14: 157; Doris Kearns Goodwin,
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 436–9.

41
McPherson, 445.

42
McPherson, 444; Stiles, 168–9. The extent of the government's role in the suspension of gold payments is disputed by historians, but certainly it played a role. See Stuart Banner, “The Origin of the New York Stock Exchange, 1791–1860,”
Journal of Legal Studies
27, no. 1 (January 1998): 113–40; Robert P. Sharkey
Money, Class, and Party: An Economic Study of Civil War and Reconstruction
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959), 15–28; James K. Kindahl, “Economic Factors in Specie Resumption, 1865–1879,” in Stanley L. Engerman and Robert W. Fogel, eds.,
The Reinterpretation of American Economic History
(New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 468–79; Irwin Ungter,
The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 13–7; Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz,
A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 3–14. See also Esther Rogoff Taus,
Central Banking Functions of the United States Treasury, 1789–1941
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 57–64.

43
Herman E. Krooss, ed.,
Documentary History of Banking and Currency in the United States
(New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1965), 1315–6.

44
McPherson, 445–7; Sharkey, 28–50; McKay, 122; Fowler, 153–4.

45
Krooss, 2085–6; Taus, 79, 85–6, 102, 112; Richard Franklin Bensel,
Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1865–1877
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 262–74, 287–8; Richard Sylla, “Federal Policy, Banking Market Structure, and Capital Mobilization in the United States, 1863–1913,”
JEH
29, no. 4 (December 1969): 657–86. Stuart Banner, “The Origin of the New York Stock Exchange,” argues that by 1860 the New York Stock & Exchange Board was already the premier stock exchange in the United States, effectively setting prices nationwide.

46
Entry for August 22, 1861, David Mitchell Turnure Journal, NYHS; Bensel, 168–9.

47
McPherson, 442–53; Bensel, 150–78; John Jay Knox,
A History of Banking in the United States
(New York: Augustus M. Kelley 1969, orig. pub. 1903), 91–104. Boston merchant Amasa Walker, for example, duplicated McCulloch's remarks; see Bensel, 282.

48
McPherson, 447; Fowler, 73–5, 156–7; Bensel, 152, 162. Foreign coins were actually legal tender in the United States until 1857; Krooss, 1059.

49
NYH
, January 20, 1869.

50
Since imports were paid in gold, the gold premium represented a kind of tariff. In states that thrived on international commerce, such as New York, leading businessmen favored a return to gold-based currency, as opposed to those in manufacturing centers, such as iron-and-coal-producing Pennsylvania, who competed with English imports. Railroad managers, who imported British rails, favored a gold standard and low tariffs. See Stanley Cohen, “Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruction: A Re-Examination,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
, 46, no. 1 (June 1959): 67–90.

51
HC
, September 19, 1861;
Seventh Annual Report of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, May 1861
(New York: G. F. Nesbitt & Co., 1861);
Report of the President to the Stockholders, Pacific Mail Steamship Company
(n.p.: 1868); CV to Chester Arthur, October 8, 1861, reel 1, Chester A. Arthur Papers, LOC;
CT
, November 11, 1861; Directors' Minutes, May 15, 1861, HRR, reel 27, box 242, NYCRR; NYSAD 100, 85th sess., 1862. The War Department's chartering of CVs transatlantic steamers, particularly the
Vanderbilt
, led him to discontinue the European line; see RGD, NYC 341:167.

52
Beckert, 135–6; McKay, 141; Fowler, 54, 57, 73;
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
, April 1865.

53
RGD, NYC 375:200a4;
SA
, November 15, 1862;
RT
, June 7, 1862.

54
Andrew Shuman to William H. Seward, August 9, 1861, Walter H. Gaines and Henry S. Rowland to Abraham Lincoln, December 21, 1862, Franz Sigel to Abraham Lincoln, March 17, 1863, Abraham Lincoln Papers, LOC; John D. Hayes, ed.,
Samuel Francis Du Pont: A Selection from his Civil War Letters
, vol. 1:
The Mission, 1860–1862
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), 112; Frames 237 and 244, Annual List, 1862, District 6, Division 3, Annual Lists, 1862–3, District 1, New York, roll 65, Internal Revenue Assessment Lists for New York and New Jersey, 1862–1866: Microfilm Publication M603, NA. On the problem of dividends in tax reporting, see Rufus S. Tucker, “The Distribution of Income Among Taxpayers in the United States,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
52, no. 4 (August 1938): 547–87.

55
Atlantic Monthly
, May 1868;
Forest and Stream
, August 28, 1873.

56
RGD, NYC 374:1; Strong, 3:21.

57
Burrows & Wallace, 877–81. Melvin L. Adelman argues that the rise of the respectability of harness racing reflected the rise of a new elite in New York; see “The First Modern Sport in America: Harness Racing in New York City, 1825–1870,”
Journal of Sport History
8, no. 1 (spring 1981): 5–32.

58
Beckert, 115–9, 136–7; Fowler, dedication page. Fowler also dedicated it to Salmon P. Chase and George S. Boutwell, secretaries of the treasury. His dedication to CV reads, “who has aided so powerfully to foster the steam industries of the nation on land and water.” For an overview of this period, see Burrows & Wallace, 872–82.

59
McPherson, 314–6, 546–7; Charles G. Summersell, ed.,
The Journal of George Townley Fullam
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1973), 4–14.

60
SED 71, 37th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 6.

61
HW, May
3, 1862;
OR
ser. 1, vol. 14: 365–6; HsR 28, 41st Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 1.

62
OR
ser. 3, vol. 2: 525.

63
OR Navy
, ser. 1, vol. 1: 538.

64
SR 75, 37th Cong., 3rd sess., vol. 1. These quotes come from CVs testimony before Congress a few months later, on December 30, 1862. Regarding the dates of these conversations, Banks reported on November 1 that he left Washington on October 27;
OR
ser. 3, vol. 2: 712–3. See also James G. Hollandsworth Jr.,
Pretense of Glory: The Life of General Nathaniel P. Banks
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), 83–8.

65
SR 75, 37th Cong., 3rd sess., vol. 1.

66
Nathaniel P. Banks to CV, November 3, 1862, CV to Nathaniel P. Banks, November 3, 4, 1862, cont. 24, Nathaniel P. Banks Papers, LOC; CV to EMS, January 24, 1863, reel 4, EMSP; SR 75, 37th Cong., 3rd sess., vol. 1;
OR
ser. 3, vol. 2: 712–3.

67
SR 75, 37th Cong., 3rd sess., vol. 1; Senate Misc. Doc. 27, 37th Cong., 3rd sess., vol. 1. CV has been criticized for not personally inspecting all of the scores of vessels chartered for the expedition. But as
CT
, January 15, 1863, justly noted, he went by the insurance underwriters' ratings, which he would have relied on if he had chartered the ships for his own use. CV had earlier testified, “I seldom go aboard of ships unless to go somewhere;” HsR 2, Part 2, 37th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 2. On the censure resolution, see Senate Journal, January 21, 27, 29, 1863.