The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (148 page)

82
CT
, January 1, 1873.

83
NYT
, March 16, 17, 18, 1870.

84
Ibid.

85
NYH
, July 11, 1868, November 21, 30, 1869;
BE
, August 25, 1868;
NYS
, November 28, 1872; Klein, 85–6. A somewhat different version of this settlement would be laid out in an affidavit by Gould,
NYH
, December 1, 1868. However, since Gould was suing CV at the time, he oversimplified, and (not having been in on all the negotiations) he made errors. CVs court testimony on November 20, 1869, shows that his deal was technically with Drew, though the Erie paid most of the money; also, CV said he had sold the shares at 80, not 70 as Gould claimed. Drew's testimony,
NYT
, November 30, 1869,
HC
, November 30, 1869, tends to confirm CVs account. This is important, as will be seen, for CV later claimed that he had not sold his shares to the Erie, a claim that historians have scoffed at; see, for example, Klein, 91.

86
RGD, NYC 374:10. As will be discussed later, estimates of CVs wealth can be no better than guesses, often wild ones.

87
Foner, 333–6.

88
RT
, April 25, 1868; HsR 57, 40th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 2.

89
Nation
, June 25, 1868.

90
Round Table
, April 4, 1868;
MM
, April 1868;
NYT
, April 4, 1868. A fine explanation of the divided public opinion appears in the
Nation
, March 26, 1868.

91
On the writing and importance of this essay (for which Adams was only paid $150), see Edward Chase Kirkland,
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., 1835–1915: The Patrician at Bay
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 40–1, 77.

92
CFA, “A Chapter of Erie.” For two excellent accounts of the “liberals,” as the Adams brothers and their cohorts came to be called, see John G. Sproat,
“The Best Men”: Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), and Thomas K. McGraw,
Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1984). The liberal reformers will be discussed further later in the text.

93
Letter to the
JoC
, in
NYT
, March 6, 1868.

94
Mandelbaum, 58;
Testimony Taken Before the Special Committee of the Assembly… in the Matter of the Erie Railway Investigation
(1873), 764, Erie Railway Company Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. For an important article on railroads and corruption, see Richard White, “Information, Markets, and Corruption: Transcontinental Railroads in the Gilded Age,”
JEH
90, no. 1 (June 2003): 19–43. White's discussion, while perceptive, treats the corruption of financial information as a new phenomenon of the Gilded Age, whereas it arose as early as corporations themselves; this book has shown examples as early as the 1830s. Nor is it generally true that “profit came less from selling goods and services than from financial maneuvering involving the securities of the firms;” CV's railroads paid 8 percent annual dividends on a stock capitalization that eventually amounted to roughly $100 million. The use of shell companies in the transcontinentals, seen in Crédit Mobilier, was pioneered by the Pennsylvania Railroad; and, as Mark Wahlgren Summers points out in
The Era of Good Stealings
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 46–54, Crédit Mobilier provided Union Pacific with a necessary means of financing itself, as Congress unrealistically prohibited it from selling its securities below par.

95
NYSSD 52, 1–11.

96
Francis Gerry Fairfield,
The Clubs of New York
(New York: Henry L. HINTON, 1873), 138–44. It was reported that Tweed and his ally Peter Sweeney were blackballed when they applied to become members of the Manhattan Club;
NYT
, October 16, 1869.

97
Summers, 61. My statement of this paradox is to some extent a rephrasing of Summers's own conclusion. For another view of the causes of the diminishing of free-labor ideology, see Sven Beckert,
The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 176–7.

98
HC
, June 11, 1868.

99
Ellen W. Vanderbilt to HG, June 19, 1868, reel 2, HGP; CJV to George Terry, June 12, 1871, fold. 24, box 59, ser. 13, Colt Family Papers, Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Rhode Island

100
CV to Andrew Johnson, June 27, 1868, in Paul H. Bergeron, ed.,
The Papers of Andrew Johnson
, vol. 14 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 278, 279n;
AtlC
, October 6, 1871;
CV v. Jeremiah Simonson
, August 13, 1868, file L. J. 1858-S-574, Supreme Court Law Judgments, NYCC

101
NYT
, July 19, August 18, 1868;
NYTr
, August 18, 1868;
Troy Times
, August 15, in
NYT
, August 18, 1868. On Drew's stays at the Union Hotel, see
NYT
, August 11, 1865.

102
NYTr
, August 18, 1868. See also
CT
, August 30, 1868. Previous biographers have written that CV remained in Saratoga until Sophia died; the evidence shows otherwise.

103
NYTr
, August 20, 1868.

104
1868 Annual Income Tax List, Collection District 6, Division 12, page 249, box 429, New York Tax Assessment Lists, 1867–1873, RG 58, National Archives, New York, NY.

105
NYH
, March 5, 1879.

Seventeen
Consolidations

1
CT
, October 11, 1868.

2
SA
, January 2, 1865.

3
Foner, 460–2; Joseph Frazier Wall,
Andrew Carnegie
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 188–306.

4
John D. Rockefeller to Laura S. Rockefeller, April 19, 1868, fold. 270, box 36, RG 1.2, Rockfeller Archives Center, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.; Directors' Minutes, February 11, 1868, NYC, vol. 5, box 34, NYCRR; Ron Chernow,
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr
. (New York: Random House, 1998), 98–115. Chernow dates the letter from Rockefeller cited here as August 19, 1868; I read it differently, but the difference is insignificant. On railroads and the oil business, see Rolland Harper Maybee,
Railroad Competition and the Oil Trade, 1855–1873
(Mount Pleasant, Mich.: Extension Press, 1940), esp. 207, 223–4, 238–46, 254–5, 263–9,
28
0.

5
John D. Rockefeller to Laura S. Rockefeller, April 19, 1868, fold. 270, box 36, RG 1.2, Rockfeller Archives Center, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y; Directors' Minutes, December 11, 1867, NYC, vol. 5, box 34, NYCRR.

6
WHV to JFJ, May 14, 1868; Memorandum of Agreement, December 17, 1868; JFJP;
CT
, December 21, 1868.

7
Prenuptial Agreement, CV and Frank Armstrong Crawford, August 20, 1869, CV-NYHS. (Martha was sometimes mistakenly called Mary in newspaper accounts.) In the trial over CVs will, the opposing counsel would claim that CV put Frank and Martha up in a house in New York before Sophia's death, and dashed away from her funeral to see them, but he offered no evidence to support this;
NYTr
, March 30, 1878.

8
NYT
, May 5, 1885;
NYH
, August 25, 1869, March 5, 1879;
Toronto Christian Guardian
in
NYT
, September 11, 1869.

9
CV to Frank Armstrong, October 24, 1868, CV-NYHS. On CVs pride in her Southernness, see Frank A. Vanderbilt to Ma, August 26, 1869, CV-NYHS.

10
NYS
, November 27, 1872. CVs comments should not be seen as idiosyncratic. Phrenology remained a mainstream system of reading one's inner state from the surface; and, as John F. Kasson observes in
Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1990), “Etiquette books express this intense new interest in reading character from appearances.”

11
NYS
, November 28, 1872; testimony of Jay Gould, NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869.

12
NYS
, November 28, 1872;
NYT
, March 18, 1870; Klein, 90–1. On O'Conor, see
HW
, Jun
e
1, 1867;
CT
, February 29, 1868, August 7, 1872. For rumors that CV colluded in the Belmont lawsuit, see
CT
, November 22, 1868.

13
NYT
, December 1, 1868, March 18, 1870;
HC
, December 7, 1868; Klein, 91.

14
NYT
, December 7, 1868;
CT
, December 15, 1868; Klein, 91.

15
NYTr
, in
RT
, October 10, 1868; J. Edgar Thomson to J. F. Lavien, April 27, 1868, Thomas A. Scott to Samuel J. Tilden, May 4, 1868, fold. 6, box 6, Samuel J. Tilden Papers, NYPL;
HC
, December 7, 1868; Klein, 92–3.

16
JMD to EC, January 8, 1868, fold. 5, box 90, ECP;
BE
, November 30, 1868;
NYH
, December 3, 5, 22, 1868.

17
NYH
, January 20, 1869; NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869; Directors' Minutes, December 19, 1868, NYC, vol. 3, box 34, NYCRR; Hudson C. Tanner,
“The Lobby” and Public Men from Thurlow Weed's Time
(Albany: George MacDonald, 1888), 218–23;
NYS
, December 22, 1868, in
Flake's Bulletin
, December 31, 1868.