The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (150 page)

53
McFeely, 320–31; JMD to EC, October 2, 1869, fold. 3, box 94, ECP.

54
Klein, 100–5.

55
Directors' Minutes, September 23, 1869, HR, oversize vol. 248, vol. 3, box 34, NYCRR; JMD to EC, October 1, 1869, fold. 3, box 94, ECP. The account of the panic that follows is largely derived from the following newspaper accounts:
NYS
, September 27, 1869, in
CT
, September 30, 1869;
NYT
, September 30, 1869;
NYH
, September 18, October 1, 2, 3, 18, 1869;
NYTr
, September 25, 1869;
NYW
, October 1, 2, 4, 1869; see also JMD to EC, September 23, 24, 30, October 4, 16, 20, 1869, fold. 2, JMD to EC, October 1, 1869, fold. 3, box 94, ECP.

56
JMD to EC, September 23, 24, 30, October 4, 16, 20, 1869, fold. 2, box 94, ECP. For commentary on the fear that CV could not control the Central's stock price, see RGD, NYC 342:262.

57
NYW
, October 2, 1869. The press reported that CV borrowed $10 million against HR stock, but letters in BB suggest the loan was much smaller, with NYCRR stock as collateral. See S. G. Ward to Baring Brothers, October 2, 1869, reel 37, and (in code) Duncan to Baring Brothers, October 5, 1869, reel 42, BB. For further commentary on Vanderbilt's role in stemming the panic, see Medbery 156; JMD to EC, October 1, 1869, fold. 3, box 94, ECP. Other quotes and information can be found in the newspaper issues listed previously.

58
NYH
, October 13, 1869;
CT
, October 15, 1869; Directors' Minutes, October 4, 5, 14, 15, 23, 1869, Finance Committee Minutes, October 16, 23, 24, November 4, 1869, LS&MS, reel 65, box 242, NYCRR.

59
Chandler,
Visible Hand
, 151–7.

60
H. E. Sargent to JFJ, May 16, 1874, JFJP; NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867. For a discussion of the Michigan Central and other “Joy Roads,” see
RRG
, June 11, 1870. Chandler,
Visible Hand
, 157–9, recognizes this cautious policy, noting, “The Commodore did little to integrate the operations of that road [the Lake Shore] with those of the New York Central”—though he mistakenly writes that James H. Devereux managed it after 1873.

61
H. E. Sargent to JFJ, May 16, 1874, JFJP; NYSAD 19, 90th sess., 1867.

62
Mark Twain, “Open Letter to Com. Vanderbilt,”
Packard's Monthly
, March 1869; Victor Fischer and Michael B. Frank, eds.,
Mark Twain's Letters
, vol. 4 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 125n.

63
John G. Sproat,
“The Best Men”: Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 6.

64
Sproat, 144–5; CFA, “Railroad Inflation,”
NAR
, January 1869. Examples of editorials that follow Adams's critique abound; see, for example,
Nation
, June 30, 1870.

65
Warner quoted in Sproat, 255; see also 46–7, 205–6;
Galaxy Magazine
, June 1868; Joseph Dorfman,
The Economic Mind in American Civilization
, vol. 2 (New York: Viking, 1946), 23; Henry Adams,
The Education of Henry Adams
(New York: Penguin, 1995), 229; T. J. Stiles,
Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 220; Parkman quoted in Foner, 489–90; see also 488–511. I am interpreting the basis of Twain's friendship with Carnegie from David Nasaw,
Andrew
Carnegie
(New York: Penguin, 2006), 645–6, 691–2, 722–3. Social prejudice deeply informed the influential writings of CFA. His biographer observes, “It is hard to see how Adams's way of making a fortune greatly differed from that he censured. He borrowed and he gambled on the price of stocks, sometimes outrageously;” Edward Chase Kirkland,
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., 1835–1915: The Patrician at Bay
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 77. For other uses of the term “robber baron,” see
RRG
, November 13, 1875.

66
NYT
, November 11, 1869;
NYTr
, November 10, 11, 1869. On the statue, see
NYT
, September 2, 8, 1869.

67
Nation
, November 18, 1869; Jerome Mushkat, “Hall, A(braham) Oakey,” in Kenneth T. Jackson, ed.,
The Encyclopedia of New York City
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 517.

68
NYT
, September 2, 8, 1869;
CT
, November 25, 1871;
HW
, February 3, 1872; Directors' Minutes, November 3, December 16, 1869, HRR, reel 27, box 242, NYCRR.

69
Burrows & Wallace, 944–5;
CT
, November 25, 1871;
HW
, February 3, 1872; Directors' Minutes, November 3, December 16, 1869, HRR, reel 27, box 242, NYCRR.

70
NYH
, January 22, 1870.

71
NYH
, February 6, 1870;
NYS
, February 7, 8, 1870.

72
NYS
, February 8, 1870;
NYH
, February 9, 1870; Victoria Woodhull to Whitelaw Reid, January 26, 1870, Tennie C. Claflin to Whitelaw Reid, February 6, 1870, reel 192, Reid Family Papers, LOC. See also
NYH
, February 3, 1870, in
CT
, February 8, 1870.

73
NYH
, February 6, 1870.

74
“Memoir of Alva Murray Smith Vanderbilt Belmont,” Matilda Young Papers, Duke.

75
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, “A Victoria Woodhull for the 1990s,”
Reviews in American History
27, no. 1 (1999): 87–97, and “Victoria Woodhull, Anthony Comstock, and Conflict over Sex in the United States in the 1870s,”
JAH
87, no. 2 (September 2000); Mary Gabriel,
Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1998), 92; see also Amanda Frisken,
Victoria Woodhull's Sexual Revolution: Political Theater and the Popular Press in Nineteenth-Century America
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Burrows & Wallace, 981–5; Foner, 446–9, 472–4.

76
NYS
, September 25, 1870;
NYH
, May 17, 1871;
NYTr
, May 17, 1871; October 16, 1878.

77
NYS
, November 14, 1877; Joseph Treat,
Beecher, Tilton, Woodhull, and the Creation of Society: All Four of Them Exposed, and if Possible Reformed, and Forgiven, in Dr. Treat's Celebrated Letter to Victoria C Woodhull
(New York: n.p., 1874), Rare Books and Manuscripts Department, Boston Public Library.

78
CV revised his will on January 9, 1870, providing $500,000 in securities for his wife and daughters, with no mention of Claflin or Woodhull;
NYH
, March 5, 1879. Edward J. Renehan Jr.,
Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
(New York: Basic Books, 2007), claims that John J. Ogden testified in court to the points made here, as reported in
NYT
, March 2, 1878. Renehan is wrong; the source he cites clearly shows that the lawyer made claims for what Ogden would say, but the testimony was prevented by the Surrogate, who declared, “I don't see that the conversation is any evidence of unsoundness of mind. It might be a question of taste.”

79
NYH
, January 22, February 13, 1870;
NYS
, March 26, 1870. One of the would-be witnesses by whom the lawyers offered to prove that CV had put his arm around Claflin, kissed her, and performed other scandalous acts was her father, Buck Claflin, whom even the sympathetic Goldsmith acknowledges to have been a confidence artist. He did not actually testify to the allegations;
NYTr
, March 21, 1878. The other purported witness was John J. Ogden, but he, too, did not speak to it in court;
NYS
, March 2, 1878;
NYH
, March 2, 1878.

80
RGD, NYC 349:1062.

81
NYTr
, October 16, 1878;
NYT
, January 5, 1875, August 7, 1876, December 8, 1877. Bodenhamer testified, “His mind was clear and his perception good as long as I knew him.… I do not know that I ever did know a more clear-headed man under such suffering [in his final illness]. I never saw him when his mind was not clear. In my opinion he was at all times capable of transacting any business he was accustomed to;”
NYT
, December 8, 1877. Bodenhamer is a particularly credible witness, because he clearly did not shade his testimony to cast Vanderbilt in a favorable light. He was a leading medical authority, and the author of
The Physical Exploration of the Rectum
(New York: William Wood, 1870).

82
NYH
, June 8, 1871;
NYT
, January 5, 1875.

83
Directors' Minutes, January 27, 1870, NYC&HR, vol. 1, box 93, NYCRR;
NYT
, February 12, 28, March 4, April 10, 1870; NYSAD 38, 103rd sess., 1880, 20–1; CFA, “Railway Problems in 1869,”
NAR
, January 1870. See also RGD, NYC 342:262. The
NYT
included state bond interest payments in its calculation.

84
NYC&HR Annual Report, December 16, 1870, Annual Reports Folder, box 34, NYCRR; NYSAD 161, 91st sess., 1868; Chandler,
Visible Hand
, 154.

85
Walter Licht,
Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 18–9.

86
Chandler,
Visible Hand
, 81–121, 145–56; Licht, 27; Foner, 461–88; Burrows & Wallace, 966–87.

87
CT
, March 4, May 5, 6, 1870, January 13, 1871;
RRG
, May 7, June 4, 1870, June 28, 1873;
NYTr
, October 30, 1869;
NYTr
, in
RRG
, May 21, 1870;
NYT
, May 25, 27, 1870;
RT
, June 18, 1870; JMD to EC, May 9, August 12, 1870, fold. 1, box 95, ECP; New York Stock and Exchange Board Minutes: 1867–1871, May 14, 1870, New York Stock Exchange Archives; Executive Committee Minutes, March 10, 13, 1870, NYC&HR, vol. 1, box 93, NYCRR.