The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (118 page)

45
Guernsey, 1:1–16, 120–3, 159–60, 218, 317–22; Burrows & Wallace, 409–5; W. E. Apgar, “New York's Contribution to the War Effort of 1812,”
New-York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin
29, no. 4, 203–12.

46
Guernsey, 2:301–2;
MM
, January 1865; Parton, 380;
NYT
, January 5, 1877;
NYTr
, January 5, 1877;
EP
, September 13, 1813.

47
Staten Island Church Records
, 106; Parton, 381; Lane, 20–3.

48
Burrows & Wallace, 427–8; George W. Cullum,
Campaigns of the War of 1812–15 Against Great Britain
(New York: James Miller, 1879), 174–7.

49
Parton, 381–2; Lane, 18–19; Dorothy Kelly MacDowell,
Commodore Vanderbilt and His Family
(Hendersonville, N.C.: privately printed, 1989), 22; Howard B. Rock, “A Delicate Balance: The Mechanics and the City in the Age of Jefferson,”
NYHSQ
63, no. 2 (April 1979): 93–114. Many boatmen were black; see the testimony of Joseph Bonnington, July 1, 1820, GP, and “Thomas Gibbons against Isaac Morse,”
Cases of the Court of Errors of the State of New Jersey
(November Term, 1821), 253–71 (copy in GP), a lawsuit involving a slave who escaped with the aid of a free black ferry captain in 1818.

50
New York City Census, First Ward, 1816, NYMA.

51
Frances Trollope,
Domestic Manners of the Americans
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 369–70.

52
Wilentz, 23–60; Blumin, 20–65, quotes on 26, 32–3, 64; Lambert, 2:90, 100; Albion, 235–59. On the new assertiveness of the artisans in the Revolution, see especially Edward Countryman,
A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).

53
Pred; Perkins, 271–3, 350–62; Wright,
Wealth of Nations
, 18–25; Albion, 235–59; Guernsey, 2:512–14; Ross M. Robertson,
History of the American Economy
, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 82–4. The discussion of promissory notes reflects the author's work in contemporary collections; see, for example, almost any lawsuit from this period in the Court of Common Pleas, NYCC; TG to George Johnston, February 2, 1810 (“In money transactions in the city I have always had assurances that my paper would pass current”), and TG to David B. Ogden, June 1, 1816, GP.

54
Guernsey, 2:458–9, 483–94; Wilentz, 23.

55
Wilentz, 23; Albion, 9–15.

56
Lane, 22–5; Croffut, 26; Wilentz, 35; Morrison, 169;
EP
, November 20, 1812;
NYH
, January 5, 14, 1877;
NYW
, January 5, 1877;
NYT
, January 5, 1877. The cost estimate of a boat is based on the sale of a fully equipped twenty-seven-ton periauger for $750 to TG, John C. Hatfield to TG, July 17, 1817, GP On the Chesapeake oyster schooners, and the role of Northern ships in the trade, see Geoffrey M. Footner,
Tidewater Triumph: The Development and Worldwide Success of the Chesapeake Bay Pilot Schooner
(Centreville, Md.: Tidewater Publishers, 1998), 213–25. The records of the New York Custom House, now with the National Archives, remain fragmentary at best, and the writings of earlier historians suggest that some have been lost. Morrison writes that the
Dread
was the first vessel registered under CVs name, but I could not find that enrollment record. On later enrollments of the
General Wolcott
and the
Dread
, see Enrollment Number 248, July 16, 1817, vol. 12139, and Enrollment Number 21, February 26, 1821, vol. 12148, Port of New York Certificates of Enrolment [sic], Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, RG 41, NA. The
General Wolcott
entry notes that it was “rebuilt from an open boat,” indicating CVs longer-range ambitions. For a reference to another of CVs periaugers, the
Thorn
, as a schooner, see
EP
, January 8, 1821.

57
John De Forest and Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. vs. Daniel Morgan
, April 5, 1817, file 1817-#337, Court of Common Pleas, and
Cornelius Vanderbilt and Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. vs. Phineas Carman and Cornelius P. Wyckoff
, May 26, 1817, file 1817-#1261, Court of Common Pleas, NYCC; TG to Jonathan Johnston, November 24, 1817, GP; Morrison, 44. For background on the Mayor's Court, see Richard B. Morris, “The New York City's Mayor's Court,” in Leo Hershkowitz and Milton M. Klein, eds.,
Courts and Law in Early New York: Selected Essays
(Port Washington, N.Y: National University Publications, 1978), 19–29.

58
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, quotes on 460, 462, 463, 474, 476; for his perceptive discussion of economics and Americans' attitudes toward commerce, see 439–76. On the impact of the War of 1812 and the growth in banks, see Murray N. Rothbard,
The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 1–19. Janet A. Riesman discusses the intertwining of banking and American attitudes toward commerce and credit in “Republican Revisions,” 1–44. Unquestionably the end of the war provided a boon to economic growth (see Albion and Taylor), but I agree with Daniel Walker Howe,
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 5, in disagreeing with the “market revolution” thesis popularized by Charles Sellers,
The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1820
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). For more arguments in the enormous debate over the emergence of capitalism, see Allan Kulikoff, “The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America,”
WMQ
, 3rd ser., vol. 46, no. 1 (January 1989): 120–44; Henretta, 289–304; Appleby, “Vexed Story,” 1–18; and Appleby,
Inheriting the Revolution
, 1–25, 56–90, 250–66.

59
Rochefoucauldt-Liancourt, 440; Appleby, “Vexed Story;” Appleby,
Inheriting the Revolution
, 55–91; Kulikoff, “Transition;” Lambert, 2:26–7, 33. On the trip by sloop from New York to Albany, see Hone, 905; Lambert, 2:41–9; Taylor, 15–31.

60
Taylor, 56–7; Pred, 14, 20–77, 112–4.

61
For a fine survey of the issues of westward migration and transportation, see Howe, 211–22.

62
For a splendid view of Broadway in 1819, clearly depicting the fashions of the day, see Stokes, vol. 3, plate 85.

63
Enrollment Number 248, July 16, 1817, vol. 12139, Port of New York Certificates of Enrolment [sic], Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, RG 41, NA.

64
Lane, 22–25; TG to Jonathan Johnston, November 24, 1817, GP; Morrison, 44. Elizabethtown is now known as Elizabeth. It has often been said that CV himself renamed the
Stoudinger
the
Mouse
, but it was advertised as the
Mouse
before CV took command; see
NBF
, November 13, 1817. Lane and Croffut depict CV on New Year's Eve pondering the growing importance of steam, then making a calculated decision to learn about it by working for TG TG's letter to Johnston, however, demonstrates the fortuitous nature of his hiring of CV as well as the fact that it took place more than a month before year's end.

Two
The Duelist

1
TG to Jonathan Johnston, November 24, 1817, GP.

2
CV quoted in
Den D. Trumbull et al. v. Gibbons
, April 10, 1849, 22 NJ L 117, 16.

3
TG to Thomas Heyward Gibbons, September 15, 1786,
Georgia Gazette
, September 14, 21, 1786, TG to George Johnston, February 2, 1810, George Johnston to TG, May 22, 1812, Petition of James Field to the Honorable George Walters, 1783, WG to TG, January 23, 1785, TG to WG, January 27, 1785, Memorandum by WG, March 15, 1848, GP. See also Isaac Woodruff to TG, July 20, 1817, Isaac Woodruff Papers, NYHS. In 1819, TG was described as a man of “immense wealth” in
AO v. TG
, Supreme Court of Judicature of the State of New Jersey (February Term, 1819), 2 South. 5, 612–36, 1005–15.

4
Thomas Gamble,
Savannah Duels and Duellists, 1733–1877
(Savannah: Review Publishing & Printing, 1923), 41–4, 57–8; Carol S. Ebel, “Thomas Gibbons,”
ANB;
see also George R. Lamplugh,
Politics on the Periphery: Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783–1806
(Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1986).

5
For details on TG'S many holdings in New Jersey and Georgia, see a copy of TG'S will, Thomas Gibbons Papers, NYHS. TG described his move as a matter of climate and health; TG to Crawford Davison, June 1, 1818, GP. Various correspondence in the GP adumbrate the story of his illegitimate child, which he attempted to deny, against the advice of some of New York's leading attorneys. On New York's emerging role as creditor to Southern planters, see Philip S. Foner,
Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants and the Irrepressible Conflict
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), 5–10; Albion, 95–121.

6
Joanne B. Freeman,
Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); Nancy Isenberg;
Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr
(New York: Viking, 2007), 255–404. See also Saul Cornell,
The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788–1828
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

7
Bernard Bailyn,
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 302; Frederic Cople Jaher,
The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 3, and, for an insightful discussion of the New York patricians before the Civil War, see 160–250. See also Wood.

8
Wood, 254–5, 269–70, 299–300; Martin Bruegel,
Farm, Shop, Landing: The Rise of a Market Society in the Hudson Valley, 1780–1860
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 15–6, 36–8, 206; Stuart M. Blumin,
The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 64–5; John Lauritz Larson,
Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 9–10. See also Edward Countryman, “From Revolution to Statehood,” in Milton M. Klein, ed.,
The Empire State: A History of New York
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 242–56, 264–8, 295–7; Dixon Ryan Fox,
The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1919), 58–65.