The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (149 page)

18
NYH
, December 22, 1868, January 20, 1869; NYSAD 114, 90th sess., 1867; NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869; Directors' Minutes, December 19, 1868, NYC, vol. 3, box 34, NYCRR; Tanner, 216–7. In yet another lawsuit, Judge Ingraham issued an injunction barring the payment of any dividend on the scrip; Edward Hunger-ford,
Men and Iron: The History of the New York Central
(New York: Thomas Y. Crow-ell, 1938), 219.

19
John M. Forbes to Green, January 8, 1869, Letterbooks, vol. 5, C. B. & Q. Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago.

20
NYS
, December 22, 1868, in
Flake's Bulletin
, December 31, 1868;
CT
, January 21, 1869. In the ultimate pragmatic response, the New York Stock Exchange threw up its hands and allowed trading in the scrip; Minutes for December 21, 22, 1868, February 27, 1869, New York Stock & Exchange Board Minutes: 1867–1871, New York Stock Exchange Archives.

21
NAR
, January 1869; Henry V. Poor,
Manual of the Railroads of the United States for 1869–70
, quoted in
BM
, August 1869. See also a description of Central dividends as “exorbitant interest on all this manufactured and fictitious capital and cost,” in
RT
, June 19, 1869, and
RRG
, June 4, 1870.

22
NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869; Tanner, 221–2.

23
John Steele Gordon,
The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street: Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Erie Railway Wars, and the Birth of Wall Street
(New York: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1988), 224.

24
NYSAD 142, 92nd sess., 1869; Tanner, 215–30.

25
NYH
, April 9, 27, May 21, 1869.

26
Directors' Minutes, June 11, 1869, HR, oversize vol. 248; Directors' Minutes, June 9, 30, 1869, NYC, vol. 3, box 34; all in NYCRR;
RT
, June 19, 1869. In
Isaac Jenks v. New York Central
, the lawsuit in which Barnard issued his injunction, Jenks said that a close friend of CVs told him that CV owned (directly and indirectly) 130,000 shares of Central;
NYH
, January 22, 1869.

27
RGD, NYC 364:100Q;
NYT
, March 20, 23, 1870, August 9, 1872; Promissory Note, March 17, 1869, Misc. Papers, Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., NYPL;
NYS
, December 20, 1877.

28
Executive Committee Minutes, February 1, HR, oversize vol. 249, NYCRR; Strong, 4:244;
BE
, April 21, 1869.

29
BE
, May 26, 1869; Smith, 263, 271.

30
For my portrait of Woodhull and Claflin, I will rely wherever possible on primary sources. I am informed by Mary Gabriel,
Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Wood-hull, Uncensored
(Chapel Hill, N.C: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1998), Louis Beachy Underhill,
The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull
(Bridgehampton, N.Y: Bridge Works Publishing, 1995), and the essays of Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, “Victoria Woodhull, Anthony Comstock, and Conflict over Sex in the United States in the 1870s,”
JAH
87, no. 2 (September 2000): 403–34, and “A Victory Woodhull for the 1990s,”
Reviews in American History
27, no. 1 (1999): 87–97. By contrast, Barbara Goldsmith's
Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), strikes me after close investigation as unreliable. I have consulted some sources cited by other writers (for example, the Victoria Woodhull-Martin Papers at the Boston Public Library) that I will not cite because I found them to contain nothing reliable or useful.

31
NYTr
, March 21, 1878;
NYT
, February 6, 1870; Anne Braude,
Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 23, 145–8; Stiles, 32. See also Robert C. Fuller,
Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

32
NYH
, May 16, 17, 1871;
NYTr
, May 17, 1871; Horowitz, “Victoria Woodhull, Anthony Comstock;”
NYH
, February 22, 1871. For an example of Tennie's flirting by letter, see Tennie C. Claflin to Whitelaw Reid, February 6, 1870, reel 192, Reid Family Papers, LOC.

33
NYS
, November 14, 1877; see also
NYW
, November 14, 1877. I have never seen or found a source for claims by Edward J. Renehan Jr. and Goldsmith that CV drank heavily, chewed tobacco, and spat on his hosts' carpets. Indeed, such tales fly in the face of all evidence, such as the LW Dictation, the diary of Frank Crawford (see next chapter), or various press accounts.

34
NYTr
, March 21, 1878.

35
NYH
, February 24, 1869.

36
William Cronon,
Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991), 23–93; George H. Miller,
Railroads and the Granger Laws
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971), 6–16; George Rogers Taylor and Irene D. Neu,
The American Railroad Network, 1861–1890
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956), 74; Foner, 464.

37
Taylor and Neu, 68–74; Edward Chase Kirkland,
Men, Cities, and Transportation: A Study in New England History, 1820–1900
, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), 501–3. An excellent history of fast-freight lines and trunk line competition appears in Maybee, 114–22, 131–35. For a discussion of the forces driving consolidation, see Julius Grodinsky,
Railroad Consolidation: Its Economics and Controlling Principles
(New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1930). Curiously, Alfred D. Chandler Jr. confuses fast-freight lines with express companies, in
The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 127–8, 129, 145, 153, 210. As noted in
RRG
, May 7, 1870, the Michigan Central drew freight from a vast network controlled by Joy, which CV could not ignore.

38
Chandler,
Visible Hand
, 148–51.

39
Cincinnati Gazette
in
NYH
, February 10, 1869; Klein, 93–4; Maybee, 141–2, 150–60, also 51, 101–11.

40
RRG
, May 14, 1870; Articles of Agreement of Consolidation, April 6, 1869, LS&MS, reel 65, box 243, NYCRR;
Toledo Commercial
, April 7, 1869, in
CT
, April 9, 1869;
First Annual Report of the President and Directors of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company, to the Stockholders, for the Fiscal Year Ending December 31, 1870
(Cleveland: Fairbanks, Benedict & Co, 1871), copy in Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

41
NYH
, June 2, 1869;
RRG
, May 14, 1870; Fowler, 221;
New World
, June 18, 1842;
BM
, June 1862, March 1872;
HC
, February 22, 1865;
New York Observer and Chronicle
, November 21, 1867;
Flag of Our Union
, July 25, 1868;
New York Observer and Chronicle
, February 29, 1872.

42
Directors' Minutes, June 2, 3, 1869, LS&MS, reel 65, box 242, NYCRR.

43
Cleveland Herald
, June 22, 1869, in
NYT
, June 27, 1869;
BE
, July 10, 1869;
NYH
, July 15, 1869; E. C. Deavan to EC, August 2, 1869, fold. 1, box 94, ECP;
NYT
, August 11, 1869.

44
NYH
, August 18, 27, 1869; Running Arrangement and Narrow Gauge Contract between the Erie Railway Company and the LS&MS, August 16, 1869, and Directors' Minutes, LS&MS, August 18, 19, 1869, reel 65, box 242, NYCRR.

45
E. C. Deavan to EC, August 19, 1869, fold. 1, box 94, ECP; Prenuptial Agreement, CV and Frank Armstrong Crawford, August 20, 1869, CV-NYHS;
London Free Press
, August 23, 1869, in
NYT
, August 25, 1869;
Syracuse Journal
, August 23, 1869, in
NYH
, August 25, 1869.

46
Marriage Certificate, August 21, 1869, CV-NYHS; McPherson, 516–7, 676; Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Diary 2, 1876–1878, Misc. Microfilms, reel 72, NYHS;
London Free Press
, August 23, 1869, in
NYT
, August 25, 1869;
Toronto Christian Guardian
in
NYT
, September 11, 1869.

47
London Free Press
, August 23, 1869, in
NYT
, August 25, 1869;
Syracuse Journal
, August 23, 1869, in
NYH
, August 25, 1869; Frank A. Vanderbilt to Ma, August 23, 1869, CV-NYHS.

48
NYH
, August 25, 1869; Frank A. Vanderbilt to Ma, August 23, 1869, CV-NYHS
; NYTr
, March 30, 1878;
NYS
, March 6, 1878.

49
Frank A. Vanderbilt to Ma, August 23, 26, 1869, CV-NYHS;
NYT
, August 24, 1869;
HW
, September 11, 1869.

50
RGD, NYC 374:1, 10; JMD to EC, April 2, August 12, 1870, fold. 1, box 95, ECP.

51
NYH
, September 2, 18, 19, 20, 30, October 1, 2, 1869; New York Stock and Exchange Board Minutes: 1867–1871, October 1, 1869, New York Stock Exchange Archives. See also JMD to EC, October 1, 1869, fold. 3, box 94, ECP.

52
This narrative of the gold market panic of 1869 relies primarily on Klein, 100–15, still the single best account. See also William S. McFeely,
Grant: A Biography
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 320–31; Kenneth D. Ackerman,
The Gold Room: Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, and Black Friday, 1869
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 1988); and Julia Grant's and Boutwell's memoirs, excerpted in T. J. Stiles, ed.,
Robber Barons and Radicals
(New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, 1997), 217–9.