Cornelius Vanderbilt

1794-1877

Cornelius Vanderbilt was born at Port Richmond, Staten Island, New York, the son of
a ferryman and farmer. He received little formal schooling. By age 16, he was
transporting people and cargo around New York harbor. During the War of 1812, he
secured a government contract to deliver supplies to posts throughout the area.

Vanderbilt eventually controlled most of the ferry traffic in New York waters, but in
1818 he sold his fleet and went to work for a steamship line run by Thomas Gibbons.
The Gibbons line was highly successful by effectively undercutting the earlier line
established by Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston. Litigation involving this rivalry
was eventually settled in the landmark Supreme Court case, Gibbons v Ogden (1824).
Vanderbilt stayed with Gibbons until 1829 when, having learned all he could and
accumulated sufficient savings, he left to establish his own line.

One of his first victories was won in a price war against Daniel Drew, who was
forced to withdraw from the business. During the 1830s, Vanderbilt's line became the
dominant steamship presence on the Hudson River, due largely to low pricing and
comfortable accommodations. Eventually, his competitors banded together and
bought him out.

Vanderbilt turned to serving Long Island and Boston. Never the retiring sort, he
adopted the title “Commodore” and frequently dressed in a full naval uniform.

Seizing upon the gold rush fever of 1849, Vanderbilt established a cheap, reliable
way for prospectors to reach the gold fields of California. In 1851, he arranged ship
accommodations from New Orleans to Central America, overland travel across the
isthmus, and another ship for the voyage up the Pacific to San Francisco. Vanderbilt’s
venture was so successful that his competitor bought him out and paid him $50,000 a
month for not operating his business.

In 1855, Vanderbilt opted for the luxury liner business and for a few years operated a
line between New York and Havre, France.

Vanderbilt entered the railroad business in 1857 and eventually gained control of the
New York and Harlem Railroad—again besting his rival, Daniel Drew. However,
Drew and his associates James Fisk and Jay Gould thwarted Vanderbilt’s efforts to
gain control of the Erie Railroad in the “Erie War” of 1867-68. Despite this setback,
Vanderbilt managed to expand his empire through purchase and consolidation. He
gained control of the New York Central in 1869. By 1873, he successfully linked
New York to Chicago by rail.

During the Panic of 1873 and the resulting depression, Vanderbilt began construction
of Grand Central Terminal in New York City, offering employment to thousands who
otherwise would have been unemployed. The New York Central was one of the few
railroads that posted profits during the depression.

Vanderbilt was never a great philanthropist, but he did bequeth $1 million to Central
University in Nashville, Tennessee, which became Vanderbilt University. The bulk of
his $100 million fortune was left to his son, William.
 VANDERBILT, CORNELIUS

(1794-1877), steamship and railroad promoter and financier. Cornelius Vanderbilt,

born in Port Richmond, Staten Island, New York, left school at the age of eleven to
help his father. When he was sixteen, Vanderbilt purchased a small sailing vessel
with a hundred dollars advanced by his parents and started a ferry service to New
York City. Between 1814 and 1818 he acquired several schooners for service in Long
Island Sound and the coastal trade from New England to Charleston. He sold his
sailing vessels in 1818 and became a steam ferry captain for Thomas Gibbons who
was challenging the Aaron Ogden steam navigation monopoly in New York State.
Soon he was managing Gibbons's fleet and by 1828 had accumulated over thirty
thousand dollars.

In 1829 Vanderbilt established a line of steamboats from New York to New

Brunswick, New Jersey, with service on to Philadelphia. Soon he transferred his
operations to the Hudson River, Long Island Sound, Providence, and Boston.
Vanderbilt made his ships safe, comfortable, and fast. Before he was fifty he was a
millionaire and was called "Commodore" because of his primacy among New York
shipmasters. In 1846 Vanderbilt left Staten Island for New York City, where he built
a town house on Washington Place. As traffic to California grew during the gold rush,
Vanderbilt built fast steamers for service to Nicaragua, where he constructed roads to
the Pacific Coast. This line prospered, and by 1853 Vanderbilt was worth $11 million.
In 1854 he entered the Atlantic trade against the British Cunard Line. Vanderbilt
vessels set speed records, but he found it difficult to compete against the heavily
subsidized British ships. During the Civil War Vanderbilt offered several of his ships
to the federal government to aid the Union war effort.

Commodore Vanderbilt was a hardheaded businessman, big, bumptious, loud, and

coarse in speech but frank and faithful to his word once he had given it. He entered
upon new ventures only after careful consideration. Certainly he was not hasty in
entering railroading. In 1857 he invested in the New York & Harlem Railroad and in
1863 was its president. By 1865 he also controlled the Hudson River Railroad. Both
lines connected New York and Albany. West of Albany the New York Central served
Buffalo but used barges and steamboats on the Hudson River to reach New York
City. In January 1867, with the Hudson thick with ice, Vanderbilt refused to accept
any New York Central freight headed for New York. The New York Central
capitulated, and Vanderbilt was soon in control of the line to Buffalo. Vanderbilt in
1869 merged the Hudson River and the New York Central and later acquired a long-
term lease of the New York & Harlem. His eldest son, William H., who helped run
the enlarged system, urged the addition of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern in
1873 and the Michigan Central in 1875, lines that served Chicago.

Although Vanderbilt dealt in millions of dollars of watered stock, his rail system was
efficiently managed and paid good dividends even during the long panic of 1873.
Commodore Vanderbilt, oldest and perhaps the greatest of the nineteenth-century
railroad barons, died the richest man in New York City. Wanting his fortune and
railroad to remain intact, he left the bulk of his $100 million estate to his son William
(one of his thirteen children) and William's sons. As an exemplar of the common
person's shrewdness and dislike of social niceties, Vanderbilt became a folk hero as
well as a major business figure.

Robert L. Frey, ed., Railroads in the Nineteenth Century (1988); Wheaton J. Lane,
Commodore Vanderbilt: An Epic of the Steam Age (1942).