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Summary
Summary
A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism.
Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington's presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation's largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire. Lincoln consulted him on steamship strategy during the Civil War; Jay Gould was first his uneasy ally and then sworn enemy; and Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president of the United States, was his spiritual counselor. We see Vanderbilt help to launch the transportation revolution, propel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan, and invent the modern corporation--in fact, as T. J. Stiles elegantly argues, Vanderbilt did more than perhaps any other individual to create the economic world we live in today.
In The First Tycoon , Stiles offers the first complete, authoritative biography of this titan, and the first comprehensive account of the Commodore's personal life. It is a sweeping, fast-moving epic, and a complex portrait of the great man. Vanderbilt, Stiles shows, embraced the philosophy of the Jacksonian Democrats and withstood attacks by his conservative enemies for being too competitive. He was a visionary who pioneered business models. He was an unschooled fistfighter who came to command the respect of New York's social elite. And he was a father who struggled with a gambling-addicted son, a husband who was loving yet abusive, and, finally, an old man who was obsessed with contacting the dead.
The First Tycoon is the exhilarating story of a man and a nation maturing together: the powerful account of a man whose life was as epic and complex as American history itself.
Author Notes
T. J. Stiles received a B. A. in history from Carleton College and a M. A. and M.Phil. in European history from Columbia University. He is the author of Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2010, and Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, which won Pulitzer Prize for history in 2016.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In 1860, the New York Times identified the character of Cornelius Vanderbilt as a symptom of how capitalist competition had ruined American morality. But when a shrewd biographer probes that character with the advantage of historical hindsight, he discovers a surprisingly engaging figure. As he did in his much-acclaimed Jesse James (2002), Stiles limns the meteoric career of an impetuous spirit. Rich in detail, the narrative reveals much about not only the unschooled genius who conquered a hostile commercial world but also the national culture he helped transform through his triumph. The very archetype of the rugged American individualist, Vanderbilt blazed a way up from his lowly job as a ferryman to a lofty post as commander of a huge fleet of steamships. But it was by parlaying his steamboat success into a railroad empire that Vanderbilt left his most enduring imprint, forever transforming American business by forging a new corporate model for financial power. Yet this ruthless corporate titan supported the Union cause in the Civil War with selfless patriotism and then generously underwrote efforts to promote national reconciliation after Appomattox. Perhaps most astonishing, however, are the ways this fierce public antagonist expressed sometimes fumblingly softer emotions within his family circle. A landmark study.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2009 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Cornelius Vanderbilt created empires, undercut rivals and stirred, then quelled, financial panics. AMERICANS have always been ambivalent about men who turn small businesses into gigantic ones. We marvel at their cleverness and daring and envy the manifold pleasures they buy and discard at whim. Yet we assume that anyone so big must also be bad. Tycoons get blamed for making the marketplace less free, for corrupting politicians, for exploiting the ordinary folk who work in their companies. Some of the corporate rich then try to enhance their reputations with ostentatious philanthropy. No wonder that in this most capitalist of nations, our leading capitalists usually garner as much suspicion as love. Cornelius Vanderbilt spent little of his long life fretting over his image. If Americans were not grateful for the many steamships he built, the major railroad lines he integrated into a common system, the stock market panics he soothed and the Grand Central Terminal he constructed with his own millions, that was their fault, not his. Vanderbilt was the richest man in 19th-century America; at his death in 1877, he possessed, at least on paper, one-ninth of all the American currency in circulation. But like other corporate giants of his era and ours, he saw no reason to apologize for manufacturing and managing commodities everyone wanted and needed. "Vanderbilt was many things, not all of them admirable," T.J. Stiles says in this perceptive and fluently written biography, "but he was never a phony. Hated, revered, resented, he always commanded respect, even from his enemies." That respect stemmed, in part, from how he earned his fortune. During the early years of the republic, most rich Americans had inherited their wealth from mercantile or planter ancestors. Like their fellow patricians across the Atlantic, they tended to equate good breeding with the right to rule. Vanderbilt left school at the age of 11. But as a self-taught, self-made entrepreneur, he had no equal. Vanderbilt grew up on Staten Island, the son of ambitious farmers who were determined to profit from the commercial bounty being frantically pursued in the booming city across the bay. Cornelius routinely took his father's boat to Manhattan and back; sometimes, he spent all night in the small vessel in order to grab the first job the next morning. By his 20th birthday, Vanderbilt had made enough cash to compete for trade up and down the coast. While a tiny number of men his age were leisurely studying the classics in Cambridge and Princeton, Vanderbilt became a prosperous "shopkeeper of the sea." He was also one of the first Americans to learn to construct and operate steamships - the greatest innovation in transport since the invention of sail. Vanderbilt erected a continental empire on his love and mastery of the age of steam. It was a perilous industry : captains eager to destroy the competition routinely pushed engines beyond their limits. Boilers exploded. Ships crashed into one another. Deaths were common. Vanderbilt often challenged other owners to races, piloting boats of his own design with ferocious cunning, if not always to victory. But the Commodore (a name he cherished) accomplished his most impressive feats away from the steering wheel. By slashing fares and buying out rival firms, Vanderbilt achieved a near monopoly on steamship travel between New York and Boston. During the California gold rush, he hacked out a passage through Nicaragua to carry the forty-niners and their mail from ocean to ocean. Midway through the Civil War, he loaned his largest and fastest ship to the Union Navy to chase down Confederate raiders. Once victory was won, he switched his energies to the railroad business and soon controlied a network of lines that ran from New York to Chicago. Like a great athlete, Vanderbilt lived to compete. As a septuagenarian, he still relished racing a team of fancy horses on the outskirts of Gotham. His "resolution is indomitable," The New York Herald gushed. But Henry J. Raymond, the editor of The Times, introduced a new metaphor by likening Vanderbilt to a robber baron. Similar to the medieval German nobles who "swooped down upon the commerce" of the Rhine "and wrung tribute from every passenger that floated by," Vanderbilt gained maximum profits by gaining maximum control of whatever market he entered. Manipulating stock prices was as essential to that end as offering low fares and efficient service. In the fall of 1869, Vanderbilt arrested a Wall Street panic by pumping millions of dollars into companies on the verge of failing. But he had helped bring on the "Black Friday" crisis in the first place by flooding the market with shares of his own railroads to foil the plans of Jay Gould, a rival baron. "Vanderbilt appeared in the role of a hero," Stiles says. "Closer inspection reveals that a blood-chilling ruthlessness infused all his actions." Stiles, the author of a biography of Jesse James, writes with both the panache of a fine journalist and the analytical care of a seasoned scholar. And he offers a fruitful way to think about the larger history of American elites as well as the life of one of their most famous members. Vanderbilt may not have been the "first" tycoon in the United States - the fur merchant John Jacob Astor probably deserves that title. But, as Stiles contends, the Commodore was a leading exemplar of a new class of businessmen. All were Northerners, and most believed fervently in the strong Union their toil and wealth had knit together. Corporate ethics, however, were honored more in banquet rhetoric than in deeds. Vanderbilt and his cost-conscious brethren naturally preferred friendly negotiations to forceful or dishonest tactics. Yet when polite methods failed, they were quite willing to buy off politicians, double-cross former partners and have the police break up strikes by their workers. Although Vanderbilt habitually dressed in the simple black-and-white outfit of a Protestant clergyman, his only religion was economic power. "Vanderbilt" Stiles writes, "was a paradox - both a creator and a destroyer." Several of his 13 children had reason to feel a similar ambivalence about the old man. As kind patriarch, the Commodore either employed his sons or staked them to businesses and careers of their own. He also carefully scrutinized the marriage choices of both daughters and sons and treated them to some of the most lavish weddings in the land. Vanderbilt was quick, however, to judge any sign of dependency as a flaw of character. He labeled one son a "sucker" for borrowing money. Another son tried to keep his gambling addiction a secret from his father, lest Vanderbilt cut him off. AS a notoriously "hard man," the Commodore had just a little room in his heart for charity and none at all for guilt The one time he donated a substantial amount of money was to seed the university in Nashville that bears his name. What motivated that late-life gift, characteristically, was a desire to reconcile the South and North so that, under the leadership of a new elite, the whole nation might prosper. Soon after Vanderbilt's death, such confidence was shaken by a wave of violent strikes and increasing alarm about the plight of the urban poor. A generation of reformers and radicals convinced the public that clever capitalists with untrammeled powers could not be trusted to make decisions that benefited the majority of Americans. Since last year, the entire world has had to relearn that lesson. Yet the Commodore also grasped the need for strict regulation, if only for his corporate underlings. As a longtime secretary put it, "He thought every man could stand watching." Michael Kazin's most recent book is "A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan." He teaches history at Georgetown University.
Choice Review
Stiles, a well-versed historian and author, thoroughly articulates the sweeping saga of Cornelius Vanderbilt's personal and professional life. His account provides a thorough description of Vanderbilt's industrial achievements as well as the personal challenges that confronted and, at times, haunted him. This excellent biography offers a portrait of this outstanding entrepreneur and a sweeping view of 19th-century America. Interweaving Vanderbilt's personal life with the economic, political, and cultural changes of the era, this volume offers a compelling narrative of the period. Stiles describes Vanderbilt's achievements as builder of a vast steamship and railroad line as well as a prominent figure in the great Western expansion and inventor of the modern corporation. Although other titles describe Vanderbilt's life, this well-written work is the first authoritative biography of the American giant. Numerous photographs enhance the work. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All audiences, from general readers to learned scholars. J. P. Miller emeritus, Simmons College
Kirkus Review
A rousing life of the legendary robber baron who was in all the right places at the right time. Cornelius Vanderbiltcalled the Commodore in his dayrose from a common birth, the child of a Staten Island farmer, to control one of the largest fortunes in world history. Popular historian Stiles (Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, 2002) writes that although he was derided as an arriviste in his own time, "illiterate boorish," Vanderbilt was actually a man of much substance. The author credits him with being farsighted enough to envision the deeply hidden architecture of capitalism and to understand the importance of transport, the source of his earliest successes, in the new world system. Moreover, Stiles observes, he "saw that a group of men sitting around a table could conjure 'an artificial being, invisible, intangible' that could outlive them all"in other words, the modern corporation, making money out of abstractions. Vanderbilt was ruthless too. Following what some have called the Wal-Mart model, he undercut the competition until they disappeared, then raised his prices to suit himself, a practice for which he was widely disliked. Born shortly after the Revolution and alive into the Gilded Age, Vanderbilt was an innovator in bringing law and politics to bear on his understanding of commerce. He surrounded himself with smart lieutenants, including one who, ordered to allow no free rides on a Vanderbilt ferry, insisted that the Commodore pay full fare. Expanding into railroads, transoceanic vessels, communications and many other realms and conquering nearly every economic opponent he confronted, he also founded something that Americans "had long thought to be the corrupt artifact of the aristocratic societies of Europethat is, he started a dynasty." An exemplary biography and highly readable business history. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Twenty-eight hours is a long time to spend in the company of any biographical subject, but Cornelius Vanderbilt is no ordinary subject. America's richest man when he died in 1877, he rose from almost nothing to become the driving force of both the steamship and railroad industries and was the principal architect of the modern corporate economy now in such disarray. In this massively detailed biography, Stiles (Jesse James) tells Vanderbilt's story while also offering a history of 19th-century transportation. Actor Mark Deakins's energetic narration makes the time pass quickly. Recommended. [The New York Times best-selling Knopf hc received a starred review, LJ 3/15/09.-Ed.]-R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Islander They came to learn his secrets. Well before the appointed hour of two o'clock in the afternoon on November 12, 1877, hundreds of spectators pushed into a courtroom in lower Manhattan. They included friends and relatives of the contestants, of course, as well as leading lawyers who wished to observe the forensic skills of the famous attorneys who would try the case. But most of the teeming mass of men and women--many fashionably dressed, crowding in until they were packed against the back wall--wanted to hear the details of the life of the richest man the United States had ever seen. The trial over the will of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the famous, notorious Commodore, was about to begin. Shortly before the hour, the crowd parted to allow in William H. Vanderbilt, the Commodore's eldest son, and his lawyers, led by Henry L. Clinton. William, "glancing carelessly and indifferently around the room, removed his overcoat and comfortably settled himself in his chair," the New York Times reported; meanwhile his lawyers shook hands with the opposing team, led by Scott Lord, who represented William's sister Mary Vanderbilt La Bau. At exactly two o'clock, the judge--called the "Surrogate" in this Surrogate Court--strode briskly in from his chambers through a side door, stepped up to the dais, and took his seat. "Are you ready, gentlemen?" he asked. Lord and Clinton each declared that they were, and the Surrogate ordered, "Proceed, gentlemen." Everyone who listened as Lord stood to make his opening argument knew just how great the stakes were. "the house of vanderbilt," the Times headlined its story the next morning. "a railroad prince's fortune. the heirs contesting the will. . . . a battle over $100,000,000." The only item in all that screaming type that would have surprised readers was the Times' s demotion of Vanderbilt to "prince," since the press usually dubbed him the railroad king . His fortune towered over the American economy to a degree difficult to imagine, even at the time. If he had been able to sell all his assets at full market value at the moment of his death, in January of that year, he would have taken one out of every twenty dollars in circulation, including cash and demand deposits. Most of those in that courtroom had lived their entire lives in Vanderbilt's shadow. By the time he had turned fifty, he had dominated railroad and steamboat transportation between New York and New England (thus earning the nickname "Commodore"). In the 1850s, he had launched a transatlantic steamship line and pioneered a transit route to California across Nicaragua. In the 1860s, he had systematically seized control of the railroads that connected Manhattan with the rest of the world, building the mighty New York Central Railroad system between New York and Chicago. Probably every person in that chamber had passed through Grand Central, the depot on Forty-second Street that Vanderbilt had constructed; had seen the enormous St. John's Park freight terminal that he had built, featuring a huge bronze statue of himself; had crossed the bridges over the tracks that he had sunk along Fourth Avenue (a step that would allow it to later blossom into Park Avenue); or had taken one of the ferries, steamboats, or steamships that he had controlled over the course of his lifetime. He had stamped the city with his mark--a mark that would last well into the twenty-first century--and so had stamped the country. Virtually every American had paid tribute to his treasury. More fascinating than the fortune was the man behind it. Lord began his attack by admitting "that it seemed hazardous to say that a man who accumulated $100,000,000 and was famous for his strength of will had not the power to dispose of his fortune.&# Excerpted from The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.