Biographer T.J. Stiles

On This Page

1) The Debunker: Updated weekly, leading up to the publication of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
2) About the The First Tycoon, coming in April 2009 from Knopf
3) From Train Robber to Robber Baron: An essay on the transition from writing a biography of Jesse James to writing about the life of Commodore Vanderbilt

The copyright for each essay on this page belongs to T.J. Stiles. No reproduction without permission of the author.

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The Debunker
My forthcoming biography, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, is a serious look at Commodore Vanderbilt and his impact on the broader landscape of American history. Unfortunately, most of the writing about Vanderbilt has been based on apocryphal sources or even raw fictionalization. As a result, the standard accounts of his life are riddled with myths that don't hold up. Each week, I'll post a different myth about Vanderbilt that fell apart when I looked at the actual historical evidence. In almost every case, the truth is much more interesting; but for the full story, you'll need to read the book

Week of November 16, 2008:
Vanderbilt gave financial backing to Victoria Woodhull & Tennessee Claflin, who were the first female brokers on Wall Street.

One of the most sensational stories repeated about Vanderbilt is his close relationship with Victoria Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee (or Tennie C.) Claflin. It is reported by many writers that he had an affair with Claflin, went to her and Woodhull for spiritualist sessions (both were mediums), and backed them when they started the first female-run brokerage house on Wall Street. Later, it is said, he backed them in launching the radical newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, which published the "Communist Manifesto," among other things. Woodhull won headlines by running for president in 1872.

Vanderbilt did know them, and probably saw them for "magnetic healing" (which consisted of massage). It is possible, but far from proven, that he had an affair with Claflin after his first wife died. But everything else is nonsense, perpetuated by Woodhull and Claflin themselves, who were incorrigible con artists. Most of the evidence for a deep relationship with the sisters turns out to be highly unreliable or simply nonexistent. Furthermore, their "brokerage house" is not known to have conducted any business on Wall Street; the sisters were soon besieged by lawsuits by angry women who placed their money with them, and lost it all. And I found new information that shows that from the beginning they desperately searched for funding for their newspaper, which eventually folded. Vanderbilt's money was nowhere to be found.

What's really interesting about this relationship (which was minor and passing from Vanderbilt's perspective, if hugely important for the sisters) is how it has been treated by previous writers. . . .

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The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Since 2002, I have been at work full-time on a biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1794-1877 (better known as Commodore Vanderbilt), to be published in April 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf. This book will offer a new account of every aspect of Vanderbilt's life, from his years as Thomas Gibbons's steamboat captain to his role in the California gold rush, from the birth of his railroad empire to the infamous Erie War of 1868 to his agonizing final illness, bringing to light entire episodes that have escaped notice in prior biographies.

Commodore Vanderbilt was the first great corporate tycoon in American history—the man for whom the title "robber baron" was created, the man whom John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie sought audiences with early in their careers. Creator of the New York Central railroad empire, builder of the original Grand Central Station, the founder of the Vanderbilt dynasty, he dominated the American economy as few men ever have. And yet, there has never been a definitive biography of this central figure.

I have tried to write the first truly complete life of Vanderbilt, the first consistently grounded in reliable sources—in a narrative that does not burden the reader with the weight of the research. How does that effort add up? Let's do the numbers:

Total years of work on this book (by the time it appears): 7
Page count: 752
Maps: 6
Illustrations: 80
Endnotes: 1,443
Archives consulted: 38
Manuscript collections: 166
City & state government documents: 11
Federal reports and documents: 37
Published primary sources: 69
Contemporary newspapers & magazines (titles, not individual issues): 95

When Vanderbilt died, he was worth an estimated $100 million. How rich was that? Let's compare to Bill Gates. According to Forbes magazine, in 2006 Gates's fortune was worth $53 billion. If he were to have sold all his assets to American buyers, he would get $1 out of every $130 in circulation (including cash and bank deposits).* If Vanderbilt could have done the same at his death, he would have taken $1 out of every $20. (The New York Times, July 15, 2007, calculated that Vanderbilt was the second-wealthiest figure in American history, though such estimations are problematic.)

From Train Robber to Robber Baron

By following Jesse James with The First Tycoon, I am turning from a train robber to a robber baron—from a furtive figure, living outside the law, to a titan at the center of American affairs for half a century. To me, at least, the transition makes perfect sense.

I try to write the kind of book I like to read. My ideal work of nonfiction follows a classic formula: It both informs and entertains. As a historian, I try to draw out the larger meanings. I am drawn to topics that speak to the creation of modern America, that highlight the major themes of the nation’s history. I also hope to say something new about them. As a writer, I look for interesting characters, dramatic lives, complicated human relationships. I try to give the reader a reason to turn the page—every page. In short, I like big questions and good stories.

In the life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, like that of Jesse James, I found a larger-than-life subject badly in need of a new biography. And I found a subject whose life revolved around themes that I had hoped to deal with in my first book, but found did not belong there.

The Big Picture

In an address to the 2008 meeting of the Business History Conference, historian Richard White observed that there are two great topics of nineteenth-century American history: the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the rise of the corporation. I began work on Jesse James with the notion that the first topic defined James’s life, but I believed I would grapple with the second as well. Surely, I thought, his reputation as a Missouri Robin Hood reflected popular resentment of the railroads—the specific business that introduced the big corporation into American life.

But I was wrong. Rarely does a historian discover that his initial thesis is far more on the mark than he had anticipated, but such was my experience. The evidence was virtually unanimous: Jesse James was not an anti-railroad social bandit, but the Last Rebel of the Civil War.

At the same time, in pursuing James’s career as a bank and train robber, I began to dig into business and economic history—the financial system, the railroad corporations, the express companies—and the political questions that swirled around the changing economy. So when I contemplated a new biography, I naturally turned to the man who towered over the railroad system—indeed, the American economy as a whole—during the same period: Cornelius Vanderbilt.

An Unexamined Life

Vanderbilt has been in dire need of a new and complete biography. The last serious study was published in 1942: Wheaton Lane’s Commodore Vanderbilt: An Epic of the Steam Age. Lane’s work has stood up extremely well, but it is also nearly seventy years old. More than that, it is emphatically a business biography. Lane paid little attention to Vanderbilt’s larger social, cultural, and political significance, let alone his complicated personal life.

I expected to complete The First Tycoon two years after I started work on it at the beginning of 2002. I soon discovered that it would be impossible. Vanderbilt’s career began before the War of 1812 and lasted until the end of Reconstruction, marked by deals with John D. Rockefeller and other giants of the industrial age. He stood at the center of the public stage from 1824, when he played a key role in the landmark Supreme Court case Gibbons v. Ogden, through the California gold rush and the Civil War, to the rise of Wall Street, the railroad, and the giant corporation. And yet, much of his life has never been explored before. I found (sometimes by accident) dozens of archives filled with details about him and his businesses, as well as thousands of press reports that discussed his activities and debated his impact.

So the research went on, year after year. It was frustrating, and it was thrilling. I discovered previously unknown episodes in his life: Fistfights, steamboats deliberately ramming each other, expeditions into the Nicaraguan jungle, secret agents on dangerous missions, family turmoil, political intrigue, and secret business deals recorded in letters marked “Burn this immediately” (an instruction I’m very happy the recipient ignored). He was everywhere in the nineteenth century, from the international stage to hidden corners where no one had looked.

A Public Life

I found that I had to rewrite and rewrite to bring his significance into focus. In an era of starkly limited government, a businessman of Vanderbilt’s stature occupied the intersection of the main public currents of the day. His life spoke to the great debates over opportunity and equality, over the need for economic development and fears of an aristocracy, and he was a subject of fierce controversy. And he played an important personal role in the conduct of the Civil War, the struggles over government corruption, the incredible growth of the American economy, and the polarization of society through the emergence of great private fortunes.

The questions that drove me in writing The First Tycoon go to the heart of American culture, politics, and identity. How have the people of the United States grappled with the collision between opportunity, liberty, and equality? Why did corporations, rather than the government, construct so much of the nation’s transportation infrastructure? Where did the notorious corruption of the nineteenth century come from, and how did Americans deal with it? How did government regulation of the economy emerge? How did the giant corporation come to dominate the economy of a country that had been largely rural and agrarian? How did Americans come to grips with the abstractions of securities and financial markets?

Too often, books that address business figures tend to moralize on one side or the other. Depending on which polemic you pick up, you will read that Vanderbilt was either a merciless, manipulative robber baron or a heroic captain of industry. By contrast, I hope to provide an honest assessment that examines him in the full context of his times. That context was so different from our own that the results are sometimes surprising. When the robber-baron metaphor was invented (specifically for Vanderbilt), it was part of a political framework that simply makes no sense in the twenty-first century. Readers will (and should) draw their own conclusions about whether Vanderbilt was admirable or the opposite, but I hope they will agree, after reading my book, that he was truly significant.

An Intimate Life

The intimate details of Vanderbilt’s life have remained even more obscure. Since he left no collection of papers, much of what has been said about him has been based on apocryphal newspaper accounts, particularly his obituaries. The most sensational claims have drawn on the great trial over his will, when one daughter tried to annul his intention to leave the bulk of his fortune to his oldest son, William H. Vanderbilt. Based on this evidence, he has been depicted as a rapacious, illiterate brute, an overreaching dictator in business and a tyrant loathed by his family.

I found that much of this evidence did not stand up to scrutiny. Many of Vanderbilt’s most famous quotes were not spoken by witnesses, but by the lawyers who were trying posthumously to prove his instability. Other quotes were simply invented by the press. Vanderbilt famously had a friendship with Victoria Woodhull (who ran for president in 1872) and her sister Tennie C. Claflin, who were spiritualist mediums, magnetic healers, and activists for women’s rights. Unfortunately, much of what has been written about their relationship has been based on the words of Woodhull and Claflin themselves, who lied freely to the press.

Vanderbilt could be colorful, even eccentric. He was interested in spiritualism and magnetic healing, but this was entirely ordinary in the decade that followed the Civil War, when thousands of Americans tried to contact the dead or avoid conventional physicians’ doses of mercury and rounds of bloodletting. He was a domineering man of fierce will, but he also prized his honor, stood by his word, and practiced patient diplomacy throughout his career in railroads.

In letters written by his children, and in those in his own hand, I discovered a man of great emotional complexity. A man of action, he suffered for his awkwardness in navigating the turbulent emotional waters of everyday life. He set high standards for his sons, who struggled to meet them. His middle son, Corneil, is the tragic antihero of Vanderbilt’s story, a man stricken with epilepsy and addicted to gambling, arousing Vanderbilt’s frustration, compassion, and despair. And the Commodore deeply loved his two wives, Sophia and Frank. He apologized to Frank for afflicting her with his short temper during his final, fatal illness, but he also demonstrated wit and fortitude to the end.

Few individuals have had such a profound impact on American history. As I write in my book, no one person can single-handedly move the national economy and culture—but it is hard to think of anyone who had his hand on the lever for so long, or pushed so hard, through so formative a period. Admired, feared, resented, Vanderbilt always commanded respect, even from his enemies.

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* For the amount of money in circulation, I am using the M2 total provided by the Federal Reserve for 2006. For amount of money in circulation in January 1877, I am using the 1876 report of the Comptroller of the Currency, including all greenbacks, national banknotes, coin, and demand deposits, not including those of savings banks. (This is not the same measure as M2, but represents a rough equivalent for the simpler economy of that time). I am skeptical of simple cost-of-living calculators for translating nineteenth-century dollar figures, given the radical changes in the complexity and scale of the economy since then. I think a comparison relative to the money stock in this case is more revealing.