Chapter Ten

ARIEL

“Billy, never underestimate your opponents.” Lambert Wardell overheard the comment in one of Vanderbilt's increasingly frequent, and increasingly fatherly, conversations with William. It is difficult to chart this father-son relationship, for it was entirely oral, yet it seems that a warming continued after their months together on the North Star. This particular piece of advice stuck in Wardell's memory because it was so characteristic of his employer's thinking. “This was one of the secrets of his success,” Wardell later reflected. “He never underrated himself nor anybody else.”1

These well-remembered words say much about how the Commodore envisioned his business career. Wardell would add that he “detested details.… He was very concise and gave general directions regarding matters rather than dictating in detail.” This statement seems not to apply to this stage of Vanderbilt's career, considering the minute attention he often lavished on his ships and various operations, until it is put into the context of that comment about “opponents.” He did not think of his businesses as machinery; rather, he saw them as military campaigns against his enemies. When he could not avoid the merely mechanical aspect of his enterprises he often expressed impatience; but when he was locked in combat he paid attention to the tiniest detail. This helps explain why he regularly sold out his steamboat and steamship lines after only a year or two of competition: once he achieved victory, he lost interest. He devoted little time to the businesses that he did operate year after year, such as the Staten Island Ferry, which had attracted widespread complaints about its condition.2

In the months and years that followed the North Star's voyage to Europe, Vanderbilt increasingly thought of himself in another way: as a pillar of New York's mercantile community. That could be seen clearly in August 1854 (the same time that he achieved victory over the Accessory Transit Company), when he set out to rescue a bastion of New York's business establishment, the New York & Erie Railroad—or Erie, as it was more commonly known. The Democrats who ran New York State had chartered the company in 1832 with the Whiggish notion that it would be a private corporation with a public purpose, to bring the benefits of the newfangled railway to the southern tier of upstate New York counties. Even the radical New York Evening Post supported it, and prominent merchants subscribed to the stock. But building a line over the mountains from the Hudson River to Lake Erie proved far too expensive and time-consuming for private capital alone. The state stepped in repeatedly to keep the enterprise afloat as it grew ever more costly. Finally, in 1851, New York celebrated the completion of what was then the longest railroad in the world.3

After all the trials the Erie endured in construction, it began to make a great deal of money. In 1853, it earned $4,318,762, a 25 percent increase over the year before and well above expenses (at a time when only three or four dozen textile factories represented a total investment of $250,000 or more). When Nelson Robinson carried its stock up to 92, it was not simply because of his skills as a broker, but also because the Erie had bright prospects. But it seems that Robinson did not attend to his duties as treasurer quite as carefully as he should have. A massive cluster of debts fell due on September 1, 1854; when the railroad's officers tried to arrange short-term loans to cover the payments, they encountered the same tight money market that had brought down Robert Schuyler. The company needed a great deal of credit, very fast.4

The Erie towered over the economic landscape. Its stockholders numbered in the hundreds, and it boasted a capitalization larger than all but a few other giant railroads. Yet it was situated in a culture that still did not distinguish between the invisible corporation and its corporeal managers and shareholders. In this crisis, all eyes turned to its directors, who were expected to take personal responsibility for the corporation's debts. Panicked by the enormity of the payments coming due, they all declined. “Where are all the great financiers who used to congregate in the directors' room of this huge concern, and put forth their edicts with all the pomposity of the Grand Mogul?” asked the New York Herald. “Where are they now? We do not see them striding about the streets, annihilating all the little bears by a look. Verily, their occupation is gone, and they have given place to a set of hungry creditors.”5

Robinson was nowhere to be found. As treasurer, he had seen the storm coming, sold all of his stock, and again went into retirement. Only his former partner, Daniel Drew, stood up to the challenge. Drew's connection to the road predated his election to the board of directors; as early as 1842, he and Isaac Newton had provided the steamboat connection between Manhattan and Piermont, the railroad's terminus on the west bank of the Hudson River. On August 30, 1855, the Mercantile Agency summarized his life and reputation in words that reflected the deep respect of Wall Street. “He is a self made man, of great energy, [prudence,] & integrity. Began his [business] life as a cattle dealer, in which he made considerable money. Was afterwards a broker in the firm of Drew, Robinson & Co.… until March ′52, when he retired,” it wrote. “Was then believed to be [worth] over a million & is probably [worth] that now.… He is [very] prompt in all his [business] transactions. Is in unquestioned [credit] & his [notes] are placed amongst the first-class paper.”6

A day would come when the brokers of Wall Street would howl with laughter at the thought of Drew being described by the words “prudence” and “integrity.” But in August 1854 he seemed like a savior when he undertook to rescue the Erie from bankruptcy. Not that he acted out of sheer nobility: he knew that the railroad would have to pay him enormous fees for credit it could get nowhere else. But it needed more credit than Drew alone could muster, and so the former drover turned to his old friend. “Mr. Vanderbilt has been called upon for aid after every member of the board of directors, except Mr. Drew, declined to come under for any further responsibility” the New York Herald reported, “and if he backs out we really do not know what will become of the once magnificent Erie Railroad Company”7

He did not back out. Vanderbilt endorsed the Erie's paper—that is, he accepted ultimate responsibility for its repayment of a six-month loan—to the sum of $400,000. For collateral, he took a mortgage on the entire rolling stock, all 180 locomotives and 2,975 cars. Drew endorsed notes for $200,000 (later even more) and took a mortgage on everything that was left. If the Erie didn't pay, it would become the personal property of Vanderbilt and Drew. The railroad's position was so precarious that a panicked sell-off of its stock broke out when it was rumored that Vanderbilt had been thrown from his wagon in Broadway and severely injured (it actually happened to his brother Jacob).

But the Erie paid back the loan. It also delivered a 10 percent fee to the two gentlemen, a neat $40,000 payoff for the Commodore on his bet that the Erie would survive.8

The incident reveals much about Vanderbilt's peculiar role in the emergence of the modern economy. The hallmark of a modern financial system is institutionalization—the emergence of banks and similar bodies to pool capital, assess risks, and provide credit. By 1854 such institutions had already sprouted on the American scene, but Vanderbilt the individual seemingly dwarfed them all. In rescuing the Erie, he (and Drew) accomplished what seemed beyond the combined might of New York's merchant class. He would have to battle that class again—as early as the beginning of October, when his spokesman faced down an angry meeting of New Haven Railroad stockholders, marking the start of Vanderbilt's long war to force the corporation to accept responsibility for the spurious stock Schuyler had issued.9 But his salvation of the Erie consolidated his position as a merchant prince in the Medici mold, both a relic of a bygone era and an aggressive leader of the new. And it contributed to a slow and subtle change in his social status.

At first glance, it seems impossible to decipher the contradictory signals sent by New York's great merchants in the 1850s. James King and the Mercantile Agency scorned him; Hamilton Fish and Robert Schuyler turned to him for help. But the signs of acceptance were growing more numerous. In 1855, for example, he received a dinner invitation from the socially prestigious merchant Cyrus W. Field, brother of the prominent lawyer David Dudley Field, denizen of fashionable Gramercy Park, and organizer of an attempt to build a transatlantic telegraph cable. Unusually, Vanderbilt personally wrote a reply. “I am extreamly mortified to be compelled to say it is out of my power to do so in consequinc of an ingagement previously made,” he wrote.10 This otherwise insignificant letter is less notable for Vanderbilt's continuing disregard for conventional spelling than for the formal tone that now suffused his language, as well as the fact of the invitation itself.

Did this creeping social acceptance give his wife Sophia equal satisfaction? “She was of simple tastes and habits, and never learned to feel quite at home amid the great and splendid city” wrote William A. Croffut a decade after Vanderbilt's death. Croffut was more a gossip than a biographer, but we have little other evidence. “She clung closely to the acquaintances of her youth, and used to tell… that the happiest days of her life were those spent in hard work in the halfway tavern at New Brunswick, and that she liked the house that her husband had built on Staten Island, with all the children romping on the lawn… far, far better than the prim mansion on Washington Place.”11

WITH ALL HIS ENEMIES CHASTISED, Vanderbilt had to decide what to do next. No matter how significant he was as a financier, temperamentally he wasn't suited to merely play the money man. He was a builder of enterprises—more specifically, he was a competitor. He was accustomed to taking a leading role in transportation, which was by far the largest sector in the American economy; that meant he was accustomed to being a public figure, for transportation was the great meeting ground of public and private interests in the nineteenth-century republic. It is not surprising, then, that as soon as he closed up his California lines he launched an attack on the sea lanes to Europe.

The end of 1854 happened to be the perfect time for his entry into the transatlantic steamship business. The Cunard Line, the British steamship company, temporarily disappeared because of the intensifying war with Russia. “In response to the British government's need for support in the Crimea,” writes maritime historian John A. Butler, “the line was… obliged to withdraw from the New York-Liverpool route and send its ships to the Black Sea with troops and mail.” In addition, the primary American competitor, the heavily subsidized Collins Line, had recently suffered the sinking of its flagship Arctic.12

“There is room for more Atlantic steamships, and, just in the nick of time, we have the man to step in and fill up the deficiency,” the Herald announced in December. “We understand that Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, as a shipbuilder and navigator has earned for himself the title of ‘Commodore Vanderbilt,’ is now building two fine steamers, upon the general plan of the North Star, to ply from New York to Havre or Liverpool, and that they will be ready for sea in the course of the coming spring.” Though the Heraldavoided criticizing the Collins Line, the political controversy surrounding its federal subsidies suffused its commentary. “Competition is the life of business,” it wrote. “Commodore Vanderbilt has the necessary experience, both as a steamship builder and as a steamship navigator, to know what to do in the way of putting up a perfect steamer; and with a private fortune of some $7,000,000 or $8,000,000, he may undertake this great Atlantic enterprise with impunity”13

The Herald was right in one respect, but off the mark in two others. The Commodore did indeed have a steamship under construction at the Simonson shipyard, one specifically designed for the Atlantic. The New York Post lovingly described the three-deck sidewheeler: “twenty-threehundred tons burden, and named the Ariel, diagonally iron-braced throughout, and considered as strongly built as any steamship of her class afloat.” But, according to Vanderbilt himself, the Herald's estimate of his fortune was short by several million—a margin larger than the estate of nearly any other wealthy man in the country. An associate later recalled how the Commodore asked him who he thought was New York's next-wealthiest merchant, after William B. Astor. When he guessed Stephen Whitney, with some $7 million, Vanderbilt snorted, “Hmmm! He'll have to be worth a good deal more than that to be the second-richest man in New York.”14

A more significant oversight concerned Vanderbilt's attitude toward subsidies. He undoubtedly took a dim view of federal payments to private businesses—but he had no intention of operating at a disadvantage. He wanted for himself those federal dollars now flowing to Collins, though he was willing to take smaller helpings. To get them, he would embark on a dramatic new lobbying campaign in Washington.

Before he did so, he may have seen an opportunity to make a quick return on his investment in the Ariel. Sometime around January 1855, he reportedly called upon Collins in his office. The sixty-year-old Commodore bluntly stated his proposition: he planned to fight for the subsidy in Congress, but “he would refrain from doing so if he (Mr. Collins) would put back two of his ships to the Allaire Works for repair, and purchase the steamer Ariel, then on the stocks, for $250,000,” wrote the New York Times some weeks later. “Mr. Collins declined, considering the Ariel worth not over $150,000, and that $100,000 was asked simply as ‘hush money’” If the story was true, Collins badly underestimated the Ariel's value. In conversations with friends, Vanderbilt reportedly shook his head over his foe's stupidity in turning down a very fair price (especially in light of his long history of commercial extortion). Then again, the story may have been false, as it was reported by the openly hostile Times. The newspaper surmised, “The fact is, the ‘Commodore’ has become so accustomed to bringing down his game, that it is not to be wondered at if he does expect it to fall the instant he points a gun.”15

Collins himself brimmed with confidence. In the age that saw the great flowering of lobbying, he lobbied more effectively than anyone. In 1847, he had convinced Congress to pay him a subsidy for ten years in return for building five ships capable of conversion into military transports or men-of-war. He built four, all luxury passenger liners. The sums his company drew were staggering for the time. Its ships, each roughly 2,800 tons, cost an average of $736,035, an extravagance that Vanderbilt would never have tolerated—though he never had federal loans to cover his expenses. By 1855, federal payments to the line had risen to $858,000 annually, or $33,000 per trip; one congressman calculated that it had sucked $7,874,000 out of Washington since its formation. Collins lavished luxuries on his ships, built them to be very fast, and ran them hard. “They used twice the coal of other ships,” writes historian Mark Summers, “and cost more in repairs after six years than the original outlay for construction.”16

“A great deal is said about the excellence of these steamers,” one congressman quipped. “They are certainly the deepest-draught steamers I have ever yet heard of—drawing thirty-three feet in the National Treasury.” Collins secretly pooled earnings with the Cunard company, and earned an average annual profit of 40 percent per year, though inventive accounting made it seem that his line ran at a loss. “Any observer,” Summers concludes, “could see how well it did by a glance at the Brussels tapestries, chandeliers, silver tea-services, and rosewood furniture on board.”

To keep Congress from so observing, Collins marshaled the most effective lobbyists in Washington, including banker and gambling-house proprietor W. W. Corcoran and former House clerk Benjamin B. French. “While others got their thousands for aiding in the Collins steamer appropriation, I got $300,” French complained in 1852. “True I worked only one day, but if I had not worked that day, their appropriation would have been lost, for my intimacy with a single member caused him to remain at home, & his vote against it would have defeated it. They ought to have given me ten times what they did.” Another of Collins's “borers” (as they were called), a man notorious for his effectiveness in greasing money out of Congress, was described by a close friend as suffering from only one flaw: “He is such an infernal scoundrel.” Collins worked the Capitol in person, bringing the lavishly appointed Baltic up the Potomac in 1852 to entertain congressmen desperate for amusement in backwater Washington.17

The borers, the Collins subsidy, and the lucrative mail contracts for the California lines all represented a simmering crisis in American politics, as the ideology of an earlier generation broke down in the face of economic and territorial expansion. Radical Jacksonians condemned both active government and business corporations; yet the growing nation clearly needed transportation enterprises on a vast scale. This contradiction resulted, perversely enough, in large public payments to private corporations to do the work, with an attending frenzy of corruption.18 Ironically these circumstances set up Vanderbilt to play the Jacksonian champion even as he reached new heights of stockjobbing.

In February 1855, Vanderbilt launched his attack on Collins's subsidy with a formal proposal to carry the mail to Liverpool for $15,000 per voyage—less than half of Collins's fee. “I have had some experience in ocean navigation,” he wrote, “and am well satisfied that… the enterprise can be accomplished with great advantage to the country, and without loss to myself. I would not ask for the protection of $15,000 per voyage, were it not for the considerable compensation now allowed to the Cunard line by the British Government, and the still more stupendous protection afforded by our own Government to the Collins line.” In conversation with the press, he won sympathy by directly appealing to Jacksonian values. “He considers that the large sums now paid by the American and British governments for carrying the mail blights individual enterprise, and defies individual competition,” Scientific American reported.19

And so commenced the great congressional struggle over the Atlantic mail subsidy. It would be forgotten in later years, overshadowed by more ominous events. In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act had passed, repealing the Missouri Compromise and throwing open the question of slavery to the settlers of those newly opened territories. An organized land rush was under way, as free-soil migrants from the North moved into Kansas, where they confronted heavily armed, pro-slavery “border ruffians” from neighboring Missouri. The collapse of the old sectional compromises undermined the Whig Party; out of its ashes were arising the nationalist, anti-immigrant Know-Nothings (formally the American Party) and the free-soil Republicans. The Kansas-Nebraska earthquake was tearing apart the political landscape; already many were talking about the secession of the South, should slavery fail to expand into Kansas.20

On February 15, 1855, however, it was Collins's “enormous appropriation” that dominated the floor of the House of Representatives. Though the principles at stake would later seem minor compared to secession, they went to the heart of American politics. Simply put, it was a struggle between the old Democratic belief in individual enterprise and limited government, and the patriotic conviction that the United States must assert its place in the world, at least to the extent of carrying its own mail—in speed and style. “We live in a fast age,” declared Congressman Edson Olds of Ohio, chairman of the House Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads. “We have fast horses and pretty women [laughter]—and we want the fastest steamers in the world.” Olds's enthusiasm aroused skepticism in a congressman who later became quite an expert in government extravagance, one William M. Tweed. But Olds was adamant in his defense of Collins. “His line of steamers have done more for the American name and skill on the ocean than all the Government [Navy] steamers put together,” he claimed.

Olds spoke for a bill to lock in the Collins subsidy at its recently elevated level and eliminate Congress's option to cancel it with six months' notice. Congressman William Smith of Virginia stood up to interrupt him. According to the New York Times, Smith “said he listened with inexpressible surprise,” because Olds had denounced the subsidy in 1852. “Mr. Vanderbilt offered to do the service for a very considerably less sum than Mr. Collins, tendering good security but the proposition was rejected and duly disregarded, in order to continue the present monopoly,” Smith thundered. He “declared himself opposed to the whole scheme, viewing it as a source of corruption.” At that, Olds stood up and asked, “If the gentleman were so opposed to extras, how he got the name of ‘Extra Billy?’ [Laughter.]” Smith replied, “By extra and faithful service in the Democratic Party—not by dishonorable means or unworthy tricks. ‘Do you,’ he asked of Mr. Olds, ‘understand that?’ [Sensation.]”21

The House of Representatives passed the Collins bill. In the Senate, Democrat Robert Hunter of Virginia pointed to bribery as the explanation, noting that just seven months earlier the House had defeated the same measure, as had the Senate. “Now look at both Houses and see the tendency to the other side. What has produced this? Have any new features come up? Shall we say the change is attributable to outside influences? Mr. Vanderbilt proposes to do this service without the extra pay and my constituents shall know that there is one Senator who is unwilling recklessly to squander the money of the people.”

“I don't know nor care about Mr. Vanderbilt,” said Whig George Badger. “I do know what Mr. Collins has done. He has accomplished a successful rivalry with Great Britain, and I think for the honor of the country he should be permitted to proceed.”

“Mr. Vanderbilt is well known to us all,” countered Stephen R. Mallory of Florida. “His reputation is second to nobody.” But William H. Seward, the giant of New York's old Whig Party and an emerging Republican leader, came to Collins's defense. “It is said by some senators that this is an extravagant, a luxurious line,” Seward announced. “Sir, this line of steamers is, in my judgment, the proper diplomatic representative of the United States to the Old World.”22

The debate in the Senate raged on February 27 from one o'clock in the afternoon until nine at night. Finally the chamber passed the Collins subsidy bill. “Congress was not deluded—it was corrupted,” the New York Tribune declared. “Where the money came from, we do not legally know—we can only give a Yankee guess—but that money passed this bill—money not merely expended on borers and wheedlers, and the usual oyster-cellar appliances of lobby legislation—but money counted down into the palms of Members of Congress themselves—this is as clear as the noon-day sun.”23

At nine thirty a.m. on Saturday, March 3, the Ariel slid down the stocks into the East River. That same morning, President Franklin Pierce vetoed the Collins subsidy bill, denouncing it as a “donation” that would establish a monopoly and eliminate “the benefits of free competition.” The reaction on Capitol Hill was violent. “The veto of the Ocean Steamer Bill produced the greatest excitement in Congress today,” the New York Herald reported. “When it was read cries for impeachment were heard from different parts of the hall. Mr. Campbell of Ohio, with much vehemence, exclaimed, ‘The time for revolution has come!’”24

“The veto was bought by the opposition,” claimed one New York newspaper. “Vanderbilt is rich and bids high to carry his points, especially his enmities; and President Pierce has sold himself, and his friends, too so often, that his influence has become a marketable commodity. Fifty thousand dollars is supposed to be about the present price of a veto involving a million of dollars.”

The accusation led Vanderbilt to respond, in one of the most distinct expressions of his philosophy ever to be printed. It may well have been crafted by Horace Clark or one of his attorneys, though Lambert Wardell would later claim that Vanderbilt dictated his correspondence with great skill; certainly the letter he now sent to the New York Tribune crystallized sentiments he had expressed for the last thirty years. He suggested that he might file a lawsuit over the libelous accusation that he had bribed the president, but for the moment, “I desire that the public should know all that I have done and all that I wish to do,” he wrote. “After my return from my last visit to Europe, I became satisfied that the facilities of communication between the two countries were altogether insufficient.” The Cunard Line's interruption had brought matters to a head.

Now I have made no attack upon the Collins line, though I have never regarded, and do not now regard, any particular line of steamers as one of the institutions of the country… to venture to compete with which is treason. I am not inimical to that line, nor have I entertained aught of ill will toward the gentlemen who founded it.… I congratulate them on the prosperity which has hitherto attended their enterprise, and perhaps ought to applaud them for their ingenuity in its management.… They have succeeded in awakening a species of national fervor in favor of their enterprise till some seem to have considered that the measure of American patriotism is the extent of the public contribution to their treasury.

The tone of disdain hardly needs comment. But Vanderbilt went further, using impeccable Jacksonian language. “I assumed that the Atlantic Ocean was wide enough for two lines of steamers, and that if I saw fit to venture there, I encroached upon no private domain, and invaded no vested right,” he wrote.

But it is said that I am always in opposition, and that the same spirit of resistance which has often hitherto governed my action has influenced it now. In answer to this imputation I have only to say, that this is the same spirit which founded this great Republic, and which is now drawing the commerce of the world to our shores. It was the same spirit which unchained the fetters, which legislation similar in principle to that against which I now protest, once fastened upon the Hudson. Repress it if you dare, and before many centuries shall have passed away, your greatness and your glory, and your commerce will have gone still further west.

My life has been thus far spent among a people who I supposed favored no such principles as these which sanction this kind of legislation, and the share of prosperity which has fallen to my lot is the direct result of unfettered trade and unrestrained competition.25

What is most remarkable about this letter is its complete consistency with his previous public pronouncements, going back to the early 1830s. For all the apparent contradictions in his behavior, he envisioned his own career—his mission—in terms of a coherent philosophy: Jacksonian laissez-faire. Though the day was approaching when laissez-faire would be the conservative philosophy of a wealthy establishment, at this moment it lay on the populist—even radical—side of the spectrum. Vanderbilt had come of age in a society in which government intervention in the economy was seen as assistance for the elite. Even now, two decades after Jackson's day, the beliefs of that president pulsed through American politics, equating egalitarianism with individual enterprise and competition in a way that would make little sense to Americans of later centuries, after both government and the economy had grown larger and more intricate.

In Vanderbilt's mind, his commitment to competition kept alive the spark of the Revolution. He, Vanderbilt, represented the “spirit of resistance,” whether to the odious Livingston steamboat monopoly or the obscene subsidy to the already-rich investors in the Collins Line. He, Vanderbilt, had “unchained the fetters” that held men and commerce and American greatness down. What is most notable about this self-image is how much truth it held. Between the stances of hero-worship and cynicism lies an honest assessment of Vanderbilt at half century, one that both recognizes his ambivalence as a historical figure and still gives him due credit. For all his contradictions over the years, he remained the master competitor, the individual who did more to drive down costs and open new lines in steam navigation than any other. More than that, he had helped shape America's striving, competitive, productive society. Waging war with his businesses, he had wrought change at the point of a sword. He was the selfish revolutionary, the millionaire radical.

What he did not realize was that the world in which he had made himself—the world that gave rise to these individualistic, laissez-faire values—was beginning to disappear, thanks in part to his own success. He helped create enterprises on a scale never seen before in the United States. Small proprietors could not compete against him. Still more profound, his businesses required large numbers of wage workers. Laboring for someone else had been seen as a temporary condition, until a man set up his own farm or shop; now lifetime employees began to appear on the American scene—still few in number, but significant nonetheless. The emerging importance of big business can be seen in the life of lawyer Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's clients had always been individuals with small cases; but in the mid-1850s he began to devote most of his time to representing railroad corporations. Thanks to Vanderbilt, one day those corporations would grow far beyond any that employed attorney Lincoln.26

Despite the veto, Congress enacted the Collins subsidy through an amendment to a naval appropriations bill. The day after Vanderbilt's letter ran in the Tribune, the New York Times offered a closing commentary on his defeat. The Times supported Collins, and condemned the lack of “morality” in Vanderbilt's purported attempt to force him to buy the Ariel. “‘Commodore’ Vanderbilt has returned from Washington in rather unfortunate spirits,” it declared. “Possessing a large capital, upon which he is willing to draw freely to accomplish his ends, and endowed with a more than ordinary share of energy and perseverence, he is accustomed to succeed. Under these circumstances he submits to defeat with a very bad grace.” The paper saw one likely result: “Judging from his past history, we shall expect soon to see the ‘Commodore’ setting up an ‘opposition’ Congress, at half price.”27

As the Times foresaw, Vanderbilt would not give up. At the beginning of April, he announced the imminent start of his new Atlantic line, featuring the Ariel and his repurchased North Star, managed by another capable son-in-law, Canadian-born Daniel Torrance. Subsidy or no subsidy, he would fight Collins to the death.28

DURING THE BATTLE IN CONGRESS, Vanderbilt attended to another matter pertaining to Washington, one that involved his own family. George, his youngest son, wanted to attend the United States Military Academy. Though evidence about the boy is mostly apocryphal, by all accounts he was an outstanding athlete, a favorite of his father. On February 7, 1855, Congressman James Maurice of New York wrote to Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to name George a cadet at West Point, after a spot opened up due to a serious injury to a previous appointment. Five days later, President Pierce authorized the selection; a week after that, the Commodore sent Davis his formal permission for George's entry in the academy. On July 1, the boy began his training.29

George's appointment could only have been a matter of pride to the father who, of course, had named two of his sons after famous generals. Corneil, too, seems to have taken a step to untangle his unhappy life, by becoming a notary public in March. To all appearances, he began to work productively during this period, first in the law firm of Charles Rapallo and Horace Clark, then as a clerk in the leather store of Willliam T. Miller & Co.30 For once the source of strife in the Vanderbilt family came from a different source—Daniel Allen, now returned from Europe.

About the time of the launch of the Ariel and the veto of the Collins subsidy, Allen filed a lawsuit against the Accessory Transit Company claiming that its purchase of his father-in-law's steamships violated its corporate charter. “The street was full of rumors today about the proceedings instituted against the Nicaragua Transit Company,” the financial column of the New York Herald reported. “Personal spite and prejudice has undoubtedly something to do with it.” It was widely believed that the lawsuit was an attempt by short-sellers to drive down the stock price.31 Indeed, twenty-two years later Allen admitted, “I was representative of parties who had an interest.”

The problem was, that interest ran counter to those of his father-in-law. Vanderbilt had earned a large profit from the steamship sale. The lawsuit infuriated him, as Allen later acknowledged. “Our friendly relations were interrupted during that period,” he would observe, rather drily. Vanderbilt delivered a damning affidavit to counter Allen's claims, and told Horace Clark to defend Charles Morgan and the company32

Just as Vanderbilt believed friends could not be trusted, he was showing once again that enemies could be partners. Indeed, he seemed to view his prior battle with Morgan strictly as a matter of business. In January, they both had served on a committee appointed by the Chamber of Commerce to honor Commodore Matthew Perry's recent trade treaty with Japan. In May, both would publicly oppose the conversion of Castle Garden into an immigrant depot. (Fear of epidemics motivated resistance to the plan.) Business made strange bedfellows; before the end of the year, Vanderbilt would be driven into the arms of still another despised rival.33

AS SPRING TURNED TO SUMMER IN 1855, opponents preoccupied Cornelius Vanderbilt, as they so often did. There was Edward K. Collins, of course; but the Commodore also confronted his old rival George Law in an unlikely ring. Law had become a hero to many by defying the Spanish rulers of Cuba, who had tried to bar his steamships from docking in Havana because of an employee who had written tracts in favor of Cuban freedom. In 1854, a rumor had circulated that Law planned to use his private yacht, the Grapeshot, to smuggle to the island 200,000 surplus muskets that he had purchased from the federal government. Thanks to widespread American enthusiasm for seizing Cuba from Spain, this made Law a champion of expansionist nationalism.34

In March 1855, a movement began to build within the Know-Nothing Party to nominate Law for president. These anti-Irish, anti-immigrant ex-Whigs hailed him as “Live Oak George,” in tribute to his steamships; “Live Oak Clubs” sprang up in New York and Pennsylvania. The New York Herald wrote, “He advocates the intermingling of all our adopted citizens in the homogenous mass of the American people, not as Irish Americans, German Americans, or American Catholics, but simply as Americans.” The Heraldstressed his “opposition to all sectional agitators, North and South.”35

Law's candidacy reflected the chaos enveloping American politics. The destruction of the Whig Party, coupled with the growing crisis between North and South, left political activists scrambling to find new men and erect new parties. And the excitement around Law reflected his very public role as a creator of the U.S. Mail Steamship Company and stockholder in the Panama Railroad; in them he had owned and managed a vital piece of the nation's transportation infrastructure. It should not be surprising, then, that the next man spoken of as a suitable president should be another steamship tycoon. On March 30, ten members of the New Jersey legislature signed a letter to Cornelius Vanderbilt. “Recognized at home and abroad as an American citizen who, by ability and integrity, energy and enterprise, has practically illustrated the genius and character of our republican institutions,” they wrote, “we desire to connect your name with the high office of President of the United States.”

On April 12, Vanderbilt responded with a curiously ambivalent letter. “The earlier period of my life was devoted to unremitting toil, while my later years are severely burdened by the multiplied cares which my varied pursuits have engendered,” he wrote. “I have never found the time to indulge one single dream of ambition; and I have already attained to that period of life when more simple realities take the place of the hopes and the anticipations of youth.” Along with this apparent refusal to stand as a candidate, he announced some positions on public affairs. He declined to partake of the anti-immigrant fervor, for example, speaking in defense of “the large class of industrial emigration now flowing in upon our shores.” And he recommended his personal approach to enterprise for the nation as a whole. “I am well satisfied that all the results that have attended the labors of my life are attributable to the simple rule which I early adopted, to mind my own business.… Nor can I suggest one more appropriate for the regulation and conduct of the foreign policy of the American people.”36

The attempt to draft Vanderbilt, and his response, say a great deal about the man and his relationship to his times, albeit indirectly. The appeal to him was nonpartisan, which reflected the collapse of the old party system, of course, but also Vanderbilt's own lack of party affiliation. As noted earlier, the only evidence of serious political activity on his part is an apocryphal account of his parading for Henry Clay in 1844; before and after, he expressed no interest in public affairs unless they intersected with his own. Lambert Wardell later summarized, “He paid no attention to politics and was not a party man.”37 His lack of partisanship showed in the positions that he did take. Like a Whig, he looked askance at U.S. intervention abroad, and embraced corporations and the entire invisible architecture of modern commerce; like a Democrat, he championed immigration and free competition.

All of this was a bit remarkable in 1855. Politics saturated American life even more thoroughly than twenty years earlier, when Alexis de Tocqueville toured the republic and commented on the partisan passions of the people. To disengage from politics was, in some ways, to disengage from the substance of social intercourse.38 So, too, was Vanderbilt's lack of ambition rather noteworthy. In New York, the tradition of political leadership by the mercantile elite lingered from the eighteenth century. True, it had become attenuated in recent decades, as professional politicians came to dominate the ballot, but men such as Hamilton Fish and various Livingstons still walked the halls of power; banker August Belmont occupied the center of the national Democratic Party organization; and wealthy merchants organized mass meetings and citizens' committees that declaimed on every aspect of public affairs. Vanderbilt, on the other hand, represented a new species of wealthy Americans. After his precedent, it would not seem strange that Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller should shun public office, choosing to quietly exert their influence behind closed doors.

Despite enthusiasm in the newspapers for the “steamboat candidates,” neither went anywhere. Law being Law, he tried to corrupt delegates to the Know-Nothing convention. “A well-known agent of his attempted to bribe John H. Lyon of Jersey City with a certified check for $200,” reported a New Jersey newspaper. “This fact was made known by Mr. Lyon, and thence [contributed to] Mr. Law's defeat.” As for Vanderbilt, he never seriously considered running. It was a curious diversion in a year when business, not politics, drove his Washington agenda.39

The first order of business was his Atlantic line, scheduled to start on May 21. In April, he announced that he would slash fares to Europe from $130 to $110 for first cabin tickets, and from $75 to $60 for second cabin. “The magnificent steamship Ariel, lately built as a consort to the North Star, in Vanderbilt's direct New York and Havre line, will sail on her first voyage on Saturday noon next,” the New York Herald announced on May 17. The newspaper lavishly praised the vessel, focusing in particular on the luxury of the grand saloon. “The wainscotting is of satin rose and other highly polished wood. The deck is superbly carpeted, and the walls are ornamented with beautiful mirrors; and easy chairs, ottomans, and lounges of the most luxurious description are profusely scattered about.” Unlike the North Star, the Ariel had only one engine, a feature calculated to reduce fuel costs. And yet it proved fast enough, crossing the Atlantic on its first voyage in only twelve days.40

“Both the Ariel and North Star are fine steamships of great speed,” the London Times observed on August 1. “Their voyages across the Atlantic have recently been performed with admirable regularity.” It reported that “the well-known” Vanderbilt had arranged for the ships to stop at Southampton. “What is the most interesting feature of the business is, that Commodore Vanderbilt is running his ships entirely unassisted by any Government grant or subvention whatever.”

This was indeed international news. It may be that Vanderbilt conducted his campaign out of personal pique against the man who had snubbed him, yet his fast, well-run, unsubsidized line kept him at the center of the political debate. As the London Timesconcluded, “His ships have, therefore, to sail at every disadvantage against the heavily subsidized mail steamers of the various British and American lines. The Commodore appears to be convinced that good management and great speed of transit will enable his vessels to hold their own and to make a fair profit.” Or, perhaps, he simply had to run his ships long enough, even at a loss, to undermine congressional support for Collins's subsidy.

As Vanderbilt pounded the Collins Line with his swift, luxurious ships and low fares, he prepared for a second assault: a ship nearly twice the size of the North Star, a steamship larger than any ever built. Construction began in the Simonson yard about the time the Ariel made its first voyage. It would prove to be the pinnacle of Vanderbilt's shipbuilding career.41

Collins began to see his company fall apart under the strain. He doggedly kept his fares up, only to see passengers flock to the Vanderbilt line. Pressing his ships' advantage in speed, he ordered his captains to run them so fast that their engines needed costly, time-consuming repairs on each return to New York. Soon a second transatlantic line, the Ocean Steam Navigation Company—a line that had run to Bremen for a decade—began to struggle under Vanderbilt's pressure.42 Eventually all would come down to a test of will between Collins, with his bookkeeping tricks and political connections, and the fierce but savvy Commodore.

VANDERBILT'S SECOND ORDER of business for 1855 would be the Accessory Transit Company. It was rather like the business version of his son Corneil, a child with a kind of genius and a kind of curse, its great promise addled by an addiction to deceit, a child he was unable to simply shunt aside.

It was a ripe and vulnerable target. The company had continued to do “an exceedingly favorable business,” according to the New York Tribune, but it faced seemingly grave difficulties: its unsettled debt to Nicaragua, its ongoing payments to Vanderbilt, its loss of the Yankee Blade, and, perhaps most important, competition with the Panama route. In February, workers completed the Panama Railroad, and trains began to run from Aspinwall on the Atlantic to the city of Panama on the Pacific. Passengers flocked to the Pacific Mail and U.S. Mail Steamship companies as the isthmus crossing dropped from a matter of days to only hours. And yet, these obstacles were all surmountable. Over the previous two years, Accessory Transit had improved its operations, and even now remained competitive in terms of speed between New York and San Francisco. The initial surge of business to Panama slacked off as passengers began to return to the Nicaragua route. And shorter steamship voyages meant that operating expenses still remained significantly lower for the Transit Company. It was under these circumstances—short-term trouble but long-term possibilities—that Vanderbilt made his return.43

He had never left, really, having retained shares in the company all along. In early November, he went to the company offices, where Charles Morgan presided over the annual stockholders' meeting. There were “many other anxious faces” among the shareholders, one man reported. Of particular concern to them was Morgan's practice, as New York agent, of letting the company's ships sit “idle for the need of trifling repairs,” while Morgan put his own Sierra Nevada on the line, taking 60 percent of the earnings for himself. “Cornelius Vanderbilt said he had performed similar service for the Transit Company for 40 percent,” the witness wrote. “Mr. Morgan apologized for the extra 20 percent, under a plea of a higher price for coal.” The meeting broke up in suspicion over Morgan's conduct.44

Discontent within the company and worries without presented an obvious opportunity On November 21, the day when newspapers published Accessory Transit's annual report, detailing its difficulties, certain brokers began to bid for large amounts of its stock. Within a few days, the mysterious “new party” behind the purchases bought 25,000 shares, nearly a third of the 78,000 shares in existence. Word went out on Wall Street of a secret plan, the New York Tribune reported, “to buy a majority of the whole, so as to control the company”45

Vanderbilt, of course, was behind the “movement,” as it was called; but he had something larger in mind besides simply taking back the Accessory Transit Company. For some time, he had plotted the future of the California passenger business with Marshall Roberts of U.S. Mail and William Aspinwall of Pacific Mail. Nothing could have said more about Vanderbilt's rising status, for these men—both leaders of New York's social establishment—wished to place their fortunes in his hands.46

The three men crafted a multifaceted plan for both immediate profit and long-term dominance. First, after they acquired control of Accessory Transit they intended to have the company buy back forty thousand of their shares for several dollars more for each than they had paid. Second, Vanderbilt was to bring his ferocious cost-cutting skill to bear, to enable the company to pay a consistent dividend. Third, Accessory Transit would buy out the U.S. Mail Steamship Company, and then abandon the Pacific to Pacific Mail, which would become sole carrier for both Nicaragua and Panama. Accessory Transit ships would provide the Atlantic connection for both routes. Fourth, Accessory Transit would assume the Atlantic mail contract from the soon-to-be-dissolved U.S. Mail; as an incentive for Congress, Vanderbilt would carry the mail weekly instead of bimonthly, and for $90,000 less per year.

It was a remarkable turnabout. Not nine months after Vanderbilt publicly proclaimed his belief in “unfettered trade and unrestrained competition,” he conspired to erect a monopoly over California's steamship lines. To all appearances, he saw no inconsistency in this curious juxtaposition, despite the fact that this new monopoly would be supported by government funds (if they succeeded in transferring the mail contract). Perhaps he felt himself justified, for unlike his intended partners he had arrived at this point—at the threshold of total market control—through his prowess in competition, and he would maintain it in the future only if he remained ready to fight against any challengers. In any case, he never engaged in competition purely for its own sake, but always as a means of achieving a satisfactory, and profitable, equilibrium.47

One thing is certain: he had grown accustomed to holding his fate in his own hands, whether whipping a team of fast horses through a crowded street or seizing the corridor between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Little did he realize that he recaptured Accessory Transit at the very moment when its fate—and the fate of Nicaragua itself—was falling into the hands of an international criminal.

ON THE AFTERNOON OF NOVEMBER 8, a company of soldiers drew up in formation on the grand plaza of Granada, Nicaragua. They stood at attention as a distinguished figure approached: General Ponciano Corral, a popular patrician of the city a veteran of the republic's many civil wars, and the Conservative military commander. He strode beside a priest to the center of the plaza, sat down in a chair, and looked out over the city's tiled roofs and its massive cathedral, the volcano Mombacho in the distance. Then the soldiers raised their rifles and shot him dead.48

The man who ordered Corral's execution was William Walker. Vanderbilt would never meet Walker, but he would prove to be the most dangerous enemy of the Commodore's life so far. Walker was a small man, just five feet six inches tall, with a slender frame, thin mouth, thinning hair, and a freckled complexion. He had intense gray eyes that often drew notice. Commodore Hiram Paulding, one of the U.S. Navy's senior officers, remarked, “He listens to everything in a quiet way, says but little, speaks in a mild and subdued tone, and has rather the appearance and manner of a clerical gentleman than that of a warlike leader. He is said to be remarkable for his abstinence… and that wine and the society of ladies have no charm for him.”49

Walker had landed in Nicaragua six months earlier, leading fifty-six rifle-carrying Californians hired to fight for León's Liberals in the most recent flare-up of civil war. In the United States, though, he was known not as a mercenary, but as a filibuster. “Filibustering” had entered the American vocabulary around 1850 as a name for armed invasions of foreign territory by private American citizens—generally with the hope of annexing those lands to the United States. The term had likely been imported from Spanish (filibustero), which had borrowed in turn from the Dutch word for freebooter. By any name, it dated back to the earliest days of the republic. In 1837, for example, the first steamboat constructed by Vanderbilt, the Caroline, went over Niagara Falls amid skirmishing between Canadian militia and American invaders. The current wave grew out of the fight for independence by American settlers in Texas and the Mexican War. Filled with that expansionist enthusiasm captured by the name “Manifest Destiny,” small groups plotted expeditions into Latin America. In 1850 and again in 1851, scores of Americans made disastrous landings in Cuba. Walker himself had led an invasion of Mexico with a handful of men in 1853—a failure, but one that made him famous.50

In retrospect, filibustering can seem like a curious footnote to the antebellum era, a case of quixotic eccentrics racing down one of history's blind alleys. In reality, it was a significant element in the United States' slide toward civil war. Militants in the South embraced the movement in hopes of enlarging the territory open to slavery; the filibusters' focus on Cuba, for example, was due in part to the island's proximity to Florida and the fact that large-scale slavery already existed there. Perhaps most important, filibustering reflected the explosion of freelance violence as civil society and respect for political norms disintegrated in the fight over slavery's growth in the 1850s.

But filibustering was a complicated phenomenon, mingling nationalist expansionism with naked racism with a crusading belief in spreading Protestantism and free institutions to benighted Latin America. As one U.S. diplomat in the region wrote to Secretary of State William Marcy “Catholicism and Military rule have charms for them, which my pen is inadequate to describe, while any other more rational form of religion or government appears to them, heresy and anarchy.” After Walker landed in Nicaragua, Paulding wrote to his wife, “Central America will soon be brought into harmonious action by the introduction of our own beautiful system of government.”51

Walker himself had no lofty goals in mind. Entranced with the power of his own star, he believed himself destined to become Central America's own Napoléon. Nicaragua, with its transit route, was simply a convenient place to begin his conquests.52

He did have his beliefs—chiefly in his own genius. Born in Nashville, he received a classical education, and later wrote a memoir in which he referred to himself in the third person, in imitation of Julius Caesar's Commentaries. Caesar he was not. He fought four pistol duels in his life, missing his antagonist every time. In Nicaragua he threw his men into headlong attacks against fortified enemy troops, suffering horrific casualties. But he was lucky. The Liberals' chief executive and army commander both died soon after Walker's arrival; by default, he emerged as León's senior military leader.

After some of his usual, costly blundering, he won the war with his only inspired maneuver: he commandeered an Accessory Transit steamboat at Virgin Bay on Lake Nicaragua, landed at Granada, and captured the city from the rear. He then took hostage the families of leading Conservatives, forcing General Corral to surrender. Walker dictated a peace treaty that established a provisional unity government nominally led by Patricio Rivas, former governor of San Carlos, a weak figure whom Walker easily dominated. Walker named himself commander of the army and Corral minister of war. Within days, Walker accused Corral of treason, had him tried by a court-martial of filibuster officers, then had him shot, thereby consolidating his own power.53

With his political position secured, Walker turned to the problem of the transit. If he were to survive as Nicaragua's strongman, he would need a steady supply of reinforcements from the United States; his fellow countrymen were his most reliable troops, but they died in large number in his frontal assaults. Walker was intensely aware of this dependence. As he later wrote, “Internal order as well as freedom from foreign invasion depended… entirely on the rapid arrival of some hundreds of Americans.” Fortunately for him, his success created a wave of enthusiasm; thousands of young Americans proved eager to join his army—if they could get to Nicaragua. Walker, then, was as dependent on the Accessory Transit Company as he was on his American recruits.

But how to get Accessory Transit to respond to his dictates? His initial correspondence with the company was discouraging. Joseph White dismissed his demands, and Cornelius Garrison, the company's agent in San Francisco, did not reply at all. Frustrated, Walker turned to an aide, a one-handed confidence man named Parker H. French. Walker instructed Rivas to appoint French as Nicaragua's minister to the United States, then sent French to New York with orders to buy guns from George Law and bring Accessory Transit to terms. But Walker continued to mull over his relationship with the company.54

In every account of Walker's invasion of Nicaragua, from the 1850s to the twenty-first century it has been said that Accessory Transit “willingly cooperated with Walker,” as historian Robert E. May writes, “because company officials viewed him as a stabilizing influence on the country.” This was neither true nor logical. It makes no more sense than a storekeeper, troubled by shoplifters, thinking of an armed robber as a “stabilizing influence.” Most accounts cite as evidence a crate of $20,000 in gold bars that Accessory Transit donated to Walker upon his victory at Granada. In reality a local company official named Charles MacDonald, overcome with enthusiasm for Walker, delivered the gold on his own initiative. The move infuriated Garrison, who fired MacDonald when he learned of it. Indeed, Walker and French had called on Garrison before departing San Francisco to ask for transportation on an Accessory Transit steamship. “Garrison not only refused to let us go on the steamer,” French recalled, “but told us he would have nothing to do with the matter, for if he did, he would be blamed by the company.” After Walker sailed, French had remained behind to forward arms and men to Nicaragua, smuggling them aboard Accessory Transit ships with the connivance of friendly captains to avoid Garrison's scrutiny. When French himself had left San Francisco, leading scores of recruits, he had hijacked the steamship Uncle Sam, forcing Garrison off the ship at gunpoint.55

Garrison's resistance is significant because he has consistently—and wrongly—been depicted as the mastermind who pitted Walker against Vanderbilt. Historians have not done well with Garrison; for example, they have named him as Charles Morgan's partner in throwing Vanderbilt out of Accessory Transit in 1853, even though Garrison had left for San Francisco shortly before the Commodore's departure in the North Star, and took no part in the ensuing battle from all the way across the continent. It was only afterward that Garrison and Morgan had formed a business partnership, establishing a bank in San Francisco and cooperating on the stock exchange. And in the story of William Walker, Garrison would be the manipulated one, not the manipulator.

Not that he was a man to be taken lightly: Garrison was wily, decisive, and personally courageous. An engraving from this period reveals a man of force, with a large head, a long, strong chin, a long nose that points downward between prominent cheekbones, large perceptive eyes lurking under a high forehead, and wings of hair tufting out above his ears, as if he were wearing fuzzy laurels. He wears a dignified gray double-breasted coat with large black lapels and a black cravat. But it was cunning, not dignity that defined his career.

Born in 1809 on a farm near West Point, Garrison went from cabin boy on a Hudson River sloop to command of the Mississippi riverboat Convoy. In 1849, he followed the tide of the gold rush to the city of Panama, where he established a firm that was part bank, part mercantile house, part casino. On one occasion, he and a rival drunkenly agreed to a duel in the moonlight at no paces. They grabbed each other's lapels and one of the men shouted, “Fire!” As they raised their revolvers to shoot, the weapons collided, both bullets went astray, and the duel ended in laughter. In 1851, bandits robbed a mule train carrying a large consignment of gold across Panama; Garrison leaped onto a horse and led a posse into the jungle in pursuit. He rode back in triumph with two captured outlaws, one white and one black, both from New York56

In Panama, Garrison had served as agent of Morgan's short-lived steamship line, which had led to his lucrative position as agent of Accessory Transit in San Francisco, where he had arrived on March 23, 1853. Over the course of three years, he would handle well over $3 million in revenues, and speculated in land, coal, and flour. A reporter for R. G. Dun & Co. would conclude almost two decades later that Garrison would “take an interest in almost any apparent successful venture… but is not consd. reliable. Antecedents not in his favor, and all transactions [with him] should be clearly defined.” Or, as one writer put it, it took “twenty men to watch him.” That made him an ideal leader for San Francisco, which elected him mayor six months after his arrival.57

At the end of 1855, Garrison did not know about Vanderbilt's campaign to buy control of Accessory Transit, which was just beginning to unfold on the far side of the continent. But he did know about Walker's victory. So he paid close attention when Edmund Randolph, one of Walker's closest friends, walked into his office on the southeastern corner of Sacramento and Leidesdorff streets in San Francisco. The thirty-five-year-old scion of one of Virginia's first families and an early California lawmaker, Randolph would become the link between Garrison, Morgan, and Walker—the man who would threaten Vanderbilt with financial disaster and throw into chaos one of the primary lines of communication with California. And he would do it all out of greed.

Randolph explained to Garrison, quite candidly, that he intended to profit from his friend Walker's conquest of Nicaragua. “I told him that it seemed to me inevitable that the Accessory Transit Company would be abolished,” Randolph recalled; inevitable, that is, after Randolph spoke to Walker about the matter. But Walker would need a replacement company to bring arms and men from the United States. Randolph would later testify that he told Garrison, “I believed that I could obtain General Walker's influence with the new government to grant me the [new] charter in preference to anybody else.” If Garrison threw his support behind the filibuster movement, then Randolph promised to sell the transit rights to him, as a private individual. In essence, Randolph aspired to be Nicaragua's own “dummy,” in the proud tradition of the California steamship business.58

Garrison indignantly declined, but Randolph's insouciance gave him pause. “If things should take that twine,” Randolph recalled him musing, “he did not wish to be involved in the ruin.… He would do nothing whatever against the company, but if they fell wanted to save himself.” Garrison believed that Morgan remained in charge of the company, and he worried that Morgan would think that he had betrayed him if he gave in to Randolph's plot. But the wily Garrison was up to the challenge. When Randolph sailed for Nicaragua on December 5, Garrison sent along two agents (one of them his son, William R.). If Walker approved Randolph's plan, they were to buy the transit rights, and William was to go to New York to bring Morgan into the new line.59

Less than two weeks later, Walker welcomed his friend with joy. “The friendship between Randolph… and Walker,” the filibuster wrote, “was of a character not to be expressed by words; but the existence of such a sentiment… is essential for an understanding of the perfect confidence which marked their acts in reference to the Transit.”60 Walker listened closely as Randolph outlined a case for revoking Accessory Transit's corporate charter. It existed to aid the original canal company, he argued, but the canal had been abandoned. It had failed to pay the state its $10,000 in dues for 1855. And it never had paid the 10 percent of its profits. Walker accepted the indictment without question.

There were solid arguments against these charges. Accessory Transit was a separate entity from the canal company (which had until 1861 to build a canal). It still had time to pay its 1855 dues; more than that, it had cause to withhold the money, since the legitimacy of the new government remained in question, and the United States refused to recognize it. Furthermore, the company was then negotiating with representatives of the old government over the unpaid 10 percent. Finally, Nicaragua previously had assigned all payments to Thomas Manning, a British merchant who had lent the state a great deal of money. Randolph, however, was not adjudicating—he was prosecuting. He freely admitted that he wanted “a grant for myself of a charter of a similar nature” so he could sell it to Garrison.61

By coincidence, Walker was looking for a legal justification for killing the company. He had just learned that White previously had sent a small armed force to aid the Conservatives against a completely different filibuster. Curiously, this short-lived body of some fifty mercenaries would be overlooked in all the press coverage of this episode. In Walker's mind, it was decisive. Accessory Transit had taken up arms on the side of his enemies; even before Randolph's arrival, he had concluded to destroy it.62

By the end of December, William Garrison finalized negotiations for a new transit company. Walker would grant Randolph the exclusive right to carry passengers and freight across Nicaragua. Randolph would sell that right to Cornelius Garrison for an undetermined sum. Garrison would bring Morgan into the new line, and transport reinforcements to Nicaragua for free. Walker would seize Accessory Transit's steamboats, steam ships, and other property, and give them to Garrison and Morgan. William left for New York to inform Morgan, and his fellow agent returned to San Francisco to secure Garrison's approval. Walker held off on the revocation of the charter until everything was in place.63 News of a coup of this scale would be explosive; they had to time the announcement very carefully to deny the Accessory Transit officials any hope of stopping them.

The chief Accessory Transit official would soon be Vanderbilt, who purchased shares and drew up plans for a monopoly in happy ignorance of the looming disaster. As 1855 drew to a close, his world had suddenly become a very different place. He had grown accustomed to ruling his own fate, with money, guile, and force of will. Now his future was being driven by a quiet, fanatical man and his scheming friend, who wielded the one thing he lacked: armed force. To survive the impending conflagration, he would need armed force of his own.

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