Born
of poor Dutch immigrants, Cornelius Vanderbilt rose from an untutored
Staten Island ferry boy who could not spell correctly into a modern
captain of industry – he had known no other school than that of the dock
and “Possessed of a sharp wharf-rat’s tongue and a rough wit . . .
[and] Wherever his keen eye detected a line that was making a large
profit . . . he swooped down and drove it to the wall . . . Then when
the opposition was driven out, he would raise his rates without pity, to
the lasting misery of his clients.” The war-party of Lincoln in 1861
hastened a massive transfer of power to these captains of industry and
large-scale capitalism.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Legend of the Yankee Trader
“In
the 1850’s [one of the kings of the marketplace] was Daniel Drew,
sometimes an associate, sometimes rival of [Cornelius] Vanderbilt . . .
Timid and mistrustful, he always believed the worst of men and their
business ventures. He said: “Never tell nobody what yer goin’ to do,
till ye do it.” [As] Henry Clews relates, “no hardships or privations
could deter him from the pursuit of money.”
[Drew]
. . . became a character of renown, possessing a fortune of many
millions, a model for a rising generation. His sayings were repeated
everywhere and his more famous tricks were rehearsed by younger
disciples. According to Clews he cared not a fig what people thought of
him, or what newspapers said. “He holds the honest people of the world
to be a pack of fools . . . .when he has been unusually lucky in his
trade of fleecing other men, he settles accounts with his conscience by
subscribing toward a new chapel or attending a prayer meeting.”
For
Drew was devoutly religious . . . Had he not given the immense sum of
$250,000 to found a Methodist theological seminary in New Jersey? But in
truth, it turned out in the end that he had given only his note, which
after many years, in the shifting fortunes of new times, was never to be
honored . . .
The
legend of the Yankee Trader . . . formed a significant part of the
composite national portrait, in which the mellow features of [Benjamin]
Franklin are prominent . . . He was Uncle Jonathan, or Jonathan Slick or
Sam Slick, as Miss Constance Rourke describes him in her recent
inquiries into American folklore. He was long and lean and
weather-beaten; never passive, he was “noticeably out in the world; it
was a prime part of his character to be “a-doin.”
He
pulled strings, he made shrewd and caustic comments; he ridiculed old
values; “the persistent contrast with the British showed part of his
intention.” And to the British especially he always appeared homely and
“rapacious,” but never slow-witted. If you met him in a tavern and he
drew you into trade, he soon quietly stripped you of everything you had.
In
the South, superstitious colored folks and even white folks, according
to tradition, locked their doors piously at the approach of the long,
flapping peddler’s figure.
This
ingenious Yankee, quick to adapt himself everywhere, easily extricating
himself from situations, and by religion and training profoundly
rational, his passions under control, his reason dominated by his
natural inclinations, “plain and pawky,” overassertive, self-assured,
moving everywhere, had left his mark upon the society and leavened it.
But in the give and take of the frontier he was at home naturally; he
easily bested all others.”
(The Robber Barons, The Great American Capitalists, 1861-1901, Matthew Josephson, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934, pp. 17-21)
