![]() ![]() “He thought every man could stand watching,” remarked his lifelong clerk, Lambert Wardell, “and never placed confidence in anyone.” By 1861, Vanderbilt’s tough-minded brilliance had lifted him to “almost kingly power,” the Chicago Tribune wrote. “There is no friendship in trade,” he often said. “He had a clear complexion, ruddy cheeks, a large bold head, a strong nose, square jaw, a high, confidence-inspiring brow, and thick, long gray hair which turned magnificently white.”Ī conqueror, yes a benefactor, no. He even “looked like a conqueror,” wrote Louis Auchincloss. When the Civil War began, no one imagined he would turn out to be a selfless patriot.īorn in 1794, he stood 6 feet tall, bristling with a sinewy strength acquired in a youth spent at the mast, on the docks and in fistfights. Unsentimental, he earned a national reputation for taking care of himself. Panic over the vulnerability of the Union fleet in 1862 induced the government to accept his gift.Ĭornelius Vanderbilt was a hard man. Cornelius Vanderbilt tried since the outbreak of war to donate the steamship Vanderbilt, his largest and fastest vessel, to the Union effort.
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