He was a round-shouldered man of 46, with receding, greased-back hair, small, round glasses, and a moustacheless beard that spouted off his chin in a fountain of gray. Physically, Stanton provided a contrast with his guest. Navy’s highest rank until the Civil War-and fittingly belligerent.Ībraham Lincoln, then, may have been wary on March 17, 1862, when Secretary of War Edwin Stanton escorted the Commodore into the White House. The public awarded him the unofficial title of “Commodore,” the U.S. After decades of business warfare, he now shared a monopoly on shipping between California and the Atlantic coast, owned America’s primary transatlantic line, and dominated Wall Street. “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.

Union navy medal of honor civil war