Part 4 (1/2)
[32] ”Abstracts of Wills,” ii:444-445.
[33] Ibid., 1:323-324.
[34] ”Abstracts of Wills,” 1:108.
[35] ”An Historical Account of Ma.s.sachusetts Currency.” See also Colonial Doc.u.ments, iii:242, and the Records of New Amsterdam. See the chapters on the Astor fortune in Part II for full details of the methods in debauching and swindling the Indians in trading operations.
[36] Thus Captain Bellamy's speech in 1717 to Captain Baer of Boston, whose sloop he had just sunk and rifled: ”I am sorry that they [his crew] won't let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a mischief when it is not for my advantage; d.a.m.n the sloop, we must sink her, and she might be of use to you. Though you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security--for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by their knavery. But d.a.m.n ye altogether; d.a.m.n them for a pack of crafty rascals, and ye who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls. They villify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference: they rob the poor under cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under protection of our own courage. Had you better not make one of us than sneak after these villains for employment.” Baer refused and was put ash.o.r.e.--”The Lives and b.l.o.o.d.y Exploits of the Most Noted Pirates”:129-130.
[37] ”A Commercial Sketch of Boston,” Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, 1839, 1:125.
[38] Colonial Doc.u.ments, iv:790.
[39] Ibid., 678.
CHAPTER IV
THE s.h.i.+PPING FORTUNES
Thus it was that at the time of the Revolution many of the consequential fortunes were those of s.h.i.+powners and were princ.i.p.ally concentrated in New England. Some of these dealt in merchandise only, while others made large sums of money by exporting fish, tobacco, corn, rice and timber and lading their s.h.i.+ps on the return with negro slaves, for which they found a responsive market in the South. Many of the members of the Continental Congress were s.h.i.+p merchants, or inherited their fortunes from rich s.h.i.+ppers, as, for instance, Samuel Adams, Robert Morris, Henry Laurens of Charleston, S. C., John Hanc.o.c.k, whose fortune of $350,000 came from his uncle Thomas, Francis Lewis of New York and Joseph Hewes of North Carolina. Others were members of various Const.i.tutional conventions or became high officials in the Federal or State governments. The Revolution disrupted and almost destroyed the colonial s.h.i.+pping, and trade remained stagnant.
FORTUNES FROM PRIVATEERING.
Not wholly so, for the hazardous venture of privateering offered great returns. George Cabot of Boston was the son of an opulent s.h.i.+powner.
During the Revolution, George, with his brother swept the coast with twenty privateers carrying from sixteen to twenty guns each. For four or five years their booty was rich and heavy, but toward the end of the war, British gun-boats swooped on most of their craft and the brothers lost heavily. George subsequently became a United States Senator. Israel Thorndike, who began life as a cooper's apprentice and died in 1832 at the age of 75, leaving a fortune, ”the greatest that has ever been left in New England,”[40] made large sums of money as part owner and commander of a privateer which made many successful cruises. With this money he went into fisheries, foreign commerce and real estate, and later into manufacturing establishments. One of the towering rich men of the day, we are told that ”his investments in real estate, s.h.i.+pping or factories were wonderfully judicious and hundreds watched his movements, believing his pathway was safe.” The fortune he bequeathed was ranked as immense. To each of his three sons he left about $500,000 each, and other sums to another son, and to his widow and daughters. In all, the legacies to the surviving members of his family amounted to about $1,800,000.[41]
Another ”distinguished merchant,” as he was styled, to take up privateering was Nathaniel Tracy, the son of a Newburyport merchant.
College bred, as were most of the sons of rich merchants, he started out at the age of 25 with a number of privateers, and for many years returned flushed with prizes. To quote his appreciative biographer: ”He lived in a most magnificent style, having several country seats or large farms with elegant summer houses and fine fish ponds, and all those matters of convenience or taste that a British n.o.bleman might think necessary to his rank and happiness. His horses were of the choicest kind and his coaches of the most splendid make.” But alas! this gorgeous career was abruptly dispelled when unfeeling British frigates and gun-boats hooked in his saucy privateers and Tracy stood quite ruined.
Much more fortunate was Joseph Peabody. As a young man Peabody enlisted as an officer on Derby's privateer ”Bunker Hill.” His second cruise was on Cabot's privateer ”Pilgrim” which captured a richly cargoed British merchantman. Returning to sh.o.r.e he studied for an education, later resuming the privateer deck. Some of his exploits, as narrated by George Atkinson Ward in ”Hunt's Lives of American Merchants,” published in 1856, were thrilling enough to have found a deserved place in a gory novel. With the money made as his share of the various prizes, he bought a vessel which he commanded himself, and he personally made sundry voyages to Europe and the West Indies. By 1791 he had ama.s.sed a large fortune. There was no further need of his going to sea; he was now a great merchant and could pay others to take charge of his s.h.i.+ps. These increased to such an extent that he built in Salem and owned eighty-three s.h.i.+ps which he freighted and dispatched to every known part of the world. Seven thousand seamen were in his employ. His vessels were known in Calcutta, Canton, Sumatra, St. Petersburg and dozens of other ports. They came back with cargoes which were distributed by coasting vessels among the various American ports. It was with wonderment that his contemporaries spoke of his paying an aggregate of about $200,000 in State, county and city taxes in Salem, where he lived.[42] He died on Jan. 5, 1844, aged 84 years.
Asa Clapp, who at his death in 1848, at the age of 85 years, was credited with being the richest man in Maine,[43] began his career during the Revolution as an officer on a privateer. After the war he commanded various trading vessels, and in 1796 established a s.h.i.+pping business of his own, with headquarters at Portland. His vessels traded with Europe, the East and West Indies and South America. In his later years he went into banking. Of the size of his fortune we are left in ignorance.
A GLANCE AT OTHER s.h.i.+PPING FORTUNES.
These are instances of rich men whose original capital came from privateering, which was recognized as a legitimate method of reprisal.
As to the inception of the fortunes of other prominent capitalists of the period, few details are extant in the cases of most of them. Of the antecedents and life of Thomas Russell, a Boston s.h.i.+pper, who died in 1796, ”supposedly leaving the largest amount of property which up to that time had been acc.u.mulated in New England,” little is known. The extent of his fortune cannot be learned. Russell was one of the first, after the Revolution, to engage in trade with Russia, and drove many a hard bargain. He built a stately mansion in Charleston and daily traveled to Boston in a coach drawn by four black horses. In business he was inflexible; trade considerations aside he was an alms-giver. Of Cyrus Butler, another s.h.i.+powner and trader, who, according to one authority, was probably the richest man in New England[44]--and who, according to the statement of another publication[45]--left a fortune estimated at from three to four millions of dollars, few details likewise are known. He was the son of Samuel Butler, a shoemaker who removed from Edgartown, Ma.s.s., to Providence about 1750 and became a merchant and s.h.i.+powner. Cyrus followed in his steps. When this millionaire died at the age of 82 in 1849, the size of his fortune excited wonderment throughout New England. It may be here noted as a fact worthy of comment that of the group of hale rich s.h.i.+powners there were few who did not live to be octogenarians.
The rapidity with which large fortunes were made was not a riddle. Labor was cheap and unorganized, and the profits of trade were enormous.
According to Weeden the customary profits at the close of the eighteenth century on muslins and calicoes were one hundred per cent. Cargoes of coffee sometimes yielded three or four times that amount. Weeden instances one s.h.i.+pment of plain gla.s.s tumblers costing less than $1,000 which sold for $12,000 in the Isle of France.[46]
The prospects of a dazzling fortune, speedily reaped, instigated owners of capital to take the most perilous chances. Decayed s.h.i.+ps, superficially patched up, were often sent out on the chance that luck and skill would get them through the voyage and yield fortunes. Crew after crew was sacrificed to this frenzied rush for money, but nothing was thought of it. Again, there were examples of almost incredible temerity. In his biography of Peter Charndon Brooks, one of the princ.i.p.al merchants of the day, and his father-in-law, Edward Everett tells of a s.h.i.+p sailing from Calcutta to Boston with a youth of nineteen in command. Why or how this boy was placed in charge is not explained.