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Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer

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The ground here is so fertile; it's a shame that Stephen Dando-Collins does approximately nothing with it. We start with one of the coolest lines in the history of capitalism -- a letter from a tycoon to his erstwhile business partners:

Gentlemen, you have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The story of wrongs avenged gets better. Because while Vanderbilt's partners are scamming him, the American William Walker is trying to take over Nicaragua. Vanderbilt needs Nicaragua; the gold rush is heating up in California, and Vanderbilt wants to shuttle passengers from the east coast to the west. Without a railroad or a Panama Canal, the quickest way to do this had been to send them around the southern tip of South America. Vanderbilt had another idea: send boats through the Caribbean to Nicaragua, get on the San Juan River at Greytown, follow the San Juan to Lake Nicaragua, use mules to cover a small strip of ground between the Lake and San Juan Del Sur, and dump them out onto the Pacific. From there, the trip up to California is comparatively short.

There will be conflict eventually. On the one side we have Walker, the American "filibuster" (a term meaning something like "treasure-seeking cowboy" before it meant "reading from the phone book for 72 consecutive hours"), hoping to carve out a new nation under his tutelage in South America. On the other we have a ruthless businessman who needs Walker's territory to make his money. While Vanderbilt plots his enemies' destruction, Walker draws thousands upon thousands of Americans down from the north into his private army and names himself president of Nicaragua. How do those thousands of Americans get there? They need to take ships, obviously. The collision course is set.

Unfortunately, Dando-Collins does as little as possible with these promising materials, and by the end of "Tycoon's War" he reminds us how little he's done with them. For instance: one might want to know what motivates Walker to do what he does. Is it money? Fame? Power? You'd think that in a book ostensibly about "America's Most Famous Military Adventurer," his motivations would be weaved into most every page of the book. Yet Dando-Collins saves them for the end, in a couple-page-long chapter entitled "The Protagonists' Motives." Dando-Collins will soon be releasing an edition of the New Testament with an epilogue entitled "Stuff About Jesus."

Dando-Collins wants us to believe that Walker was hugely important within American history. He may well be, but nothing Dando-Collins tells us would suggest so. The best he can come up with is to note that "To this day, there is an historical marker honoring Walker outside the Nashville house where he was born and grew up." Mt. Rushmore it isn't.

The unfortunate reality seems to be that Dando-Collins is a William Walker fanboy. Near "The Protagonists' Motives," we get this: "Throughout Central America today, Walker's name ranks with that of Hitler and Stalin." That is the sole unflattering line about Walker in the book's 342 pages, and it takes 334 pages to get there. The reader is not equipped to understand why Central Americans might view Walker that way.

We can at least hope for solid military history. "Tycoon's War" is a reasonably engaging on that score, and indeed that seems to be the only part of "Tycoon's War" that really interests Dando-Collins. He mostly lets the Walker biography, the Vanderbilt biography, the broader story of the U.S.'s role in this hemisphere, and the clash-of-titans aspects drop.

In 1849, fifty-five year old shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt was one of the richest men in America. When he died in 1877, Vanderbilt had more money than the US Treasury and was the richest man in the country. Americans remember Vanderbilt's name today, but very few Americans remember the adventurer William Walker, his rival, who was the most famous man in America during his day.
This was the age of expansion. The US had just won the war with Mexico the previous year during which the country took half a million Mexican acres. Now Nicaragua interested several countries. The French wanted to build a canal across it from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. The British landed military forces in Nicaragua to take control of the area and introduce their influence into Central America. This was also the time of the California gold rush when many people lost their lives when they traveled across the US by land.
Vanderbilt proposed to the US government that the government get him the right from Nicaragua to build a canal across their country so that Americans and others could go from the east to the west safely. However, Vanderbilt was opposed by the very talented young American idealist, William Walker, who was determined to conquer and rule over a Central American Empire. Walker would become the president of Nicaragua for awhile, but ultimately failed to accomplish his goal. The two powerful men, both opportunists, clashed in battles that resulted in the death of thousands of Americans.
This book is a well-written history, with much interesting information, and it reads like a drama.

The "Tycon's War" offers an entertaining historical voyage into a fascinating era of American/Central American history. I wholeheartedly recommend this book for both its historical and entertainment value. Well written and well researched, the book provides many great stories to recount to friends and family.

I consider myself pretty well read and at least passably knowledgeable in American history, which is why I was surprised that I knew so little about William Walker. I first came across him in an odd little book called "Legendary Outlaws of the West" (Williams). A chapter discussed his early attempts to invade and claim Baja, Mexico. He was rebuffed by a notorious outlaw/rancher named Melendrez, who later was commissioned as a general in the army for helping defeat Walker and his men.

You'd think Walker would return to the U.S. humbled, but instead - driven by a unwavering commitment to manifest destiny (translation: it's our right to do whatever we want) he set his sights on Nicaragua, ultimately leading a successful invasion with a handful of filibusteros (based on the Dutch word for freebooter - pirate - and source of today's "filibuster"). His dreams of empire were in direct opposition, ultimately, with shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt who wanted to control access across the country via Lake Nicaragua to profit from trips to the west coast of America (at the time, pre-railroad, boats were much faster than going overland and the profits were obscene.)

It was hard to know who to pull for in this war: a tough as nails mercenary who, after a series of victories, was elected president of Nicaragua, or the epitome of a capitalist successes, Vanderbilt, literally a self-made man able to devote millions to destabilizing Walker's regime in order to make more millions.
This is a great book, thoroughly researched - in fact, I started to lose track of the many battles and the many players strutting across the stage only to be executed against an adobe wall - and I highly recommend it. My favorite passage, near the end, was an inspired bit of sabotage that ultimately sealed Walker's defeat.

It really puts in stark light the mind set that possibly still shapes American idealism - that we have some moral obligation to reshape the world in our image. Sadly, the only force greater than manifest destiny appears to be capitalism and the desire to concentrate vast amounts of wealth by hook or by hook or, in this case, by arming soldiers and mercenaries and tempting them to invade other countries.

In Walker's own words, to his troops after his defeat, "You have written a page of American history which is impossible to forget or erase." Sadly, he appears all but forgotten in his own country though his dark legacy lives on in Central America.

When you hear the name Vanderbilt, what do you think of? Gloria's designer blue jeans, perhaps? Amy's practical particulars on proper etiquette? Consuelo's European titled-husband-hunting and subsequent portrait by Sargent? An American university? Or maybe those preposterously lavish millionaire's "cottages" in dotting the landscape in Ashville, North Carolina and Newport, Rhode Island? Yes, so do I. All of the above stem from Cornelius--AKA "Commodore"--Vanderbilt, who fashioned an empire worth $143 billion in today's dollars, out of ferry boats, steamships and railroads, thus making himself and his heirs among America's wealthiest plutocrats down to this very day.

All of this is pretty well known. But without the book Tycoon's War, even 19th century trivia buffs might not have realized that the Commodore of the New York Central also waged a war in Central America, against a colorful expatriate American from Nashville named William Walker, and through deception, skullduggery and the power of the dollar, won it. Just barely. Had he lost, he might have ended his life in reduced circumstances and semi-obscurity like the rest of us. And therein lies this tale.

The Commodore, to make the understatement of the day, was not exactly a likable fellow. He was accustomed to getting exactly what he wanted and derived inordinate pleasure from terrorizing the populace by driving his horses up and down the boulevards of Manhattan at break neck speed, cheating at protracted card games with various sons and sons-in-law (most of whom he disinherited at regular intervals) and causing a general ruckus wherever he went. A person of ordinary means with such a sour disposition would have been shunned as the Amish do, but the Commodore had extraordinary means and so his oafish behavior was tolerated, though never appreciated. All of this makes for good copy, if not good companionship.

Given a choice--and really there is not much of one--throughout the book the reader roots fervently for the underdog adventurer, William Walker. Whether this is due to Walker's perennially sunny assessment of his own prospects of success, his adulation in the contemporary American press, his hero worship by his hand picked followers or his improbably bookish appearance, Walker comes off better than the Commodore on every page. Then again, a rumpled sheet of waxed paper would come off better than the Commodore. But I digress. Walker seeks to establish a government in Nicaragua with himself as the generalissimo behind the titular president and thereby, extend United States influence southward. However, in so doing, Walker commandeers the Commodore's lake steamers from his lucrative trans-isthmus business, just as all thousands of young fellows are responding to Horace Greeley's decree, "Go west, young man!" This gets the Commodore where it hurts, in the Vanderbilt wallet. So in the Commodore's eyes Walker has got to take a hike. West or otherwise.

I won't spoil the story by telling you how it comes out but it is a real life yarn well worth your time and attention.

"In addition to symbolizing a certain lifestyle and founding a major university, Cornelius Vanderbilt engaged in a vicious economic and personal war with William Walker of Nashville. When Walker and his private army invaded Nicaragua, Vanderbilt's fortune was threatened and this true story illustrates all the greed and violence that resulted."

This book was recommended by a doctor friend in Costa Rica who has built a remarkable adventure lodge (eco, fishing, birding, kayaking, etc.) in the jungle at Greytown, a settlement prominent in the book. The book is very well written about an exciting part of Central American history. I recently traveled to the eastern part of Nicaragua one to see my friends lodge, Rio Indio (Indian River), but really became interested after I returned and read the "Tycoon's War". I frequent Costa Rica and love the beauty of the land which is typical to the Greytown area of Nicaragua. I have been on parts of the San Juan River where parts of the book takes place. For these reasons I have a special interest in the topic but I can still highly recommend this read to others vaguely interested in Nicaragua, adventure, Vanderbilt, the gold rush, etc.

What a study in power and greed. Wow, would the US and Central America look different without Vanderbilt and Walker. Brought together masterfully by Dando-Collins. I'll never look at Vanderbilt University the same again...nor Nicaragua.