Posted on 09/04/2008 5:45:54 AM PDT by forkinsocket
Their lives and their fates could hardly have been more different. William Walker graduated from college when he was 14 and later earned a medical degree and passed the bar. Cornelius Vanderbilt quit school after the sixth grade and is known to have read only one book in his entire life.
Walker was executed by firing squad when he was 36, his body thrown naked into a shallow grave far from his native Nashville, Tenn. When Vanderbilt died in bed at the age of 83, he was the richest self-made man in the world. His tomb on his native Staten Island, New York's grandest after Ulysses Grant's, was designed by William Morris Hunt and landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted.
Though his fame once rivaled Vanderbilt's, Walker today is largely forgotten -- even in Nashville, where the name Vanderbilt certainly is better known. Yet as Stephen Dando-Collins recounts in "Tycoon's War," for a few years in the 1850s these two men, who never met in person, clashed violently in far-off Nicaragua.
It was the era of Manifest Destiny, and Walker wanted to extend the reach of the U.S. empire to Central America. Walker was a self- appointed conqueror, heading a private army that invaded Nicaragua, which had been racked by years of civil war. By 1856 he was president of the country and even recognized by the American government.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“Gentlemen, You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you.”
Now that is a great line!
bump for later
And there also was the story about how when he was well on in years Vanderbilt preferred to shuffle around town dêshabillê. It drove his wife to distraction. She begged him to dress more in keeping with this statue.
"Why?" he asked.
"In case you have to impress somebody," replied his wife.
Vanderbilt studied on this a minute than said,"I'm the richest man in America. Who do I have to impress?"
True or not, who knows? But a cute story anyway.
And to think that Vanderbilt’s legacy has finally diluted itself down to the mewling little fop we all know as Anderson Cooper. I venture that, given his sexual predilictions, the bloodline will stop w/him. Corny must be raging in his fancy grave.
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