prominent among whom was Samuel Sloan.

As we enter the Civil War period, we find the three important
properties which were afterwards to make up the Vanderbilt system
all developing rapidly and logically into the strategical
relationship which would make ultimate consolidation inevitable.
The completion of the Erie Railway and its gradual development as
the only through line across the State from New York to the Great
Lakes; the opening, expansion, and general solidification of the
Pennsylvania lines and their aggressive policy of reaching out to
the lake region on the west and across New Jersey on the east;
the extension of the Erie interests into the New England field,
and the possibility that the latter might gain control of the
Harlem or the Hudson River Railroad--all these considerations
naturally aroused in the New York Central interests a desire to
insure the future by obtaining for themselves control of the
lines that would connect their own system with New York City and
the Eastern seaboard.

During the Civil War, however, no progress was made in this
direction. It was not until 1869, four years after the closing of
the war, that any radical change took place. But in the years
that had intervened, a new and commanding figure in the railroad
world had come upon the scene. This man had grown to be the
dominating genius, not only in the field of railway expansion,
but in the world of finance as well. His name was Cornelius
Vanderbilt. Born in 1794 in very humble circumstances, he had
received little or no education, and as a youth had eked out a
living by ferrying passengers and garden produce from Staten
Island to New York. He had painfully saved a few hundred dollars