What Vanderbilt's obituary failed to mention, perhaps as contemporaries already knew it well, was that Hamilton was African American. The day after Vanderbilt's death on January 4, 1877, an almost full-page obituary on the front of the National Republican acknowledged that, in the context of his Wall Street share transactions, 'There was only one man who ever fought the Commodore to the end, and that was Jeremiah Hamilton.' Cornelius Vanderbilt, America's first tycoon, came to respect, grudgingly, his one-time opponent. Hamilton was a well-known figure on Wall Street. The day after Vanderbilt's death on January 4, 1877, an almost full-page obituary on the front of the National Republican acknowledged that, in the context of his Wall In the middle decades of the nineteenth century Jeremiah G.
In the middle decades of the nineteenth century Jeremiah G.
