- 336 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
"I got to be a millionaire afore I know'd it hardly," remarked the Wall Street financier Daniel Drew (1797-1879).
An uneducated farm boy from Putnam County, New York, he became in turn a successful cattle drover, a circus clown, tavern keeper, a shrewd Hudson River steamboat operator, and an unscrupulous speculator. As the colorful "Uncle Daniel" of Wall Street-his whiskered face seamed with wrinkles and twinkling with steel-gray eyes—time and again he disrupted the financial markets with manipulations whereby he either won or lost millions of dollars.
Having "got religion" upon hearing a scary hell-fire sermon at the age of fourteen, Drew was also a fervent Methodist. Rumors of his financial operations—epic struggles that pitted him against Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Jim Fisk, and that subjected him to threats of arrest and even kidnapping, and on one occasion to a most undignified flight from the state-baffled and disturbed the Methodists, who admittedly had little grasp of Wall Street but knew firsthand Brother Drew's tearful repentance at prayer meetings and his generosity in founding churches and seminaries.
With its dual commitment to religion and rascality, Drew's career is a rich study in contradictions, an exciting chronicle of high drama and low comedy capped by bankruptcy. To understand Drew in his complexity, the author argues, is to get a grip on the heady and exploitative age that produced him—the yesterday of "smartness" and "go ahead" that helped engender the America of today. Based on primary sources, this is the first full-fledged biography of Drew, who hitherto has been known chiefly through a fictionalized and fraudulent account of 1910.
Frequently asked questions
- Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
- Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half title
- Über den Autor
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue
- 1 Beginnings
- 2 Circus and Drover Days
- 3 King of the Bull’s Head Tavern
- 4 Into Steamboating
- 5 Top Dog on the River
- 6 Wall Street
- 7 Enter the Iron Horse
- 8 The Best Friend a Railroad Ever Had
- 9 Wartime
- 10 The Virtuoso of Erie
- 11 A Seminary, an Injunction, and a Loan
- 12 Uncle Daniel’s Little Railroads
- 13 The Great Erie War: Preliminaries
- 14 The Battle of Wall Street
- 15 The Battles of Fort Taylor
- 16 The Battle of Albany
- 17 Negotiations and Peace
- 18 The Greenback Lockup
- 19 Respite and Return
- 20 Uncle Daniel Buys the Dream
- 21 The Last Great Caper
- 22 Bankruptcy
- 23 The Oldest Man on the Street
- Epilogue
- Appendix Bouck White’s “Book of Daniel Drew”: An Enduring Fake
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index