Vanderbilt University - Commodore Yearbook (Nashville, TN)

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control. Meanwhile, the Commodore's young second new wife, the former Miss Frank Craw- ford of Mobile, had her own influence on the magnate. Methodist Bishop Holland McTyeire was a leader of the movement to establish an institution of learning of the highest order -a movement that had already received a Nashville-issued charter for Central Univer- sity. The Bishop was also on his way to New York in 1873 for medical treatment, ultimately to become a guest in the Commodore's home. The Bishop's illness worsened, he lost some ten to fifteen pounds, and he lingered with the Vanderbilts. He did gain, however, the respect of the aging mogul. The two men, leaders in their respective fields at a difficult time, soon felt an empathy that got them down to business. The Bishop had also won the sympathies of the Commodore's wife, who pointed out to her husband the dearth of educational in- stitutions in the South. She recommended

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Vanderbilt was a tough cookie. He warned competitors who had crossed him that he would ruin them. He did. His self-reliance and self- confidence left no sympathy for lesser mortals who didn't measure up. And business was a man's game of competition, a no-holds-barred sort of sport. Law! the Commodore once said, What do I care about the law? Hain't I got the power? The Commodore's profits grew to be the largest fortune in America, but by the 1870's he was in later life and still had made no major act of philanthropy. But people were working on the Commodore. The Reverend Charles Deems, a regular visitor of the Commodore, warned him that boys would point to the Commodore and say how no education was needed, wanted, or mis- sed by the richest man in America. Will they say that? the Commodore asked his friend, But it isn't true, I do care for education and always have, but what shall I do? Another time he told Deems, I'd give a million dollars today if I had your education. A million dollars indeed. This conversation was supposed to lead to a gift for the Moravians, but the Commodore rebelled against their demands for ecclesiastical

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that he endow a university and referred him to the Bishop and the Bishop's well-laid plans. The suggestion caught the Com- modore's fancy, wrote the Bishop's daughter. Dinner over, he repaired to the Bishop's room, and the early hours of the morning found him still seated at his bedside as the plans for the foundation of a great university were unfolded to him. And this was but the first of the talks between the Bishop and the Commodore about this new university for the South. Back in Tennessee, people labelled the Bishop's university-building a quixotic dream. The Commodore, on the other hand, found substance in the Bishop's ambitions, figuring that the field of railroad law lost its greatest potential when McTyeire entered the ministry. And the Commodore paid. The Commodore paid seven percent First Mortgage Bonds of the New York Central and