Alexander Vaden

Alexander Vaden (December 5, 1824 - June 7, 1877) was an African-American business magnate who built his wealth in shipping and railroads. Vaden worked in the steamship transit business, however a vast majority of his wealth came from his investment in the rapidly growing railroad industry. He was responsible for effectively transforming the geography of the United States through the railroads.
== Early Life ==
Alex was born December 5, 1824 to Daniel, born Kabelo in South Africa, and Delila, born Abena in Ghana. His parents were slaves owned by Henry Kirby in Madison County, Georgia. When he was fifteen years old, Alex's father was caught sleeping with Kirby's 21-year old daughter. This sexual relationship had been going on for months against his fathers will due to the woman's coercion but when they were caught she made it seem as if she had been forced into the act. Henry Kirby strung Alex's father up and beat him for hours, forcing the other slaves to watch; when Alex's older brother, Samuel, attempted to intervene and plead for mercy Kirby had him strung up as well and forced his son Jared, who was best friends with Alex's brother, to then beat both slaves.
After this incident Alex's father and brother were left strung up as they bled, dying the next day. His mother went into a state of depression and refused to eat, before she eventually died four months later. Alex and his brother Joseph, who was one year older, began planning their escape shortly after. Both boys knew how to read and write, as Samuel had taught them after he himself learning from Jared, and they wrote down their plans. On October 4, 1839, Joseph and Alex escaped from the plantation and headed north, arriving in Asheville, North Carolina three days later.
The two boys managed stayed in North Carolina for two weeks, surviving off of stolen produce from farms in the southern edge of the city and rabbits they killed from the forrest. After being caught stealing from on of the farms they again began traveling further north, eventually being separated just outside Johnson City, Tennessee after running into slave catchers.
Alex continued on east where he settled in Richmond, Virginia. Two days into arriving he ran into Thomas Vaden, a Richmond businessman who operated a steamship service on the James river, a slave. Immediately recognizing the boy as a runaway, Thomas, who was secretly against slavery, brought the boy into his home and offered him work cleaning his ship and servicing passengers during trips. To the public Alex was a slave in order to protect him, but in reality he had near free reign to do as he pleased. Alex continued to work on the ship eventually learning to captain the vessel by the age of 17, when he began taking trips on his own after Thomas purchased a second ship. Upon his 18th birthday, Thomas gave him freedom papers making him legally free, and Alex adopted Thomas' last name.
== Shipping Business ==
In 1850, Alex purchased his own ship with money he had saved from his Thomas' business and moved to New York City. When the California gold rush began in 1849, many of the migrants to California, and almost all of the gold returning to the East Coast, went by steamship to Panama, where mule trains and canoes provided transportation across the isthmus. Alex started a steamship line to Nicaragua, which was closer to the United States and was spanned most of the way across by Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River. He also founded the Accessory Transit Company to carry passengers across Nicaragua on the lake and river.
Later he turned to transatlantic steamship lines, running in opposition to the heavily subsidized Collins Line, headed by Edward K. Collins. Alex eventually drove the Collins Line into extinction. He also eventually bought control of a major shipyard and the Allaire Iron Works, a leading manufacturer of marine steam engines, in Manhattan.
By 1856 he had developed a monopoly on the California steamship business.
==American Civil War==
When the Civil War began in 1861, Alex attempted to donate his largest steamship, the Asante, to the Union Navy. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles refused it, thinking its operation and maintenance too expensive for what he expected to be a short war. Vaden had little choice but to lease it to the War Department, at prices set by ship brokers. When the Confederate ironclad Virginia (popularly known in the North as the Merrimack) wrought havoc with the Union blockading squadron at Hampton Roads, Virginia, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and President Abraham Lincoln called on Vaden for help. This time he succeeded in donating the Vaden to the Union Navy, equipping it with a ram and staffing it with handpicked officers. It helped bottle up the Virginia, after which Vaden converted it into a cruiser to hunt for the Confederate commerce raider Alabama, captained by Raphael Semmes. For donating the Asante, he was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal. Vaden also paid to outfit a major expedition to New Orleans.
During the war, Vaden also provided funds for northern Black teachers to go to Contraband Camps to educate the slaves captured by the Union forces. This included Camp Shiloh in Memphis, Tennessee; Camp Birney in Vicksburg, MS; Camp Parapet in New Orleans, LA; and the Grand Contraband Camp in Hampton, Virginia.
==Railroad Empire==
===New York and Harlem Railroad===
In 1863, Vaden took control of the Harlem in a famous stock market corner, and was elected its president. He later explained that he wanted to show that he could take this railroad, which was generally considered worthless, and make it valuable. It had a key advantage: it was the only steam railroad to enter the center of Manhattan, running down 4th Avenue (later Park Avenue) to a station on 26th Street, where it connected with a horse-drawn streetcar line. From Manhattan it ran up to Chatham Four Corners, New York, where it had a connection to the railroads running east and west.
===New York Central and Hudson River Railroad===
Once in charge of the Harlem, Vaden encountered conflicts with connecting lines. In each case, the strife ended in a battle that Vaden won. He bought control of the Hudson River Railroad in 1864, the New York Central Railroad in 1867, and the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway in 1869. He later bought the Canada Southern as well. In 1870, he consolidated two of his key lines into the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, one of the first giant corporations in United States history.
He would go on to buy the Erie Railroad in 1872 from Jay Gould.
===Grand Central Depot===
In 1869, Vaden directed the Harlem to begin construction of the Grand Central Depot on 42nd Street in Manhattan. It was finished in 1871, and served as his lines' terminus in New York. He sank the tracks on 4th Avenue in a cut that later became a tunnel, and 4th Avenue became Park Avenue. The depot was replaced by Grand Central Terminal in 1913.