Type: Exhibition case
Name: The State of Camden and Amboy
Detail: As a result of their “exclusive privileges,” the Joint Companies were an immediate financial success and the state’s coffers were filled. But at what price? As early as 1831, one newspaper feared that the legislature had created a monster that was already the “influence behind the throne, greater than the throne itself.” The deal struck with the state soon excited the jealousy of competing railroad companies, who felt that the state’s economic development was hindered. Complaints arose within New Jersey and from neighboring states that fares charged both for passengers and for freight were excessive. The Camden and Amboy was parsimonious regarding upgrades to its physical plant. Because of its reluctance to double-track its line, for instance, accidents were more common than on other railroads; in one incident, both John Quincy Adams and Cornelius Vanderbilt (who was injured) were passengers. The monopoly’s wealth, power, and influence were soon exerted in the political sphere. Its adroit machinations in the legislature caused New Jersey to gain the unsavory reputation as “the State of Camden and Amboy.” The chief strategist of the monopoly was Robert F. Stockton (1795–1866), the grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A naval officer who served in the U.S. Senate, he was ambitious, self-confident, and impulsive, but also congenial and generous. Stockton was instrumental in brokering the consolidation of the canal and railroad companies. He reputedly boasted that “he carried the State in his breeches pocket, and meant to keep it there.” Whenever the monopoly was attacked, Stockton and its other apologists invoked the sanctity of contracts, states’ rights, and the financial benefits to the state.
Matters came to a head in 1848 when a series of letters by “A Citizen of Burlington” appeared in the Burlington Gazette. In addition to reciting the usual complaints against the monopoly, the author used statistics and detailed analysis to accuse the Joint Companies of the more serious charges of gouging the public and concealing profits in their reports, thereby defrauding the state. The anonymous writer later revealed himself as the noted publisher and political economist Henry C. Carey (1793–1879). Robert F. Stockton replied to the charges on behalf of the canal and railroad companies. Two legislative commissions investigated the charges, one of which exonerated the companies, while the other found only “remissness” and “inadvertency” in bookkeeping. Even though he was castigated as a “miserable monomaniac,” Carey proceeded to pick apart the commissions’ reports in detail, and insisted upon being allowed to inspect the companies’ books. The Joint Companies ultimately refused his demand. It is perhaps a vindication of his charges that subsequently the joint board of directors ordered all the early records destroyed.
Through the vehicle of the state’s Democratic Party, in the antebellum period the Joint Companies influenced elections, often to their advantage, on the Congressional, the gubernatorial, and the local levels. They had their mouthpieces in the national and state legislatures, and controlled several newspapers. But there was also an active anti-monopoly press, including Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. During the Civil War, the monopoly’s chokehold on through traffic drew national attention, as trains carrying troops, supplies, and mail bottlenecked in New Jersey. The Joint Companies’ (renamed the United Companies) monopoly expired in 1869, two years before the Pennsylvania Railroad leased them for 999 years. That lease by a “foreign” (i.e., out-of-state) company was also controversial, and sparked a legal challenge (John Black et al.) by the lessees’ stockholders.
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