115

George Peabody and Junius Morgan, Taylor seemed to have an 

ample supply of cash for buying up distressed stocks. He purchased 

nearly all the stock of Delaware Lackawanna Railroad for $5 a share. 

Seven years later, it was selling for $240 a share. Moses Taylor was now 

worth fifty million dollars.

In August, 1861, Taylor was named Chairman of the Loan Committee 

to finance the Union Government in the Civil War. The Committee 

shocked Lincoln by offering the government $5,000,000 at 12% to 

finance the war. Lincoln refused and financed the war by issuing the 

famous "Greenbacks" through the U.S. Treasury, which were backed by 

gold. Taylor continued to increase his fortune throughout the war, and 

in his later years, the youthful James Stillman became his protégé. In 

1882, when Moses Taylor died, he left seventy million dollars.* His son-in-

law, Percy Pyne, succeeded him as president of City Bank, which had 

now become National City Bank. Pyne was paralyzed, and was barely 

able to function at the bank. For nine years, the bank stagnated, 

nearly all its capital being the estate of Moses Taylor. William 

Rockefeller, brother of John D. Rockefeller, had bought into the bank, 

and was anxious to see it progress. He persuaded Pyne to step aside in 

1891 in favor of James Stillman, and soon the National City Bank 

became the principal repository of the Rockefeller oil income. William 

Rockefeller’s son, William, married Elsie, James Stillman’s daughter, 

Isabel. Like so many others in New York banking, James Stillman also 

had a British connection. His father, Don Carlos Stillman, had come to 

Brownsville, Texas, as a British agent and blockade runner during the 

Civil War. Through his banking connections in New York, Don Carlos 

had been able to find a place for