In New York the antebellum merchant elite with their ties to the South, cotton, and the Democratic Party yielded to a new class whose wealth came from industry and finance. Some of the industrialists and railroad men, Cornelius Vanderbilt for one, had made their money in New York. Others like Huntington moved to New York to be closer to investment banks and to Washington, D.C. A second tier of wealth—lawyers and high executives—surrounded them, and leading families intermarried. The bourgeoisie in the 1860s and 1870s considered themselves the epitome of the better classes.
