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responsibility of private companies in regard to accidents or injuries they may have caused.
His racehorses competed against President Andrew Jackson’s, and some of the gold nuggets from his Virginia gold mines (1848) were the largest discovered prior to the California gold strikes. Stockton was at one time or another a Federalist, a Democrat, and a Whig, as well as a member of the American Party (the Know-Nothings). Stockton was a protean man in his politics, his beliefs, his activities, and his passions.
Yet Stockton's protean quality wasn’t the result of his being unfixed or unstable. No, throughout his life Stockton seemed to be ever fixed on reinterpreting his contemporary Carl von Clausewitz's dictum, “War is merely a continuation of politics by other means.”8 For Stockton, all his business endeavors, his political races, his high-stakes horse racing, his technological experimentation, his writing—all were a continuation of his pursuit of glory and honor by many means.
Four Commodores
Most of Commodore Stockton's personal letters disappeared shortly after his death.9 However, one can infer the intentions behind many of Stockton's choices by comparing them with alternate choices of three other U.S. Navy contemporary commodores who paralleled Stockton's career at many points in the antebellum navy: Matthew C. Perry,10 Samuel Francis DuPont,11 and Uriah P. Levy:12