Philadelphia
A 300-YEAR HISTORY
A Barra Foundation
Book
W. W. NORTON &
COMPANY
NEW YORK - LONDON
E D I T O R
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Nicholas B. Wainwright
Edwin Wolf 2nd
EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS
Joseph E. Efick
Thomas Wendel
Copyright @ 1982 by The
Barra Foundation. All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada by
George J McLeod Limited, Toronto. Printed in the United States of America.
FIRST EDITION
The text of this book is
composed in photocomposition Janson Alternate, with display type set in Roman
Compressed No. 3 and Garamond Old Style. Composition by The Haddon Craftsmen,
Inc. Printing and binding by The Murray Printing Company.
BOOK DESIGN BY MARJORIE
J. FLOCIC
ISBN 0-393-01610-2
Ed.: Portions of
the extensive chapter, The Age of Nicholas Biddle, have been
excerpted for the purpose of giving an impression of the development of the
City of Philadelphia at the time of the arrival of the Hopkin Thomas family in
1834.
(Note that the
original of this text is thoroughly annotated – these citations have not
been included in this excerpt – see the original publication for
details.)
J. McV, 8/2008.
1825-1841
by Nicholas B.
Wainwrigbt
Philadelphia
is a city to be happy in.... Everything is well conditioned and cared for. If
any fault could be found it would be that of too much regularity and too nice
precision.
-
NATHANIEL P. WILLIS
******
1825
On
the surface all seemed well with the city, were one content with limited
aspirations. At a testimonial dinner in 1825 Commodore John Barron held forth
his glass and declaimed: "Philadelphia-justly acknowledged to be the first
in the arts, and second to none in whatever can contribute to the grandeur, respectability,
and comfort of a city!"" Yet in the arts Philadelphia was fast losing
her place, and she had already lost her rank as the country's largest city and
most important trading center.
I
To
be sure, numerous vessels continued to ascend the Delaware-about 500 a year
from foreign ports, two to three times that many plying the coastal trade.
Unloaded on the wharves that lined the city's front were cargoes of rice,
cotton, and tobacco from the South; spermaced oil from New Bedford; horse hides
from Montevideo; coffee from Brazil and Java; toys from Germany; linen from
Ireland; rum from St. Croix and Jamaica; sherry, madeira, claret, muscatel, and
teneriffe from their points of origin; armagnac, bordeaux, and brandy from
France; whisky from Scotland; mahogany from Nicaragua and Santo Domingo; indigo
from Bengal; pepper from Sumatra; and opium from Turkey. The most princely
imports of all came from Canton, consigned to merchants specializing in that
trade. Every year about a dozen richly laden ships hove into port from the
Pearl River. Shortly after the ice had melted in the early spring of 1825, the
Caledonia sailed majestically upstream to discharge her store of silks, curry
powder, window blinds, umbrellas, porcelains, camphor trunks, bamboo baskets, fans,
kites, fireworks, and vast quantities of tea-Hyson, Gunpowder, Imperial,
Pouchong, Souchong. These Chinese luxuries found a ready market, but
Philadelphia had little to export to China in exchange. Her ships went out
lightly freighted with gold and silver to balance her trade with the Orient. As
a consequence her merchants sought substitute markets. By 1820 English and
French porcelain had largely supplanted Chinese articles in that line and by
1825 the city had its own porcelain factory, where the famous Tucker china was
made. Tucker's masterpieces were said to surpass European imports "in
soundness of body, smoothness of glazing, and beauty of lustre.Ó
Vase made at the
Tucker porcelain factory (1826-1838), c. 1832-1835. The building painted on the
vase was the Tucker factory on the Schuylkill riverfront near Market Street.
Part
of the bullion exported to China was gained in Philadelphia's favorable trade
with Latin America. In 1825 about a third of her foreign exports - flour,
lumber, furniture - went to Mexico and South America, bringing back much hard
money in exchange. Henry Pratt, Matthew Bevan, and Manuel Eyre were prominent
in this trade, which was the largest with Latin America of any North American
port. Trading ties brought social ties. Many young South Americans and Cubans
were sent to school in Philadelphia, among them Simon Bolivar's nephew
Fernando, who attended Germantown Academy in the mid-1820s.
In
the order of their value, the city's largest foreign exports in 1825 went to
Mexico, Cuba, and England. In the same order, the largest foreign imports came
from England, China, and Cuba. Most of this trade, which was so vital to the
city's economy, was carried in American ships, many of them Philadelphia-owned
and built in the extensive Kensington and Southwark yards. Six to ten thousand
tons of new shipping slid annually down their ways into the Delaware. In 1825
the 6292 tons launched were represented by seven ships, eleven brigs, two
schooners, one sloop, and one steamboat.
Most
of these vessels were built for the coastwise lines which furnished regular
service between Philadelphia and New York, Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New
Orleans, and other ports. The city also had two Liverpool lines, one owned by
Thomas P. Cope and the other by John Welsh. The Liverpool packets, with their
ample cabin space - the trip to England cost $93 - and large holds for cargo,
were among Philadelphia's most highly prized vessels. Cope's Tuscarora, Montezuma, Algonquin, and Alexander and the "New Line's" Colossus, Delaware, Julius Caesar, and Bolivar were proud sights as they cleared the
river under clouds of canvas.
II
But
commercially the city might have done better had she not been so relaxed and
comfortable. Philadelphia's easy-going southern overtones were in marked
contrast to the hurly-burly, the raucous bustle of New York. Her ties with the
South were close. During the sickly season families from South Carolina and
Virginia summered in her vicinity, and there was much inter marriage. From
Charleston came Draytons, Hugers, Middletons, and Izards, some of them to
remain as Philadelphians. The Virginia contingent, Carters, Tuckers, Pages,
Riveses, was most distinguished. In addition much of Philadelphia's business
was with the South. Seasonal visits filled her hotels with southern and western
merchants, come to replenish their stocks of merchandise by large purchases
from the local commission dealers.
Out-of-towners
looked forward to their Philadelphia visits. The city was so neat and clean,
its market the best in the country. The better stopping places, such as the
United States Hotel, facing the Bank of the United States across Chestnut
Street, were noted for their cuisines. Joseph Head's Mansion House at Third and
Spruce Streets boasted French cooking, a style evidently considered unrivaled,
while Parkinson's celebrated restaurant at 161 Chestnut Street advertised
"Coffee ˆ la mode de Paris." Of all the exponents of the French mode,
M. Latouche was unquestionably the leader. For eight years Latouche had cooked
for the prince D'Ecmuhl, then for three years he had presided over the kitchens
of the duc de Rovigo. Coming to America, he had been employed in Washington by
the Russian minister before settling in Philadelphia as a restaurateur and
caterer. In addition to the oyster cellar he conducted under his Market Street
restaurant, well stocked with the choicest wines, Latouche offered take-out
dishes such as oyster pies (100 oysters), $1.25; fourteen mutton chops, $1.00;
eight quail, roasted and larded, $1.00; sixteen pounds of beef ˆ la mode,
$3.00; and hogs' heads, trimmed with jelly, $2.50. The prices seem low, but
when it is realized that the pay of Philadelphia weavers averaged only five
dollars a week, there could not have been too many calls for hogs' heads from
the workingman.
******
111
Although
parties were frequent and life pleasant, the city lived to an excessive extent
on the diminishing returns of a direction given to its economic life by men
long since dead. A bold, aggressive new leadership was necessary lest
Philadelphia's drowsiness lapse into a deep slumber. Profoundly agitated at the
portents of the times, the city's men of business fully recognized the
seriousness of the crisis. Comparing the past with the present, they were faced
with figures that proved how badly their city had fallen behind her rivals.
Historically
Philadelphia had prospered as the "bread basket" of the colonies and
the young Republic; but the westward shift of population had cost her primacy
in the export of flour. This was not because Pennsylvania was producing
relatively less - 59 of the 100 members of her House of Representatives were
farmers in 1825 - but because her flour was slipping away to other ports. The
produce of the western part of the state now went down the Susquehanna to Port
Deposit, at the head of tidewater navigation. There, thousands of barrels of
Pennsylvania flour and whiskey and vast quantities of wheat, corn, pork, and
bacon were loaded on schooners for shipment to Baltimore. Fleets of lumber
rafts, which had floated downstream, were towed off to the same place. In 1820
Baltimore had exported 577,000 barrels of flour, already exceeding
Philadelphia, which had only 400,000 barrels to ship out, but was
still far ahead of New York's 267,000. The measure of Philadelphia's decline in
this trade is seen in the comparable figures for 1825: Baltimore, 510,000;
New York, 446,000; Philadelphia, 354,000. The completion of the Erie Canal, as
Philadelphians were aware, would not improve the situation. In 1828, for
example, New York was to ship out 722,000 barrels;
Baltimore,
546,000; Philadelphia, 333,000
Brought
up in the belief that their prosperity depended on foreign commerce,
Philadelphians were dismayed at how, year by year, the shipping tonnage
registered at their port was falling behind their competitors. Tonnage figures
for 1825 showed New York in the lead with 304,484; Boston next with 152,868;
Baltimore totaling a surprising 92,050; and Philadelphia trailing with 73,807.
As far as the rivalry between New York and Philadelphia was concerned, the
figures were in balance with the values of their foreign imports and exports.
In 1824 New York's imports were valued at $36,113.000 - Philadelphia's at
$11,865,000; New York's exports came to $22,897,000 - Philadelphia's to
$9,634,000. The state of New York, having surpassed Pennsylvania in population
before 1820, had a growth rate in the 1820s twice that of Pennsylvania, and
that rate approximated the growing difference in size between her metropolis
and Philadelphia.
IV
Philadelphians realized that the economic
health of their city depended on internal improvements, access to the interior
wherein lay the future wealth of America. The turnpike spree was still in
progress - by 1832 Pennsylvania chartered 220 turnpike companies which had
built some 3000 miles of roads - but for the shipment of heavy freight
turnpikes were outmoded; canals were now the cry, and New York was in the lead.
Her great state-built canal, 362 miles long and eight years in the building,
was completed in 1825. Philadelphians had financed two lesser improvements: the
Schuylkill Navigation Company, which was opened to Reading in 1825, and the
Union Canal, which would soon permit canal navigation between Reading and the
Susquehanna. Philadelphians were also heavily interested in the Chesapeake and
Delaware Canal, but these three improvements did not reach the heartland of the
country, the great western reaches that New York had tapped through her Erie Canal.
Determined
that their city should not lose what was left of her commercial prestige, a
group of Philadelphians, headed by John Sergeant, eminent lawyer, congressman,
and champion of Henry Clay's American System, had founded the Pennsylvania
Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvements late in 1824. The activities
of this society resulted in a public meeting in January 1825, presided over by
Chief justice William Tilghman. Sergeant, the principal speaker, pointed out
that canal navigation between the Delaware and the Susquehanna would soon
become a reality, and that this development called for the next step - water
communication between the Susquehanna and the Allegheny. Furthermore, from the
Allegheny a canal to Lake Erie should be undertaken, and built at the expense
of the state. The meeting enthusiastically endorsed Sergeant's resolutions. A
suitable memorial to the legislature was prepared, and William Strickland was
sent abroad by the internal improvements society to procure information on canals
and railroads. "A large proportion of the western trade has been withdrawn
from this city," reported the improvements society, "and the present
exertions are calculated not merely to regain what is lost. The struggle
assumes a more serious aspect. It is to retain what is left.Ó
Philadelphians
next convened_a canal convention at Harrisburg, attended by 113 delegates from
thirty-six counties. After a year of ceaseless effort by Sergeant and his
friends the legislature passed an act that opened the way for the building of
the canal at state expense. Ultimately the state improvement program embraced a
railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia, the point on the Susquehanna where much
of the western produce reached the river, and various lesser projects. A 394-milc
"main line" of State Works was projected and completed in the
mid-1830s: the Columbia Railroad, 82 miles; the Eastern Division Canal from
Columbia to Hollidaysburg, 17 miles; the Allegheny portage Railroad over the
mountains to Johnstown, 37 miles; and the Western Division Canal from Johnstown
to Pittsburgh, 104 miIes.
Long
before all this was accomplished Strickland had returned from his foreign
travels and published his influential Reports on Canals, Railways, Roads,
and Other Subjects,
which so much favored railroads over canals that his sponsors required him to
tone down the emphasis.
Advertisement for
portable iron boats used in the 394-mile system of rail and canal
transportation between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Lithograph by S. Duval
after George Lehman (d.1870), c.1840.
V
After all, Pennsylvania was by this time
committed to canals, and it was especially through the Schuylkill Navigation
Company, a gilt-edged Philadelphia-owned investment, that the city was
experiencing the promise of better days. Back in 1817 the company's managers
had suggested the possibility that coal might eventually be carried on the
canal; they had had no concept that, shortly after it went into operation, coal
would constitute two-thirds of its traffic. Flour, lumber, whiskey, and all the
multitude of country products were to take a back seat to anthracite. In 1826
coal accounted for half the canal's total freight Of 32,000 tons;
in 1840, of the 658,000 tons brought down the river, 452,000 came from
Schuylkill County mines .
The Columbia Rail
Road, part of the State Works, from Daniel Bowen, A History of Philadelphia
(Philadelphia, 1839).
The
first coal of consequence to reach Philadelphia had been 365 tons brought down
the Delaware from the Lehigh area in 1820. Under the guidance of its manager,
Josiah White, the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company struggled to make the
mines at Mauch Chunk profitable. When the state agreed to build the Delaware
Division of the Pennsylvania canal system, work, began in 1827 on the Lehigh
canal planned by White and Erskine Hazard, and within a few years both projects
were completed. At Easton, the Delaware Division of the state-owned works
united with Josiah Wright's heroic enterprise, and provided slack-water navigation
down the Delaware to tidewater.
Coal
worked miracles in Philadelphia. The city had always been a wood-burning
community, its houses heated by hickory, oak, and maple. Wood was used for
cooking and to fire the boilers of the recently invented steam engines -indeed,
the appearance of steamboats on the rivers had caused the forests to recede, so
great was their hunger for fuel. At first there was much suspicion and dislike
of coal, but as stoves, grates, and furnaces were perfected for its use it won a
grudging acceptance based on its cheapness. In the late 1820s central heating
was introduced into some Philadelphia homes, but the change from wood to coal
in domestic uses came slowly; in 1833, $741,000 worth of wood was burned in the
city, only $404,000 of coal.
The
most notable physical change imposed on Philadelphia by the coming of coal was
to be seen along her Schuylkill River front, where a solid mass of wharves was
built. These were usually crowded with canal boats from the mines and bristling
with the masts of the coastal shipping which distributed anthracite to ports
along the Atlantic seaboard. Philadelphia's first exports of coal went out in
four vessels in 1822. In 1837 some 350,000 tons in 3225 carriers cleared the
port for coastal destinations. Gone forever was the old colonial concept that
the city's economic life depended on foreign trade.
An
innovation in these years, made possible by the abundance of coal, was the
application of steam power to industry. Philadelphia led early in the manufacture
of steam engines for this purpose - stationary engines as opposed to those
designed for steamboats and locomotives. By the late 1830s the role of the
stationary engine was fully appreciated and steam was being used in every
conceivable type of manufacture.
To
keep up with New York, Philadelphians had done all they could to encourage
manufacturing, but waterpower for mills was limited, as neither the Delaware
nor the Schuylkill had sufficient fall to generate a great amount of power.
Steam supplied the alternative. By 1838 there were more steam engines in
Pennsylvania than any other state, with nearly all of those in Philadelphia of
local manufacture. Made by forty-four different individuals or firms, they
serviced twenty-five types of mills, supplying the power for such enterprises
as carpet weaving, breweries, flour mills, and the iron industry. Rush &
Muhlenberg and Levi Morris were among Philadelphia's leading engine-makers, and
so famous were the city's workers in this trade that Joseph Harrison, Jr.,
later recalled: "Philadelphia skill has been sought for to fill
responsible places in all parts of the United States, in the West Indies, in
South America and in Europe, and even in British India."
Now
that factories were no longer dependent on the geographical necessities of
waterpower, manufacturers were free to concentrate their mills wherever they
wished, in Frankford and Kensington, where waterpower had first attracted
industry and which had become textile centers, but also throughout the city.
The stationary steam engine helped make possible another long step in changing
Philadelphia from a commercial to a manufacturing town with all the
implications that would have for the city's future.
VI
Philadelphia's
prosperity continued, however, to depend in large measure on her port, and
various steps were taken to make it more available to the outside world. A
canal connecting Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, it was believed, would greatly
enhance Philadelphia's southern commerce, and into such a project
Philadelphians poured a great deal of money. In the fall of 1829 the
thirteen-and-a-half-mile length of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was
completed. To celebrate its opening, a large party of Philadelphians embarked
on the steamer William Penn, chartered by the canal's directors. On board were
two companies of militia in full dress, Frank Johnson's band, and the best
caterer available. The paddlewheel-vessel churned her way down to Delaware City
at the eastern end of the canal, where her guests left for their tour of
inspection.
The
year that saw the completion of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was notable
also for the commencement of work on the great breakwater, designed by William
Strickland, at the entrance to Delaware Bay. Storms and ice had brought
disaster to 193 vessels in that vicinity during the past twenty years, losses
that would not have occurred had there been a place of shelter. Now that
Pennsylvania was at the threshold of a new era to be created by its system of
internal improvements, safe navigation of the Delaware was more than ever
necessary to protect the increased commerce that was expected on her waters.
Philadelphians believed that the canals converging on their city would provide
the flourishing interior of the nation with its shortest route to the Atlantic;
Philadelphia, they hoped, would be the place to which the western trade could
be carried at the cheapest rate.
There
was, unfortunately, a fly in the ointment; Philadelphia was not an ice-free
port. The winter of 1831-1832 was unusually severe, and the port iced in. On
January 26, 1832, there were no fewer than 126 vessels listed as ready to sail
as soon as the ice broke up. The eventual departure of this large number of
ships, all sailing together, brought thousands of spectators to the wharves. It
was a beautiful sight. In 1835-1836 the solid sheet of ice that spanned the
river again kept the shipping from coming up for more than two months. Not
until the middle of March was a passage between Chester and Philadelphia possible,
and then it was hammered out by the new steamer Pennsylvania, built at
Kensington by John Vaughan & Son and not designed primarily to clear ice
but to tow up ocean-going ships from the breakwater, thereby creating "a
new era in our foreign trade." It was a cheering sight to see the white
canvas again on the river," wrote an observer. "Fully fifty square
rigged vessels arrived at the wharves, swelling the whole number of arrivals to
near one hundred." Many of the boats were loaded with firewood, which had
been in short supply. The day they unloaded, the price per cord dropped from
fifteen dollars to seven.
While
steam tow boats were a valuable navigational aid (in 1836 the Pennsylvania towed up 247 sail), the need for a real
ice boat remained. In 1837 the Delaware was again ice-fast and the public's
patience was exhausted. As usual the stoppage of trade threw hundreds of
laborers out of work and drove merchants to New York to buy their goods."
Urged on by resolutions adopted at a town meeting, the city Councils
appropriated $70,000 to build an ice boat, which was launched the following
August at Van Dusen and Byerly's Kensington yard. The next year this boat,
commanded by Capt. Levi Lingo, was battling Delaware ice piled in ridges five
feet thick.
Launchings
at Van Dusen and Byerly's and Philadelphia's other shipyards were popular,
well-attended affairs, but there never was such a launching as that of the
U.S.S. Pennsylvania
in July 1837. It attracted the largest crowd, estimated at 100,000 that had ever-assembled
in the county. Fifteen years a-building and a-setting on the stocks in the
giant ship1house at the Navy Yard, the 120-gun ship-of-the-line Pennsylvania was the largest ship in the world and
the most heavily armed man of war ever built. Designed by Philadelphia's naval
architect Samuel Humphreys, her main gun deck was 212 feet long, and her beam
58. To the delight of the multitudes clustered on rooftops and crowding the
more than 200 vessels assembled for the event, the Pennsylvania glided smoothly
down the ways. On board were several hundred guests and a German band playing
patriotic American airs. just as the vessel touched the water, Nicholas
Biddle's brother, Commodore James Biddle, a veteran of thirty-seven years in
the navy, christened her by smashing on her figurehead a bottle of Pennsylvania
whiskey made in Union County in 1829, and a bottle of madeira, hoary with age,
its label bearing a single word, the name "Cadwalader."" The
career of the Pennsylvania was not fated to be as glorious as her launching.
She was to spend many years tied up at the Norfolk Navy Yard, and there she was
scuttled in t861 to prevent her falling into the hands of the Confederates.
Launch of the U.S. Ship
Pennsylvania, wood engraving by R. S. Gilbert (July 1837), from A History of
Philadelphia (1839).
With
navigation improved by the breakwater, tow boats, and the ice boat, its life
stimulated by coal and other cargoes carried on the canals, the port of
Philadelphia had never been more active. About five-sixths of the shad taken by
Gloucester County's forty shad fisheries was marketed in Philadelphia. Every
year about 1000 lumber rafts containing fifty million board feet in all
descended the river from New York's Delaware and Sullivan Counties and Pennsylvania's
Wayne County.
But
the enormous increase in the city's coastal trade was accompanied by a decline
in her foreign commerce. Of her two packet lines to Liverpool, only Cope's
remained. At New York, on the other hand, many lines provided regular sailings
to a number of European ports, and it was to New York that the English steamers
Sirius and Great
Western made their way
in 1838. With the practicability of transatlantic steam navigation established,
Philadelphians yearned for steam packet service of their own, through whose
"potent aid" they could "restore our city to the first rank
among our commercial sisters ... and bring back to the shores of the Delaware
the forests of masts which in former times cheered the hearts of our fathers
and laid the broad foundations of our wealth and power. But the
$550,000required to set up a steam line could not be raised. The effort was
evidently unrealistic, based on nostalgia for the city's lost position and a
desire to regain her former prestige in commerce. Philadelphia's destiny lay in
other directions, in other kinds of wealth and economic might."
V1II
For
Philadelphia was to have as much steam power as any other city, steam applied
not to ocean-going lines but to railroads and factories, with the first locally
financed road stimulated by a Germantown gathering in October 1830. Among those
who thought that a railroad to Philadelphia would be profitable were Benjamin
Chew, Jr., of Cliveden, P. R. Freas, editor of the Germantown Telegraph, and John F. Watson, the antiquarian
whose Annals of Philadelphia,
the city's first history, had just been published. The line these men wanted
was to have a branch, crossing the Wissahickon near its mouth, to Norristown,
where mills produced 40,000 barrels of flour a year. The possibilities of heavy
freight and passenger service were so favorable, and the understanding that the
line would eventually be connected with the coal regions so well understood,
that the stock of the Philadelphia, Germantown & Norristown Railroad, when
offered for sale, proved insufficient to meet the demands of frantic
speculators who scrambled for it in riotous fashion.
The railroad celebrated the
successive opening of its divisions with much pomp. In June 1832 the Germantown
run was inaugurated with thousands of curiosity seekers in attendance and the
usual band of music. The cars, which resembled large stagecoaches, each seated
about twenty passengers inside and fifteen outside, and were drawn by horses.
The road's first locomotive, Old Ironsides,
made by Matthias W. Baldwin, was placed on the rails the following November,
but at first was used only in fair weather because its weight of a mere five
tons did not give it enough traction to hold the rails in rain. Under the
supervision of William Strickland, the Norristown branch reached Manayunk late
in 1834, and in August 1835 service was initiated to Norristown. From there,
arrangements were made with the Philadelphia and Reading to continue a railroad
along the margin of the Schuylkill.
Chartered
in 1833, the Reading was to be the masterpiece of Virginia engineer Moncure
Robinson. Financed in part with money Robinson had raised in England, the
railroad was completed to Reading in 1838, providing competition for the canal
of the Schuylkill Navigation Company. A feature of the Reading was mine-to-ship
transportation, from the coal regions to the port, for its line extended across
Philadelphia County to Port Richmond at Kensington on the Delaware, where the
railroad had its own wharves.
Rail Road Depot at
Philadelphia, Ninth and Green Streets, lithograph by David Kennedy and
William Lucas after William L. Breton (c. 1773-1855), 1832. On November 24,
1832, the United
States Gazette reported, "The beautiful locomotive engine and tender,
built by Mr. Baldwin of this city
... were for the first time placed on the road. The engine traveled about six
miles, working with perfect accuracy and ease and with great velocity. "
Not
content with a railroad to Reading, Philadelphians had their eyes on the trade
of a vast area of productive land along the branches of the Susquehanna. As
early as 1830 they were calling for a railroad from Danbury and Sunbury to
Pottsville, where it would connect with the Schuylkill Navigation Company's
canal. Assisted by Mathew Carey and Thomas P. Cope, Nicholas Biddle had been
the leading figure in this move to establish the Danville and Pottsville, or
the Central Railroad as it was generally called. Moncure Robinson located the
line, but funds for its complete construction could not be had. Still, by 1836
it had been run twelve miles beyond Pottsville to Girardville, the site
designated for a town by the great Philadelphia merchant. In 1830 Girard had
purchased at auction from the trustees of the old first Bank of the United
States 30,000 acres in the rich Mahanoy coal region of Schuylkill County. Its
cost to him, including the improvements he had made, was $170,000 at the time
of his death, when he bequeathed it to the City of Philadelphia, probably the
best investment ever made by one of her citizens.
Philadelphians
had not forgotten the importance they had placed back in 1825 on an access to
Erie. The state-owned canal system had been opened to Pittsburgh in 1834, but a
canal to Erie had not been undertaken from that point. Moreover entrepreneurs
now favored railroads, because unlike the canals they did not have to shut down
for the winter months. In 1836 a convention stimulated by Philadelphians was
held at Williamsport to formalize plans for a railroad from Pittsburgh to Erie.
Nicholas Biddle was elected president of the convention, and through his
efforts a charter was obtained for the Sunbury and Erie Railroad with Biddle as
president. Surveys were run and some preliminary work on the road undertaken,
but the Philadelphia and Erie, as it was later known, was not completed until
long after its first president's death.
Meanwhile
the Columbia Railroad's double-track line to the Susquehanna was completed in
1834, with horse-drawn, flanged-wheel coach connections from various points in
the city across the new Columbia Avenue Bridge to an inclined plane up Belmont
Hill, at the top of which the coaches were hooked together for the trip
westward. Later this railroad's tracks were extended from Broad Street down
Market to the Delaware (causing the demolition of the old Court House which had
stood on Market at Second Street since 1708). It was also in 1834 that the
Philadelphia and Trenton's thirty-mile line went into operation. Earlier the same
year the Camden and Amboy Railroad across the river replaced the forty to fifty
stagecoaches that had carried passengers, freight, and the mail overland from
opposite Philadelphia to New York. One remaining line of importance to
Philadelphia continued in progress, the railroad to Baltimore. This road was
built by three companies, with Latrobe laying out the Baltimore-Havre de Grace
section, his former student Strickland in charge from Wilmington to the
Susquehanna, and Strickland's former student Samuel H. Kneass handling the
engineering of the Philadelphia-Wilmington division. The completion of the
first two sections in July 1837 called for a celebration at their juncture on
the Susquehanna, where a steamboat provided the unifying link. The next year the
double-track line from Wilmington to Gray's Ferry was completed, a railroad
bridge built over the Schuylkill, replacing the old Gray's Ferry floating
bridge, and the rails laid to a
depot on Broad Street at Prime (now Washington Avenue). The city now had its
rail access to the South –t he Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore
Railroad.
VIII
With
coal and iron in nearby abundance it was inevitable that Philadelphia in her
transition from a mercantile center should become a manufacturing center. She
had the raw materials and she had the men. John Bristed, in his Resources of
the United States,
published in 1818, noted the city's trend in that direction: "There is no
part of the world where, in proportion to its population, a greater number of
ingenious mechanics may be found than in the City of Philadelphia or where, in
proportion to the capital employed, manufactures thrive better.Ó Niles'
Register in 1829 noted
the improvement and wealth of Philadelphia, and the extension of her
manufactures: "more than half the business of selling goods in our
commercial cities, for the direct supply of the interior, is in domestic
production. The back shops of Philadelphia are more valuable to her than the
ranges of stores on the Delaware." So great and swift was the rise of
factories in Philadelphia that Peter S. Du Ponceau, in toasting the city in
1829, predicted: "Our good city of Philadelphia - In twenty years the
Manchester and Lyons of America."
The
degree to which Philadelphia had pulled herself out of the doldrums of the
1820s can be appreciated by the surprised comments of a New Yorker on visiting
this "great, beautiful, rich, and self-complacent city" in 1830:
The foreign commerce of Philadelphia
suffers much in comparison and by the all commanding advantages of New York.
But such is the countless wealth of the former city - such her internal
resources and her indissoluable connections with a vast and rich interior -
such the acknowledged superiority of her artists [engineers and mechanics] - of
almost every description - there are so many established and productive
manufactures - she has so much literature, science, and professional talents in
her own bosom-that Philadelphia makes a world in itself, altogether independent
of the accidental superiorities of her rival sister. And her growth within a
few years last past has been more substantial and more rapid than at any former
period. I had expected to see this city decline. But it is no longer a
question. She is destined to rise and grow with the country.
As
these comments indicate, Philadelphia had continued to surge vigorously into
the industrial revolution. Manufacturing and fine craftsmanship were encouraged
by the Franklin Institute's annual exhibits, where all vied for the
"premiums," or medals, awarded. In 1825 the institute offered prizes
for the best specimens in eighty-two branches of manufactures. Mathew Carey,
president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Manufactures and the
Mechanic Arts, led the way in making Philadelphia the citadel of high-tariff
theory .
Large
mills for spinning cotton and weaving wool were built with astonishing
rapidity. They were particularly numerous at Manayunk (the old Indian name for
the River Schuylkill), near "Flat Rock," five or six miles above
Philadelphia. In 1820 there was only a toll house there, but by 1825 it was a
thriving factory town, soon boasted of as the "Lowell of
Pennsylvania."" The source of waterpower for mills had always been
there, but it was the transportation facility of the Schuylkill Navigation
Company and its dam and millrace that created Manayunk and helped push
Philadelphia into the first rank in the textile field. By 1828 the city's 104
warping mills employed 4500 weavers and more than 5000 spoolers, bobbin
winders, and dyers.
Manayunk, lithograph
published by John T. Bowen (1801 - 1856), after Jobn Caspar Wild (c. 1804 -
1846), 1838.
Philadelphia also excelled in heavy
industry. By 1830 nearly one-fourth of the nation's steel production centered
there, and the city was preeminent in the building of locomotives. Matthias W.
Baldwin led off in this field with his first engine for the Germantown line in
1832, his Baldwin Locomotive Works soon becoming the largest producer in the
country. By 1838, 45 percent of the domestically manufactured engines in use on
American railroads bore his name.
In
some respects William Norris was even more famous than Baldwin. Starting in the
locomotive business in 1832 as a partner in the American Steam Carriage Company,
he moved its shop from Kensington to Bush Hill in 1835, and there built the George
Washington for the
Columbia Railroad. This engine's tremendous power brought him an order for
seventeen like it for an English railroad, the Birmingham and Gloucester. From
then on Norris's foreign business grew rapidly. Many of his machines went to
Austria and elsewhere on the Continent; they were to be found in Cuba and South
America.
Still
another locomotive builder of spectacular attainments was Joseph Harrison, Jr.,
who became foreman in 1835 for Garrett and Eastwick, one of Philadelphia's
pioneer locomotive concerns. Before long the firm had become Eastwick and
Harrison. It is best remembered as the company that moved to Russia to build
the engines and cars needed by the czar.
Samuel
V. Merrick was another industrialist comparable in achievements to the
locomotive builders. In the 1820s he and his partner John Agnew won fame for
their construction of an improved type of fire engine. Next, with John H.
Towne, Merrick established the Southwark Foundry for the manufacture of heavy
machinery and boilers. A founder of the Franklin Institute and destined to be
the first president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Merrick was one of the most
forward-looking men in the city. Many naval vessels were powered by engines
made by his firm, in particular the steam frigate U.S.S. Princeton, built at
the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1843, the first propeller-driven man-of-war
ordered by the navy.
The
reputation of Philadelphia manufacturers spread far and wide. The city's famous
coachmaker, William Ogle, exported many of his vehicles; his volantes went to South America and Mexico, and a
record exists of his making a carriage for a gentleman in Scotland. In
partnership with George W. Watson, Ogle constructed a factory near the Falls of
Schuylkill, run by waterpower and a marvel of ingenuity and efficiency.
The
making of fire engines was a separate line of business, one in which
Philadelphia became well known as the supplier of southern and western
communities. George Jeffries was one of the principal builders in this trade,
but John Agnew, late of Merrick & Agnew, was outstanding. In 1839 he made
an engine for a company in Mobile that was the largest Philadelphians had ever
seen-a "hydraulian" capable of throwing a stream of water 192 feet.
The sides of its gallery were carved in hold, bronze scrollwork by Samuel
Hemphill. All of its metal ornaments were silver plated, even to the axle
boxes, and much of this was beautifully engraved with appropriate inscriptions
and devices by Gaskill & Copper. The front locker was covered with an
inscribed plate of German silver, the back by a magnificent ornamental painting
by John A. Woodside. The moldings and paneling were blue and black, relieved with
gold.
Foundries
and factories of all sorts proliferated in the Philadelphia of this era.
Cornelius and Company's chandeliers were unsurpassed in beauty, hung in places
as exalted as the United States Senate, and won fame at the Crystal Palace
Exhibition. In a more mundane line, this company provided the countless gas
fixtures required by Philadelphians in the late 1830s - McCalla's carpet
factory at Bush Hill had achieved such a position in the trade that it was
known as the Kidderminster of America. Indicative of the city's ties with Cuba
were twelve sugar refineries, which made Philadelphia perhaps the largest
sugar-refining center in the country, one destined to be later accused of
monopolizing the business. One of the most curious industrial plants of all was
the extensive Dyottsville Glass Works, on the Delaware just above Kensington.
Of its 300 employees, 225 were boys, some not eight years of age.
Parke & Tiers Brass
Bell & Iron Founders, Point Pleasant, Kensington, Philada., engraving in Picture of Philadelphia
... (Philadelphia: E. L. Carey and A. Hart, 1831). The foundry, built by C.
B. Parke in 1819, also made sugar mills, soap boiler pans, anvils, and hammers.
T. W. Dyott, Wholesale
and Retail Druggist and Warehouse, northeast corner of Second and Race
Streets, wood engraving from the Philadelphia Directory
and Register for 1820.
View of the Glass Works
of T. W. Dyott at Kensington on the Delaware near Philada., lithograph
probably by David Kennedy and William Lucas after W. L. Breton (c. 177 3-
1855), from Picture
of Philadelphia from 1811 to 1831 (Philadelphia, 1831).
This
kaleidoscopic view presents only a few of the fields in which Philadelphia's
industry developed at such breakneck speed that by 1828 the city was recognized
as the foremost manufacturer in the country. Unfortunately the accomplishment
achieved in transferring the making of products from the home or small shop to
the factory almost totally neglected the human factor involved. The result was
a labor problem of novel aspect to employers, who saw no reason to respect the
"rights" of laborers. They had no rights: if they were dissatisfied,
let them go elsewhere; there were plenty of men available to take their places.
The justness of this attitude was endorsed by the clergy, public opinion, and
the law.
But
the voice of labor began to be heard in Philadelphia. In 1827 the journeymen
house carpenters struck, complaining of the "grievous and slave-like
system of labor.Ó The reaction of the master carpenters was to advertise for
journeymen in other cities. There
was no security for the workingman. Living in fear of losing his job, he was
crowded into unsanitary dwellings and tenements, working from sunrise to sunset
for pitifully low wages which were subject to drastic reductions. Mill owners
at Blockley and Manayunk expected a fourteen-hour working day, six days a week,
for a weekly salary of $4.33. Vacations were unknown, and July 4 was the only
official holiday.
**********
Soon
came the Panic of 1837, and the ensuing business depression and unemployment so
weakened the bargaining position of labor that the Ten Hour Movement of 1835
became the fond memory of a moment not to be approached again for generations.
At that, the brief success of the movement was illusory. Though the ten-hour
day was the tangible issue at hand, and though the unskilled participated in
the Ten Hour Movement, most of the impetus for the general strike of 1835 came
from skilled artisans, whose basic concern was not the length of the working
day but the loss of their historic status and independence. The independent
artisan of the eighteenth century, who ran his own business from his dwelling
place, was now losing control of his destiny to capitalists who bought up his
products for distribution in a larger, big-city-wide or regional or national
market, and who in the process reorganized the trades.
IX
The
enormous increase in the city's industrial output brought about startling
changes in her population. In 1820 the number of people living in Philadelphia
County already exceeded those in the city proper by 72,922 to 63,713. Over the
years both sections gained in population density, but the county with its new
factory areas grew faster than the city, and in 1840 had outstripped her by
164,474 to 93,652. The old sections of the city began to run down. Few new
buildings went up on the Delaware front; the houses once owned by wealthy
colonial merchants were taken over as tenements or factories as blight set in.
Back from the river more recent residential streets were transformed into rows
of stores as the former residents moved westward. This drift was recognized as
early as 1825 when the Middle Ward boundaries were extended from Fourth Street
to Seventh. By 1830 the center of the city was around Sixth Street, since
37,500 people lived west of Seventh and 43,000 east of
the new dividing line. The 1840 census shows a quickening of the westward trend
- 56,000 inhabitants west of Seventh Street, 37,500 east. Of course the areas
to the north and south were also increasing in population. Southwark, the
Northern Liberties, and Kensington doubled their numbers in this twenty-year
period, while Spring Garden's jumped from 3500 to 28,000.
Surprised
by such changes, an Old Philadelphian recorded in 1828 that "Below South
Street, east of Broad, has recently sprung up a new town. Where last summer the
boys played, there are now solid blocks of brick buildings, grocery stores and
taverns [and the] clitter-clatter of the weavers' shuttle." The quantity
of buildings being erected was astonishing. In 1827 more houses were built in
Philadelphia than in any two years previous, and in 1829 and 1830 it was
estimated that 5000 residences and stores were erected in the city and county,
yet rents were higher than ever.
Building
rows of handsome brick houses, three and four stories high, complete with baths
and water closets, was one of Stephen Girard's favorite forms of investment
carried on by him until his death: "He projects and executes schemes with
the courage and ardour of a young man." Examples can still be seen in the
south side of Spruce Street between Third and Fourth. All were high in praise
of Girard's superior and extensive building improvements. "He has been the
means of beautifying this, his adopted city, and of employing large numbers of
respectable artisans, who might otherwise have been thrown out of bread,"
observed a Chestnut Street merchant."
"Philadelphia,"
wrote Nathaniel P. Willis, "is a city to be happy in. . . . Delightful
cleanliness everywhere meets the eye. The sidewalks are washed constantly; the
marble steps are spotlessly clean.... Everything is well conditioned and cared
for. If any fault could be found it would be that of too much regularity and
too nice precision." As Latrobe had observed earlier of Philadelphia
architecture, "so it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
be." But change was on its way; granite fronts were coming into vogue, and
among Girard's building efforts was the row of houses on Chestnut between
Eleventh and Twelfth, which were distinguished by marble fronts and pillars.
Rich men like Matthew Newkirk, railroad president, bank director,
philanthropist, and, to his guest Henry Clay's dismay, teetotaler, built marble
mansions.
North Side of Chestnut St:
Extending from Sixth to Seventh St., watercolor by Benjamin Ridgway Evans
(fl. 1840- 1855), 1851. The Philadelphia Arcade, designed by John Haviland
(1792-1852) stood between the Columbia House and Bolivar House hotels. The
second Chestnut Street Tbeatre is just east of the Bolivar House. The Arcade
was demolished in 1863.
Of
the three great architects of the period - Strickland, Haviland, and Thomas U.
Walter - Strickland was probably the most outstanding. "He found us,"
said newspaper publisher Joseph R. Chandler, "living in a city of brick,
and he will leave us in a city of marble."" The marble came from
quarries in Montgomery County and owed its perfection in appearance to the
Scotsman John Struthers, unquestionably the best marble mason in Philadelphia,
if not in the country. Strickland's beautiful buildings did much to enhance the
appearance of the city and to provide her with many of her "lions."
His contributions were impressive: in addition to the second Bank of the United
States (1819 - 1824) at 420 Chestnut Street, there were the Naval Asylum, near
Gray's Ferry (1826 - 1829); a new building for the Unitarian church on the
Tenth and Locust site (1828); the Arch Street Theatre, on the north side of
Arch Street above Sixth (1828); the University of Pennsylvania's Medical Hall
(1829) and College Hall (1829 - 1830); the United States Mint at the northwest
corner of Chestnut and Juniper (1829-1833); the Almshouse at Blockley west of
the Schuylkill (1830 - 1834); the Merchants' Exchange on the north side of
Walnut between Third and Dock Streets (1832 - 1834); and the Philadelphia Bank
on the southwest corner of Fourth and Chestnut (1836 - 1837), to mention some
of the most notable. Of these, along with the Bank of the United States, only
the United States Naval Asylum and the Merchants' Exchange still stand.
Merchants' Exchange, lithograph
by Deroy after Augustus Kollner (1813 - 1906), 1848. The Exchange, designed by
William Strickland (1788- 1854) in
1832, is now part of Independence National Historical Park.
John
Haviland's first important building was the Philadelphia Arcade, which,
patterned on London's Burlington Arcade, owed its inception as the cityÕs first
office building to the restless energy of Peter A. Browne. Chief Justice
William Tilghman having recently died, his ancient home, formerly the residence
of Gov. Sir William Keith, was torn down and on its site on the north side of
Chestnut Street between Sixth and Seventh Haviland's handsome marble building
was erected in 1827. The tenancy of the ninety stores it housed was sold at
auction, an odd way of establishing their rental value. Peale's Museum vacated
Independence Hall to occupy the third floor. Intretesting as the novel building
was, it turned out a financial failure.
The
year after he completed the Arcade, Haviland, again in conjunction with Browne,
built an even more curious structure, a Chinese pagoda. This nifty pile stood
in a pleasure garden near the Schuylkill at Fairmount, and presented a tower on
the banks of the Ta-ho, between Canton and Hoang-du. Alas, it too was
unsuccessful.
Haviland
achieved his greatest fame in prison design: cell blocks radiating like the
spokes of a wheel from a central administration building. In 1829 he commpleted
Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary at Cherry Hill-now Fairmount Avenue
at Twenty-first Street - according to this plan and surrouunded it with a stone
wall twelve feet thick at the base and thirty feet high, with castellated
towers at its comers and a massive fortress-like entrance. Having demonstrated
his virtuosity in Greek Revival buildings, such as his assylum for the Deaf and
Dumb on the northwest corner of Broad and Pine (1824-1825) and St. George's
Episcopal Church on Eighth Street south of Locust (1822), as well as his familiarity
with medieval fortresses and Chinese temples, Haviland was next entranced by
the "pure Egyptian." His plan for the Museum Building in 1835 was a
transplant from the Nile. In 1839 he designed a building for an insurance
company on Walnut Street opposite Independence Square. This marble Egyptian
edifice so took the fancy of a prominent New Yorker that the architect was
commissioned to do one like it for that gentleman's residence. Haviland's work
was well known in New York. After the great fire in 1835 he received several
major commissions, including the building of the New York Exchange. This
recognition of his worth caused a New York editor to write: "The best
architectural taste in the country is found at Philadelphia, as her public
buildings make manifest. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that we are
indebted to the American Athens, instead of our own." The Eastern State
Penitentiary; the original Franklin Institute (1826), on Seventh Street south
of Market, now the Atwater Kent Museum; the Philadelphia College of Art and
what is now St. George's Greek Catholic Church; and the much altered Walnut
Street Theatre are the principal Haviland buildings surviving in Philadelphia
today.
Philadelphia's
third prominent architect, Thomas U. Walter, is noted for his Girard College,
erected 1833-1847, but he also built the Philadelphia County Prison in
Moyamensing in 1835 (demolished in 1967). This formidable Gothic stronghold, to
which were transferred the prisoners from the antiquated Walnut Street Prison
was of granite from the Quincy quarries in Massachusetts. Next to it, Walter
built an Egyptian-style debtors' prison of red Connecticut sandstone. Many
churches and other public structures owed their design to him, such as the
Spruce Street Baptist Church at 426 Spruce. In domestic architecture, his
outstanding work was the enlargement of Biddle's "Andalusia," and
"Portico Row," west of Broad Street on Chestnut (not to be confused
with "Portico Square," of similar construction on Spruce Street).
Between 1825 and 1840 Walter and his friends Strickland and Haviland created
more architecturally important buildings in Philadelphia than had ever been
built there before.
X
Although
her appetite for building improvements seemed insatiable, Philadelphia was often
slow in accepting technological advances. For years voices had been heard
vainly urging the establishment of a gasworks. Baltimore, New York, and Boston
had gas plants, but the city Councils were timid. In 1831 they averred that gas
lighting had not yet been brought to the necessary degree of perfection. They
feared health hazards, danger of explosion, nauseous odors, and other perils
and inconveniences. Irritated by this nonsense, Samuel V. Merrick, advocating
gas lighting, was elected a councilman and went abroad to study gas
manufacture. His report resulted in an ordinance establishing a gasworks which
he designed and superintended for several years. This plant was erected on
Market Street next to the Schuylkill and went into general operation in 1836. The
following year the city's principal streets were lighted by gas. Philadelphians
were thrilled with the new light. "This evening," wrote Joseph Sill
in 1836, "was rendered remarkable by the introduction of gas into my store
and private entry of my dwelling ... the most clear, dazzling, and bright light
I ever saw."
Among
other improvements which came to the city in the 1830s were several in
transportation. Until 1833 Philadelphians went about town either on foot, in
private carriages, or in hired hacks. June 1, 1833, brought a new method, for
on that day omnibus service was inaugurated. The William Penn, lineal ancestor of the horse car,
trolley, and bus, started its hourly runs between the Merchants' Coffee House
on Second Street and the Schuylkill. Immediately afterward line after line went
into operation, their gay equipages fancifully painted and individually named -
Stephen Girard, Independence, Lady Washington, Union - until there was scarcely a major
avenue in Philadelphia without its ponderous looking omnibus service. Six years
after the appearance of the William Penn another mode of conveyance, the cab, attracted favorable
comment. Abbreviated from the French cabriolet, the cab carried two passengers
inside and a driver outside on a box to the rear. Philadelphia's "Cab No.
1Ó was made by Robert E. Nuttle for Joseph M. Sanderson, the genial proprietor
of the Merchants' Hotel on Fourth Street north of Market.
Representation of the
Gas Works, Philadelphia, Market Street at Twenty-Second, drawn by Nicholson
B. Devereux for Gleason's
Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion (1853).
XI
Another
change of the times, brought on by population growth and the inadequacy of
church burial yards, was the commercial cemetery. In 1827 James Ronaldson, type
founder and the enterprising president of the Franklin Institute, opened the
Philadelphia Cemetery (usually called Ronaldson's) on Shippen (now Bainbridge)
Street between Ninth and Tenth, a city landmark until 1950 when it was removed.
Next, the concept of cemeteries set in peaceful, rural settings, modeled on
Mount Auburn, near Boston, and P6rc la Chaise, Paris, became popular. In 1836
Laurel Hill, Joseph Sims's former countryseat on the Schuylkill, was purchased
by a stock company and converted into a beautiful cemetery in the new style.
Before long other similar burial grounds were in operation - Woodlands Cemetery
on the Hamilton estate in West Philadelphia, and Monument Cemetery at North
Broad Street and Turner's Lane, removed in recent years and the grounds
transformed into a Temple University parking lot.
The
elaborate efforts to beautify cemeteries, particularly Laurel Hill where John
Norman was employed as architect, were in the mood of the city's exceedingly
appreciative interest in artistic endeavors. Traditional art activity in
Philadelphia was sustained by the annual exhibitions of the Artists' Fund
Society and of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, as well as by
numerous special exhibitions at Masonic Hall and Earle's Gallery. This was the
Philadelphia of Thomas Sully, her most popular portrait painter. He idealized
his subjects, but he obtained likenesses and painted more Philadelphians than
any other artists. His greatest triumph came in 1838 when he went to England to
paint Queen Victoria. "The Queen, he told me," wrote Samuel Breck,
"was exceedingly affable and granted him six sittings."'
John
Neagle did not obtain as good likenesses as Sully, but his composition was far
more interesting. His portrait of Thomas P. Cope, for example, shows one of
Cope's packet ships in the background, while in the foreground, on a table,
rests the charter of the Mercantile Library Company, of which Cope was founder
and president. Neagle's best known work, Pat Lyon at the Forge, was completed
in 1827. Behind Pat's brawny figure is the cupola of the Walnut Street jail,
where he was imprisoned in 1798 for a crime he did not commit. In his wealthy
old age Lyon insisted on being painted not as the gentleman he had become but
in the role of his early days, a blacksmith.
Rembrandt
Peale, Jacob Eichholtz, and Henry Inman were all prominent portrait painters in
Philadelphia in this period, many of their works being made into prints by John
Sartain, the best engraver of the day. In prolific Thomas Birch, the city
rejoiced in one of the best marine painters of the time, his canvases selling
usually for thirty dollars. Russell Smith had come into public notice when,
failing to gain adequate support for his landscapes, he turned scene painter
and did extraordinary work at the Walnut Street Theatre. In John A. Woodside
the city had one of the best ornamental painters in the country, famed for his
stirring allegories which decorated fire engines. His signs, such as the one
that hung in front of Lukens' Tavern in Kensington - The Landing of Columbus - were unexcelled.
Visiting
artists were invariably entranced by the Fairmount Water Works. In 1834 J. C.
Wild's watercolors of Fairmount were exhibited at the Merchants' Exchange, and
the next year Nicolino Calyo exhibited his large, highly colored city views at
Masonic Hall. Scarce had Calyo been in town a month before he too had his view
of Fairmount, and the ruins of the great fire that burned out fifty-five acres
of New York City had hardly cooled before he was exhibiting pictures of the
disaster.
William
Rush continued in his great tradition. His favorite carvings were ship
figureheads of Indian chiefs. Sometimes they were shown in the act of shooting
an arrow, or in solemn thought, arms folded within a tightly drawn blanket, or
else fiercely threatening with raised tomahawk. But Rush was versatile. When
the ship John Sergeant
slid into the Delaware from John Vaughan's yard in 1831, her figurehead was an
excellent likeness by Rush of Philadelphia's prominent citizen. On Rush's death
in 1833, it was acknowledged that as a carver he had been unequalled. However,
John Rush, his son, carried on capably, carving the figurehead for the mighty U.S.S.
Pennsylvania - Hercules
dressed in a lion's skin, armed with a club.
Whether
the banker's head ornamented the brig Nicholas Biddle at her launching at Southwark in 1838 is
not recorded. She was a first-rate ship intended for the Brazil trade, and not
the first to be named for him. Fortunately a description survives of the Joseph
Cowperthwait, a brig
launched two months later, named for Biddle's cashier. Cowperthwait's bust
adorned the vessel, but not in the usual place under the bowsprit; it was
placed at the stern. To starboard of this effigy in bold carving was the front
of the Bank of the United States, while on the other side were carved
representations of the cashier's books, desk, and the charter of the bank.
Among
the city's many excellent sculptors in marble was Nicholas Gevelot, whose
statue of Apollo, god of music and poetry, was placed in the pediment of the
Arch Street Theatre in 1830. It was Gevelot who carved the angels for St.
John's Roman Catholic Church on Thirteenth Street, and who was commissioned to
do the life-size marble statue of Girard at Girard College. His bronze busts of
Edward Burd and William Strickland delighted Philadelphians who found them on
exhibit at the Louvre in 1836.
To
provide Gevelot with some competition, E. Luigi Persico came to Philadelphia in
1831. Over a period of years Persico immortalized a number of Philadelphians in
marble. Much excellent sculpturing was done by artists whose names are lost.
However, it is known that the brothers Peter and Philip Bardi did the elaborate
capitals for the columns at the Merchants' Exchange, and that the pair of lions
that guard its front were carved by Signor Morelli of 31 Dock Street. At
Struthers's marble yard highly skilled workers provided the city with its most
elaborate mantelpieces, ornamented with delicately worked friezes of grapevines
and Egyptian caryatids. Some of these men, such as Hugh Cannon, later set up
their own studios. John Hill was presumably Struthers's best man, for it was he
who lavishly executed Struthers's masterpiece according to designs provided by
Strickland, the Washington sarcophagus. True proportions were the ideal of the
day. A sculptor exhibiting his statue of Cleopatra in Philadelphia displayed a
certificate testifying to its anatomical exactness, signed by several of New York's
most eminent physicians.
Nicolo
Monachesi, who made Philadelphia his home from 1831 until his death twenty
years later, was a master of painting in fresco. In this medium he decorated
the ceilings of the great room at the Exchange, St. John's sanctuary, and other
Catholic churches. Some of the city's most costly residences bore testimony to
his skill: "This tasteful manner of decorating the walls of noble mansions
is becoming fashionable and seems to offer some encouragement to the fine arts."
For Matthew Newkirk's house he provided a brilliant ceiling of Cornelia, the
mother of the Gracchi, showing her jewels to Capuano. Sidney George Fisher
thought that George Cadwalader's parlors were the handsomest in town; their
walls and ceilings were "beautifully painted in fresco by Monachesi.
One
of the city's most active art patrons was the engraver Col. Cephas G. Childs.
It was he who procured for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Benjamin
West's masterpiece Death on a Pale Horse. Between 1827 and 1830 Childs published in parts his Views
in Philadelphia and Its Environs,
and in 1829 he became interested in lithography, the city's first lithographic
firm having been established the year before. His major contribution to this
art of inexpensive reproduction was bringing to Philadelphia an expert French
lithographer, Peter S. Duval. Duval, and his competitor J. T. Bowen, turned out
some of the most important lithographic artwork of the times, notably Thomas L.
McKenny's and James Hall's three-volume History of the Indian Tribes of
North America, John
James Audubon's octavo Birds of America, and also the naturalist's Quadrupeds of North America.
A
pictorial process cheaper yet than lithography was at hand. On the afternoon of
October 16, 1839, Joseph Saxton leaned out of a window at the mint, where he
was employed, pointed a contraption housed in a cigar box at nearby Central Hi
gh School, and took the first American daguerreotype. Other inventive
Philadelphians immediately turned their hands to this fascinating innovation.
Ralph Cornelius, a lamp manufacturer, obtained the first picture of a human
face ever taken by Louis Daguerre's process. Dr. Paul Beck Goddard of the
University of Pennsylvania, improved on the technique, and in January 1840 made
the first successful attempt at interior photography. While many rejoiced at
the prospect of cheap pictures, others had cause to mourn. Peter F, Rothertnel,
a promising young portrait painter, gave up portraiture, blaming loss of
business on the daguerreotype. The years that lay ahead were to bring a sharp
decline in the quality of oil painting in Philadelphia, and with mass
production and garish color processes, a falling off in the charm that had characterized
lithographic work of the 1830s.
However, Philadelphia in the 1830s survives visually in the
hundreds of scenes drawn by its artists on stone. The elegance, color,
ostentatious pride, and activity of the day vibrate in these exuberant prints.
Never before had Philadelphians lived in so vivacious a style. The sober veil
of Quaker origins had been rent to shreds; there was a sense of elation and
gaiety in these times of accomplishment, of intense individualism held in check
by pleasant formality, an ordered discipline.
Rowing clubs began to hold regattas on
the Schuylkill in 1834, their members suitably dressed for the sport and their
boats colored to suit their fancy. The Metamoia barge was painted vermilion with a gold
stripe; her rowers wore Canton hats, white jackets trimmed with blue, and white
pantaloons. She competed against the Sylph, orange with red gunwales, her members clad in dark
trousers, pink striped shirts, and red and white caps.
There
had never been so many stirring parades as in this day of fresh and ardent
patriotism. The magnificence of the militia's uniforms was recorded by William
H. Huddy and Peter S. Duval in their U. S. Military Magazine. The triennial processions of the fire
companies were gorgeous, circus-like. Each company had its distinctive dress
(one was garbed as Turks). Their engines and hose carriages, nearly all of them
superbly decorated by Woodside, were drawn on these occasions by horses ridden
by boys in fancy costumes. The officers, carrying silver speaking trumpets,
were preceded by buglers and by standard bearers holding aloft imaginatively
painted banners. Bands of music interspersed the column. Flowers and flags
festooned the equipment. In the 1833 parade the William Penn Hose Company was
led by members dressed as Penn, Indians, and Quakers, accompanied by seamen who
bore gifts offered at the famous treaty.
The
most stupendous parade in these years took place in 1832 on the centennial of
Washington's birth. At 10:30 that morning 15,000 marchers fell into line,
headed by eighteen pioneers, large, athletic men in white frocks and leather
caps, carrying axes. Next came a trumpeter and then the chief marshal, Col.
Clement C. Biddle, whose father had been a marshal in the Grand Federal
Procession of 1788. Included in the parade were the city's officials, the
military, the fire companies, and the various trades, many of them in their
individual full-dress attire. On elaborate floats, printers were busy with
their press and handed out broadsides; the bakers served bread hot from their
oven; tobacconists distributed "segars." The master mariners sailed
up Chestnut Street in an amply manned full-rigged ship. From time to time a
hand in the mizzen chains heaved the lead and announced the depth to the pilot.
Every time the vessel came to a temporary halt her anchor was cast. The
celebration, "the most imposing spectacle that has ever been exhibited at
Philadelphia," concluded at Independence Hall, where William Rawle read
Washington's Farewell Address and Bishop William White delivered a prayer.
Parades
of another sort marked the passing of famous men. On Girard's death in 1831,
Bishop White's in 1836, Dr. Philip Syng
Physick's in 1837, and Mathew Carey's in 1839, those who did not follow
the coffin to the grave lined the streets through which it passed. Girard's
funeral was the largest the city had yet seen; there were 3000 in the
procession and 20,000 watchers. The head of Dr. Physick's funeral column had
nearly reached Christ Church burial ground before its rear had left his house
on Fourth Street. Carey was followed to the grave by unprecedented thousands of
mourners. The interest thus expressed, the ceremonial attention, reflected the
close, personal feelings of involvement that characterized the Philadelphian of
that day.
The
town meeting furnished another outlet for demonstrations of public interest.
When Chief justice John Marshall died at Mrs. Crim's Walnut Street
boardinghouse in 1835, the public met to record its respect. Bishop White
presided and Joseph R. Ingersoll delivered the eulogy. Silver presentations were another form
of tribute and appreciation. On July 4, 1834, Mathew Carey was honored with a
silver service in testimony to his public conduct. The old printer's friends
deemed Carey's "whole career in life an encouraging example, by the
imitation of which, without the aid of official station or political power,
every private citizen may become a public benefactor." Most presentation
pieces were made by Thomas Fletcher, although Carey's came from another
silversmith, R. & W. Wilson. Yet another form of tribute was the
testimonial dinner. The English dramatist James Sheridan Knowles was thus
honored in 1834, and in 1837, 200 of the city's cultural elite dined with Edwin
Forrest at the Merchants' Hotel.
In
these prosperous years, fortunate Philadelphians lived very well, summering at
inland watering resorts or at Long Branch and Cape May. Those who did not go
out of town patronized Swaim's baths at Seventh and Sansom, an elegant
establishment with forty-four baths and showers as well as a swimming pool for
children. For ice cream there was no equal to Parkinson's. where one sat on
sofas and dined off small marble tables. With its marble mosaic floor, its
ceiling a glorious picture of the marriage of Jupiter and Junoby Monachesi,
Parkinson's represented refinement par excellence.
For
bucolic pleasures, the drive to the Falls of Schuylkill was most picturesque,
and the catfish and coffee to be had at the taverns there formed a favorite
meal. Closer at hand, nature could be enjoyed at various botanical gardens and
nurseries, such as Bartram's (run by Robert Carr), Daniel Maupay's, and the
Landreths', which sold seeds and plants all over the country and also to Europe
and South America. In the city proper were the public squares. In 1825 the city
Councils gave them names - Penn, Logan, Washington, Franklin, Rittenhouse, and
Independence. By 1837 when the cemetery on Franklin Square was obliterated,
they had nearly all been extensively improved with walks and plantings. On
Washington Square fifty varieties of trees flourished. Philadelphia's interest
in flowers and shrubs was stimulated by the founding of the Pennsylvania
Horticultural Society in 1828 with Horace Binney as president.
The
city offered a wide range of entertainment, the most rewarding of which was a
visit to the new marble Museum Building, opened at Ninth and Sansom on July 4,
1838. After ten years at the Arcade, the Peale family collection was moved to
this location, where could be seen some of the best exhibits in the country.
Its "grand saloon," 233 feet long, 64 feet wide, and a towering 32
feet in height, was said to be the largest room in America. In its center stood
the prodigious skeleton of Peale's mastodon. In one of its lower rooms was Nathan
Dunn's Chinese Collection, which he had assembled during a long residence in
Canton. Some seventy to eighty life-size figures in costumes from that of
mandarin to coolie, Chinese rooms and shops, landscapes and portraits, ship
models and numerous other objects illustrated the arts, manners, pleasures, and
characteristics of the celestial race. A block from the museum, the Assembly
Building offered the best facilities for balls and receptions. Its great hall,
with its immense mirrors, rich pilasters, Corinthian capitals, and gilded
moldings, was likened to Aladdin's palace. Here Signor Antonio Blitz, one of
the most popular entertainers of the time, performed with his trained birds,
his sleight-of-hand and magical tricks, and his feats of ventriloquism. And as
for the theater, staid Philadelphians were surprised to note that in 1840 there
were seven of them in nightly operation.
The
glamor of the stage had its attractions for the city's men of letters. Dr.
Robert Montgomery Bird, without doubt Philadelphia's ablest literary figure,
created the role of Spartacus in The Gladiator for Forrest. In this part the famous
thespian won ovations in New York, Philadelphia, and London. By 1853 this play
had been performed a thousand times. Another distinguished actor, Junius Brutus
Booth, acted the principal role in Sartorius, a drama by David Paul Brown, one of the
city's leading orators and criminal lawyers. Showing unusual modesty, Brown
thought that it was not so remarkable that he "should have written two bad
plays, but that he had been able to write any.Ó James Nelson Barker, collector
of the Port of Philadelphia and former Mayor, was yet another dramatist. In
1836 one of his plays was performed at the Arch Street Theatre.
For
those not interested in the theater there was the field of sports to cultivate.
Each year the United Bowmen celebrated their anniversary with a shoot attended
by immense crowds. In white pantaloons, green caps, and frock coats trimmed
with gold, the archers marched in ordered array from target to target,
delivering their shafts with grace and precision to the music of Frank
Johnson's band. At Nicetown's Hunting Park, one of the leading tracks in the
country in the 1830s, trotting races were all the rage. These races were under
saddle, not sulky-drawn events. At Carlton, his Germantown estate, John C.
Craig had his own racetrack and a large stud of race horses, whose portraits by
Edward Troye hung on his walls. Gen. Callender Irvine, a Philadelphian who
seems to have preferred to race his horses at Saratoga, owned thirty-eight
thoroughbreds at the time of his death in 1841. Probably the city's outstanding
horseman was George Cadwalader, grandson of Gen. John Cadwalader who had
presided over the Jockey Club during George Washington's visit to attend the
races in 1773. In October 1840 a diarist who crossed the Delaware to see the
races at the Camden track recorded that "A great crowd was there. Three
horses ran 4 mile heats.... George Cadwalader was there in the most complete
and stylish equipage I ever saw. A barouche and four superb dark brown horses.
The celebrated Ned Forrest, the fastest trotter in the world, and a steed of
matchless beauty, was one of the leaders.... I suppose no man in this country
or elsewhere can turn out such a splendid team. He had two servants in livery
with him.Ó
A
yachtsman and devotee of duck shooting, Cadwalader had a zest for all the good
things in life and enjoyed the company of those similarly inclined. In 1834 he
was a founder of Philadelphia's first city club in the modem sense, an
organization appropriately named the Philadelphia Club. Sixteen years later the
club moved into the Thomas Butler mansion at Walnut and Thirteenth Streets,
where it remains to this day.
In
the pursuit of business and pleasure Philadelphians did not overlook the
promotion of worthy causes. While most leading citizens participated in such
work, four men were outstanding: Bishop White, an Episcopalian, was remarkable,
nothing ever keeping him from the ballot box or attendance at public meetings
of a religious or philanthropic nature; Roberts Vaux, a Quaker, a leading
promoter of public schools and abolitionism, was active in many charities;
Alexander Henry, a Presbyterian, was president of the American Sunday School
Union, and an officer of most other benevolent organizations of note; and
Mathew Carey, a Catholic, had closest at heart the welfare of the poor. The
promotion of temperance attracted them all, while the more controversial
Sabbatarian movement was led by Robert Ralston and Henry, whose followers
pledged "to refrain from all secular employment on that day, from
travelling in steam boats, stages, canal boats, or otherwise, except in cases
of necessity or mercy." Attempts were made to persuade the packet lines
operating between Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore not to run on Sundays.
A
more successful effort at moral improvement was that of Philadelphia reformers
interested in penitentiaries. They championed the "Pennsylvania
System" - solitary confinement with labor - which was enacted into law in
1829 and was subsequently copied all over Europe. Cherry Hill, the Eastern
State Penitentiary designed by Haviland, had large cells suitable for one-man
workshops, and the cells were provided with high-walled exercise pens where
individual prisoners could secure fresh air while remaining completely
secluded. The theory was that solitary confinement prevented the prisoner from
being contaminated by others and afforded the assurance that when he left
prison he would at least be no worse than when he entered it. Solitude, forcing
reflection, was considered a powerful moral medicine. Labor was necessary
because it calmed the mind, made solitary confinement possible, and restored
self-respect.
Another
reform, akin to the above, dealt with the growing concern over the treatment of
juvenile delinquents, who were miserably lodged in the jails and almshouses.
New York had opened its House of Refuge for juvenile offenders in 1825, and
Boston had followed in 1826. Under John Sergeant's leadership the Philadelphia
House of Refuge was built at Fairmount Avenue and Fifteenth Street, and
received its first inmates in 1828.
Yet
another reform was the abolition of imprisonment for debt, just in time to
render purposeless Walter's new Egyptian debtor's prison at Moyamensing. Of the
817 persons imprisoned for debt in Philadelphia between June 1829 and February
1830, it is of interest to note that 30 owed debts of less than one dollar; 233
owed between one and five dollars; only 98 owed more than $100.
The
benefactions of the period, which included Dr. Jonas Preston's bequest of the
Preston Retreat, a lying-in charity for married women in indigent
circumstances, and James Wills's bequest of the Wills Hospital "for the
Indigent Blind and Lame," were overshadowed by Stephen Girard's action in
leaving virtually all his estate to the city. The richest man in the country,
Girard's property had a book value of more than $6 million; its true value was
beyond anyone's wildest imagination. The chief feature of his will was the
creation of Girard College for "poor white male orphans."
It
is doubtful that the city's black population - about one Philadelphian out of
twelve in 1830 - was irritated by Girard's restriction of his college to
whites. Segregation was the practice of the day. By coincidence the year of
Girard's death, 1831, was the year that the first major effort was made by
people of color in America for the improvement of their general condition. A
"national convention" consisting of sixteen delegates from five
states met in Philadelphia that June. Although not much was accomplished, the
call for the meeting points up the fact that there was a growing black middle
class in the city. It supported a Philadelphia Library Company of Colored
Persons, various debating societies, lyceums and literary clubs, sixteen
churches, and sixty-four benevolent organizations. James Cornish, Robert
Purvis, and the Rev. William Douglass were among the leaders of the black
community. Philadelphia black Protestantism grew rapidly, for blacks found
religion the most congenial sphere in which to develop their talents.
The
feelings of the white laboring class were easily incensed against theblacks.
Negro competition in the labor market was resented, and the activities of abolitionists
frequently infuriated the mob and led to race riots. It was an indication of
the mood of the times that the Pennsylvania constitution of 1838, otherwise a
Jacksonian document widening popular participation in state politics, deprived
black men of the franchise which they had exercised under the constitution of
1790.
Although
the mayor claimed with some reason that 99 percent of Philadelphia's citizens
were opposed to abolition, the city nevertheless maintained its Quaker-led
priority in the antislavery movement. It was in Philadelphia that the American
Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1833, and the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery
Society in 1837, and it was there that John Greenleaf Whittier took over the
editorship of the Pennsylvania Freeman the following year.
A Sunday Morning View of
the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philidelphia - taken in June
1829, lithograph by David Kennedy, and William Lucas (act. 1829 - 1835)
after W. L. Breton (c. 1773 – 1850).The church, on the west side of Fifth
Street below Walnut, opened for services in 1794.
Although
the crescendo of antislavery activity was directed solely toward the good of
the African race, it brought disastrous consequences to Philadelphia's Negro
community in the 1830s and sadly worsened that community's position.
Antislavery came to be regarded as subversive; any action taken against it
seemed legal. Mobs saw themselves in the role of patriots defending the
established order against enemy encroachments. The abolitionist movement was
deemed by many a conspiracy against the nation fomented by British agents. The
alternative to slavery was regarded as either race war or miscegenation, and
the charge that abolitionists desired a mixture of races could always stir up
the brutality of the mob. The reaction to the antislavery crusade was thus an
upsurge of violence in America in the mid-1830s. It affected all parts of the country and became a feature of
American life.
Those
who bore the brunt of this disorder were the Negroes rather than the
abolitionists. Turning public opinion against the blacks also was the rancor of
the newly arrived Irish who found themselves competing with them for jobs.
Attacks on Negroes by the Irish and others during the 1830s were distressingly
frequent for a City of Brotherly Love. Houses were burned, people were injured,
several were killed in a series of race riots. In August 1835 rioters indulged
themselves somewhat more picturesquely by emulating the Boston Tea Party. They
seized a mass of antislavery pamphlets, took them to the middle of the Delaware
River, and consigned them in small pieces to the water.
The
most spectacular violence of the period occurred in May 1838, when the
unpopular abolitionists, unable to secure meeting rooms, dedicated a large,
handsome building of their own, Pennsylvania Hall, as a place where freedom of
speech could be enjoyed. The Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women met
there shortly after the hall was opened, and blacks and whites promenaded arm
in arm. This was too much for the temper of the times. Inflamed beyond control,
a mob burned the building to the ground. "Such is the force of public
opinion when provoked!Ó approved the usually liberal Samuel Breck. "The
abolitionist must be put down, or the Union of these states will be
dissolved." But the burning of Pennsylvania Hall only strengthened the
antislavery cause. A reaction set in and the far more serious violence that was
to mark Philadelphia's ensuing decade was to be directed at Irish Roman
Catholics rather than at Negroes, a stroke, it might seem, of poetic justice.
Frontispiece from
Pennsylvania Hall Association, History of Pennsylvania Hall, which was
Destroyed by a Mob, on the 17th of May, 1838 (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn,
1838).
Much
of the city's laboring class, its factory and dock workers, was composed of
recent Irish immigrants, a factor that presented a massive challenge to the
Roman Catholic bishop. He found himself faced with an urgent need for more
priests and churches. The Diocese of Philadelphia in 1828 had only thirty-two
priests, twenty-five of them of Irish birth. To train new ones, Bishop Francis
Patrick Kenrick established the seminary of St. Charles Borromeo in 1832. The
183os were a great church-building period for the Catholics. Wherever
manufacturing interests had attracted many Irish a church was built-among them
St. John's in Manayunk in 1831; St. Michael's in Kensington in 1834; for the
coal-heavers, St. Patrick's on the east bank of the Schuylkill in 1839; and St.
Philip de Neri in Southwark in 1840. Also to serve the constantly increasing
Irish-Catholic population, Bishop Kenrick established St. Mary's Moyamensing
Cemetery.
Probably
the denomination most severely affected by the egalitarian impulse that
characterized the Age of Jackson was the Society of Friends, which experienced
in 1827 the Hicksite-Orthodox Separation, dividing it into two parts which have
been reunited only in recent years. The causes for the separation were complex.
In part it was a reaction against the wealthy, urban dwelling businessmen who
dominated the Philadelphia meetings, a struggle between aristocracy and
democracy. The Hicksites, who took their name from Elias Hicks, were mainly
traditionalists driven by a desire to preserve old ways of worship and to
function under a weak central organization. Whether Hicksite or Orthodox, the
Quakers zealously adhered to the basic elements of their discipline. When Mrs.
Roberts Vaux, for example, learned in 1838 that her son, a future mayor of
Philadelphia but at the time a young attachŽ of the American legation in
London, had danced with Queen Victoria at her coronation ball, the old lady
remarked: "I hope my son Richard will not marry out of Meeting.
Another
influence in the Age of Jackson that disquieted religious circles was the
rising controversy over slavery. The Unitarians were particularly affected by
it. In 1825 William Henry Furness started his fifty-year career as the first
full-time ordained minister of the city's small Unitarian congregation. His
success was extraordinary. Three years after his installation the Unitarians
found it necessary to build a new church seating nearly three times the number
accommodated by the former building. The serenity of Furness's congregation was
severely jolted in 1839, however, when he became an ardent, tireless, and
outspoken abolitionist. Many influential parishioners abandoned his church in
protest.
Throughout
these years agitation of a less alarming and more acceptable kind was directed
toward the necessity of establishing a system of free public education. This
was one of the goals promoted by William Heighton in the interest of labor.
Another persistent advocate was Joseph R. Chandler, himself a former
schoolteacher. Editorials in his United States Gazette consistently backed
proposals that the necessary laws be passed. The man who spearheaded the drive
for legislative action from 1818 to 1834 was the ubiquitous Roberts Vaux, head
of the Philadelphia school system and president of the Pennsylvania Society for
the Promotion of Public Schools. Thanks largely to Samuel Breck, a Philadelphia
legislator, and to much favorable propaganda, the Pennsylvania Assembly passed
the Free School Law of 1834, which, as amended in 1836, became the basis of a
statewide system of tax-supported schools. Grade schools now replaced the
primitive, monitorial Lancastrian system. The act of 1836 also authorized the
establishment of Philadelphia's Central High School. The first in the country,
Central High opened in 1838 on juniper Street east of Penn Square, where its
building was photographed a year later by Joseph Saxton. Alexander Dallas Bache
served as its first principal.
Central High School,
Juniper Street (photograph made c. i854). Originally on the present site of
John Wanamaker's Department Store, Central High School is now at Ogontz and
Olney Avenues.
Professional
life in Philadelphia went more even-tempered, or complacent, ways. In the
second quarter of the century the city's bar, continuing its leadership in
almost every facet of civic and cultural life, was brilliantly headed by
William Rawle, Horace Binney, John Sergeant, Charles Chauncey, Joseph R. and
Charles J. Ingersoll, and John M. Scott. When the bar assembled of a morning,
the courtroom, thronged with elegantly dressed gentlemen of refined manners,
more nearly resembled a drawing room. Distinguished for learning, ability, and
eloquence, these were men of high professional honor and moral worth. Many of
them served a term or two in Congress.
Their
versatility was well expressed in their historical interests. William Rawle,
first president of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, contributed articles
to its Memoirs. Charles J. Ingersoll found time to write a four-volume history
of the War of 1812; his brother Joseph R. Ingersoll was the Historical
Society's fifth president. From Binney's pen came The Leaders of the Old Bar
of Philadelphia and
countless pamphlets. "C. C.Ó and "J. S.," the authors of a
history of the French Revolution published in Philadelphia in 1830, are
believed to be Charles Chauncey and John Sergeant. Sergeant's eminence in law
and government is attested by his selection as the Whig vice-presidential
candidate in 1832, and by the offers he received of a seat on the United States
Supreme Court, a cabinet position, and the mission to England, all of which he
declined.
The
city's medical profession was no less eminent than its lawyers, for
Philadelphia was still the most advanced medical center in America, with the
oldest and largest medical schools, hospitals, and libraries. Even after the
death of the famous Dr. Physick, when his son-in-law Dr. Jacob Randolph became
the leading surgeon, Philadelphia more than held its own. In fact with the
establishment of Jefferson Medical College by Dr. George McClellan in 1825 the
city strengthened its position. By 1841 Jefferson had an outstanding faculty,
including such notable names as Robley Dunglison, Thomas D. Xhitter, Charles D.
Meigs, John K. Mitchell, and Franklin Bache.
In
addition to the activities of its many distinguished practitioners,
specialists, and professors in the medical schools, notable advances were made
in hitherto neglected areas of medical science and rehabilitation. In 1833
Julius R. Friedlander, backed by John Vaughan and Roberts Vaux, founded
Philadelphia's famous school for the blind, with Bishop White as its first
president. About the same time Dr. Thomas Kirkbride undertook his pioneer work
in the treatment of mental diseases, which led to his becoming superintendent
of the Pennsylvania Hospital's department for the insane, better known as
"Kirkbride's." In another area of medicine Dr. Isaac Hays, a
specialist in diseases of the eye and an outstanding surgeon, was from 1826 to
1869 the editor of the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, which had been
founded under another name in 1820 by Dr. Nathaniel Chapman. In publishing
medical material, the city had early won an unequalled reputation, one that it
has retained.
Unquestionably
the most dramatic and terrible challenge faced by the physicians of this time
was the cholera epidemic of 1832. The disease had appeared in India on the
banks of the Ganges in 1817 and started on its course around the world. In 1832
it reached Canada and then spread over the eastern part of the United States,
arriving in Philadelphia in July. Carey and Lea, the country's leading
publisher of medical books, promptly issued the Cholera Gazette, edited by Dr. Isaac Hays. This weekly
publication informed the public of the progress of the disease and its
treatment. With sixty to seventy people dying daily of the plague, Henry Carey
wrote to James Fenimore Cooper: "The People now read only the Cholera
Gazette." Some 2314 cases of cholera and 985 deaths were reported by
October when the pestilence disappeared. As a testimonial to the heroic role of
the medical profession in battling the infection, the city Councils presented
thirteen silver pitchers to the physicians who had been in charge of the
hospitals, among whom were Nathaniel Chapman, John K. Mitchell, W. E. Horner,
Charles D. Meigs, and Hugh L. Hodge.
Many
literary journals made their appearance at this time, covering subjects of more
cheerful note than that of the Cholera Gazette. In 1826 Samuel C. Atkinson started The
Casket, a monthly
magazine. Robert Walsh's serious The American Quarterly Review began its appearances the following
year. Godey's Lady's
Book, specializing in
fashions, was brought out by Louis A. Godey in 1830. Among its contributors was
Eliza Leslie, a prolific writer on subjects of interest to women. In 1836 she
started her annual, The Gift,
printing in its first issue Edgar Allan Poe's "MS Found in a Bottle." Subsequently she was editor of Miss
Leslie's Magazine.
Poe
came to Philadelphia, then the hub of the American publishing world, in 1837,
and there he wrote many of his most famous stories and poems. In 1839 he became
William E. Burton's assistant editor on The Gentleman's Magazine. This association was not entirely
happy, and Poe hoped to edit a journal of his own, The Penn Magazine, but was unable to arouse sufficient
interest. Meanwhile George R. Graham had come on the scene, purchasing The
Casket in 1839, and
shortly after, The Gentleman's Magazine, merging the two in 1841 into the very successful Graham's
Magazine.
Although
Philadelphia failed to produce literary figures of lasting renown, she had in
Henry Carey, Mathew's son, the leading political economist of the day. His
three-volume Principles of Political Economy came out between 1837 and 1840. The want
of literary genius did not discourage publishers, however. Under Henry Carey's
leadership the publishing house of Carey and Lea dominated Philadelphia's and
the nation's book trade. It was the publisher of James Fenimore Cooper and
Washington Irving, active in the reprint trade of English authors, notably Sir
Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, and dominant in the field of medical texts.
When Henry Carey retired in 1838 the firm's great rival, Harper and Brothers,
captured for New York preeminence in yet another field.
Henry
Carey had witnessed a revolution in the technique of printing. To begin with
better presses were invented, and after 1825 the cylinder press replaced the
old flat-bed press. Within a few years steam power was adapted to its use.
Other technological advances in typesetting and printing methods - most
important, stereotype plates - and in papermaking made possible cheap, mass
production of books and at the same time unleashed a flood of newsprint upon
the community in the 1830s.
For
news, Philadelphia continued to be served by more than a dozen papers, a fluid
field with new papers being offered and mergers and sales removing old ones. In
1829 the Philadelphia Inquirer
(first known as the Pennsylvania Inquirer) was launched as an organ dedicated to the principles of
Andrew Jackson. It did not prosper and was soon acquired by Jesper Harding, a
Bible publisher. Under Harding the Inquirer became a leading journal, broke with the
Democrats, and assuming a tone of gentility, was deferential to commercial
interests.
In
1839 the North American
was established, a paper that was destined to become most influential. It
promptly swallowed up Zachariah Poulson's American Daily Advertiser, the oldest daily in the country. Since
1800 Poulson's had been a favorite with Philadelphia conservatives, a
safe-and-sound family paper. The famous old United States Gazette, a Philadelphia fixture since 1790, was
also to be sold to the North American a few years later. Under the guidance of
Joseph R. Chandler, the Gazette
was considered an infallible authority by many readers throughout the 1830s,
and evidenced a mild Whig character while paying studious attention to the
interests of trade and commerce.
The
sale of newspapers had been limited by their high prices, six cents for the
better ones. But in the 1830s the new printing processes and cheaper paper made
possible the penny paper. In 1833 Benjamin Day brought out the New York Sun, that city's first popular penny gazette.
Two years later James Gordon Bennett, after an unsuccessful newspaper career in
Philadelphia, created an even more successful penny paper in his New York
Herald. Philadelphia's
first penny journal was the Public Ledger, founded in 1836. It had a lurid appeal in its handling of
police reports and other sensational matters, and it gained notoriety through
libel suits. So well did it flourish that its proprietors established a similar
paper in Maryland, the Baltimore Sun. William M. Swain, editor of the Ledger, shocked Philadelphia's staid newspaper
world with his innovations. Rather than waiting for news to be delivered to his
office, he sent reporters about town, a most undignified procedure. The few
reporters employed by the city's papers used to meet once a day to pool
information. The Public Ledger
was the first to hire enough reporters to free itself of this exchange method
and to insist on exclusive news coverage. It was the policy of this
enterprising sheet, moreover, to route newsboys through the streets, soliciting
sales; other papers either mailed their issues or decorously delivered them to
subscribers' doorsteps. Before long the Ledger had the largest circulation in
Pennsylvania.
In
the stories carried by Philadelphia's newspapers it is possible to trace the
public's growing awareness of the city's history, for in the early part of the
nineteenth century America began to identify its historical image. Historical
societies were founded, sites were honored, documents preserved, historical
writings published, and the historical theme found expression in orations, art,
the theater, and literature. The impulse that set this trend in action in
Philadelphia had been Lafayette's visit in August 1824. Civic-minded citizens
were pleased to recall the founding of the city. On October 24 they met in the
Letitia House, a building then associated with William Penn, to commemorate the
142nd anniversary of his landing in 1682. Out of this dinner was born the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. "Our Penn Dinner has made a great
stir, and is very popular," wrote the philanthropist Roberts Vaux to the
antiquarian John Fanning Watson; "The Historical Soc'y will go on, and in
short a new current, of feeling seems to have set in. The society was founded
the next month with William Rawle, a leading member of the bar, as its first
president. Rawle was succeeded in 1837 by the even more celebrated Peter S. Du
Ponceau, another lawyer of note, a contributor to historical and linguistic
literature, and president of the American Philosophical Society. Thus a good
and enduring start was made and a worthy stream of publications soon attested
to the society's program.
The
attractions and importance of history in these years led Deborah Logan of
Stenton to arrange and transcribe James Logan's correspondence. In 1827 a
monument was erected near the site of the great elm at Kensington to
commemorate Penn's treaty of 1682 with the Indians. Two years later, Thomas F.
Gordon, a Philadelphia lawyer, published his history of Pennsylvania, and as
already noted, in 1830 John Fanning Watson gave to the public the first history
of Philadelphia.
Lafayette's
visit also awakened interest in the State House (Independence Hall), which had
hitherto been accorded little reverence. In 1828 the city Councils retained
Strickland to restore its wooden steeple, taken down in 1781, and three years
later John Haviland was commissioned to convert its Assembly room, where the
Declaration had been signed, "to its ancient form."
The
collector was early on the scene. In John McAllister, Jr., an antiquarian who
retired from business in 1835 to devote the rest of his long life to gathering
materials on the history of Philadelphia, the city rejoiced in the most
perceptive of scavengers who preserved significant records which would
otherwise have been lost. And in David J. Kennedy, a skilled amateur artist who
came to Philadelphia in 1836, the city gained a historically interested person
who would record the appearance of its old buildings in hundreds of sketches.
The
contributions of these talented, historically interested people were
overshadowed, however, by the city's most dynamic and dramatic issue, the
future of the Bank of the United States.
XIII
When
Nicholas Biddle became president of the bank it was his ambition to give the
country better "notes" than it had ever seen before. Aside from the
bank's own paper money, that in use was issued by state-chartered banks. There
was always the tendency for them to over-issue, and from this and other causes
their notes had circulated at a discount. In return for a bonus paid for its
charter and the services it rendered to the government without charge the
transfer of public money from place to place, the payment of the public debt,
of pensions, of salaries for the civil list, the army, and the navy- the bank
was made the depository of the public funds. These funds arose principally from
taxes paid by importers to customs collectors and were largely in the form of
state-bank notes. With these notes in hand the Bank of the United States was a
creditor of the state banks, and by presenting their notes for payment could
regulate their activities and keep them from lending too much, thereby
preventing the depreciation of their paper money.
Not
only did the bank, the largest corporation in the nation, enforce a uniform
standard of currency; it had eased financial crises and prevented others by the
expansion or contraction of its credit facilities. By 1828 there was virtually
no criticism heard of its operations. Relations with the bank's largest
stockholder, the federal government, were excellent at the close of John Quincy
Adams's administration. Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush termed the
institution "an indispensable and permanent adjunct to our political and
fiscal system." That the new president, Andrew Jackson, did not harbor
such friendly notions was no secret, but Biddle was sure that experience would
convince him otherwise. As far as party ideologies were concerned there was not
as yet any question over the bank. Biddle himself had voted for Jackson in 1824
and again in 1828; many of his closest advisers, notably Gen. Thomas
Cadwalader, were strong Jackson men.
Dissuaded
from coming out against the bank in his inaugural address, Jackson raised the
question of the bank's re-charter in his first annual message to Congress.
"Both the constitutionality and the expedience of the law creating the
bank are well questioned," he averred, "by a large portion of our
fellow citizens, and it must be admitted that it has failed in the great end of
establishing a sound and uniform currency." The currency Jackson wanted
was one of hard money. Biddle, on the contrary, believed that a paper currency
was the only practical medium of exchange; the country had never had such a
currency as Jackson wanted, and it never would have. The parts of Jackson's
message relating to the bank were referred to the appropriate committees of the
Senate and the House, both of which reported in favor of the bank and its
usefulness to the community. The statement from the House controverted the
president's reasoning at every point, declaring, as had the Supreme Court, that
the bank was constitutional. Moreover, it was highly expedient, and had
"actually furnished a circulating medium more uniform than specie.
Jackson's
views were not yet party policy. Like many other Democratic leaders, Charles J.
Ingersoll disapproved the president's financial theories. In 1831 Ingersoll
urged the re-charter of the bank in the Democratically controlled Pennsylvania
legislature. Resolutions to this effect passed its Senate by a unanimous vote
and its lower house by seventy-five to eleven. Despite the overwhelming
proportions of these votes the Globe, spokesman for the administration in
Washington, announced that the bank had purchased the passage of the resolutions
by bribery. Ingersoll and his associates branded the accusation "an
unfounded and attrocious libel.
In
December 1831 Secretary of the Treasury Louis McLane reported in favor of
re-chartering the bank. That same month the National Republican party, running
Henry Clay for president and John Sergeant for vice-president, adopted the
re-charter of the bank as one of its goals. Cadwalader, after consultation with
leaders of both parties, urged Biddle to apply immediately for re-charter;
there seemed little to be gained by postponing this increasingly agitated
question. Accordingly, in January 1832 George Mifflin Dallas, Democratic
senator from Pennsylvania, son of the man who had proposed the bank, long a
counsel for it, and recently a director, presented Biddle's memorial for a
renewal of the charter. Neither Biddle nor Cadwalader thought the application
would have the slightest effect on the president's reelection, which they
regarded as certain. Thus Biddle professed not to consider the application in an
election year as politically motivated. To Ingersoll he wrote: "You know I
care nothing about the election. I care only for the interests confided to my
care."
The
re-charter bill passed Congress. But Jackson, having urged the people to take
into consideration the re-charter of the bank, now that they had done so
through their constituted representatives vetoed their decision. His veto
message's strength rested in its appeal to the poor against the rich, the West
against the East, democracy against privilege. Questioning the very solvency of
the bank, Jackson directed the secretary of the treasury to find out whether
the public deposits could be considered safe. The Treasury's investigation was
undertaken by a Democratic politician who found that there was no question as
to the security of the deposits or the solvency of the bank. A congressional
investigating committee endorsed this opinion: "there can be no doubt of
the entire soundness of the whole Bank capital.
The
result of Jackson's veto was the worst possible for the bank, for it made the
bank the central issue of the presidential election of 1832, a contest of
extraordinary bitterness. Biddle was soon in the thick of it, getting up
speeches and arguments for the bank and having them printed and distributed to
defend the bank against the heavy attacks being made on it. The administration
considered his activities as electioneering against Jackson. Perhaps it is
impossible to separate the two, and there has been much criticism of Biddle's
throwing the bank into politics. However, few leading men in Philadelphia
opposed his activities, and while the defection of such Democrats as George
Mifflin Dallas, Charles J. Ingersoll, and Richard Rush brought them political
favor, it resulted in their social ostracism at home where an overwhelmingly
ariti-Jackson vote was registered."'
Obsessed
by the idea that the bank was a hydra-headed engine of corruption, Jackson
viewed his reelection as a mandate to destroy the "monster," which,
in his message to Congress in December 1832, he announced was insolvent.
Disappointed by the results of all the investigations of the bank, he convoked
a meeting of New York bankers to obtain their opinion on the removal of the
deposits. Again he was disappointed. They urged him not to do it and repeated
advice that he had heard before-removal of the deposits would bring on a
financial crisis. Opposed by his secretary of the treasury, he promoted McLane
to be secretary of state, replacing him with William J. Duane, a known opponent
of re-charter from Philadelphia. When Duane refused to obey Jackson's request
that he remove the deposits, Jackson dismissed him. Believing that unless the
bank was broken it would break his administration, and that the removal of the
deposits was "necessary to preserve the morals of the people, the freedom
of the press, and the purity of the elective franchise," Jackson appointed
Roger B. Taney secretary of the treasury, and the removal of the deposits was
ordered, effective October 1, 1833.
The
government pledged that funds deposited in the bank would be withdrawn
gradually as needed and that no funds would be transferred to state-bank
depositories. Partially through the clumsiness of Taney, this pledge was
immediately violated, and unannounced drafts totaling more than $2 million
began to be presented for instant payment. Faced with the necessity of reducing
loans because of the forthcoming loss of the deposits and the closing of the
bank itself in 1836, Biddle now feared that Jackson was actually trying to make
good his threat to break the bank. There were runs on branches of the bank, as
at Savannah, where at the height of a run a government paymaster from
Charleston appeared with a Treasury draft to be paid for in specie, refusing to
explain why he did not cash it in his own city. Such incidents convinced Biddle
that the runs were politically inspired, and indeed such actions had been
openly discussed by leaders of the administration. Accordingly, for the safety
of the bank Biddle ordered more drastic reductions in credit than would
normally have beer. necessary.
Jackson
at first refused to recognize the financial crisis that ensued, and of which he
had been warned. But the distress was real, and the petitions that poured in on
him from all over to restore the deposits to the bank and thus right the
country's economy did nothing to soothe his temper. At length, when it became
undeniable that he had placed the safety of the bank beyond Jackson's ability
to destroy it, Biddle ordered an easing of credit restrictions and the crisis
passed. His action liberalizing loan policy aroused the stern displeasure of
many of his friends, including Horace Binney, who declared that Biddle's action
was "a complete reversal of the Bank's policy and an abandonment of its only
practical weapon of defense against the administration Ò.
The excitement in Philadelphia over the War on the Bank, or
as Jackson would put it, the Bank's War on the People, was intense, and
throughout the remainder of Jackson's administration the great majority of the
city's voters was solidly against Old Hickory. The withdrawal of the deposits
was protested as "executive usurpation," and numerous rallies were
held during the financial crisis by every sort of trade and organization
demanding the return of the deposits. In March 1834 the largest of these
gatherings, 50,000 people, assembled at Independence Square. One of the
memorials praying for the return of the deposits bore 10,259 signatures.
Biddle
proceeded to wind up the bank's affairs and close its branches. At this time,
he and the bank stood high in the esteem of the commercial world. "in all
the proceedings of this institution," wrote a business commentator,
"a calm dignity, a moderation of temper, and a regard to the interests of
the country are observable, which contrasts admirably with the perturbed and
ferocious spirit that seems to animate its persecutors." At their final
meeting the stockholders expressed their entire approbation for the way the
bank was run during its last seven years, during which period "the
institution has been exposed to both persecution and obloquy, which the public
investigation of its transactions, and their undeniable benefit to the nation
have enabled them to know were unmerited and unjust.Ó
The
failure of the bank five years later lent credence to Jackson's sagacity in
having attacked the "monster," and made history's verdict appear that
he was right and Biddle wrong. But it should be borne in mind that throughout
the period of Jackson's presidency the bank was unquestionably solvent. Its
subsequent troubles did not stem from its operations as the national bank.
When
Jackson removed the deposits he made it impossible for Biddle to regulate the
extension of credit by private banks, and this did much to make the Jacksonian
inflation one of the worst in American history. During Jackson's presidency the
number of banks in the country increased by 140 percent. Unfettered by control,
they fostered a whirlwind of speculation that ended in panic, bankruptcy, and a
long depression.
The
most notable victim of these disasters was the Bank of the United States,
operating after the loss of its federal charter under a charter granted by
Pennsylvania. According to the most recent study of this bank, it was
"strong, solvent, and liquid" when forced to suspend specie payments
in 1837 because of the general paralysis of bank credit occasioned by Jackson's
Specie Circular of 1836. Seeking to encourage the hard-money economy so dear to
his heart, Jackson had ordered payment for government land to be made only in
gold or silver. As a result specie was drained from the great commercial
centers of the East, where it was most needed, to the frontier, where it was
least needed. Two months after Jackson left office, every bank in the nation
suspended specie payments.
In
1838 the Philadelphia banks, following the example set by New York, resumed,
and with affairs looking reasonably prosperous, Biddle felt free to resign from
the Bank of the United States the following March. Six months later the bank
suspended again, as did all the other banks in Pennsylvania, the South, and
most of the West. Forced by the legislature to resume in January 1841, it
encountered staggering runs on its specie and was soon obliged to close its
doors for a final time. In the ensuing panic the city's next two largest banks
failed, as did four lesser ones.
The
reason for the bank's failure lay in policies that caused its assets to become
illiquid and the safety of the bank itself to be tied to the debtor sections of
the nation, the South and West. Ever anxious to promote improvement programs,
Biddle had subscribed heavily to state bond issues. Anxious to help the
southern banks resume in 1838, he had come to their aid. The bank's portfolio, the
largest in the country, filled up with state obligations and stocks of all
sorts. When the boom ran out, the states, including Pennsylvania, stopped
paying interest on their bonds, prices fell, and the bank could not convert its
rapidly depreciating assets into liquid funds.
Philadelphia
was profoundly shocked by the failure of the Bank of the United States and the
disclosures of corruption in other banks. The Schuylkill Bank was ruined by its
cashier and the Western Bank was compromised by one of its officers; the
president of a local railroad sold its stock by the simple process of filling
in blank shares and pocketing the money. In an atmosphere of bitter
recrimination, criminal charges were lodged by stockholders against Biddle, but
they were later dismissed as without foundation. "It is due to truth to
say that his private and personal character has never, to my knowledge, been
successfully impeached," observed Martin Van Buren.
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