Historic Philadelphia

Richard Vaux, a lawyer, beat the Whigs, the
New Republicans and the Native Americans
in the 1856 mayoralty election with his
Democratic reform platform calculated to take
all the fun out of being a politician: “No
increase of taxes. No excursions of Councils.
No free dinners. No free rum at expense of
Councils. No free cigars. No free hack hire.”
A thirty-six-year-old Princeton-educated
lawyer, Alexander Henry, was elected mayor
in 1858, the first Whig candidate to identify
himself with the new Republican Party.
Railroads of varied lengths had
proliferated, but had been forced by public
pressure to terminate their lines before
reaching the built up part of the city. Short
trips inside the city were made in carriages or
horse-drawn omnibuses. In 1858 a new
service opened. Multi-passenger vehicles
pulled by two horses traveled on rails in the
street, making frequent stops, over Fifth and
Sixth Streets between Frankford and
Southwark. Each had a driver and a
conductor to collect the five cent fares.
Many Philadelphians opposed street
railways, citing noise, danger to pedestrians,
traffic congestion, interference with carriages,
and potential lowering of property values on
streets with tracks. While the dispute
continued (“much vigorous Anglo-Saxon was
used on both sides,” wrote an observer), the
success of the enterprise touched off a frenzy of
rail-laying, and by the end of 1859 there were
thirteen street car lines, carrying nearly fifty
thousand passengers daily. “Private carriages
will soon be unnecessary,” wrote one booster.
The seven departments at the Central High
School were English belles lettres, mathematics,
French and Spanish, Latin and Greek, natural
philosophy and chemistry, natural history, and
drawing and writing. The Female Medical
College began training women physicians, the
School of Design (now Moore College of Art)
started teaching women commercial art, and
the Philadelphia High School for Girls
graduated its first class in 1859.
The year 1859 ended with a portent of the
national division soon to come. On December
22, after a meeting to discuss the problem,
three hundred medical students from the
South, disgusted with abolitionist sentiments
in Philadelphia, resolved to leave Jefferson
Medical College and the University of
Pennsylvania, and went in a body to resign.
WAR
YEARS
The 1860 census found a city population of
565,000, second to New York. Philadelphia’s
twenty-two thousand African Americans were
the largest black population of any Northern
city. The city was twenty percent Irish.
Life was becoming easier for those who
could afford the latest technology. There were
sewing machines that could do “a day’s sewing
in an hour,” according to one report. Lamps
that burned the new coal oil (the favorite
brand was called Kerosene) were cleaner and
brighter at half the cost of fat-based “common
oil” and a tenth the cost of candles.
Ice skating was popular in winter,
described by a Philadelphia aristocrat as a
“fashionable amusement for ladies as well as
gentlemen.” Croquet was also in vogue. Base
Ball (it was two words then) was becoming
organized. The Minerva Base Ball Club was
formed in 1857, the Keystone in 1859, and in
1860, the Mercantile and the Athletics, a
name that would be identified with the city
for nearly a century.
The Continental Hotel opened on February
16, 1860, at Ninth and Chestnut Streets. The
architect was John M. McArthur, Jr., who would
soon begin work on a new City Hall. There were
✧
Prominent Republicans founded the Union
League in 1862 to support the Federal
cause. The organization recruited and
equipped nine infantry regiments, helped
form five cavalry companies and other units,
and erected its dignified brown headquarters
on Broad Street at Sansom. The club house
officially opened on May 11, 1865, a month
after Robert E. Lee surrendered. The League
spent $33,000 equipping Philadelphia’s
African-American troops.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
CHAPTER IV
73