Philadelphia (Repplier)/Chapter 18

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THE history of Philadelphia for the first half of the present century does not make vivacious reading. She had turned her page, and the long story of her struggles, her triumphs, her pride of place, her political power, her reckless dissipation, was at an end. In its stead, we have a dismal narrative, full of such familiar phrases as "dull times," "hard winters," "stagnant trade," "great suffering among the poor,"—all included in the inevitable reaction from a mad extravagance that had no sounder basis than speculation, and the allurements of an inflated currency. The embargo act of 1807, which ​forbade vessels to set sail from the United States for any foreign port, put the finishing touch to the commercial ruin of a city which had covered the sea with her ships. The act may or may not have been annoying to the foreign ports which it was meant to injure; but the havoc it made at home was never a matter for doubt. Philadelphia drooped pitifully under this cruel hurt. "The grass grew on her wharves, the ships rotted in their moorings." Hungry, penniless sailors paraded the streets, and the sympathy of the people was strongly aroused for these poor mariners who were so childishly incapable of understanding the law which locked up their boats, and bade them starve in peace. Help there was none, however, and hundreds of them made their way to Nova Scotia, and, entering the English service, regained their sea under an alien flag. Desperate efforts were made by ship-owners and captains to elude the embargo; but Napoleon the ruthless ordered the seizure of all American vessels, without distinction or favour, cynically observing that, by the commands of their own government, they were forbidden to sail, and that he was assisting the United States to maintain her admirable restrictions.

The once prosperous Quaker City was now dull, dejected, and heavy with many cares. All classes shared in the general anxiety; few men were rich enough to help their poorer neighbours. Robert Morris, old, ​bankrupt, and brokenhearted, had seen his noble fortune melt like mist, and his friends vanish away like floating mist-wreaths. His beautiful home, which never reached completion, was sold by the sheriff, and pulled down stone by stone; his books and ornaments were bought by fellow-townsmen; and he who had saved the honour of his country, who had fed and clothed her starved and ragged soldiers, who had deemed no labour too great, no gift too generous when the welfare of the Republic was at stake, was suffered to lie for four years in a debtor's prison, while the people he had served in their utmost need wagged their heads wisely, and talked pious platitudes about the Tower of Babel and inordinate ambition. Each summer the ravages of the yellow fever emptied the jail where Philadelphia's greatest citizen, forgotten or ignored, breathed the pestilential air, and waited patiently for the end. When at last he was set at liberty, that end was near at hand; but that it did not find him still in durance was a matter for self-congratulation on the part of his countrymen. Something they felt was due in return for his services, and Robert Morris was permitted to die under a roof of his own, and in the arms of his wife. Who shall say that republics are ungrateful!

The refusal of Congress to re-charter the Bank of the United States in 1811, added another heavy load to the financial distress of Philadelphia. In vain her merchants, her manufacturers, her carpenters, and house-​builders sent their deputations to plead for a new charter, and to lay their dire necessities before the House. Of what avail was the homely reasoning of mere business men and mechanics, when Henry Clay, master of rhetoric and flowing periods, denounced the towering pride of corporations, and scoffed at the utility of banks. So, on the eve of war, the city saw herself crippled and bound. France had swept away her ships, Congress had swept away her credit, and England stood ready to sweep away whatever might by any chance be left.

In these sad times, the old fighting instinct came to the rescue of the commonwealth. "National happiness," says the peace-loving Deborah Logan, "was suspended by the war of 1812"; but this is a more than doubtful statement. National prosperity was, indeed, sorely crippled, and no town outside of New England was more cruelly impoverished than Philadelphia, where all the necessaries of life had grown alarmingly dear, and where the stagnation of commerce threatened absolute ruin. But with the declaration of war, of an unpopular, but not inglorious war, came the excitement of combat, pushing sordid anxieties into the background, and filling men's minds with other and wider cares. The city sent forth her sons to fight, and some of them, like Lieutenant Biddle of the Wasp, brought back honours to lay proudly at her feet. She fitted up privateers,—her old diversion,—and she found, Heaven ​knows how! money for the government loan. The adventurous raid of Sir George Cockburn, who marched into Maryland with five hundred men, as with an invading army, and whom nobody took by the shoulders and turned out, thrilled her with wholesome shame. The capture of Washington aroused her to a sense of personal disgrace and personal danger. It even silenced for a time the quarrels of her contending factions, and sent every able-bodied man to drill at Camp Dupont, or to work at the defences which, being inadequate, were happily never needed. No citizen was permitted to shirk his manifest duty, the "State Cockade" was pinned upon every shoulder, and even the comfortable voice of conscience was unheeded in the din. Pious men, who could not endure the ungodly aspect of the camp, were requested to drill apart, and make up a corps of their own.

By this time the French fever was permanently cured. Napoleon's scornful treatment had proved wonderfully efficacious in healing the most desperate cases, and when the news of his downfall reached our shores, Philadelphia, exulting openly, set at once about the usual dinners, without which no public event could be properly commemorated. She toasted the Emperor Alexander and the King of Sweden; she toasted Holland and Germany, amid wild acclamations of delight; she toasted the "patriots" of Spain and Portugal. But England, whose great struggle with her great enemy ​was over at last, England, who had held together the allies, paid their soldiers, and fought their battles, received no notice at these civic banquets. Her part in the work was ignored, for she was still our foe, and the dawn of peace upon the continent gave her a breathing spell which could not fail to be disadvantageous to our cause. All things considered, it might have been better for us if Napoleon had engaged her attention a little longer.

But on Christmas Eve, 1814, the treaty of Ghent was signed, and while General Jackson was fighting and winning the battle of New Orleans, word was coming slowly over the sea that the war was at an end, and that the United States were once more free to turn their attention to their own pressing needs. Philadelphia's share of needs was plainly manifest. The foreign commerce, which had brought her prosperity for so many years, had received a check from which it never wholly recovered. Her shipping merchants, who had built up noble fortunes in the past, strove, but strove in vain, to regain their old ascendency. The opening of what was then called "the West"; the network of canals, and afterwards of railways, which made transportation possible and even easy, gave a tremendous impetus to New York, now reached as readily as her sister city,—New York proudly commanding her splendid harbour, and the natural outlet for our grains. We laugh when we read of the old Philadelphia newspapers gravely discuss​ing the relative merits of canals and railways, and coming to the serious conclusion that the latter were "inexpedient" in Pennsylvania. Sleepy little town, we think, which at the same time rejected the introduction of gas, declaring it to be a public nuisance, unsafe, undesirable, and with an "intolerable smell." Yet it was a long time before the gas-pipes proved themselves blessings to the community; and the immediate result of the railways was to make Philadelphia a half-way house to the great city of commerce, New York.

when, very slowly, there dawned on Pennsylvania the knowledge of the mineral wealth hidden beneath her bosom, and with it came a dim revelation of the vast industrialism of the future. The first successful experiments with our own anthracite coal were made in Philadelphia immediately after the declaration of peace, and its superiority over the Virginia coal in heating and rolling iron promised magnificent results, sure to be long in coming, but sure to come at last. One fifth of all gold or silver ore found in his province, had Penn promised to send back to England's king; but here at length were the mines whose inexhaustible riches should fill the land with plenty. Four years later, we find Lehigh coal offered for sale in Philadelphia, "in quantities not less than one ton," the price being eight dollars and forty cents. It was such a novelty, and people were at ​once so curious and so doubtful, that the clever agents kept what they called a "specimen fire" burning all day long at 172 Arch Street, that purchasers might see for themselves what an admirable fuel they were buying.

The year 1816 saw the second National Bank of the United States established in Philadelphia, a bank destined to be wrecked, like so many other institutions, by factious hostility and violence. Her mint—not the present marble pile with its Ionic columns, but a modest predecessor—was coining plenty of copper cents, and a few silver dollars, then highly esteemed, and all too insufficient for the country's needs. The rapid increase in population, with its corresponding decrease of grace and virtue, industry and thrift, had made the feeding of the poor and the suppression of crime more difficult and more inefficacious every year. It is true that so many benevolent associations were at work starting soup kitchens and kindred charities in the Quaker City, that for a long time she was known as the "emporium of beggars," and idle vagabonds flocked from neighbouring states to enjoy her hospitality. Yet destitution on the one hand, and viciousness on the other, kept pace with her daily growth. The almshouse and the prison were equally crowded, and equally mismanaged. Philadelphia, says Mr. MacMaster, was attempting to control a population of a hundred thousand by the same primitive methods she had used

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​successfully for twenty thousand. She had become a city, without ceasing to be a village.

While things were in this uncomfortable period of transition, La Fayette came to the United States, and twice visited the town, "the great and beautiful town

of Philadelphia," as he politely said, "which first welcomed me as a recruit, and now welcomes me as a veteran." Of the warmth of this welcome there was no shadow of doubt. What other man could have borne the weight of such sustained enthusiasm! Six cream-coloured horses drew his carriage, and the First and Second City Troops escorted him proudly through the ​thronged streets. He was dined, and wined, and presented with unstinted addresses in French and English. The Free Masons, the Cincinnati, the school children, and all orders, societies, and bodies of citizens generally waited upon him, and were received with indefatigable courtesy. He amiably permitted himself to be taken to all the city's sights, from the penitentiary and the new waterworks at Fairmount, to Vauxhall Garden, where a band of little boys and girls met him with lighted torches, and surrounded him as a guard of honour while he listened to the music, or stared at the appropriate fireworks.

Philadelphia always delighted to show reverence to her distinguished guests. Kosciuszko, for whom "Freedom shrieked," had visited her hospitable homes, and had received unvarying kindness and respect. Kossuth was to prove in the future that her admiration for patriots and patriotism was still undimmed. But La Fayette she really loved. He had fought her battles, he had been wounded in her cause, he had given her and her sister cities the honest devotion of his youth. His career since those early days had not been a very dazzling one; but the breathless, blood-stained, terrible, glorious history of France had permitted only the strong and the unswerving to play memorable parts upon her shifting stage. It was not a time for well-meant futilities, or indecisive action; and men more resolute than La ​Fayette had failed to steer their course amid such Titanic storms. It must have been to him an inexpressible pleasure to see once again the land of his boyish enthusiasm, the people who cherished for him nothing but affection and respect. Never did any man thirst more keenly for admiration; never did any nation admire more honestly, or with more fervid zeal. The visit of this well-loved Frenchman rekindled even the embers of a burned-out fire; and when the Bourbons were expelled from France after the revolution of 1830, Philadelphia awoke to a transitory glow, called meetings, passed resolutions, and sent her sober citizens marching through the streets to the airs which had once heated the city's blood to fever point, but which now produced only an afternoon's pleasurable excitement.

There were still links which bound this restless, fast-growing population to the past, still old habits and customs not easily relinquished. The social aspects of the town had altered less than her political and commercial life. She was quieter, more thrifty than in the first expansive years of freedom, but otherwise unchanged. She is unchanged to-day. When things are as good as they can possibly be, what consummate wisdom in leaving them alone! Before the present century had started on its course, before Washington died, or Congress was carried to New York, Dr. Caspar Wistar, author of the first American treatise on ​anatomy, was gathering under his hospitable roof those informal Sunday night assemblies which were destined to grow into the celebrated Wistar Parties, as much an institution of Philadelphia as the Mint. Like all things fated to long life, they did not start ready made, did not proceed from any definite plan of organization; but expanded slowly and comfortably from a few guests to a large club, from the friendliness of Sunday evenings to the more formal elegance of Saturdays, from cakes and wine which nobody wanted to oysters and terrapin which nobody pretended not to want.

All this took time. In 1811, conviviality had extended no further than the introduction of ice-cream, nuts and raisins,—strange food for hungry men; but the meetings had grown regular, and many strangers of distinction brought charm and variety into the quiet nights. Among the early guests were Baron von Humboldt, who, returning from Mexico and the West Indies, lingered a little while in Philadelphia; and Captain Riley, the narrative of whose long captivity among the Arabs was one of the treasures of every child's library. Children's libraries were not then the plethoric bookcases of to-day, and Captain Riley ranked as a second Sinbad for wonderful adventures and ill-luck.

After the death of Dr. Wistar in 1818, it was resolved that his evenings should be perpetuated by ​a club bearing his name, the members of which should be chosen from the Philosophical Society, thus securing "mutual improvement," as in Franklin's youthful days. The ice-cream was wisely abandoned in favour of hot dishes, which increased and multiplied as years went on, until they made a very pleasing impression upon so apt a judge as Thackeray, who was not wont to ignore the essentials of life. "If I had been in Philadelphia, I could scarcely have been more feasted," he was good enough to write, after a season of London and Paris dinners; and the gratified Philadelphian, reading this generous tribute to his birthplace, murmurs under his breath, "Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley," and feels justly proud of the Quaker City's hospitality.

In 1824 were founded the Franklin Institute for the promotion of mechanical and scientific studies, in which Philadelphia had always outranked her sister cities, and the Pennsylvania Historical Society, which had for its purpose "the elucidation of the history of the State." Both these institutions began life with characteristic modesty, and maintained the utmost discretion amid the vicissitudes of impecunious youth. The Franklin Institute, like the Academy of Natural Sciences, was the work of a dozen young men, who hardly knew how much they hoped to accomplish, when they banded together and devised their first unpretending schemes. A few lectures in the old Academy building, a few ​classes for architectural and mechanical drawing, a few more, later on, for mathematics and modern languages. This was all they could boast, save a few useful friends like Alexander Dallas Bache, great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, who held the chairs of chemistry and natural philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, and who was one of the most enthusiastic workers for the Institute which bore his great ancestor's name. There seemed no lack of pupils, however, ready and glad to avail themselves of these lectures and classes; and among the earliest was a young bricklayer named Thomas Walter, who learned thus the rudimentary principles of architecture, and who some years later designed Girard College and the Capitol at Washington.

Little doubt was felt at any time of the Institute's permanent success. It had among its historical relics the original electrical apparatus, and the clumsy printing-press of Benjamin Franklin, and it appealed to the spirit he had fostered, to the seed which had taken deep root in such congenial soil. Did not Philadelphia, in the days of her tender youth, prefer lectures on electricity to the graceless levity of the theatre? "Pennsylvania," says Mr. Sydney Fisher, "is overwhelmingly manufacturing, saturated with industrialism,—the result of tendencies that have been working for two hundred years." At the very time that Thomas Walter was learning other things than the laying of brick on brick, a young silversmith and tool-maker named

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​Matthias Baldwin was struggling with a problem so intricate, and of such absorbing interest, that all the former occupations and amusements of his days faded into dull nothingness by its side.

How curious are the chances that come into men's lives and make them what they are! The use of steam as a motor power for railways had by the year 1829 dawned as a splendid possibility upon the world; and it occurred to Mr. Franklin Peale, the enterprising manager of Philadelphia's flourishing museum, that a miniature locomotive in good working order would be a strong attraction to his patrons. He laid the matter before Matthias Baldwin, who undertook eagerly, yet with profound misgivings, to construct the ingenious toy, which was to be large enough to drag two carriages, each holding two people, around a track laid on the museum floor. The little engine when completed was wholly successful, both from a scientific and from a commercial point of view,—Peale well understood the temper of the Philadelphians whom he studied to please,—and seeing it run its appointed course faithfully hour after hour, the managers of the Germantown and Norristown Railway Company came to the conclusion that steam would be an improvement on horse power, even for their few miles of road. They directed Baldwin to build them a locomotive, equal in drawing power to an English engine recently imported by the Camden and Amboy Railway Company, and ​which he was at liberty to inspect and study. It was a tremendous undertaking for one so slenderly equipped; but labouring day and night with his own hands, improvising his own tools, training his own workmen, triumphing over obstacles and defeats, Matthias Baldwin toiled on, and Old Ironsides, parent of American engines, was put upon the road on the twenty-third of November, 1832.

Vast was the excitement it created, and vast the crowds that flocked to see it start, or—thrilling with conscious courage—take their places in the carriages it drew. Its utmost speed was thirty miles an hour, and such admirable care did the company take of this new possession that it was never permitted to run out carelessly in the rain. The following is the notice inserted in the Daily Advertiser:—

"The locomotive engine (built by M. W. Baldwin of this city) will depart daily, when the weather is fair, with a train of passenger cars. On rainy days, horses will be attached."

So much for being a petted only child!

The difficulties in the path of the early manufacturers were so great, their discouragement was often so profound, that Matthias Baldwin was wont to say decisively many times before the engine was completed, "That is our last locomotive"; futile words when destiny had shaped his appointed course. The

​are the fairy-tales of modernity, and the mighty progeny of Old Ironsides have gone forth over the civilized world. To Canada, to South America, to Russia, to Austria, to Scandinavia, they have carried the story whose interest never flags,—the story of man's conquest over the elements, of his patient labour, his resolute perseverance, his unflinching courage, and final mastery.

For matters unconnected with steam and electricity, Philadelphia evinced but a languid and half-hearted regard. The Pennsylvania Historical Society, founded the same winter as the Franklin Institute, received scant support from a community which, having broken away from the past, was ready to bury it forever out of sight. The members met in one of the rooms of the Philosophical Society, elected Mr. William Rawle as their president, and limited their expenses for fire and candles during the first year to the modest sum of fifty dollars. Unhelped and unheeded, they set about their appointed task,—the collection of books, pamphlets and manuscripts, many of them of great value, yet in danger of being permanently lost through the general indifference to their safety. For more than twenty years they continued this useful work before aspiring to quarters of their own, and then rented a single room on Sixth Street, which they fitted up with a bookcase and other furniture,—"cost, not to exceed one hundred dollars." Here, and in the upper story ​of the Athenæum they remained for twenty-five years, and the success of their labours is shown by the size of the library they amassed. When, in 1872, they moved to the commodious "New Hall" on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Hospital, they carried with them twelve thousand volumes, eighty thousand pamphlets,—not much trouble to collect these in a State which never wearied of printing them,—and a vast array of unsorted manuscripts. They had worked very quietly for nearly half a century, but they had not worked in vain.

The present home of the Pennsylvania Historical Society contrasts pleasantly with the simplicity, not to say the indigence, of its youth. Thrice fortunate in having secured the fine old property of General Patterson on Locust Street, it is spared the evil fate common to most institutions,—the inhabiting of buildings glaringly new, and ostentatiously appropriate. From the spacious, beautiful rooms, with their ineffaceable air of elegance and hospitality, may be seen the leafy garden, narrower than of yore, but inexpressibly welcome to the tired eyes of the brick-dweller. In these rooms are stored away more than forty thousand books,—the pamphlets are now long past being counted,—and a number of interesting historical relics, from Philadelphia's first charter, 1691, and the wampum belt presented to Penn by the Indians, to "Poor Richard's" Almanacs, and the ​log-book and telescope of Dr. Kane. Here, too, is the charming portrait of young William Penn in the days of his martial boyhood, and the original despatch which brought the news of the battle of Lexington, and a collection of nine hundred medals of Washington,—a pleasant tribute to fame,—and Franklin's little punch-keg which rolled so smoothly from thirsty guest to guest, and the gold and white china presented to the philosopher by Madame Helvetius, which seems to have suffered no scath nor mutilation at the hands of ravaging housemaids. Those were not days when cups and saucers were made to illustrate the mutability of matter.

In 1831 Stephen Girard died, and the bulk of his estate was bequeathed to the school which bears his name. The millions he had amassed in the old prosperous days of foreign traffic made him the Rothschild of his age. He was known to be the richest man in the United States, and people who loved to talk about other men's money never wearied of reckoning up his fortune. He was solitary, austere, morose, a good citizen, a just master, but with few associates, and fewer friends. He was childless, his wife was mad, he lived alone, "exchanging no offices of courtesy or kindness with his neighbours." Yet in that dreadful summer when Philadelphia was desolated by the yellow fever, and afterwards, when cholera swept her slums free of their miserable inhabitants, ​no one worked harder for his fellow townsmen than Stephen Girard; no one gave more liberally than he, time, money, and even sympathy, that rarest of benefactions from a millionaire, and which is worth more than all his millions multiplied. Girard was not by nature kind; his was no bright, broad, genial outlook on the world; yet there is not lacking evidence to show that he helped again and again where help was sorely needed, and where no one recognized the helper's hand. Men called him—perhaps with truth—an atheist, and atheism was distinctly unpopular in the city which religious enthusiasm had founded and sustained. The clause in his will which forbade to clergymen of any creed the exercise of their sacred functions within the precincts of his school, and which refused them even the common privilege of entering it as visitors, added to the uncanniness of his reputation. The bequest was a magnificent one; but why, it was asked, should orphan boys be denied the ministrations of the faith which was their birthright? Why should this cold hostility to all tenets and dogmas reach from the grave to influence the lives of little children, uprooted by indigence from the soil of home, and flung into the broad, bleak arms of systematic, organized charity?

It was not possible, however, to disobey or to ignore any injunction in Stephen Girard's will. No man ever knew his own mind more accurately than he

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​did, nor left more minute directions,—even to the vaulting of the ceilings, which gave forth such reverberating echoes that they had to be covered over before master or boy could hear each other speak in the schoolrooms. The only matter in which the directors were permitted to use their discretion was the study of the classics. "I do not forbid, but I do not recommend the Greek and Latin Languages," is the wording of the will. It was Girard also who applied the term "college" to his great charity school, which is not a college in the correct and accepted sense of the term. The lads are admitted when they are from six to ten years old, and under no circumstances remain after they are eighteen, while by far the greater number leave at an earlier age. They are taught French and Spanish,—which were especially enjoined by the founder,—the common English branches, and the industrial arts, so that as many as possible may learn to labour deftly with their hands.

It is difficult to do justice to the size and scope of this remarkable institution. The trust fund for its support has, through the careful management of the directors, increased to the enormous sum of fifteen millions. The first beautiful building, with its stately columns, and its air of noble simplicity, has been reinforced by thirteen others, all pleasing to the eye, and all admirably constructed. They cover, with their lawns and playgrounds, an area of forty-one acres; and ​within them sixteen hundred boys are maintained and educated, forming a little city of their own; a community hemmed in by streets and houses, yet apart from the home life which surrounds them; bound by close kinship to toiling women and men, yet remote from common paths, from common cares, from the common pleasures and pains that make up the ordinary, everyday existence of Philadelphia's equally poor but less secluded sons.

The year that followed Girard's death was fraught with many evils. The intense and unusual heat of the summer lent a deadly malignity to the cholera, which by this time had returned again and again to exact its heavy tolls. So great was the mortality that, in the narrow Arch Street jail, seventy prisoners died within two months; and every evening, strollers who had come forth to breathe a little air, even the stifling, tainted air of the city by-ways, saw the corpses carried from the prison gates, and piled in the waiting carts. Then, too, the hostile attitude of President Jackson, who in July vetoed the bill to re-charter the Bank of the United States, awoke bitter but futile resentment, and was ominous of coming calamity. Philadelphia's banks had always led stormy lives; but she had hoped, and hoped in vain, that a national institution, well-ordered and beneficial, might win more gentle treatment. Valiant efforts were made by the directors to avert the threatened destruction; their ​official statements were pronounced satisfactory, and Mr. Nicholas Biddle, the bank's president, did all that lay in the power of mortal man to soften the animosity of its enemies. But Jackson, who was not easily turned from a set purpose, followed up his veto by removing the government deposits. Business was paralyzed, one failure followed another, and, in this desperate emergency, it was deemed possible to re-incorporate the stock in a state institution, which was chartered by the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1836. From that day until its final collapse in 1840, distress was keen and ruin imminent. All classes suffered from a blow that was aimed at all alike. The rich lost heavily through the rapid depreciation of stocks, the poor were rendered poorer by the inevitable reduction of wages. It was a melancholy period, which the historian is glad to pass swiftly and lightly by.

One incident of the time is worth narrating for the pleasant illustration it affords of our grandfathers' conservatism and piety. Only in 1830 did Philadelphia succeed in ridding herself of the chains which churches of all denominations were permitted to stretch across the streets during the hours of service, so that neither preacher nor congregation should be disturbed by passing vehicles. People were supposed to stay quietly at home, or to sit quietly in their pews, on the Sabbath day, and not to drive profanely through ​

the silent city. But necessity knows no Sunday, and it often happened that the doctor speeding to his patients, the engines speeding to a fire, were fatally delayed by these barriers which forced them to turn aside again and again before their destinations could be reached. Even the driver of the mail protested irreligiously against such devious and winding ways, and a strong effort was made to have the troublesome impediments removed. The churches, one and all, wrestled stoutly for their peculiar privilege, but public sentiment mastered their opposition. The chains fell, and sleepy citizens, dimly conscious of Philadelphia's progress, murmured softly like the obstinate Galileo, "Still it moves!"