Civil War Museum of Philadelphia-PhilaCW

In mid-19th America, there were two large cities, New York and Philadelphia.

Philadelphia was the historic heart of the country in the 19th century, a place of pilgrimage to honor the work of the Founders. Lincoln, for example, traveled to Philadelphia in 1861 on the way to his first inauguration. He raised an American flag at Independence Hall, giving a stirring speech focusing on the values articulated in the Declaration of Independence and their importance in shaping his own ideas and response to growing sectional conflict.

As a center for the training of physicians before the war, and with its location as the “southernmost Northern City”, Philadelphia was a natural place to establish hospitals to treat wounded. The two largest Army hospitals in the country, Satterlee in West Philadelphia, and Mower, in Chestnut Hill, were in Philadelphia, treating over 32,000 wounded and sick soldiers.
Philadelphia’s manufacturing capacity made it a national leader in the economic shift from an agricultural nation to an industrial one and laid the foundation for the production of more war materiel than any other region.

Second only to New York in banking and financial services, Philadelphia banker and financier, Jay Cooke, was the contractor the federal government turned to help generate the funds to finance the war, selling $1.5 billion in bonds between 1862 and 1864.

Philadelphia had the largest free black population in the country.
Philadelphia had a vocal pro-South minority, in part because of the business relationships in the textile industry, a manufacturing sector which was so important to the region. The arguments about slavery and secession played themselves out in the newspapers, the social clubs and, sometimes, on the streets
Philadelphia is the birthplace of the abolition movement, with Ben Franklin and other leaders, the free black community, and the Quakers taking the lead and establishing the moral, economic, social, and political arguments that grew from the earliest discussions of how to treat slavery in drafting the Constitution up to the firestorm of the Civil War.
Pennsylvania, as a border state, played a key role in organizing the Underground Railroad. Initiated and supported by Philadelphia’s free black community, the idea of providing a network of “stations” and a communications system to help escaping slaves move north to Canada and other safe havens, spread across the free states.
Philadelphia was the home of Major Gen. George Gordon Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac and in command at Gettysburg, the largest battle ever fought on the North American continent. After the war, Meade returned to Philadelphia as commander of the Military Division of the Atlantic and served as the first Commissioner of Fairmount Park, laying out the roads and bridle paths of one of the country’s largest urban park systems.