Louisville in The American Civil War - 1850-1860: The Gathering Storm

1850-1860: The Gathering Storm

During the 1850s, Louisville became a vibrant and wealthy city, but together with the success, the city also harbored racial and ethnic tensions. It attracted numerous immigrants, had a large slave market from which enslaved African Americans were sold to the Deep South, and had both slaveholders and abolitionists as residents. In 1850 Louisville became the tenth largest city in the United States. Louisville's population rose from 10,000 in 1830 to 43,000 in 1850. It became an important tobacco market and pork packing center. By 1850, Louisville's wholesale trade totaled $20 million (USD) in sales. The Louisville-New Orleans river route held top rank in freight and passenger traffic on the entire Western river system.

Not only did Louisville profit from the river, in August 1855, its citizens greeted the arrival of the locomotive "Hart County" at Ninth and Broadway and connection to the nation via railroad. The first passengers arrived by train on the Louisville and Frankfort Railroad. James Guthrie, president of the Louisville & Frankfort, pushed the railroad along the Shelbyville turnpike (Frankfort Avenue) through Gilman's Point (St. Matthews) and on to Frankfort. The track entered Louisville on Jefferson Street and ended at Brook Street. The state paid tribute to James Guthrie by naming the small railroad community of Guthrie, Kentucky in Todd County after him.

Leven Shreve, a Louisville civic leader, became the first president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N), which was to prove more important for trade. It led to the developing western states and linked with Mississippi River traffic. With the railroads, Louisville could manufacture furniture and other goods, and export products to Southern cities. Louisville was on her way to becoming an industrial city. The Louisville Rolling Mill built girders and rails, and other factories made cotton machinery, which was sold to Southern customers. Louisville built steamboats. Louisville emerged with an iron-working industry; the plant at Tenth and Main was called Ainslie, Cochran, and Company.

Louisville also became a meat packing city, becoming the second largest city in the nation to pack pork, butchering an average of 300,000 hogs a year. Louisville led the nation in hemp manufacturing and cotton bagging. Farmington Plantation, owned by John Speed, was one of the larger hemp plantations in Louisville. Hemp was Kentucky's leading agricultural product from 1840 to 1860, and the leading commodity crop of the fertile Bluegrass Region. Jefferson County led all other markets in gardening and orchards. The sales of livestock, quality horses and cattle, was also important.

Attracted by jobs and pushed by political unrest and famine, European immigrants flowed into the city from Germany and Ireland; most of them were Catholic, unlike the Protestants who lived in the city. By 1850, 359,980 immigrants arrived in the United States, and by 1854, 427,833 immigrants arrived to seek out a new living. With the increase in new immigrants in the city, native Louisville residents felt threatened by change, and began to express anti-foreign, anti-Catholic sentiments. In 1841, the growth in population prompted the Catholic archdiocese to move the bishop's seat from Bardstown to Louisville. The archdiocese began construction on a new Catholic cathedral, which was completed in 1852. This asserted Catholic presence in the city.

In 1843, a new political party arose, called the American Republican Party. On July 5, 1845, the American Republican party changed their name to the Native American Party and held their first national convention in Philadelphia. The party opposed liberal immigration policies. On June 17, 1854, the Order of the Star Spangled Banner held their second national convention in New York City. The members were "native Americans" and anti-Catholic. When their members answered questions about the group, they responded with "I know nothing about it," becoming the Know-Nothing or Native American Party. The new political party gained national support. The Know-Nothing party encouraged and tapped into the nation's prejudice and fears that Catholic immigrants would take control of the United States. Hostility to Catholics had a long history based on national rivalries in Europe. By 1854, the Know-Nothings gained control of Jefferson County's government.

Ethnic tension came to a boil in 1855, during the mayor's office election. On August 6, 1855, "Bloody Monday" erupted, in which Protestant mobs bullied immigrants away from the polls and began rioting in Irish and German neighborhoods. Protestant mobs attacked and killed at least twenty-two people. The rioting began at Shelby and Green Street (Liberty) and progressed through the city's East End. After burning houses on Shelby Street, the mob headed for William Ambruster's brewery in the triangle between Baxter Avenue and Liberty Street. They set the place ablaze and ten Germans died in the fire. When the mob burned Quinn's Irish Row on the North side of Main between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets, some of the tenants died in the fire; the mob shot and killed others. The Know-Nothing party won the election in Louisville and many other Kentucky counties.

As in other cities, slavery was a consuming topic; some of Louisville's economy was built on its thriving slave market. Slave traders' revenues, and those from feeding, clothing and transporting the slaves to the Deep South, all contributed to the city's economy. The direct use of slaves as labor in the central Kentucky economy had lessened by 1850. But throughout the 1850s, the state slaveholders sold 2500-4000 slaves annually downriver to the Deep South. Slave pens were located on Second between Market and Main Streets.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 added to the controversy, as it threatened potentially lucrative expansion of slavery to western states. Louisville also had a free black population, among whom some managed to acquire property. Washington Spradling, freed from slavery in 1814, became a barber. By the 1850s, he owned real estate valued at $30,000. With its agriculture, shipping trade and industry, and slave markets, Louisville was a city that shared in cultures of both the agricultural South and the industrial North.