Cathedral Heritage Foundation
A Concise History of Louisville
from "Spirited City: Essays in Louisville History"
by Clyde F. Crews
II. Growth And Strife 1826-1870
The arrival of the first steamboat in Louisville in 1811 signaled a new age of growth. With river traffic greatly improved, the opening of the Portland Canal in 1830, and the large inflow of German and Irish immigrants grants in the 1840's, the city population began to explode, reaching 43,000 in 1850, placing Louisville among the top twelve cities in size in America, larger than either Washington or Chicago. In that same year of 1850, Indiana's largest city was New Albany, just across the river from Louisville. Staples of economic life in these years included tobacco, hemp, livestock, distilling, commercial sales and warehousing. In the personage of James Guthrie, the city found not only one of its first businessmen, but also a civic leader who would be involved in establishing the University of Louisville in 1837 and the mighty L & N Railroad, which opened to Nashville in 1859, making the city the rail-head for the entire South. (Photo: View of the Public Landing at Louisville, KY)
By the 1830's, Louisville was entering its first urban maturity, building vital institutions at home, and exporting leaders far and wide. The twelfth President of the United States, Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) had grown up in Louisville, and three cabinet members before the Civil War came from Kentucky's metropolis. (Photo: Zachary Taylor)
And yet, the city's early priorities (or lack of them) may come as a shock to late twentieth-century Louisvillians: Education was not a priority: the first public school did not open until 1829. Organized religion was not a priority: denominational churches did not dot the urban landscape until the city was over thirty years old. Health was not a priority: hospitals were not established nor were swamps drained until well into the city's second generation of life. Ecology was not a priority: Native American earthen mounds (at Fifth and Main and Sixth and Muhammad Ali) were pulled down with no evident archaeological or ethnological concern. Rather, the earliest priorities of Louisville were commercial and political.
The epicenter of political life was the Jefferson County Court House. Partially opened in 1842, this building hosted civic rallies at the time of the Mexican War; over the decades, it would welcome seven U.S. presidents as orators. At the court house in the 1840's, both slave sales and abolition meetings took place, strikingly demonstrating Louisville's border status. In the autumn of 1862, this Greek Revival architectural treasure served as the capitol of Kentucky. Run out of Frankfort by Confederates, the state legislature took refuge in the court house's chambers. (Photo: The 1843-44 City-County Jail can be seen west of the Courthouse in this 1867 engraving made prior to the erection of City Hall.)
Slavery was a tragic fact of life in this city. When the Civil War began, close to 8% of the population were slaves with free territory just across the broad Ohio. Even so, both free and enslaved blacks managed to establish several church congregations, some of which still exist today. Louisville was also, in these antebellum years, a major southern center of culture and the arts. Shakespearean plays, operas, concerts, lectures, and minstrel shows were common nightly fare in the city's theaters and halls. (Photo: Abraham Lincoln)
By the 1840's three respected daily newspapers were published locally, including George Prentice's regionally significant Journal. Additionally, by decade's end, a German paper, the Anzeiger made its appearance. Even before the Civil War began, sectional journalistic battles were fought out along Louisville's Newspaper Row, on Green (Liberty) Street. On the north side of the street stood, appropriately enough, the pro-Union Journal; on the south side, the pro-Confederate Courier. To this day, then, in the Courier-Journal the city bears the remembrance of its status as a meeting point of north and south in America. (The papers were merged in 1868 under the leadership of Henry Watterson.)
In the decade before the Civil War, there was a climate of violence in Louisville. The anti-immigrant "Bloody Monday" riot of August 6, 1856, took over twenty lives. And a vigilante killing of four blacks at the Court House on May 14, 1857, caused editor Prentice to write: "The law has been put to death."
During the war itself, the city, with the river and the rail-head, was vital. ''I may have God on my side," Lincoln was reported to have irreverently observed, "but I must have Kentucky." He undoubtedly saw the Commonwealth's metropolis as a critical part of that strategic importance. Louisville braced for invasion in the autumn of 1862, knowing itself to be a crown jewel in the spoils of war. But the Battle of Louisville never came, forestalled by the Battle of Perryville.
Louisville settled down behind its hastily-built defenses to become a center of troop movement, supplies, spies and intrigue. The headquarters of the Army of the Cumberland were established on Fourth Street (where the Galleria now stands) with the famous William Tecumseh Sherman serving for a time as commander. In the war years, while many cities of the South lay prostrate, Louisville traded with both sides and grew prosperous. (Photo: Kentucky State Guard encamped in Louisville's Crescent Hill, just before the Civil War-Ky)
Photo credits:
- View of the Public Landing at Louisville, KY, courtesy of Louisville Courier-Journal.
- Zachary Taylor, Views of Louisville since 1766, Samuel W. Thomas: The Filson Club. Engraving by Henry Sartain. Philadelphia, 1848 after a daguerrotype.
- Courthouse, Views of Louisville since 1766, Samuel W. Thomas: Travelers Guide to the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, Louisville, 1867, op. p. 25.
- Lincoln, Library of Congress.
- Kentucky State Guard, Military Museum: Ky. Historical Society.
A presentation by: The Cathedral Heritage Foundation
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