ABSTRACT
The new habits of business taught the mid nineteenth century Philadelphia businessman that the city was not important to their daily lives, and in response these business leaders became ignorant of their city and abandoned its politics. Philadelphia workshop owners viewed with alarm Andrew Johnson's conciliatory policy toward the defeated South. Experience of a bloody civil war against a determined class of planters turned proprietors into Radical Republicans. Former slaves should aspire to property ownership but most, he felt, would willingly accept wage labour. Philadelphia manufacturing interests boosted the accumulation process through a programme of autarky. Victorious, as a result of the Civil War, the youthful class arrived in a world dominated by British industry. During the war, the North abandoned the gold standard, issued a paper currency and dramatically raised the tariff. After the Civil War, Pennsylvania's coal, iron and steel, textiles and engineering placed the state in the forefront of the protectionist movement.
