Lives of the Philadelphia Engineers

Book excerpt: Lives of the Philadelphia Engineers examines the emergence of a new class of industrial entrepreneur and the world they confronted and shaped. Historians have been reluctant to examine nineteenth-century American business leaders as a social group and this study helps remedy the defect. By examining nineteenth-century American business leaders as a distinct social group, it interweaves a history of the social and economic development of the largest centre of machine building in nineteenth-century America with the dramatic political narrative of sectional conflict, Civil War and Reconstruction. Crossing and re-crossing the boundary between industrial and political history it throws important new light on the process of industrialisation, the Civil War conflict, and the contested governance of nineteenth-century cities. While this study is firmly rooted in the experience of Philadelphia's machine builders, its historiographic significance extends to many important themes of mid-century American history.