Harrisburg

“ Other prominent buildings besides the Capitol are the court-house, Governor's residence, State arsenal, State Insane Hospital, county prison, Grand Opera House, high school, public library, Conservatory of Music, City Hospital, Home for the Friendless, and the Children's Industrial Home. Harrisburg is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop.
Owing to its excellent transportation facilities, both by rail and by water, Harrisburg occupies a position of considerable importance in the industrial and commercial world. It has a large trade in lumber; extensive iron and coal mines are in the vicinity ”

“ While affairs were thus culminating in the fort, an exciting spectacle was presented outside. For several days previously we had seen, whenever we went down to the river-side to bathe, or to draw water from the well, a stream of people with farm and household properties, coming in by the Carlisle and river roads, and pouring across the long bridge into Harrisburg. By day or night this living stream seemed never to cease. Men, women and children, white and black, some in carriages, some in wagons, some on horseback, some on foot, hurried along. Their horses and cattle they drove before them. ”

“ Fern never to jump a judgment, of a town, from a bird's-eye view out of a car window, I should quarrel with Harrisburg, situated in that gem of a valley, for resting so satisfied with nature's work, as to ignore any adornment of art, as well as with some other places near, and for the same reason. ”

“ Behind the Blue mountains we saw grain and Indian corn flourish in a cultivated region, and reached Harrisburg. We delayed here about two hours, and met with a stage which had come from Pittsburgh by the southern road. Harrisburg is two hundred and nine miles from Pittsburgh, and a hundred from Philadelphia, occupies a somewhat elevated position between the left side of the Susquehanna and Paxton creek, and may contain about four thousand inhabitants. It is the metropolis and seat of government of the state of Pennsylvania, and contains a capitol, with the other necessary buildings. ”

“ Harrisburg is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop, and its charitable organizations include several hospitals, the Home of the Friendless, and the Children's Industrial Home. It has electric street railway connections with neighboring towns. ”

“ Harrisburg was named in honour of John Harris, who, upon coming into this region to trade early in the 18th century, was attracted to the site as an easy place at which to ford the Susquehanna, and about 1726 settled here. He was buried in what is now Harris Park, where he erected the first building, a small hut, within the present limits of Harrisburg. In 1753 his son established a ferry over the river, and the place was called Harris’s Ferry until 1785, when the younger Harris laid out the town and named it Harrisburg. ”

“ It was not till a year before the Civil War Harrisburg received a charter, and at the moment of our visit the population did not number 80,000. A State House and Library, a State Arsenal, a State Lunatic Asylum, a County Prison, Opera houses, Masonic Hall, churches, Harris Park and Cemetery, and great ironworks, all unvisited, but duly enumerated by citizens zealous of the honour of their city, haunted conscientious tourists as things which ought to be seen, but they were not in the programme—we could not find them in the bond—and so they were taken for granted ”

“ Harrisburg, the capital of the State, was indeed in danger, as was realized by the authorities and the citizens. Thirty regiments of Pennsylvania militia, besides artillery and cavalry and nineteen regiments from New York were assembled under the command of General Couch, who disposed his forces to the best advantage, assigning a large portion of them to the defence of Harrisburg. In that city all places of business were closed, and citizens labored on the fortifications with the pick and the spade. Men were enrolled by wards and drilled in the park and on the streets. ”

“ The opposite shore spreads out in a plain on which stands Harrisburg clustered about its looming capitol. The landscape up the river is bounded by the Blue Ridge, five miles off, which melts away behind the city in the far distance. Through these mountains the Susquehanna has broken its way, forming a gap whose abrupt sides finely relieve the monotony of the range. From the summit of the camping ground the view down the river is even more charming. There the eye wanders over an immense region warm with ripening wheat fields and white farm houses, and cool with hills, woods and water. ”

“ In the afternoon we were relieved by a Pennsylvania company, and as we retired in full sight of the rebels, the rascals yelled at us, and gave us several volleys, from which it is wonderful that every man escaped.
That evening we moved to the extreme rear, into Fort Washington, on the bank of the river in front of Harrisburg. Here it was said our advance work was over, and we were promised comfortable quarters and rest.
Any one nowadays can see a camp, but only one who has seen it can understand how picturesque it is. The night scene at Harrisburg was beautiful in the extreme. ”

“ Nothing can be much uglier than the State House at Harrisburg, but it commands a magnificent view of one of the valleys into which the Alleghany mountains is broken. Harrisburg is immediately under the range, probably at its finest point, and the railway running west from the town to Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and Chicago passes right over the chain. The line has been magnificently engineered, and the scenery is very grand. I went over the Alleghanies in mid-winter when they were covered with snow, but even when so seen they were very fine. ”

“ Harrisburg is highly spoken of for the salubrity as well as the beauty of its site, and gives promise of becoming important in point of population; at present its inhabitants are about four thousand.
From this we steered away to the southward, until at Chambersburg we struck the direct road leading from Baltimore to Pittsburg. We had a rough night of it; but a halt of an hour at Chambersburg in the morning, enabled me to [Pg 296] make a comfortable toilet and get an excellent breakfast. Here we took the first spur of the mountains, and from this were on a continual ascent. ”

“ The State House is surrounded by Capitol Park, embracing thirteen acres, and inclosed by an iron fence. These grounds gently slope from the centre, and are ornamented with stately trees, beautiful shrubbery and flowers and closely-shorn greensward. The site was set apart for its present purpose before Harrisburg was a city, by John Harris, its public-spirited founder. Fine views are obtained from it of the suburb of East Harrisburg and the Reservoir, Mt. Kalmia Cemetery, the tower of the new State Arsenal, and the dome of the State Insane Asylum. ”

“ The Affirmative would abolish at one blow the working principle of successful city organization in France, Germany, England, Canada, and unnumbered cities in the United States.
In the second place, evils in our cities are due to bad social and economic conditions. Harrisburg, Pa., was notoriously corrupt. A spirit of reform aroused the citizens, and Harrisburg stands today as a remarkable example of efficient government, yet the form of organization has been unchanged. ”

“ He could not have passed through Philadelphia without visiting the house called Beautiful, where he had been so tenderly cared for after his wound at Ball's Bluff, and where those whom he loved were lying in grave peril of life or limb. Yet he did pass through Harrisburg, going East, going to Philadelphia, on his way home. Ah, this is it! He must have taken the late night-train from Philadelphia for New York, in his impatience to reach home. There is such a train, not down in the guide-book, but we were assured of the fact at the Harrisburg depot. ”

“ The road to Harrisburg crossed it at right angles going south. The general had provided a guide acquainted with the country, as it was a portion in which he had never been. The morning came. Arrangements were made early. Some embarrassments arose for want of animals for artillery; but soon they were in readiness, and as the troops filed out in the direction of Harrisburg, without an intimation being given to any one, two companies that had been stationed at San Felipe, and below that, on the Brazos, and ordered to concentrate at Donoho's, arrived. The officers were sullen and refractory ”

“ Yes, after Harrisburg, the metropolis spoke, a flourishing example of freedom's self-developing energy; and after the metropolis, now so mighty a centre of nations, and it ally of international law—next came Pittsburg, the immense manufacturing workshop, alike memorable for its moral power and its natural advantages, which made it a link with the great valley of the West, a cradle of a new world, which is linked in its turn to the old world by boundless agricultural interests. ”

“ Sir, it is a gratifying view to see how the generous sympathy of individuals for the cause which I respectfully plead is rising into Public Opinion. But nowhere had I the happy lot to see this more clearly expressed than in this great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the mighty "keystone State" of the Union. The people of Harrisburg spoke first: no city before had so distinctly articulated the public sympathy into acknowledged principles. It has framed the sympathy of generous instinct into a political shape. I will for ever remember it with fervent gratitude. ”

“ Bigler is one of the most important men in the state; nobody has more influence at Harrisburg. I don't like him any more than thee does, but I'd better lend him a little money than to have his ill will. ”

“ A motorist touring north along the Susquehanna Trail, when six miles above Harrisburg, just at the point in the roadway where one would turn off sharply to the right, if going to the beautiful Country Club of Harrisburg, can see a boulder which marks the site of Fort Hunter, one of the busy places during the stirring period immediately following hostilities which inaugurated the French and Indian War. ”

“ After going through another dreamy place—a long aqueduct across the Alleghany River, which was stranger than the bridge at Harrisburg, being a vast, low, wooden chamber full of water—we emerged upon that ugly confusion of backs of buildings and crazy galleries and stairs, which always abuts on water, whether it be river, sea, canal, or ditch: and were at Pittsburg.
Pittsburg is like Birmingham in England; at least its townspeople say so. Setting aside the streets, the shops, the houses, waggons, factories, public buildings, and population, perhaps it may be. ”

“ As the swarm of fugitives made straight for Harrisburg, it was but natural that the inpouring of such panic-stricken throngs, all declaring that the enemy was close behind them, should throw that city into the wildest commotion, which every hour tended to increase. ”

“ Do the citizens of Harrisburg or of Philadelphia quarrel to-day about the strict legality of an executive act meant in good faith for their protection against the invader? We are all citizens of Harrisburg, all citizens of Philadelphia, in this hour of their peril, and with the enemy at work in our own harbors, we begin to understand the difference between a good and bad citizen; the man that helps and the man that hinders ”

“ It was told to me, at Harrisburg, in Pennsylvania, when I was there in "Fremont's time," anno 1856. Alas! the fates deal hardly with Fremont. C. and F., now a satellite of C., helped to slaughter him once before in Pennsylvania—sold him out to Know-Nothings. Hope they haven't now in Missouri pitched him over to be succeeded by Do-Nothings. But to the story. Harrisburg has wide, clean, brick sidewalks. Many of the poorer sort there kept geese years ago, and sold or ate their progeny in the days of November and December—the "embers of the dying year." ”

“ During that never-to-be-forgotten Sabbath day, so strangely "kept," there was no flurry among the garrison, judging by the men of the Twenty-Third, nor any fear shown at any time among those upon whose courage the fate of Harrisburg seemed likely to rest. While in that threatened city the chief authorities were staggering under the herculean work of organizing an unwilling or at least an indifferent people into a disciplined force capable of resistance, and of infusing into them somewhat of the patriotic zeal which shone so brightly in the conduct of their fellow-citizens of Pittsburg ”

“ On April 16, 1836, Santa Anna, in hot pursuit of Sam Houston and the Texas army, rode into the almost deserted hamlet and burned it. The second event, the decision of those other upstate New Yorkers, the Allens, to start a town at the most interior point of 42 year-round navigation in Texas, joined with the first to overcome Harrisburg’s ambitions.
The Allens and others had eyed the Harrisburg area with shrewd expectations. It was early seen that Buffalo Bayou would become important as an exit route for cotton and other crops grown in the rich agricultural lands along the Brazos River. ”

“ When I went to the city to live, where there were no such opportunities, I naturally enough turned to the gathering of books, with the result that when I went to Harrisburg in 1903 I left locked up in my house, 1540 North Fifteenth Street, in Philadelphia, over ten thousand volumes. In the main they were books relating to Pennsylvania and early imprints of the province and the state. It was the most complete collection of material of that kind which any individual had ever possessed, and in some respects was unequaled by any public library. ”