![]() ![]() He lost out, however, to Horatio Seymour of New York - the Democrats were banking on New York (which had 47 electoral votes to Pennsylvania's 36) and Seymour's reputation as a reformer and a friend of Catholics to carry the election. Winfield Scott Hancock, by James Reid Lambdin, 1880. At the same time, Packer invested heavily in the iron industry in Bethlehem which produced the iron he needed for his railroads. ![]() By the 1870s, the Lehigh Valley Railroad dominated the shipment of coal from the anthracite region and also handled much of the freight in northern New Jersey and New York. Through the railroad and his other holdings Packer was able to amass a fortune of more than $50 million. ![]() Having purchased one of the anthracite-coal region's railroad lines in 1851, he constructed a forty-six-mile track from Mauch Chunk to Easton, part of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which quickly replaced the canal system as the primary route for sending coal south to Philadelphia. In 1853, Packer became the upper Lehigh Valley's congressman. In 1841 he was elected as a Democrat to the state legislature, and after two terms served five years as a county judge. After purchasing a general store with his earnings, he then began a contracting business that constructed the canal locks that soon dotted the region.īy the late 1830s, Packer was investing in coal mining and shipping. There, he operated one of the canal boats that were hauling anthracite coal down the recently completed Lehigh Canal. Once again, he encountered economic hardship, briefly moved to New York City, and then came to Mauch Chunk in 1833. Much like Abraham Lincoln, he was a poor boy who made good.īorn in Mystic, Connecticut, Packer was unable to earn a living as either a tanner or a farmer, so he walked 200 miles to Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, where his cousin taught him to be a carpenter. Asa Packer (1805-1879), a self-made businessman, philanthropist, and pro-war Democrat, fit the bill better than anyone in Pennsylvania. The best they could do was stand for honest government and dedicated public service as an alternative to Republican greed. Immediately after the Civil War, the Democratic Party in both Pennsylvania and the nation was hard-pressed to find political candidates who could overcome their image of disloyalty and challenge Republican war heroes. ![]()
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