Thomas Alexander Scott was an American businessman, railroad executive, and industrialist. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him to serve as U.S. Assistant Secretary of War, and during the American Civil War railroads under his leadership played a major role in the war effort. He became the fourth president of the Pennsylvania Railroad (1874–1880), which became the largest publicly traded corporation in the world and received much criticism for his conduct in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and as a "robber baron." Scott helped negotiate the Republican Party's Compromise of 1877 with the Democratic Party; it settled the disputed presidential election of 1876 in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for the federal government pulling out its military forces from the South and ending the Reconstruction era. In his final years, Scott made large donations to the University of Pennsylvania.
Thomas A. Scott
Burning of Pennsylvania Railroad and Union Depot, in the 1877 Pittsburgh railroad strike
Thomas A. Scott Grave at the Woodlands Cemetery
Great Railroad Strike of 1877
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, sometimes referred to as the Great Upheaval, began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) cut wages for the third time in a year. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was the first strike that spread across multiple states in the U.S. The strike finally ended 52 days later, after it was put down by unofficial militias, the National Guard, and federal troops. Because of economic problems and pressure on wages by the railroads, workers in numerous other states, from New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, into Illinois and Missouri, also went out on strike. An estimated 100 people were killed in the unrest across the country. In Martinsburg, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and other cities, workers burned down and destroyed both physical facilities and the rolling stock of the railroads—engines and railroad cars. Some locals feared that workers were rising in revolution, similar to the Paris Commune of 1871, while others joined their efforts against the railroads.
Blockade of engines at Martinsburg, West Virginia, 16 July 1877
Maryland National Guard's Sixth Regiment fighting its way west along main downtown commercial thoroughfare Baltimore Street through Baltimore, Maryland, July 20, 1877
Burning of Pennsylvania Railroad and Union Depot, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 21–22, 1877, engraving from Harper's Weekly
Burning of Union Depot, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 21–22, 1877, engraving from Harper's Weekly