Could it get any worse? 150 years ago today Andrew Johnson’s Swing Around the Circle tour rolled on from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg, PA. According to the September 15, 1866 issue of The New-York Times the crowds were generally enthusiastic along the 260 mile route. At Johnstown at least 3000 mostly supportive citizens cheered as Senator Edgar Cowan introduced President Johnson as “the great Tribune of the American people.” General Grant and Admiral Farragut were cheered, but then a temporary platform for the audience that spanned an old canal collapsed. About four hundred people were standing on the platform when it gave way; it was about a twenty-foot drop. A second section of the platform collapsed after the first. People were buried in the rubble. “Men and women were seen with helpless children in their arms, their clothes and faces blackened by the coal dirt against which they had fallen.”
Johnstown September 14, 1866
The train, after remaining several minutes, moved on, the work of rescue being still in progress, and a number of wounded and of dead apparently being borne away. The train was obliged to move to keep the time-table right to avoid accidents. There was, therefore, no opportunity to ascertain the extent of the accident. the President instructed Deputy Marshal O’BEIRNE to remain at Johnstown to learn the particulars and to extend all possible aid to the sufferers.
Even though the train had to follow its time-table, “[to] appearances, however, Johnson had callously abandoned the scene of massive casualties.”
The Library of Congress provides the images: the 1866 “bridge” collapse, which was published in Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, v.23, 1866 Oct. 6, p. 40 and which reported four killed and over 350 people wounded; and ruins from the more well-known 1889 Johnstown Flood.
Johnstown 1889
