Philip Tomppert

Philip Tomppert (June 21, 1808 – October 29, 1873) was the fifteenth and seventeenth Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky in 1865 and 1867 to 1868. He was born in Württemberg, Germany and immigrated to Wheeling, West Virginia in 1831, and moved to Louisville in 1837.

He was elected to the Kentucky General Assembly in 1849 and the Louisville City Council in 1861, serving until 1864. He was elected mayor April 1, 1865 over Unionist K.P. Thixton. Tomppert was a Democrat who advocated an end to the Civil War and return to the pre-war Union, with slavery intact.

Tomppert's election occurred ten years after Bloody Monday, an election day race riot in Louisville involving Protestant mobs attacking Irish and German Catholic immigrants. The nativist Know-Nothing Party ultimately won the election in 1855 only to have German-born Tomppert elected as mayor one decade later.

A controversy erupted just after Tomppert was sworn in, as it was revealed that a council member had accepted a $5,000 bribe to approve a street railway along Market Street. Though the council approved it, Tomppert refused to sign the law because of the bribe. As a result, the council impeached him for "neglect of duty" and voted him out by a 10-2 margin on December 28, 1865.

The post was filled by James S. Lithgow until the State Court of Appeals reinstated Tomppert on February 14, 1867 to fill the remainder of the term. Tomppert was subsequently reelected.

Tomppert was a Freemason, holding the position of master. He died of typhoid fever and is buried in Louisville's Eastern Cemetery.

See also

• Louisville in the American Civil War

References

• Yater, George H. (1987). Two Hundred Years at the Fall of the Ohio: A History of Louisville and Jefferson County (2nd ed.). Louisville, KY: Filson Club, Incorporated. ISBN 0-9601072-3-1.