J. Hampton Moore

J. Hampton Moore was a journalist, publisher, civic official, congressman, and two-time mayor of Philadelphia. Born Joseph Hampton Moore in 1864, he reported for the Public Ledger before holding municipal posts and representing Pennsylvania in the United States House from 1906 to 1920. The enlisted man records his 1909 address at the unveiling of Washington’s Stephenson memorial to the Grand Army of the Republic. Our National Beginnings comes from another 1909 address, delivered at Independence Hall on July 5. Baker at Ball’s Bluff preserves a 1911 commemorative speech about Senator Edward D. Baker and the battle fought fifty years earlier. These titles reflect Moore’s public role more directly than conventional literary authorship: each transforms a ceremonial address into a durable printed text. His political career later included mayoral terms from 1920 to 1924 and 1932 to 1936, while his long presidency of the Atlantic Deeper Waterways Association connected local government with shipping policy. The three works show history used as civic argument before public audiences.