Philadelphia Mayor. He was Mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1850 to 1854. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, he moved as a young man to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to read law with Joseph Ingersoll, a noted attorney who would later serve as a United States Congressman from Pennsylvania. Admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1832, he went on to become director of the first school district of Philadelphia and the solicitor for the Guardians of the Poor, an antebellum benevolent agency. A civic-minded man, he served on the Common Council for the City of Philadelphia before being elected the 91st mayor of Philadelphia in 1850 by a margin of less than 100 votes. A member of the Whigs, his opponent in that election was the candidate endorsed by an alliance of the Democratic and Native American Party, which consisted of white Protestant men who were opposed to the ever-increasing ethnic diversity in the city, especially to the arrival of Catholic and non-English speaking immigrants. Charles Gilpin was elected again in 1851, 1852, and 1853, but he did not win the election held in the fall of 1854. By then the Native American Party had morphed into the Know-Nothing Party, which was rising in power. The Know-Nothings backed the Democratic candidate in 1854; meanwhile Gilpin's Whig party was rapidly disintegrating. During his terms as mayor, from October 15, 1850 to June 13, 1854, Gilpin took a prominent role in strengthening the municipal police force and in removing the gas works from private control to become a public holding. He promoted the passage of the Consolidation Act of February 2, 1854, whereby the city of Philadelphia expanded to incorporate numerous small local municipalities and unincorporated areas within its boundaries. During the Civil War he was a staunch supporter of President Abraham Lincoln and the Union cause. On January 8, 1863 he joined the fledgling Union League of Philadelphia. The following year President Lincoln appointed him United States attorney for the Philadelphia district; however, after Lincoln's death, his successor, President Andrew Johnson, removed Gilpin from this office less than two years later. He then returned to private practice of the law.