[6] His son, Horace Porter, who was the aide-de-camp of Union General Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War,[7] served as the United States Ambassador to France from 1897 to 1905.

[8][9][10] Porter, the first governor under the State Constitution of 1838, was born October 31, 1788, near Norristown, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, spending his boyhood at Selma Mansion, a home built by his father in 1794.

Known as the "Buckshot War",[33] Governor Ritner began making plans in Harrisburg to order military intervention to ensure the peaceful transition of government, but members of the legislature worked together to reach consensus and certified the election results before the situation could escalate further, bringing the conflict to an end a few days before Porter's inauguration.

[37] When he assumed office, Porter faced the difficulties of a statewide recession that had begun in 1837 and a state bureaucracy that had spent heavily during the previous years.

"[41] Porter then easily won re-election in 1841, defeating John Banks, the first Whig gubernatorial candidate to run without having to form a coalition with the Anti-Masonic Party.

Our banking system, then tottering to its fall, has been examined with searching scrutiny by the public eye—its faults have been detected, its unsoundness exposed, and its dangers guarded against by the dissemination of correct information.

Experience has painfully demonstrated to the conviction of all, what the sagacious foresight of some apprehended—that nations, like individuals, when they make 'too great haste to get rich' are in danger of bankruptcy and ruin.

Cases of individual hardship no doubt exist; patience, industry and enterprise will effect a cure in most of them; and for those that are remediless, we can but express our sympathy and sorrow....

The Commonwealth, herself, after a short struggle borne with fortitude characteristic of her citizens, and the integrity that they would scorn to tarnish, will overcome all her pecuniary difficulties—will faithfully fulfill her engagements and proudly maintain her honesty and her fame.

In addition, he was able to curtail efforts by some General Assembly members to redefine constitutional separations between the executive, judicial and legislative branches of the state's government.