Civil War Pittsburgh: Forge of the Union

By Len Barcousky and Andrew E. Masich

On Christmas Day 1860, the "Daily Pittsburgh Gazette "announced that more than one hundred cannons from the nearby U.S. Arsenal were to be shipped south. Fiercely loyal to the Union, Pittsburghers halted the movement of the artillery, which would have been seized by secessionist sympathizers. Over the course of the Civil War, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County provided both troops and equipment--including heavy artillery--in disproportionately large numbers. While no major battles were fought nearby, local soldiers and civilians sacrificed and suffered--the Allegheny Arsenal explosion in September 1862 left seventy-eight dead and was the worst civilian disaster of the war. Thousands dug trenches and joined militia companies to defend their city as others worked to support the wounded soldiers. Reporter Len Barcousky draws on the next-day reporting of the predecessors of the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "to craft a gripping and insightful view of the Steel City during the Civil War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: May 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781625845344

Len Barcousky

Until his retirement in 2015, Len Barcousky had been a longtime editor and reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the oldest newspaper west of the Allegheny Mountains. He covered the city's history in his "Eyewitness" columns, and he received his BA from Penn State and MBA from Columbia University.

Book preview

words."

Introduction

Lincoln Salutes the Union’s Banner County

Abraham Lincoln was one of two American presidents-elect on the way to their inaugurations when he visited Pittsburgh on Valentine’s Day 1861.

Lincoln’s train had been scheduled to pull into the station in Allegheny City, now Pittsburgh’s North Side, at 5:20 p.m. It arrived instead in heavy rain and darkness, almost three hours late. He had been delayed by a freight-train derailment that blocked the line between Baden and Rochester, the Daily Pittsburgh Gazette reported the next morning.

That same day’s paper carried a story with an Alabama dateline. Hon. Jefferson Davis will leave Jackson, Miss., tonight for Montgomery, the story began. Davis, a West Point graduate and former U.S. secretary of war and senator from Mississippi, had been elected provisional president of the Confederate States of America. With major stops planned in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Atlanta, Georgia, he was heading for Montgomery, the new capital of the breakaway Southern states.

While Pittsburgh and Allegheny County voters had strongly backed Republicans in recent gubernatorial and presidential races, the region had plenty of Democrats who were in sympathy with the Southern cause. The newspapers reflected in their coverage of Lincoln’s overnight visit the region’s political differences. While the Gazette supported the GOP, the Pittsburgh Post was the voice of the region’s Democrats.

Both papers agreed that the area around the Federal Street station had been crowded at 5:00 p.m., shortly before Lincoln’s train was due to arrive. The Post reported the next morning that a driving rain and too long a wait had sent most spectators home, leaving Federal Street almost deserted.

A bronze plaque notes the 1861 visit by Abraham Lincoln to Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, which is now the North Side. The memorial is at Federal Street and South Commons. Courtesy Robin Rombach of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Though he agreed that many people had gone, the Gazette’s reporter wrote that thousands, however, remained about the depot and under the platforms when Lincoln’s train arrived. The reporter continued his description: His appearance set the people wild with excitement, and cries of ‘speech, speech’ intermingled with continuous cheering, indicated that they were not to be put off without a word or two. Standing up in the carriage that was to take him across an Allegheny River bridge into Pittsburgh, Lincoln complied, but he didn’t say much. He alluded to the delay of the train and the inauspiciousness of the weather, according to the newspaper. He promised to speak at length the next morning.

Lincoln was to spend the night at Pittsburgh’s finest hotel, the Monongahela House on Smithfield Street. So dense was the gathering [in front of the hotel entrance], that the military had to clear a passage with their bayonets, when the President-elect stepped from the carriage and entered the hotel. The crowd wanted more. It was from the balcony of the hotel that Lincoln, a consummate politician, made his often quoted remark about the region. No words of praise were necessary about Allegheny County, he said, as it was already widely known as the ‘banner county’ of the State, if not of the whole Union.

The Monongahela House was demolished in 1935, but the bed that Lincoln is believed to have slept in survives. It was recently reassembled and put on display at the Senator John Heinz History Center.

Lincoln, although he was president-elect, spent his brief time in Pittsburgh behaving like a candidate still running for office. He made three short speeches and a major address. He shook hands, tipped his hat to crowds of well-wishers and met with political supporters and elected officials from the county, Pittsburgh and Allegheny City.

And if a memoir of a North Side woman is accurate, he kissed at least one pretty girl.

Susan Cooper Walker was born on Wylie Avenue in April 1852 but soon moved with her family to Brighton Road. When Lincoln came to Pittsburgh, we were taken to the railroad station to see him, she wrote in a 1943 memoir called When I Look Back and Think. The book, dictated more than eighty years after the events it describes, does not make clear if the Cooper children went out to see Lincoln arrive or leave. With us went Mary Morrison, an older cousin, Walker recalled. She was lovely to look at. When he saw her, Abraham Lincoln said, ‘You’re a pretty girl,’ and kissed her. Initially indignant, Mary Morrison lived to brag about that kiss, her cousin wrote.

A 1935 photograph shows Allegheny County carpenters carrying what is believed to be the bed that Lincoln slept in while on a visit to Pittsburgh. Courtesy the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Monongahela House in the early twentieth century. Lincoln spoke from the balcony at right in February 1861. Courtesy Senator John Heinz History

Reviews for Civil War Pittsburgh

[gbelik_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is an enjoyable little book, full of anecdotes and pictures. Much of the information is culled from two Pittsburgh newspapers, one Democrat and one Republican. I enjoyed seeing the different versions of the same event or speech by the two papers.