Allegheny City: A History of Pittsburgh’s North Side

Chapter 3. Conflict and Newfound Prosperity: Allegheny in the Civil War

sub chapter title recto 41 acknowledgments c h a p t e r 3 Conflict and ewfound Prosperity Allegheny in the Civil War O n Tuesday, November 6, 1860, voters streamed to Allegheny’s polls. They knew that the imminent threat of Southern secession and war placed the country’s future at risk and thus overwhelmingly turned out for Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for president. In the First Ward, for example, 562voters cast ballots for Lincoln, 98for Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, and 85for John Bell of the Constitutional Union party. These voters’ effo ts, however, proved fruitless: they could do nothing to stem the tide of war, which would sweep through the country only fi e months later. While the Civil War’s armed conflicts took place far from Allegheny and Pittsburgh, the war nevertheless had a profound effect upon Allegheny and nearby communities. Thewar altered the city’s economy and manufacturing concerns, its families prominent and obscure, and even its topography. Before the newly elected president made it to office however—and before the first shots of the war were fi ed at Fort Sumter—Pittsburgh was the site of what one local historian called “the first overt act of the war” when citizens of Pittsburgh and Allegheny grew anxious over Secretary of War John B. Floyd’s directive to ship heavy weapons from the US Arsenal in Lawrenceville to Southern forts in December 1860.The proposal alarmed local businessman William Robinson Jr., who ran an emergency meeting in response on Christmas Day, attended by prominent Pittsburgh and Allegheny citizens. Their telegram to outgoing president James Buchanan, a native Pennsylvanian , convinced the president to forbid the weapons shipment, and Secretary Floyd resigned on December 29to join the Confederacy. He would serve as a Confederate general until he died in 1863. Perhaps in response to the clear support he enjoyed among the area’s 41 42 conflict and newfound prosperity citizenry, Abraham Lincoln visited Allegheny and Pittsburgh as presidentelect in February 1861,during a multicity tour that was taking him to his inauguration in the nation’s capital. The Pittsburgh Gazette reported that on February 15thousands of citizens gathered at the depot and lined up along Federal Street, to the south, for a glimpse of Lincoln, adding, “The [Sixth Street] bridge was also lined, notwithstanding a strong east wind [that] rendered it a very uncomfortable place for crinoline.” The upper windows of Federal Street’s shops and homes provided an exceptional vantage point for a fortunate few. They waited for nearly three hours as railroad workers cleared an unrelated accident near Rochester, Beaver County, and the special train carrying “Honest Abe” and his party finally rolled into Allegheny’s Pittsburgh , Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad depot on Federal Street at 8 p.m. Allegheny mayor Simon Drum of Parkhurst Street escorted Presidentelect Lincoln from his railcar in a heavy downpour. Lincoln politely acknowledged the crowd’s demand with some brief remarks, noting the unpleasant weather and the lateness of the hour and encouraging citizens to attend his scheduled speech in Pittsburgh the following morning. Mayor Drum, along with Pittsburgh mayor George Wilson, both cities’ municipal councils, and local military groups, then escorted Lincoln to Pittsburgh’s famous Monongahela House hotel, on the Monongahela Riverfront, at Smithfield Street. The next morning, Lincoln gave a widely reported speech on economic affairs and the possibility of secession and war from the Monongahela House balcony. During this inaugural trip, Lincoln’s speeches were usually vague attempts to pacify the South, but at Pittsburgh his tone was more decisive. After he condemned the Southern states’ discontent as a “manufactured crisis ” invented by “designing politicians,” he left for Cleveland from the Federal Street depot, with another large crowd to see him off Thecrowds that marked Lincoln’s arrival and departures also drew skilled pickpockets, who slipped into the crowds around the Federal Street depot to prey upon Pittsburghers, Alleghenians, and residents of outlying villages who had come to see the president-elect and perhaps shop. The most successful took a wallet containing $490 in cash and a $500 check—enormous sums for the time—from William Ward of Pittsburgh. Some of the pickpockets disposed of the now-emptied wallets by placing them in the pockets of unsuspecting residents. Pittsburgh newspapers surmised that the pickpockets were following Lincoln on his tour, taking advantage of the president-elect’s popularity. 43 allegheny in the civil war...