Pennsylvania in the Civil War

Pennsylvania in the Civil War

Just as Pennsylvania earned the nickname "the Keystone State" for its central role in the nation's formative years, the Commonwealth earned that reputation anew during the country's second great trial, the Civil War. During four years of war, Pennsylvania contributed substantial human and material resources to the war to end slavery and preserve the nation. At times, with its southernmost boundary the fissure point between free and slave states, Pennsylvania directly felt the tempest of war. Yet in spite of its legacy as a keystone, the story of Pennsylvania in the Civil War is hardly one of unanimous support for the Union. No corner of the Commonwealth escaped the war's long reach, and many of those touched lacked enthusiasm for the national cause.

Initially, many Pennsylvanians accepted secession, but the public mood shifted dramatically when the Confederates shelled Fort Sumter, South Carolina in April, 1861. In an outpouring of patriotism, Pennsylvania volunteers quickly answered President Abraham Lincoln's call for troops to quell the rebellion. Days after the attack on the fort, Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin rushed five companies of plucky-if underarmed-militia from Pottsville, Reading, Allentown, and Lewistown to the unprotected capitol in Washington, D.C. This timely intervention earned these troops the title "First Defenders."

In the succeeding four years of war more than 360,000 Pennsylvanians wore Union blue. Many trained at Camp Curtin near Harrisburg, a huge staging and supply depot, others prepared at smaller camps in Easton, Pittsburgh, and West Chester. A majority of Pennsylvania troops fought in the eastern theater, with only about 10 percent serving in the western armies. Few white Pennsylvanians enlisted to free black slaves from bondage. Most detested slavery, but not on moral grounds. Rather, they eyed slave labor as a threat to their status and livelihood as paid free workers. Numerous factors motivated volunteering, including patriotism, the threat of being drafted, or other generous "bounties" paid for enlisting. The conflict also attracted thousands of teenage enlistees with the illusion of war as an adventure. Bored with the humdrum of farm or village life, they viewed the war as an opportunity for escape and personal heroism.

Pennsylvania blacks, however, probably viewed the war as an opportunity to prove their worthiness and to strike at the southern slave system. Of all the northern states, Pennsylvania ranked first in the number of black soldiers - 8,612 - mustered for the Union cause. When Pennsylvania began recruiting blacks in mid-1863, the War Department established Camp William Penn north of Philadelphia where eleven thousand blacks had been trained by the war's end. The eleven regiments of United States Colored Troops recruited in Pennsylvania often suffered racial indignities while demonstrating their soldierly mettle. Initially paid less than white recruits, they were often given menial jobs and faced the prospect of being reenslaved or killed if captured by the Confederates.

A number of Pennsylvania regiments merit special mention. The 6th United States Colored Troops lost 62 percent of its men during an assault on New Market Heights near Richmond in 1864. Two of its members received the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry. In the western theater, the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry rode with the Army of the Cumberland as the only eastern cavalry participating in "Sherman's March." The Pennsylvania Reserves, thirteen regiments that fought as the only army division from a single state, ranks among the notable Pennsylvania infantry organizations. Although originally created by Governor Curtin as a reserve force to defend the Commonwealth, the Pennsylvania Reserves struggled on such hard-fought battlefields as t he Seven Days, Second Manassas, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania. Pennsylvania's most famed regiment of the war, the "Bucktails," formed the thirteenth regiment of the Reserves. Organized in the timbering counties of northwestern Pennsylvania, the Bucktails sported white-tailed deer tails on their caps as a symbol of their skilled markmanship.

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