Pennsylvania in the Civil War

Pennsylvania in the Civil War

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In Clearfield and Cambria Counties, small armies of deserters congregated and armed themselves to resist authorities. One band on the Clearfield River protected themselves with a fort while they engaged in lumbering. A force of a thousand troops occupied Columbia County, a haven for draft dodgers and deserters. Although this force arrested delinquents, apparently some gave in willingly. A soldier from Columbia County wrote t hat many draftees from his region "fled to the mountains and commenced camp life there, but most of them (very wisely) came to the conclusion that if they must camp out they had better be paid for it and they are now reporting themselves to the commissioners of the draft..."

Despite manpower siphoned into military service and occasional strikes, the war boosted Pennsylvania industries. Pennsylvania supplied 80 percent of the federal war machine's iron, all of its anthracite coal, and much of its textiles, flour, and meat. Railroads, enhanced by a burst of Pennsylvania-made locomotives, rails and freight cars expanded along with the fledgling oil industry of western Pennsylvania. Many entrepreneurs launched private fortunes through lucrative government contracts. The Fort Pitt foundry in Pittsburgh manufactured over two thousand cannon during the war and ten million pounds of shot. In Philadelphia, C. Sharps & Co. turned out more than a thousand of its Sharps breech-loading rifles a month. The Philadelphia Navy Yard played a large role in building gunboats for the U.S. Navy, while the city's ready-made clothing industry produced uniforms and blankets.

The many changes forced on Pennsylvanians during the war altered patterns of life and disrupted families and communities. Thousands of children waved good-bye to fathers who never came home or returned disabled. After the war, orphanages were established across the state to provide homes for children whose wage-earning fathers had been killed or crippled. Many youths were drawn into industrial jobs during the conflict. Approximately 22 percent of the state's textile workers during the war were under sixteen years old. Growth in the number of wage earners from 98,397 in 1860 to 160,000 in 1866 occurred in part because both youths and women entered the paid work force.

Women confronted new challenges with men-folk away from home. Many undertook traditional male responsibilities on farms or entered occupations opened up by the war in government, industry, and army nursing. Thousands volunteered to sew, make bandages, and assemble food packages. Pennsylvania women acquired new visibility by dominating hundreds of relief organizations, including the U.S. Christian Commission and U .S. Sanitary Commission, national organizations that coordinated northern relief work and provided soldiers a variety of spiritual and physical comforts. But Pennsylvania women helped win the war in another important way. As moral guardians of the home, women influenced the martial enthusiasm of their male kin by approving enlistment and encouraging tenacity at the front. A wife's letter to her husband about hard times at home might prompt a desertion; a mother's patriotic words to her son might encourage volunteering. A teenage recruit from Wyoming County later recalled his mother "expected her boys to do their duty" and "reminded me that I was the grandson of two Revolutionary soldiers and should be sorry to know that I showed the "white feather."

Pennsylvania served as the backbone of the Union arsenal, supplying troops as well as material and moral support to fight the war. At the same time, Pennsylvania harbored dissenters who either lacked enthusiasm for or opposed the war for a variety of reasons. Geography, which continues to shape Pennsylvania's history, proved a significant factor. Many Pennsylvanians were far more concerned about local and regional issues, and were indifferent to an abstract national cause.

In the end, the long shadow of the Civil War changed life in Pennsylvania, just as Pennsylvanians influenced the outcome of the war. The Commonwealth emerged with a strong economy, poised to become an industrial leader. The spurt of growth in manufacturing had resulted in the construction of more factories, new production processes, as well as in improved mechanization in agriculture.

Veterans organizations, most notably the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic), became important social outlets and politically influential. The generation that fought the war dominated Pennsylvania politics for decades, and left enduring monuments to its wartime sacrifice in innumerable town squares and county seats.