How Pittsburgh played a key role during the Civil War

A Civil War battle never took place in Pittsburgh, but the city played a significant role during the conflict.

When the war between the states ignited in 1861, Pittsburgh, like many cities and towns, mobilized for war. Tens of thousands of troops were mustered in Allegheny County alone, and other than New York, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania provided more manpower to the Union army than any other state.

But while Pittsburgh was not on the front line of fighting, it played a key role in the conflict.

"During the Civil War, Pittsburgh was the arsenal of the Union," says Andy Masich, president and CEO of the Heinz History Center.

Masich says that during the war, thousands of men and women worked in factories making cannons and munitions. Women, in fact, were the main workforce at the Allegheny Arsenal that sat in what is today Arsenal Park in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Those women and girls made millions of rounds of small arms ammunition, as well as cannonballs and explosives for the war effort.

But on the same day the Union army claimed its first major victory at Antietam, disaster struck here in Pittsburgh.

"On Sept. 17, 1862, Allegheny Arsenal exploded," said Masich. "It was the worst disaster in Pittsburgh history. One building after another exploded. Body parts and munitions rained down on. Windows were broken blocks away, just from the concussion of these blasts at Allegheny Arsenal. It was a tragedy the likes of which we've never seen before. Seventy-eight women and girls were killed in this disastrous explosion."

Despite multiple investigations, it was never determined what caused the explosion.

And because the war was still on, the arsenal was quickly rebuilt and brought back online while those who perished were placed in a mass grave in the Allegheny Cemetery, marked only today by one large stone, tucked away on the far side of the burial grounds.

Not far from the arsenal monument, however, rests someone whose life from that time has just been thrust back into focus. His name was Archibald Rowand Jr. He entered the war at just 16 years old in 1862 and would eventually earn the Congressional Medal of Honor.

"He was a member of a unit called Jessie Scouts, and they were U.S. Army scouts that dressed in Confederate uniforms," said Michael Kraus, curator and historian at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum. "This is a hanging offense if you are captured. It's very dangerous. They penetrated Confederate lines, and they gathered information. He was personally responsible to General Sheridan and carried messages and information back and forth to Sheridan. And at the end of the war, he had a personal message that he was in charge of getting to General Grant, which helped close the war; it gave dispositions of the Confederate army in the very last days."

After the war, Rowand became an attorney in Pittsburgh and was even the Allegheny County clerk of courts for a time. He, along with his fellow veterans who formed the fraternal organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, helped to build Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum, where his Medals of Honor were recently donated by his family.

"He did not earn two medals ... but he has two medals of honor because the one he got for Civil War service was in 1873. It was the very first model," Kraus said. "And those recipients were encouraged to turn in that medal in 1902 to get the upgraded one, and he refused to. So, he kept the old one, and he got a new one. And we have both of them."

Rowand's medals will soon be on permanent display in the museum's Hall of Valor for people to visit, learn and reflect.

While the Civil War was fought far from Pittsburgh's streets, its impact can still be found here today — in the graves of arsenal workers, in the medals of hometown heroes, and in the stories preserved for future generations. A legacy that remains part of Pittsburgh's Path, and America's story, more than 160 years later.