Review - "Our People Are Warlike: Civil War Pittsburgh and Home-Front Mobilization" by Allen Christopher York

[Our People Are Warlike: Civil War Pittsburgh and Home-Front Mobilization by Allen Christopher York (University of Tennessee Press, 2023). Hardcover, map, photos, illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xii,162/211. ISBN:978-1-62190-825-8. $50]

Our People Are Warlike: Civil War Pittsburgh and Home-Front Mobilization begins with an informative overview of the nineteenth-century growth and development of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania into a major industrial and population center. By 1860, its nearly 50,000 inhabitants (37% of which were foreign-born) ranked it in the top twenty of U.S. cities. If the entire metro area were to be included, that population rises to nearly 80,000. Located in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, where the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers forms the head of the great Ohio River, Pittsburgh was ideally situated at the crossroads of east and west and additionally held commercial ties to the South. Rather than recount the Civil War-era story of the city in typical chronological fashion, author Allen Christopher York instead thematically organizes and presents Pittsburgh's myriad of political, military, industrial, and social contributions to Union victory as a series of interlocking mobilizations.

Though his city study does not meticulously trace the evolution of the political history of Pittsburgh in terms of party affiliation, York claims that during the November 1860 general election "no major city gave a greater majority to Lincoln than Pittsburgh" (pg. 29). While a more thorough explanation of the reasons behind that would have made for interesting reading, the author seems to argue that widespread antislavery activism, including opposition to fugitive slave laws, in the city during the late-antebellum period made it a fertile ground for Republican dominance and later a broad acceptance of emancipation. After the firing on Fort Sumter there was an outpouring of support in Pittsburgh for Lincoln's call to arms, and York's examination of the Democratic response in the city suggests that opposition to war was comparatively muted. Prewar southern ties were enthusiastically severed during this atmosphere of war fever, although one suspects that the prospects of replacing that lost manufacturing business with the new business of war made that change more readily palatable. York does not provide a detailed rundown of wartime election results in the text, but he does suggest that, unlike other northern urban centers that experienced Democratic resurgence in 1862-63, Pittsburgh remained a steady Republican stronghold.

Manpower mobilization was another key part of Pittsburgh's response to Lincoln's call for volunteers. As was the case in many parts of the North, the early wave of volunteers from Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County well exceeded assigned quotas, and local leaders struggled to determine what to do with the excess numbers. Forward thinkers feared that the rejected volunteers might not make themselves available again when the government inevitably asked for future levies, and York details local initiatives aimed toward pressing state and federal authorities to establish a permanent military camp in the city to house the excess volunteers. The author also recounts the municipal law and order problems that ensued when those volunteers, confined indefinitely and forced to witness the parading about of far better uniformed and equipped home guards, became unruly. Surprisingly, York does not enter into formal discussion of the formation of the Pennsylvania Reserves and which units in that division had the strongest Pittsburgh imprint.

Pittsburgh would later become famous as the Steel City, but before that it was a major producer of iron and iron products, that heavy industry itself supported by coal imports from the surrounding region. The Fort Pitt foundry will already be familiar to many Civil War readers, and York discusses its significance to the Union war effort through the facility's production of heavy cannon. Perhaps lesser recognized by readers is the importance of Pittsburgh's shipyards, which converted or constructed numerous gunboats for the war on the western waterways. While the Ellet ram fleet and its Mississippi Marine Brigade successor became famous for their Mississippi River Valley exploits, mastermind Charles Ellet himself was based in Pittsburgh and most of the converted vessels were fitted out and crewed there.

Another aspect of Pittsburgh's mobilization was the city's all-hands-on-deck response to the threat of the first major federal draft in 1863. This coincided with the recent Emancipation Proclamation and increased concerns over the government suppression of free speech and civil rights on the home front. As was the case in most northern industrial centers, Pittsburgh's laboring classes feared the wage and job competition that would take place if emancipation flooded their city with a new source of cheap labor. While other cities (New York being the most egregious example) experienced significant popular unrest in response to conscription and the shifting goals of the Union war effort, the reaction in Pittsburgh was different. Instead of riots, York finds the primary public concern to have been one of outside perception. Up to that point Pittsburgh had always met its quotas, but city leaders worried that mid-war slackening in volunteerism would foster an outside impression that Pittsburgh was not among the most patriotic of the nation's first cities. What was behind the stagnation in volunteerism is not fully explained, though one strongly suspects that the city's robust job market had much to do with it. Regardless of the whys involved, York shows that draft fears mobilized a broad-based civic response that raised the money necessary to fund enlistment bounties generous enough for Pittsburgh to quickly fill its quotas and prevent embarrassment.

Another major mobilization was what York terms "benevolent" mobilization. All evidence points to the Pittsburgh branch of the U.S. Sanitary Commission being very generously sustained, but the aid organization and its supporters also keenly felt the conflict between helping their own local boys and having their many contributions delivered facelessly across the entire Union war effort. Even closer to home, was the Pittsburgh Subsistence Committee, which provided meals, lodging, and medical services to soldiers passing through the city. As York reveals, this was a high-profile civilian mobilization given Pittsburgh's status as a heavily trafficked waypoint used by men moving back and forth from the front and between theaters. By 1863, the Pittsburgh branch of the U.S. Christian Commission had, in addition to its spiritual mission, largely assumed responsibility for medical supplies. In Pittsburgh, there was also significant overlap in both leadership and participation in these three aid organizations. In June 1864 Pittsburgh hosted its own sanitary fair, which was successful by all accounts. Incredibly, in terms of cash and material totals raised during the war, Pittsburgh's Sanitary Commission was responsible for an estimated quarter of all USSC donations.

The communal response to tragedy was yet another form of home front mobilization detailed in the book. From the battlefield dead to the civilian worker victims of the infamous Allegheny Arsenal explosion, Pittsburghers mobilized themselves to provide proper funerals (including respectful public processions) and take care of survivors, especially orphans, in need. York draws insightful parallels between how Pittsburgh citizens and press editors alike chose to recognize and memorialize the arsenal victims and the battlefield dead, those expressions inextricably linking fighting front sacrifices to home front sacrifices.  Additionally, the predominant attitude expressed in both cases was one of appreciation of the victims' patriotic selflessness rather than blame-seeking indignation at the losses.

Allen York's theme-based Our People Are Warlike stands well on its own, but its exploration of Civil War Pittsburgh's home and fighting front connections also very usefully complements other recent works such as Arthur Fox's Pittsburgh During the American Civil War 1860-1865 (2002, 2009-R) [review] and Our Honored Dead: Allegheny County, Pennsylvania in the American Civil War (2008) [review]. In York's view, Pittsburgh escaped the riots and labor unrest that plagued other northern cities through its strong record of sustained wartime economic growth and its small base of potentially violent opposition to the war. York ends his thoughtful study by issuing a call for fellow scholars to investigate the mobilizations of other great northern Civil War-era cities in order to determine if similar patterns existed (or if, as the author strongly suggests, Pittsburgh was in many ways truly exceptional).