Eyewitness: 1860 Pittsburgh wins a peaceful victory
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By Len Barcousky
Secretary of War John Floyd might have thought most Pittsburgh residents would be too involved in Christmas preparations to pay attention to the news.
He was wrong.
Local political leaders and ordinary citizens reacted angrily to his order to send more than 100 pieces of artillery from the Allegheny Arsenal in Lawrenceville to federal forts in the South.
They immediately recognized the danger, according to the Pittsburgh Gazette. Once the guns were transported below the Mason-Dixon Line, they likely would be captured by secessionist Southerners and turned against the federal government. In a story that appeared Christmas Day 1860, the newspaper's headline called Floyd's decision "Evidence of Treason ..."
In response, Pittsburgh residents held two mass meetings to protest the decision by the lame-duck administration of President James Buchanan to ship the weapons. Opponents, however, were in a ticklish spot. Buchanan remained the duly elected president for two more months. Any violent protests to stop the shipments could be seen as mirror images of the kind of actions that many Southerners were taking to break up the Union.
Following a Christmas day meeting in the office of Pittsburgh Mayor George Wilson, the city leaders sent a telegram to Buchanan imploring him to reverse the shipment order, the Gazette reported on Dec. 27. A second public meeting followed that same day at the county courthouse.
"[T]he sidewalks on Fifth street [now Fifth Avenue], leading to the Court House were thronged with masses of people going to the meeting," the newspaper reported the next day. So many people attended that the session had to be moved outside.
Pittsburgh Congressman James K. Moorhead warned that South Carolina politicians, who had voted Dec. 20 for their state to leave the Union, were hoping for violence in Pittsburgh. "[N]othing resembling an overt act of treason should be committed," he said. If the president could not be persuaded to rescind Floyd's order, "Let the guns go."
First Published April 1, 2011 3:33 pm
