Fort Robert Smalls
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Fort Robert Smalls
Fort Robert Smalls was a Civil War redoubt built by free blacks for the defense of Pittsburgh in 1863. It was named in honor of Robert Smalls, a man who escaped from slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina with his crew and their families by capturing a Confederate transport ship and piloting it to the safety of a Union blockade around the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina in 1862. History According to historic preservationist Eliza Smith Brown, during the American Civil War, civic leaders in Pittsburgh ordered the construction of defensive structures, including forts and redoubts, in response to the threatened invasion of Pennsylvania by Confederate troops in 1863. Fort Robert Smalls was one of two of those installations which were known to have been built by black workers on McGuire's Hill. It was named for Robert Smalls, a slave who commandeered a Confederate transport, the CSS ''Planter'', and brought his family and others to freedom in the north. Its "four-to-five-foot-high ...
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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania behind Philadelphia, and the List of United States cities by population, 68th-largest city in the U.S. with a population of 302,971 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The city anchors the Pittsburgh metropolitan area of Western Pennsylvania; its population of 2.37 million is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the Pennsylvania metropolitan areas, second-largest in Pennsylvania, and the List of metropolitan statistical areas, 27th-largest in the U.S. It is the principal city of the greater Pittsburgh–New Castle–Weirton combined statistical area that extends into Ohio and West Virginia. Pitts ...
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CSS The Planter
USS ''Planter'' was a steamer taken over by Robert Smalls, a Southern slave and ship's pilot who steered the ship past Confederate defenses and surrendered it to Union Navy forces on 13 May 1862 during the American Civil War. The episode is missing from Scharf's ''History of the Confederate States Navy,'' except for one sentence saying that Smalls "stole" the ship. For a short period, ''Planter'' served as a gunboat for the Union Navy. As the ship burned wood, which was scarce where the Navy was operating, the Navy turned the ship over to the Union Army for use at Fort Pulaski on the Georgia coast. In 1863 Smalls was appointed captain of ''Planter'', the first black man to command a United States ship, and served in that position until 1866. Service history ''Planter'' was a sidewheel steamer built at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1860 that was used by the Confederacy as an armed dispatch boat and transport attached to the engineer department at Charleston, under Brigadier Gen ...
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Forts In Pennsylvania
A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ("to make"). From very early history to modern times, defensive walls have often been necessary for cities to survive in an ever-changing world of invasion and conquest. Some settlements in the Indus Valley civilization were the first small cities to be fortified. In ancient Greece, large stone walls had been built in Mycenaean Greece, such as the ancient site of Mycenae (famous for the huge stone blocks of its 'cyclopean' walls). A Greek '' phrourion'' was a fortified collection of buildings used as a military garrison, and is the equivalent of the Roman castellum or English fortress. These constructions mainly served the purpose of a watch tower, to guard certain roads, passes, and borders. Though smaller than a real fortress, they acted ...
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Demolished Buildings And Structures In Pennsylvania
Demolition (also known as razing, cartage, and wrecking) is the science and engineering in safely and efficiently tearing down of buildings and other artificial structures. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for reuse purposes. For small buildings, such as houses, that are only two or three stories high, demolition is a rather simple process. The building is pulled down either manually or mechanically using large hydraulic equipment: elevated work platforms, cranes, excavators or bulldozers. Larger buildings may require the use of a wrecking ball, a heavy weight on a cable that is swung by a crane into the side of the buildings. Wrecking balls are especially effective against masonry, but are less easily controlled and often less efficient than other methods. Newer methods may use rotational hydraulic shears and silenced rock-breakers attached to excavators to cut or break through wo ...
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African Americans In The American Civil War
A large contingent of African Americans served in the American Civil War. The 186,097 black men who joined the Union Army included 7,122 officers and 178,975 enlisted soldiers. Approximately 20,000 black sailors served in the Union Navy and formed a large percentage of many ships' crews. Later in the war, many regiments were recruited and organized as the United States Colored Troops, which reinforced the Northern forces substantially during the conflict's last two years. Both Northern Free Negro and Southern runaway slaves joined the fight. Throughout the course of the war, black soldiers served in forty major battles and hundreds of more minor skirmishes; sixteen African Americans received the Medal of Honor. For the Confederacy, both free and enslaved black Americans were used for manual labor, but the issue of whether to arm them, and under what terms, became a major source of debate within the Confederate Congress, the President's Cabinet, and C.S. War Department staff ...
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1863 Establishments In Pennsylvania
Events January–March * January 1 – Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation during the third year of the American Civil War, making the abolition of slavery in the Confederate states an official war goal. It proclaims the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's four million slaves and immediately frees 50,000 of them, with the rest freed as Union armies advance. * January 2 – Lucius Tar Painting Master Company (''Teerfarbenfabrik Meirter Lucius''), predecessor of Hoechst, as a worldwide chemical manufacturing brand, founded in a suburb of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. * January 4 – The New Apostolic Church, a Christian and chiliastic church, is established in Hamburg, Germany. * January 7 – In the Swiss canton of Ticino, the village of Bedretto is partly destroyed and 29 killed, by an avalanche. * January 8 ** The Yorkshire County Cricket Club is founded at the Adelphi Hotel, in Sheffield, England. ** American Civil War – Se ...
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Pennsylvania In The American Civil War
During the American Civil War, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania played a critical role in the Union, providing a substantial supply of military personnel, equipment, and leadership to the Federal government. The state raised over 360,000 soldiers for the Federal armies. It served as a significant source of artillery guns, small arms, ammunition, armor for the new revolutionary style of ironclad types of gunboats for the rapidly expanding United States Navy, and food supplies. The Phoenixville Iron Company by itself produced well over 1,000 cannons, and the Frankford Arsenal was a major supply depot. Pennsylvania was the site of the bloodiest battle of the war, the Battle of Gettysburg, which became widely known as one of the turning points of the Civil War. Numerous more minor engagements and skirmishes were also fought in Pennsylvania during the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign, as well as the following year during a Confederate cavalry raid that culminated in the burning of much of Ch ...
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Demolished Buildings And Structures In Pittsburgh
Demolition (also known as razing, cartage, and wrecking) is the science and engineering in safely and efficiently tearing down of buildings and other artificial structures. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for reuse purposes. For small buildings, such as houses, that are only two or three stories high, demolition is a rather simple process. The building is pulled down either manually or mechanically using large hydraulic equipment: elevated work platforms, cranes, excavators or bulldozers. Larger buildings may require the use of a wrecking ball, a heavy weight on a cable that is swung by a crane into the side of the buildings. Wrecking balls are especially effective against masonry, but are less easily controlled and often less efficient than other methods. Newer methods may use rotational hydraulic shears and silenced rock-breakers attached to excavators to cut or break through wo ...
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Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area
Greater Pittsburgh is a populous region centered around its largest city and economic hub, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The region encompasses Pittsburgh's urban core county, Allegheny, and six adjacent Pennsylvania counties: Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington, and Westmoreland in Western Pennsylvania, which constitutes the Pittsburgh, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area MSA as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. As of the 2020 census, the Greater Pittsburgh region had a population of over 2.37 million people. Roughly one-fifth of the entire population of Pennsylvania resides within the region. The core city, Pittsburgh, has a population of 302,971, making it the second-largest city in the state. Over half of the region's population resides within Allegheny County, which has a population of 1.24 million and is the second-largest county by population in the state. Definitions Garrett Nelson and Alasdair Rae's 2016 analysis of American commuter flows, "An Economic G ...
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Arlington Heights (Pittsburgh)
Arlington Heights is a neighborhood in the southern portion of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The zip code used by residents is 15210, and this neighborhood is represented on the Pittsburgh City Council by the council member for District 3 (Central South Neighborhoods). This neighborhood is home to five government housing projects. Twenty Second Street Incline Arlington Heights was once connected to the mills along the Monongahela River by the Twenty Second Street Incline, which ran from Josephine Street to Salisbury Street, near the location of Fort McKinley. Pittsburgh Post Surrounding Pittsburgh neighborhoods Arlington Heights has only two borders with the Pittsburgh neighborhoods of the South Side Slopes to the northwest and Arlington to the northeast, south and southwest. References Further reading *{{cite book , author=Toker, Franklin , title=Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait , location=Pittsburgh , publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press , orig-year=1986 , year ...
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Becks Run
Becks Run is a tributary of the Monongahela River. As an urban stream, it is heavily polluted, receiving combined sewer outflow from Carrick (Pittsburgh) and Mount Oliver, Pennsylvania. There is a waterfall on a tributary, just downstream from a slate dump, near the intersection of Wagner Avenue and Mountain Avenue. There were coal mines along the stream, including Becks Run #2, owned by the estate of James H. Hays, served by an incline and the H.B. Hays and Brothers Coal Railroad. Other mines at various times were operated by the Birmingham Coal Company, H.G. Burghman, Jones & Laughlin, and the Monongahela River Consolidated Coal and Coke Company. It is the namesake of the Pittsburgh and Beck's Run Railroad (1877-1880), which ran from the Smithfield Street Bridge to the Jones and Laughlin Iron Works, and was absorbed by the P&LE Railroad. A former town, located where Becks Run enters the Monongahela, was also named Becks Run. See also * List of rivers of Pennsylvania ...
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Confederate States Navy
The Confederate States Navy (CSN) was the Navy, naval branch of the Confederate States Armed Forces, established by an act of the Confederate States Congress on February 21, 1861. It was responsible for Confederate naval operations during the American Civil War against the United States's Union Navy. The three major tasks of the Confederate States Navy during its existence were the protection of Confederate harbors and coastlines from outside invasion, making the war costly for the United States by attacking its merchant ships worldwide, and Blockade runners of the American Civil War, running the Union blockade, U.S. blockade by drawing off Union ships in pursuit of Confederate commerce raiders and warships. It was ineffective in these tasks, as the coastal blockade by the United States Navy reduced trade by the South to 5 percent of its pre-war levels. Additionally, the control of inland rivers and coastal navigation by the US Navy forced the south to overload its limited railroa ...
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