Pennsylvania also led the nation in providing coal to run the trains and iron to build the rails on which they ran—not to mention the guns with which men fought. Coal production in the state, both the anthracite coal in the east and bituminous coal in the west, rose from 12 million to 20 million tons during the war.
Pennsylvania produced 80 percent of the iron used by the Union. Philadelphia boasted C. Sharps and Company, which developed the breech-loading rifle in the 1850s. With the Frankford Arsenal, Krider, Tryon and the Union Rifle Factory, it made Philadelphia the leading small arms producer in the nation. The Philadelphia Navy Yard was the nation’s leading builder of ships, including ironclads and the gunboats which blockaded the South and opened the mouth of the Mississippi to the Union forces.
Pittsburgh, for its part, specialized in artillery. Thomas Jackson Rodman of the Fort Pitt Works invented the 15- and 20-inch cannon, the latter weighing 114,000 pounds and firing a 1,000-pound shot. By the war’s end, he was directing the largest artillery installation in the world. Pittsburgh’s Ohio River steamers and flatboats were drafted into the Union fleet, and the new boats constructed there accompanied General Ulysses S. Grant’s forces and secured control of the Cumberland, Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers.