The happy ending was in spite of all litigation. Pittsburgh and the great mineral and lumber wealth along the Monongahela and Youghiogheny Valleys was opened up, and on June 26, 1871, the Pittsburgh, Washington and Baltimore Railroad was formally opened and the long struggle for Pittsburgh ended. ---------- Governor Andrew G. Curtin Inaugurated War Governor January 15, 1861 Andrew Gregg Curtin, of Bellefonte, was inaugurated Governor of Pennsylvania January 15, 1861, and assumed the office at a time when the gravest problems ever presented to American statesmanship were to be solved. The mutterings of the coming storm were approaching nearer and nearer, and the year opened up gloomily. In his inaugural he took occasion “to declare that Pennsylvania would, under any circumstances, render a full and determined support of the free institutions of the Union,” and pledged himself to stand between the Constitution and all encroachments instigated by hatred, ambition, fanaticism and folly. He spoke with words of deliberation, decision and wisdom, and made a record of statesmanship that stood the severe test of years of bloody and lasting war. The conflict obliterated old and sacred landmarks in political teaching. On February 17, the House adopted resolutions pledging to Maryland the fellowship and support of Pennsylvania. On January 24, the House had adopted resolutions taking high ground in favor of sustaining the Constitution of the Union. Threatening as was the danger, while the Legislature was in session and meetings were being held in Philadelphia and throughout the State, no one anticipated that the strife would actually break forth so suddenly, nor that it would grow to such fearful proportions at the very beginning. It is true, that the soldiers of the South, who had long secretly been preparing to dissolve the Union unmasked their design when the guns of Fort Moultrie were trained on Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, South Carolina, April 12, 1861. No State in the Union was less prepared, so far as munitions of war were concerned, to take its part in the conflict than Pennsylvania. Her volunteer soldiery system had fallen in decay. There were fewer volunteer companies of militia in Pennsylvania at that moment than ever before on the rolls of the Adjutant General’s office. But when the first overt act was committed, and the news was flashed over the Northland, it created no fiercer feeling of resentment anywhere than it did throughout the Keystone State. On the morning of April 12, 1861, a message was handed to Governor Curtin in Harrisburg which read as follows: “The war is commenced. The batteries began firing at 4 o’clock this morning. Major Anderson replied, and a brisk cannonading commenced. This is reliable and has just come by Associated Press. The vessels were not in sight.”