Connecticut became an industrial powerhouse during the Civil War. Factories in the state churned out vast quantities of arms, uniforms and ships, Civil War expert David Koch recently told an overflow room of people at the Stratford Library.

“The industry coming out of Connecticut was pretty amazing,” said Koch, a professor at Housatonic Community College.

With manufacturing booming, industrial cities saw a housing boon. Bridgeport built 225 buildings a year, New Haven, 300 a year. Housing was so scarce rooms were rented by shift, with tenants splitting the time.

With the Hotchkiss armament factory in Sharon, the now bucolic Northwest Corner looked like Pittsburgh.

Connecticut manufacturers like Samuel Colt developed the repeating rifle. Unable to custom make thousands of uniforms, textile manufactures created the standardized small- medium- and large clothing sizes.

“Mystic and New Haven were instrumental in creating a new type of ship,” with iron plating and both sails and steam power, Koch said.

Industrialists like Colt benefited enormously from the Civil War. “Connecticut really did quite well,” Koch said.

PT Barnum, while known for his showmanship, made a fortune through real estate developments but also held many food and clothing drives. And Frank Cheney of Manchester, who made his fortune from silk, had the first private telegraph line.

The insurance industry did well. State insurance companies had insured most Southern plantations. But after war broke out, insurance companies called them traitors and refused to pay claims.

In addition, because many customers could not pay their premiums upfront, insurers started the practice of accepting installment payments in return for interest payments. In the process, they made millions on interest on insurance policies.

Civil War leaders

Other Connecticut people took leading roles in prosecuting the Civil War. Gideon Welles of Glastonbury served secretary of the navy. Although Lincoln called him “old man Neptune,” he was a politician who knew nothing of naval affairs. Yet he oversaw a tremendous build up of the nation’s naval power that enabled it blockade the South’s long coastline. Welles also introduced ironclad warships, highlighted by the USS Monitor which battled the CSS Virginia to a draw.

Major General John Sedgwick of Cornwall was a top Union General, affectionately known as Uncle John by his men. He’s best known for his famous last words. His men urged him to take cover from enemy. He scoffed, saying, “They couldn’t hit an elephant from this distance.”

Seconds later a bullet struck his head, killing him.

Admiral Andrew Foote was the first to use combined naval and army assaults, tactics that helped secure the Mississippi River for the Union. He was wounded in 1862 and died from his wounds in 1863.

Confederate sympathizers

Despite the state’s support for the union, about half its population supported the conservative, pro-Southern Democratic Party. In fact, Southern sympathizers tried to organize a company of soldiers at Yale.

Connecticut Governor William Buckingham was a staunch unionist and Lincoln supporter. But gubernatorial elections were every two years then, and Democratic candidate Thomas Seymour repeatedly came after Buckingham’s job, once losing by only about 800 votes.

Other Connecticut people were instrumental, some perhaps indirectly, in starting the Civil War.

Harriett Beecher Stowe, a West Hartford resident, wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in 1851, a virulently anti-slavery, anti-South novel that increased Northern opposition to slavery. In the1850s, the book was second only to the Bible in sales. It also increased Southern hatred of the North.

Then of course there was John Brown, who was born in Torrington. The staunch abolitionist led an attack on Harper’s Ferry federal arsenal, hoping to incite a slave rebellion. The attack failed and Brown was hung. At the gallows, Brown warned that the national disgrace of slavery could only be eliminated in a sea of blood.

Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a device that made cotton growing profitable and thus kept slavery from dieing out. Before the invention, growing cotton was uneconomical because of the time-consuming task of separating cotton seeds from the cotton, and slavery was expected to gradually disappear.

The cotton gin changed that, drastically increasing the volume of cotton making that could be profitably produced and making cotton the South’s most profitable crop. A horse-cranked gin could produce 500 pounds of cotton a day.

Much of that cotton ended up in Connecticut, a leading textile manufacturing state. Mills churned vast quantities of slave-grown cotton into cloth. Shoddy, a type of low-grade fabric, was a major product. In fact, Willimantic billed itself as the “shoddy capital of the world.” The textile was so poor is was deemed fit only for slaves, so was known as “Negro cotton.”

“Connecticut benefited much more from slavery than any of the Southern states,” Koch said.

While make money from slave labor, Connecticut was a hotbed for the anti-slavery movement in what Koch called a contradiction.