When the American Civil War broke out, the company provided round shrapnel for the Union Army. However, the company downplayed its participation in supplying one side over the other, owing to the delicate position of Baltimore between North and South (a tension which had recently exploded in the Baltimore riot of 1861), as well as the company's commercial entanglements with Southern governments, such as for the construction of the South Carolina State House, which Hayward &amp; Bartlett had secured contract for in 1848, and would resume the construction of after the war's conclusion.