Creating Southern Thunder: The Evolution of Confederate Gunpowder Production during the American Civil War

Derek Taylor

This articles examines the access to and production of gunpowder in the Confederacy during the United States Civil War. Based on government documents and instructions for the making of gunpowder, it first addresses the shortage of gunpowder in the Confederacy, then explores how the Confederacy sought and gathered resources for gunpowder production, and finally analyzes the role the Confederate Powder Works played in producing gunpowder for the Confederacy. The author argues that the Confederacy, as a new nation seeking autonomy from the northern half of the United States, needed to develop and create self-sufficient sources of gunpowder to ensure its independence and survival.

scribd. scribd. scribd. scribd. scribd. scribd.

The Welebaethan: A Journal of History

Derek Taylor

Creating Southern Thunder: The Evolution of Confederate Gunpowder Production during the American Civil War

ABSTRACT:

KEYWORDS:

U.S. history; Civil War; Confederacy; gunpowder; saltpeter; Josiah Gorgas; Isaac M. St. John; George Washington Rains; Confederate Powder Works

Introduction

In the early hours of April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries opened fire upon a Union-held fort in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Even though the fort’s outer defensive walls received minor damage from the rebel guns, Confederate mortars and hot shot started fires which destroyed the fort’s interior wooden buildings. After a day and a half of continuous bombardment, the Union garrison was forced to surrender and give up the fort to the Confederacy. Considered as the starting point of the American Civil War, the cannons and shot used in the attack on Fort Sumter required a substance that was in short supply throughout the Confederacy: gunpowder. Gunpowder had been an essential resource since the early days of Colonial America as settlers and colonists arrived in North America. As they moved west toward the American frontier, having access to an adequate supply of gunpowder meant the difference between life and death. Even with the establishment of small powder mills, the United States lacked industrial facilities before and after independence which limited domestic powder production. As a result, the United States depended on Great Britain for its gunpowder.

Gunpowder supplied by Great Britain during the late 1700s and early 1800s was of high quality and inexpensive, which made domestic gunpowder production unprofitable. British gunpowder continued to flow freely through American ports until relations between the two counties became strained or they found themselves in a state of war. During the War of Independence and the War of 1812, Great Britain halted all exports of gunpowder to America.

As a result, the Colonial and later the United States armies suffered from shortages of

Gary A. O’Dell and Angelo I. George, “Rock-Shelter Saltpeter Mines of Eastern Kentucky,”

Historical Archaeology

48, no. 2 (2014): 91-121, here 91.

O’Dell and George, “Rock-Shelter Saltpeter Mines,” 91.

The Welebaethan

46 (2019) Taylor

Creating Southern Thunder

164

gunpowder. Cut off from their only source of powder, the Colonial army employed expropriation and smuggling tactics until they were resupplied and assisted by the French. The War of 1812 saw the discovery of saltpeter caves in Virginia and Kentucky.

With the use of slave labor, these caves were extensively mined for their saltpeter which was delivered to the newly established E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company in Wilmington, Delaware. As the first domestic supplier of gunpowder, the DuPont facility provided the American forces during the War of 1812 with all the gunpowder they needed. Five decades later, the Confederacy experienced similar problems with the acquisition of gunpowder at the start of the American Civil War. With a slave-based agrarian economy as the source of its wealth, the South lacked the industrial facilities that were prevalent in the North. The absence of industrial centers meant that the South depended on outside sources for manufactured goods which included gunpowder. At the onset of the war, domestic and international sources of gunpowder were cut off, leaving the Confederacy in dire need of the explosive substance. Even though there were small powder mills throughout the South, the total amount of gunpowder produced was not enough to supply the Southern armies. Without gunpowder, the Confederacy’s struggle to become an independent nation would end. To ensure its survival and achieve independence, the Confederacy established a self-sufficient industry for the large-scale production of gunpowder to supply the its armies.

I. Historiography

When analyzing and discussing the events and outcomes of the American Civil War, scholars typically focus their research on the interaction between the armies of the North and South and the men who commanded them. Yet, these studies fall short in the discussion of the manufacture and distribution of armaments and gunpowder. As a result, the conclusions of these narratives assume that the North aggressively pursued and engaged in rapid industrialization, while the South clung to its backward-thinking agrarian society. By establishing a growing ironworks industry and railroad repair, the Southern states had engaged in small-scale industrialization during the middle and late 1800s. Even though Southern industrialization was not as rapid as in the North during the antebellum years, the Southern industrial base was slowly transforming its cities, like Atlanta, from farming communities into industrial centers. Understanding how the Confederate government took advantage of its technical and industrial capabilities is fundamental to this investigation of Confederate gunpowder production. With essays by C. L. Bragg, Charles D. Ross, Gordon A. Blaker, Stephanie A. T. Jacobe, and Theodore Savas,

Never for Want of Powder

(2007) is a textual and

O’Dell and George, “Rock-Shelter Saltpeter Mines,” 91.

The Welebaethan

46 (2019) Taylor

Creating Southern Thunder

165

illustrated history of the Augusta Confederate Powder Works.

Even though

Never for Want of Powder

examines the lives and contributions of the multiple managers and workers of the gunpowder factory, its primary focus is on the builder and operator of the Augusta gunpowder factory, Colonel George Washington Rains (1817-1898). Bragg, Ross, Blaker, Jacobe, and Savas praise Rains’s efforts—he had no munitions experience and was merely armed with a British pamphlet on gunpowder making—for being the architect and manager of the Confederate’s biggest and most impressive gunpowder facility. Credited with the construction of the most complex and self-sufficient powder mill in the Western hemisphere, Rains still had to acquire the raw materials needed for the manufacture of gunpowder. Being composed of charcoal and sulfur, the basic formula for gunpowder owes its explosive characteristic to potassium nitrate, commonly referred to as saltpeter. In

Saltpeter: The Mother of Gunpowder

(2013), David Cressy explores how saltpeter solidified the connections between the scientific, military, and political revolutions of early modern Europe and America.

Cressy’s research explores not only the English Crown’s procurement and refinement of saltpeter, but also the way England exploited men and land in its quest for potassium nitrate. Making up almost seventy-five percent of its mass by weight and considered gunpowder’s chief ingredient, the acquisition and control over sources of saltpeter was a contributing factor in the success or failure early modern European gunpowder armies and empires. With the demand for saltpeter skyrocketing during the American Civil War, prominent educators and scientists, sympathetic to the Confederacy, issued and distributed pamphlets and instructions on how to mine, grow, and refine saltpeter. The first of these was Joseph LeConte (1823-1901). Commissioned by the Confederate military while serving as a professor of chemistry and geology at South Carolina College, LeConte composed

Instructions for the Manufacture of Saltpetre

(1862).

Avoiding complex scientific language, LeConte’s twelve-page pamphlet provides detailed instructions on how to harvest and refine naturally forming saltpeter. In addition, LeConte details the process of “growing” saltpeter with the use of compost piles known as “nitre beds.” Published a year before LeConte’s treatise, George Washington Rains’s

Notes on Making Saltpetre from the Earth of the Caves

(1861) details the extraction and refinement procedures of saltpeter production.

These similarities could lead one

C. L. Bragg, Charles D. Ross, Gordon A. Blaker, Stephanie A. T. Jacobe, and Theodore P. Savas,

Never Want for Powder: The Confederate Powder Works in Augusta, Georgia

(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007).

David Cressy,

Saltpeter: The Mother of Gunpowder

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Joseph LeConte,

Instructions for the Manufacture of Saltpetre

(Columbia: Charles P. Pelham, State Printer, 1862).

George Washington Rains,

Notes on Making Saltpetre from the Earth of the Caves

(New Orleans: The Daily Delta Job Office, 1861).

The Welebaethan

46 (2019) Taylor

Creating Southern Thunder

166

to believe that LeConte had access to Rains’s pamphlet and borrowed the facts to support his conclusions. Rains claims in his publication that the loss of one-fourth of mined saltpeter was due to inefficient extraction and refining practices. Before Rains’s instructions, saltpeter mining had been wasteful and unprofitable. By enlisting the help of an Oglethorpe University professor, Rains calculated the loss of materials and resources close to $8 per barrel of saltpeter.

Considering the rate of inflation, the loss of materials and resources would roughly translate to almost $228 today. Under Rains guidance and direction, Southern saltpeter production reduced waste and labor costs while at the same time increasing production.

II. The Confederacy’s Munition Crisis

During the first year of the American Civil War, the Confederacy was plagued by munition shortages. Not only was the South lacking the minerals of iron, copper, and lead, it was also severely limited in its supply of gunpowder. Before the war, the South had only a few small powder factories producing a few hundred pounds of gunpowder.

Due to mismanagement and the lack of planning, these Southern powder mills were unprepared for the war. Instead of expanding their facilities, increasing production, and stockpiling excess powder, Southern powder mills maintained their pre-war production levels.

Along with gunpowder purchased from Northern mills before the war and confiscated from Union forts, the quantity of powder in the South was insufficient for months of military operations, let alone a protracted war. To address the munitions shortfall within the Confederate Army, the Confederate Congress created the Bureau of Ordnance under the command of Major Josiah Gorgas (1818-1883).

As Chief of Ordnance of one of the first bureaucracies created in the Confederacy, Gorgas supervised and consolidated government control over the production and disbursement of munitions throughout the South.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1818, Josiah Gorgas graduated sixth in his class at West Point Military Academy (New York) and became and ordnance officer for the Union Army.

Despite being born in the North, Gorgas developed strong

Rains,

Notes on Making Saltpetre

, 9.

C. L. Bragg, “An Urgent and Critical Need: The Confederacy’s Gunpowder Crisis,” in Bragg et al.,

Never Want for Powder

, 1-10, here 4.

Clint Johnson,

Bull’s-eyes and Misfires: 50 People Whose Obscure Efforts Shaped the American Civil War

(Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 2002), 242.

Fred C. Ainsworth and Joseph W. Kirkley,

The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies

, series IV, Vol. 1 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), 211.

Steven G. Collins, “System in the South: John W. Mallet, Josiah Gorgas, and Uniform Production at the Confederate Ordnance Department,”

Technology and Culture

40, no. 3 (July 1999): 517-544, here 522.

Johnson,

Bull’s-eyes and Misfires

182.

The Welebaethan

46 (2019) Taylor

Creating Southern Thunder

167

ties with the South during his service. As a result, Gorgas courted and married Amelia Gayle, the daughter of the former governor of Alabama, John Gayle.

When hostilities between the North and South started, Gorgas resigned his commission from the Union Army and accepted the supervisory position over the Confederate Bureau of Ordnance.

As the director of this new administration, Gorgas had the South’s munition arsenals inventoried and found that, in addition to a half million pounds of gunpowder, the Confederacy had over 100,000 cannons and small arms in its arsenal.

If these munitions and gunpowder were properly distributed, the soldiers in the field would be limited to 500 pounds of powder per gun, which was insufficient.

Faced with shortages of weapon-making materials and gunpowder, Gorgas looked for solutions both overseas and domestically by approving private and foreign contracts and encouraging Southerners to engage in the domestic production of munitions and gunpowder.

At the start of the war, the Bureau of Ordnance acquired guns and armaments from individual weapon sellers or paid army volunteers to bring their weapons. As a result, the Confederate army had a mishmash of rifles and firearms of different calibers, ranging from 1812 flintlocks to muzzle-loading P53 Enfield rifles.

Having these multiple types of weapons throughout the Confederate army created trouble and confusion in securing the right kind of ammunition and led to complaints from ordnance officers who were receiving the wrong type and size of ammunition on a regular basis. Even if the men in the field received the correct ammunition, the bullets and musket shot, depending on where they were made, would vary in size and weight. These variations led to misfires or jammed their weapons, making them useless.

Based on the principles handed down by British Major Fraser Baddeley, gunpowder progressed from a trial-and-error method to a technique based on science. As the production of gunpowder became more standardized, the number of mills that produced gunpowder increased in the United States, especially in Maine, New York, and Connecticut, which made gunpowder production an exclusively a Northern industry.

Even though the South had imported most of its gunpowder from Northern sources before the war, as soon as hostilities between the North and South started, powder mills like Oriental

Bragg, “Urgent and Critical Need,” 2.

Michael E. Lynch, “Confederate War Industry: The Niter and Mining Bureau” (MA thesis, Virginia Commonwealth University), 2001, 14.

Lynch, “Confederate War Industry,” 15.

Collins, “System in the South,” 524.

Collins, “System in the South,” 525.

Bragg, “Urgent and Critical Need,” 3.

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

RELATED TOPICS

Log In

Creating Southern Thunder: The Evolution of Confederate Gunpowder Production during the American Civil War

Creating Southern Thunder: The Evolution of Confederate Gunpowder Production during the American Civil War

Creating Southern Thunder: The Evolution of Confederate Gunpowder Production during the American Civil War

Creating Southern Thunder: The Evolution of Confederate Gunpowder Production during the American Civil War

Creating Southern Thunder: The Evolution of Confederate Gunpowder Production during the American Civil War

Related Papers

RELATED PAPERS

RELATED TOPICS