History of the Confederate Powder Works

by George Washington Rains

9. A situation which, whilst sufficiently near a town to procure readily supplies and workmen, should, at the same time, be removed so far off that the dangerous structures, should an explosion occur, would cause no damage to the nearest inhabitant.

10. Hence, also, the canal or stream on which the works exist, should have but little traffic or commerce, and, in the vicinity of the works, should pass through a sparsely inhabited district.

The Augusta Canal, having been selected for the site of the Confederate Powder Works, contracts were immediately entered into for the brick, stone and carpenter’s work, on very favorable terms.

At the beginning of the war, business was more or less paralyzed, [p11] so that the manufacturers and builders were, to a considerable extent, thrown out of employment, which enabled contracts to be made advantageously at the usual prices. Thus, the total cost of the entire works did not exceed three hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars.

The erection of these works on the ground of economy alone, was of great service to the Confederate Government. The extreme hazard of importing gunpowder through the blockade, raised its average price, the first year of the war, to three dollars per pound. There were made one million pounds at the works in that period, at a total cost, including the materials, of one million and eighty thousand dollars; thus saving to the Government in one year, one million, nine hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

The requisite land having been purchased, and contracts made for building materials, the site of the main buildings were located by myself, and construction commenced on the 13th of September, 1861, under the immediate supervision of Mr. —— Grant, a young civil engineer from Savannah. These buildings were erected of the excellent bricks supplied by the Augusta and Hamburg yards, which were worked to their full capacity, and above five millions were supplied. The handsome granite of Stone Mountain, on the Georgia Railroad, was employed for the sills, lintels, copings, and foundation stones. The whole of the buildings were erected by Messrs. Denning and Bowe, of Augusta, the former having immediate charge, and could not be surpassed for excellence of workmanship.

The first structure—or the one nearest the city—was called the Refinery building, because the central portion was used for such purposes, but it included a saltpetre and sulphur warehouse, of a capacity of fifteen hundred tons, on the east end, and a charcoal department and machine shop with a steam engine on the west end. Rifle and ballistic pendulums on the northeast, and the steam boiler house on the northwest portions. There were four square towers at the corners, used as offices; the entire structure forming three sides of a square, fronting two hundred and fifty feet along the canal, and extending back two hundred and seventy-five feet. The north side was mostly a brick enclosure with high walls, but having no roof, and temporarily used for storing wood—its ultimate destination was for workshops.

Within the square were located the kilns for drying the wood to [p12] be distilled in the charcoal retorts; the copper boilers and other apparatus for the extraction of the saltpetre from damaged powder; as also the arrangement for the final extraction of the saltpetre from the refuse of the Refinery; lastly, the great chimney, into which all the smoke flues of the entire structure terminated.

In the projection of this part of the Powder Works, I conceived the design of making the central portion present the appearance of a grand monumental structure. For this purpose the chimney was placed centrally, and its exterior dimensions considerably enlarged; in fact, it is composed of two distinct parts, the chimney and outside obelisk; the former being enclosed at its base by a square tower, nineteen by thirty-five feet in height, whose battlements arose to view above the front walls. From the top of this tower the enveloping obelisk commenced, and ascended one hundred and fifteen feet, making the complete structure one hundred and fifty feet from the ground to the coping. The interior chimney flue is five feet square from bottom to top. The corner stone, or rather the box, containing the usual documents, was, by a fancy of the architect, placed in one of the corners of the top coping of the obelisk.

The saltpetre refinery occupied the right central portion of the front, being sixty-five feet long, fifty-five feet broad and thirty feet high, open from the floor to the ventilated roof. At the east end were four of the large evaporating iron pans, placed side by side, and elevated three feet above the floor by the brick work which surrounded them; five similar pans were in a corresponding position at the west end, and the large copper drying pans occupied forty feet along the north side at the same height. Each evaporating pan had a separate furnace, and the heated air from the whole passed beneath, and in contact with the bottoms of the drying pans on its way to the great chimney; the furnaces opened into side rooms communicating with the outside open space in the rear of the building. Thus the refining room was entirely free from ashes, dust and smoke.