CHAPTER XII.
Supply of Arms at the Beginning of the War; of Powder; of Batteries; of other Articles.—Contents of Arsenals.—Other Stores, Mills, etc.—First Efforts to obtain Powder, Niter, and Sulphur.—Construction of Mills commenced.—Efforts to supply Arms, Machinery, Field-Artillery, Ammunition, Equipment, and Saltpeter.—Results in 1862.—Government Powder-Mills; how organized.—Success.—Efforts to obtain Lead.—Smelting-Works.—Troops, how armed.—Winter of 1862.—Supplies.—Niter and Mining Bureau.—Equipment of First Armies.—Receipts by Blockade-Runners.—Arsenal at Richmond.—Armories at Richmond and Fayetteville.—A Central Laboratory built at Macon.—Statement of General Gorgas.—Northern Charge against General Floyd answered.—Charge of Slowness against the President answered.—Quantities of Arms purchased that could not be shipped in 1861.—Letter of Mr. Huse.
At the beginning of the war the arms within the limits of the Confederacy were distributed as follows:
| Rifles. | Muskets. | ||
| At Richmond (State) | about | 4,000 | |
| Fayetteville, North Carolina | about | 2,000 | 25,000 |
| Charleston, South Carolina | about | 2,000 | 20,000 |
| Augusta, Georgia | about | 3,000 | 28,000 |
| Mount Vernon, Alabama | about | 2,000 | 20,000 |
| Baton Rouge, Louisiana | about | 2,000 | 27,000 |
| Total | 15,000 | 120,000 |
There were at Richmond about sixty thousand old flint-muskets, and at Baton Rouge about ten thousand old Hall's rifles and carbines. At Little Rock, Arkansas, there were a few thousand stands, and a few at the Texas Arsenal, increasing the aggregate of serviceable arms to about one hundred and forty-three thousand. Add to these the arms owned by the several States and by military organizations, and it would make a total of one hundred and fifty thousand for the use of the armies of the Confederacy. The rifles were of the caliber .54, known as Mississippi rifles, except those at Richmond taken from Harper's Ferry, which were of the new-model caliber .58; the muskets were the old flint lock, caliber .69, altered to percussion. There were a few boxes of sabers at each arsenal, and some short artillery-swords. A few hundred holster-pistols were scattered about. There were no revolvers.
There was before the war little powder or ammunition of any kind stored in the Southern States, and this was a relic of the war with Mexico. It is doubtful if there were a million of rounds of small-arms cartridges. The chief store of powder was that captured at Norfolk; there was, besides, a small quantity at each of the Southern arsenals, in all sixty thousand pounds, chiefly old cannon-powder. The percussion-caps did not exceed one quarter of a million, and there was no lead on hand. There were no batteries of serviceable field-artillery at the arsenals, but a few old iron guns mounted on Gribeauval carriages fabricated about 1812. The States and the volunteer companies did, however, possess some serviceable batteries. But there were neither harness, saddles, bridles, blankets, nor other artillery or cavalry equipments.
To furnish one hundred and fifty thousand men, on both sides of the Mississippi, in May, 1861, there were no infantry accoutrements, no cavalry arms or equipments, no artillery and, above all, no ammunition; nothing save arms, and these almost wholly the old pattern smooth-bore muskets, altered to percussion from flint locks.
Within the limits of the Confederate States the arsenals had been used only as depots, and no one of them, except that at Fayetteville, North Carolina, had a single machine above the grade of a foot-lathe. Except at Harper's Ferry Armory, all the work of preparation of material had been carried on at the North; not an arm, not a gun, not a gun-carriage, and, except during the Mexican War, scarcely a round of ammunition, had for fifty years been prepared in the Confederate States. There were consequently no workmen, or very few, skilled in these arts. Powder, save perhaps for blasting, had not been made at the South. No saltpeter was in store at any Southern point; it was stored wholly at the North. There were no worked mines of lead except in Virginia, and the situation of those made them a precarious dependence. The only cannon-foundry existing was at Richmond. Copper, so necessary for field-artillery and for percussion-caps, was just being obtained in East Tennessee. There was no rolling-mill for bar-iron south of Richmond, and but few blast-furnaces and these, with trifling exceptions, were in the border States of Virginia and Tennessee.
The first efforts made to obtain powder were by orders sent to the North, which had been early done both by the Confederate Government and by some of the States. These were being rapidly filled when the attack was made on Fort Sumter. The shipments then ceased. Niter was contemporaneously sought for in north Alabama and Tennessee. Between four and five hundred tons of sulphur were obtained in New Orleans, at which place it had been imported for use in the manufacture of sugar. Preparations for the construction of a large powder-mill were promptly commenced by the Government, and two small, private mills in East Tennessee were supervised and improved. On June 1, 1861, there was probably two hundred and fifty thousand pounds only, chiefly of cannon-powder, and about as much niter, which had been imported by Georgia. There were the two powder-mills above mentioned, but we had no experience in making powder, or in extracting niter from natural deposits, or in obtaining it by artificial beds.