Military Industries

During the first two years of the war volunteers were much more plentiful than equipment. The arms seized at Mount Vernon and other arsenals in Alabama were old flint-locks altered for the use of percussion caps and were almost worthless, being valued at $2 apiece. These were afterwards transferred to the Confederate States, which returned but few of them to arm the Alabama troops.[350] Late in 1860 a few thousand old muskets were purchased by the state from the arsenal at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for $2.50 each. A few Mississippi rifles were also secured, and with these the Second Alabama Infantry was armed. These rifles, however, required a special kind of ammunition, and this made them almost worthless. Other arms were found to be useless for the same reason. Both cavalry and infantry regiments went to the front armed with single and double barrelled shot-guns, squirrel rifles, muskets, flint-locks, and old pistols. No ammunition could be supplied for such a miscellaneous collection. Many regiments had to wait for months before arms could be obtained. Before October, 1861, several thousand men had left Alabama unarmed, and several thousand more, also unarmed, were left waiting in the state camps.[351] In 1861 the state legislature bought a thousand pikes and a hundred bowie-knives to arm the Forty-eighth Militia Regiment, which was defending Mobile. The sum of $250,000 was appropriated to lend to those who would manufacture firearms for the government.[352] In 1863 the Confederate Congress authorized the enlistment of companies armed with pikes who should take the places of men armed with firearms when the latter were dead or absent.[353] Private arms—muskets, rifles, pistols, shot-guns, carbines—were called for and purchased from the owners when not donated.[354] An offer was made to advance fifty per cent of the amount necessary to set up machinery for the manufacture of small arms.[355] Old Spanish flint-lock muskets were brought in from Cuba through the blockade, altered, and placed in the hands of the troops.[356]

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In 1862 a small-arms factory was established at Tallassee which employed 150 men and turned out about 150 carbines a week. At the end of 1864 it had produced only 6000.[357] At Montgomery the Alabama Arms Manufacturing Company had the best machinery in the Confederacy for making Enfield rifles. At Selma were the state and Confederate arsenals, a navy-yard, and naval foundry with machinery of English make, of the newest and most complete pattern. It had been brought through the blockade from Europe and set up at Selma because that seemed to be a place safe from invasion and from the raids of the enemy. Here the vessels for the defence of Mobile were built, heavy ordnance was cast, with shot and shell, and plating for men-of-war. The armored ram Tennessee, famous in the fight in Mobile Bay, the gunboats Morgan, Selma, and Gaines were all built at the Selma navy-yard—guns, armor, and everything being manufactured on the spot. When the Tennessee surrendered, after a terrible battle, its armor had not been penetrated by a single shot or shell. The best cannon in America were cast at the works in Selma. The naval foundry employed 3000 men, the other works as many more. Half the cannon and two-thirds of the fixed ammunition used during the last two years of the war were made at these foundries and factories. The foundry destroyed by Wilson was pronounced by experts to be the best in existence. It could turn out at short notice a fifteen-inch Brooks or a mountain howitzer. Swords, rifles, muskets, pistols, caps, were manufactured in great quantities. There were more than a hundred buildings, which covered fifty acres; and after Wilson’s destructive work, Truman, the war correspondent, said that they presented the greatest mass of ruins he had ever seen.[358] There was a navy-yard on the Tombigbee, in Clarke County, near the Sunflower Bend. Several small vessels had been completed and several war vessels, probably gunboats, were in process of construction here when the war ended; both vessels and machinery were destroyed by order of the Confederate authorities.[359]

Gunpowder was scarce throughout the war, and nitre or saltpetre, its principal ingredient, was not to be purchased from abroad. A powder mill was established at Cahaba,[360] but the ingredients were lacking. Charcoal for gunpowder was made from willow, dogwood, and similar woods. The nitre on hand was soon exhausted, and it was sought for in the caves of the limestone region of Alabama and Tennessee. In north Alabama there were many of these large caves. The earth in them was dug up and put in hoppers and water poured over it to leach out the nitre. The lye was caught (just as for making soft soap from lye ashes), boiled down, and then dried in the sunshine.[361] The earth in cellars and under old houses was scraped up and leached for the nitre in it. In 1862 a corps of officers under the title of the Nitre and Mining Bureau[362] was organized by the War Department to work the nitre caves of north Alabama which lay in the doubtful region between the Union and the Confederate lines, and which were often raided by the enemy. The men were subjected to military discipline and were under the absolute command of the superintendent, who often called them out to repulse Federal raiders. As much as possible in this department, as in the others, exempts and negroes were used for laborers. For clerical work those disabled for active service were appointed, and instructions were issued that employment should be given to needy refugee women.[363] These important nitre works were repeatedly destroyed by the Federals, who killed or captured many of the employees.[364] In the district of upper Alabama, under the command of Captain William Gabbitt, whose headquarters were at Blue Mountain (now Anniston), most of the work was done in the limestone caves of the mountain region.[365] Several hundred men—whites and negroes—were employed in extracting the nitre from the cave earth. To the end of September, 1864, this district had produced 222,665 pounds of nitre at a cost of $237,977.17, war prices.[366]

The supply from the caves proved insufficient, and artificial nitre beds or nitraries were prepared in the cities of south and central Alabama. It was necessary to have them near large towns, in order to obtain a plentiful supply of animal matter and potash, and the necessary labor. Efforts were also made to induce planters in marl or limestone counties to work plantation earth.[367] Under the supervision of Professor W. H. C. Price, nitraries were established at Selma, Mobile, Talladega, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery. Negro labor was used almost entirely, each negro having charge of one small nitre bed. To October, 1864, the nitraries of south Alabama produced 34,716 pounds at a cost of $26,171.14, which was somewhat cheaper than the nitre from the caves. From these nitraries better results were obtained than from the French, Swedish, and Russian nitraries which served as models. The Confederate nitre beds were from sixteen to twenty-seven months old in October, 1864, and hence not at their best producing stage. Yet, allowing for the difference in age, they gave better results, as they produced from 2.57 to 3.3 ounces of nitre per cubic foot, while the average European nitraries at four years of age gave 4 ounces per cubic foot. Earth from under old houses and from cellars produced from 2 to 4 ounces to the cubic foot. Nitre caves produced from 6 to 12 ounces per cubic foot. Most of the nitre thus obtained was made into powder at the mills in Selma. There were some private manufacturers of nitre, and to encourage these the Confederate Congress authorized the advance to makers of fifty per cent of the cost of the necessary machinery.[368]

The state legislature appropriated $30,000 to encourage the manufacture and preparation of powder, saltpetre (nitre), sulphur, and lead. Little of the last article was found in Alabama.[369] Some of the powder works were in operation as early as 1861, and in that year the War Department gave Dr. Ullman of Tallapoosa a contract to supply 1000 to 1500 pounds of sulphur a day.[370]

The Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau had charge of the production of iron in Alabama for the use of the Confederacy. The mines were principally in the hilly region south of the Tennessee River, where several furnaces and iron works were already established before the war. Two or three new companies, with capital of $1,000,000 each, had bought mineral lands and had commenced operations when the war broke out. The Confederate government bought the property or gave the companies financial assistance. The iron district was often raided by the Federals, who blew up the furnaces and wrecked the iron works.[371] The Irondale works, near Elyton, were begun in 1862, and made much iron, but they also were destroyed in 1864 by the Federals.[372] Other large iron furnaces, with their forges, foundries, and rolling-mills, were destroyed by Rousseau’s raid in 1864. The government employed several hundred conscripts and several thousand negroes in the mines and rolling-mills. It also offered fifty per cent of the cost of equipment to encourage the opening of new mines by private owners.[373] There is record of only about 15,000 tons of Alabama iron being mined by the Confederacy, but probably there was much more.[374] The iron was sent to Selma, Montgomery, and other places for manufacture. The ordnance cast in Selma was of Alabama iron; and after the war, when the United States sold the ruins of the arsenal, the big guns were cut up and sent to Philadelphia. Here the fine quality of the iron attracted the attention of experts and led to the development by northern capital of the iron industry in north Alabama.

The Confederate government encouraged the building and extension of railroads, and paid large sums to them for the transportation of troops, munitions of war, and military supplies.[375] Several lines of road within the state were made military roads, and the government extended their lines, built bridges and cars, and kept the lines in repair.[376] In 1862 $150,000 was advanced to the Alabama and Mississippi Railway Company, to complete the line between Selma and Meridian,[377] and the duty on iron needed for the road was remitted.[378] On June 25 of this year this road was seized by the military authorities in order to finish it,[379] and because of the lack of iron D. H. Kenny was directed (July 21, 1863) to impress the iron and rolling stock belonging to the Alabama and Florida Railway, the Gainesville Branch of the Mobile and Ohio, the Cahaba, Marion, and Greensborough Railroad, and the Uniontown and Newberne Railroad. The Alabama and Mississippi road was a very important line, since it tapped the supply districts of Mississippi and the Black Belt of Alabama. There were many difficulties in the way of the builders. In 1862 the locomotives were wearing out and no iron was to be obtained. In the fall of the same year the planters withdrew their negroes who were working on the road, and left the bridges half finished. But finally, in December, 1862, the road was completed.[380] In the fall of 1862 a road between Blue Mountain, Alabama, and Rome, Georgia, was planned, and $1,122,480.92 was appropriated by the Confederate Congress, a mortgage being taken as security.[381] This road was graded and some bridges built and iron laid, but was not in running order before the end of the war.