Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 4.djvu/23

Rh forth, every bell in the city rang a peal, the military band rendered a patriotic air, and with one mighty shout from her patriotic citizens, North Carolina proclaimed to the world that she had resumed her sovereignty.&quot;

This step meant war, and no people were ever less prepared for an appeal to arms. Agriculture and allied pursuits were the almost exclusive employments. Hence, for manufactured articles, from linchpins to locomotives, from joint-stools to cotton-gins, the State was dependent on Northern and English markets. According to the census of 1860, there were only 3,689 manufacturing establishments of all kinds in its borders, and most of these employed few laborers. Out of a total population of 992,622, only 14,217 were engaged in any sort of factories. The whole industrial story is told by a few of the reports to the census officers. For instance, there were in the State, as reported by these officers, the following insignificant number of workers in these most important occupations: In wrought iron, 129; in cast iron, 59; in making clothes, 12; in making boots and shoes, 176; in tanning leather, 93; in compounding medicines, 1. This was the foundation on which North Carolina, when cut off by the war from Northern markets and by the blockade from English or other foreign ports, made a most marvelous record of industrial progress, and developed a capacity for self-support as unexpected as it was wonderful.

But the State’s power to manufacture the ordinary articles of commerce was truly boundless when compared with its capacity to produce arms, equipments and the general munitions of war. To make uniforms for over 100,000 soldiers, and at the same time to supply regular customers, there were seven small woolen mills! To furnish shoes, saddles, harness for the army, and also to keep the citizens supplied, there were ninety-three diminutive tanneries. The four recorded makers of fire arms were so reckless of consequences as combinedly