Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/79

 Confederate Ordnance Department. 69

some serviceable batteries belonging to the States, and some which belonged to volunteer companies. There were neither harness, sad- dles, bridles, blankets, nor other artillery or cavalry equipments.

Thus to furnish 150,000 men on both sides of the Mississippi, on say the ist of May, i86r, there were on hand no infantry accoutre- ments, no cavalry arms or equipments — no artillery and, above all, no ammunition ; nothing save small arms, and these almost wholly smooth-bore, altered from flint to percussion. Let us see what means we had for producing these supplies.

ARSENALS, WORKSHOPS, FOUNDRIES, ETC.

Within the limits of the Confederate States, there were no arsenals at which any of the material of war was constructed. No arsenal, ex- cept that at Fayetteville, N. C, had a single machine above a foot- lathe. Such arsenals as there were, had been used only as depots. 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 dur- ing the Mexican war — scarcely a round of ammunition had, for hfty years, been prepared in the Confederate States. There were con- sequently no workmen, or very few of them, skilled in these arts. No powder, save perhaps for blasting, had been made at the South ; and there was no saltpetre in store at any point ; it was stored wholly at the North. There was no lead nor any mines of it, except on the Northern limit of the Confederacy, in Virginia, and the situation of that made its product precarious. Only one cannon foundry existed : at Richmond. Copper, so necessary for field artillery and for per- cussion caps, was just being produced in East Tennessee. There was no rolling mill for bar iron south of Richmond ; and but few blast furnaces, and these small, and with trifling exceptions in the border States of Virginia and Tennessee.

Such were the supplies and such the situation when I took charge of the Ordnance Department on the 8th of April, i86r.

The first thing to be attended to was the supply of powder. Large orders had been sent to the North, both by the Confederate Govern- ment and some of the States, and these were being rapidly filled at the date of the attack on Fort Sumter. The entire product of one large Northern mill was being received at a Southern port. Of course all the ports were soon sealed to such importations from the North. Attention was at once turned to the production of nitre in North


 * See note on transfer of arm.s to the South.