Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 13.djvu/221

 220 Southern Historical Society Papers.

of nothing," or by General Bragg: "I have always asserted that you (General Gorgas) organized the only successful Military Bureau dur- ing our national existence, and this is the more surprising, as you had less foundation to go on than any other."

General Grant, in "Siege of Vicksburg," published in the Century, September, 1885, recognizes the efficiency of General Gorgas as having supplied the Confederate soldiers with small arms which were superior to those used by his army. Page 765 he says :

" At Vicksburg thirty-one thousand six hundred prisoners were surrendered, together with one hundred and seventy-two cannon, sixty thousand muskets, and a large amount of ammunition. The small arms of the enemy were far superior to the bulk of ours. Up to this time our troops at the West had been limited to the old United States flint-lock, changed into percussion the Belgian mus- ket imported early in the war almost as dangerous to the person firing it as to the one aimed at, and a few new and improved arms. These were of many different calibres, causing much trouble in dis- tributing ammunition during an engagement. The enemy had gene- rally new arms, which had run the blockade, and were of uniform calibre. After the surrender, I authorized all Colonels whose regi- ments were armed with inferior muskets to place them in the stack of captured arms, and to replace them with the latter."

Professor J. W. Mallet, of the University of Virginia, who, as Lieutenant-Colonel, served with General Gorgas, says: "I believe it may be safely claimed that General Gorgas created and managed the most efficient Bureau of the Confederate War Department; that Bureau which was based upon the most scanty resources at the out- set, which was called upon to respond to the most special, the most varied and the most urgent demands, and which was developed to the highest degree of efficiency, in spite of the serious difficulties arising from the ever shifting conditions imposed by the events of the war.

"At this distance of time it is not but now and then that one can fairly carry himself back, as in a dream, to a practical sense of what that ordnance work was the uncertain chances of supplies brought in from abroad through the blockade the eager picking up of odds and ends of material from domestic sources to eke out these sup- plies; leaden water pipes and window weights to make bullets of, old sugar boiling kettles, torn up and re-rolled into thinner copper for percussion caps, the revamping of worn out tools and machines and alteration of them, to answer purposes for which they were never