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most of the privates to a level with their superiors inspired them with a natural respect for those among their chiefs in whom they recognized the necessary qualities for command, and induced them to accept, without a murmur, the obligations and restraints of military life when they were made to understand the necessity. Leaving the entire monopoly of insubordination to a few regiments, mostly composed of European adventurers, they exhibited none of that turbulence which is frequently associated with the name of volunteers. A few words of caution were sufficient to remind them that, having once taken the oath, there were no longer amateurs in the ranks of the army.

The personnel of staffs and administrative departments being once organized and that of the contingents purified, and the first principles of discipline established among the officers, as well as among the soldiers, the great task of drilling the army had yet hardly begun. ... In order that it may acquire suppleness and agility the recruits must go through a series of exercises and evolutions equally irksome to the teachers and the taught first singly, then by platoons, by battalions next, and finally by brigades. This task was the more difficult in the American army because instruction was as necessary for the officers as for the men, and because the latter, having no example to encourage them, did not understand the utility of so long an apprenticeship. Their intelligence, however, which rendered them submissive to the voice of chiefs really worthy to command them, soon made them undertake it with ardor. Full of confidence in themselves, they made up their minds, not that it was useless to learn, but that it would be very easy for them to learn anything they wished, the trade of war as well as any other; having enlisted voluntarily, they were determined to do everything in their power to become good soldiers capable of victory.

They were, therefore, of as much value as their chiefs, whose examples exercised an all-powerful influence over the collective spirit, if we may use such an expression, which animates a body of troops. A rapid change took place in those regiments in which the superior officers went assiduously to work and began by learning themselves what they desired to teach their inferiors. . ..

The special services found great resource in the aptitude of the American to pass from one trade to another. This is a great and valuable quality which the practice of true liberty engenders by protecting the individual against excesses in the pursuit of specialties which confine the faculties of man within a narrow prison.

In order to organize the engineer service it was also found necessary to appeal to the ardor of volunteers who had no military instruction. The officers of that arm scattered among the various corps were not sufficiently numerous to direct in person all the works required by the military operations, nor to instruct the soldiers employed in them. But there were found, on the one hand, useful auxiliaries among civil engineers, a large and educated class, composed of practical men accustomed to struggle with the difficulties of the virgin soil of America; while, on the other hand, a rapid course of special instruction imparted to a few regiments sufficed to qualify them for the most important works of engineering art, while the rougher work was entrusted indiscriminately to the various regiments of volunteers, among whom some skilful artisans were always sure to be found. The construction of these works was never entirely new to them. Even the most populous States, which still possessed vast forests, all furnished a considerable contingent of woodmen or lumbermen and pioneers, inured from their infancy to the use of the axe, the pick, and the spade, and one regiment a thousand strong might be seen felling more than eighty acres (quarantes hectares) of tall forests in a single day.

Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America (edited by Henry Coppée, Philadelphia, 1875), I, 262-277 passim.

106. Supplies for the Confederacy (1861)

BY EX-PRESIDENT JEFFERSON DAVIS (1881)

The work from which this extract is taken was prepared under Davis's dictation, a method which makes it liable to inaccuracy of detail. It is, however, a kind of official defence of the South by the man who knew most about the beginnings and progress of the Confederacy. For Davis, see No. 62 above. - Bibliography: Channing and Hart, Guide, §§ 209, 210.

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 guncarriage, 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. . . .

For the supply of arms an agent was sent to Europe, who made contracts to the extent of nearly half a million dollars. Some small-arms had been obtained from the North, and also important machinery. The machinery at Harper's Ferry Armory had been saved from the flames by the heroic conduct of the operatives, headed by Mr. Armistead M. Ball, the master armorer. Of the machinery so saved, that for making rifle-muskets was transported to Richmond, and that for rifles with sword-bayonets to Fayetteville, North Carolina. In addition to the injuries suffered by the machinery, the lack of skilled workmen caused much embarrassment. . . .

In field-artillery the manufacture was confined almost entirely to the Tredegar Works in Richmond. . . . The State of Virginia possessed a number of old four-pounder iron guns which were reamed out to get a good bore, and rifled with three grooves, after the manner of Parrott. The army at Harper's Ferry and that at Manassas were supplied with old batteries of six-pounder guns and twelve-pounder howitzers. A few Parrott guns, purchased by the State of Virginia, were with General Magruder at Big Bethel.

For the ammunition and equipment required for the infantry and artillery, a good laboratory and workshop had been established at Richmond. The arsenals were making preparations for furnishing ammuni

tion and knapsacks; but generally, what little was done in this regard was for local purposes. Such was the general condition of ordnance and ordnance stores in May, 1861.

The progress of development, however, was steady. A refinery of saltpeter was established near Nashville during the summer, which received the niter from its vicinity, and from the caves in East and Middle Tennessee. Some inferior powder was made at two small mills in South Carolina. North Carolina established a mill near Raleigh; and a stamping-mill was put up near New Orleans, and powder made there before the fall of the city. Small quantities were also received through

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These Government powder-mills were located at Augusta, Georgia, and satisfactory progress was made in the construction during the year. All the machinery, including the very heavy rollers, was made in the Confederate States. Contracts were made abroad for the delivery of niter through the blockade; and, for obtaining it immediately, we resorted to caves, tobacco-houses, cellars, etc. The amount delivered from Tennessee was the largest item in the year's supply, but the whole was quite inadequate to existing and prospective needs.

The consumption of lead was mainly met by the Virginia lead-mines at Wytheville, the yield from which was from sixty to eighty thousand pounds per month. Lead was also collected by agents in considerable quantities throughout the country, and the battle-field of Manassas was closely gleaned, from which much lead was collected. . . .

By the close of 1861, eight arsenals and four depots had been supplied with materials and machinery, so as to be efficient in producing the various munitions and equipments, the want of which had caused early embarrassment. Thus a good deal had been done to produce the needed material of war, and to refute the croakers who found in our poverty application for the maxim, " Ex nihilo nihil fit." . . .

To provide the iron needed for cannon and projectiles, it had been necessary to stimulate by contracts the mining and smelting of its

ores.

. . A niter and mining bureau was organized. . .

Niter was to be obtained from caves and other like sources, and by the formation of niter-beds, some of which had previously been begun at Richmond. . . . The whole country was laid off into districts, each of

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which was under the charge of an officer, who obtained details of workmen from the army, and made his monthly reports. Thus the niter production, in the course of a year, was brought up to something like half of the total consumption. . . . The supervision of the production of iron, lead, copper, and all the minerals which needed development, as well as the manufacture of sulphuric and nitric acids (the latter required for the supply of the fulminate of mercury for percussion-caps), without which the firearms of our day would have been useless, was added to the niter bureau. Such was the progress that, in a short time, the bureau was aiding or managing some twenty to thirty furnaces with an annual yield of fifty thousand tons or more of pig-iron. The lead- and coppersmelting works erected were sufficient for all wants, and the smelting of zinc of good quality had been achieved. The chemical works were placed at Charlotte, North Carolina, to serve as a reserve when the supply from abroad might be cut off.

In equipping the armies first sent into the field, the supply of accessories was embarrassingly scant. There were arms, such as they were, for over one hundred thousand men, but no accoutrements nor equipments, and a meager supply of ammunition. In time the knapsacks were supplanted by haversacks, which the women could make. But soldiers' shoes and cartridge-boxes must be had; leather was also needed for artillery-harness and for cavalry-saddles; and, as the amount of leather which the country could furnish was quite insufficient for all these purposes, it was perforce apportioned among them. Soldiers' shoes were the prime necessity. Therefore, a scale was established, by which first shoes and then cartridge-boxes had the preference; after these, artillery-harness, and then saddles and bridles. To economize leather, the waist and cartridge-box belts were made of prepared cotton cloth stitched in three or four thicknesses. Bridle-reins were likewise so made, and then cartridge-boxes were thus covered, except the flap. Saddle-skirts, too, were made of heavy cotton cloth strongly stitched. To get leather, each department procured its quota of hides, made contracts with the tanners, obtained hands for them by exemptions from the army, got transportation over the railroads for the hides and for supplies. To the varied functions of this bureau was finally added that of assisting the tanners to procure the necessary supplies for the tanneries. A fishery, even, was established on Cape Fear River to get oil for mechanical purposes, and at the same time food for the workmen. . . One of the most difficult wants to supply in this branch of the service

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