Manufacturing

MANUFACTURING: AN OVERVIEW

Steven Barleen

NORTHERN MANUFACTURING

Steven Barleen

SOUTHERN MANUFACTURING

Steven Barleen

FACTORIES

Steven Barleen

ARMS MANUFACTURING

Carol Brennan

SHIPBUILDING

Jeffery Seymour

TEXTILES

Pamela L. Kester

Manufacturing: An Overview

When the Civil War began in 1861, neither side in the conflict expected it to last very long. The South expected that due to the superiority of its fighting spirit it would defeat the North quickly on the battlefield and force it to recognize the independence of the Confederate States of America (McPherson 1988, pp. 316–317). Many people in the North were also eager for a brawl, expecting that with the Union's greater population and industrial capacity, it would quickly be able to make the South come to its senses (Foote 1958, pp. 50–60). As the next four years would demonstrate, however, both sides were grossly mistaken in their initial assessments of the other's ability to sustain the war, but in the long run the North was correct about its ability to overwhelm the states in rebellion. The North outstripped the South in manufacturing capacity and manpower, and while the Union struggled during the first few years of the conflict in coordinating its manufacturing resources, it was eventually able to meet all of its supply needs. The Confederacy, on the other hand, despite its attempts to develop a manufacturing base before and during the conflict, had an economy largely based on investment in slaveholding and land ownership (Luraghi 1978; Wright 1978; Genovese 1965). Even though the South desperately tried to marshal its manufacturing resources to supply its wartime needs, it simply lacked the manpower and manufacturing base to effectively counter the North's advantages in these areas.

An Unequal Contest

At the start of the conflict the manufacturing balance sheet between the North and the South was quite lopsided in favor of the Union. One historian notes that the North had 110,000 manufacturing establishments to the South's 18,000; the North had 1,300,000 industrial workers compared to the South's 110,000. Massachusetts alone produced over 60 percent more manufactured goods than all the Confederate states put together, Pennsylvania nearly twice as much, and New York more than twice as much (Foote 1958, p. 60). Another study demonstrates that the total value of manufactured goods in Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi was less than $85 million while New York alone produced goods worth almost $380 million (Millett and Maslowski 1984, p. 164). Historian James McPherson points out the irony in this disproportion: while many in the South believed that cotton production would provide them with the wealth to fund their war, the states that grew the cotton possessed only 6 percent of the nation's cotton manufacturing capacity (McPherson 1982, p. 23).

Furthermore, the states that remained within the Union had a better than ten-to-one advantage in the gross value of manufactured goods over the states that made up the Confederacy, with the latter producing only 7.4 percent of the nation's gross value of these goods (Tindall and Shi 1992, p. 642). The free states had 84 percent of the nation's capital invested in manufacturing in 1860. In such crucial industries as iron production, the South lagged far behind: During the year ending June 1, 1860, the Confederate states produced 36,790 tons of pig iron, while the figure for Pennsylvania alone was 580,049 tons (Millett and Mas-lowski 1984, p. 164). In other industries with a direct connection to warfare, the Northern states had 97 percent of the country firearms in 1860, 94 percent of its cloth, 93 percent of its pig iron, and more than 90 percent of its boots and shoes (McPherson 1988, 318).

Confederate manufacturers were at a considerable disadvantage because they had largely depended on Northern technological know-how to develop and run their industries, and many of these workers returned to the North at the start of hostilities. In addition, many of the mechanics who were Southern-born chose to seek glory in uniform rather than stay on the job in Southern manufactories (Dew 1966, pp. 90–91). Reflecting the problem in home-grown expertise, James McPherson estimates that the South had contributed only seven percent of the important inventions in the United States between 1790 and 1860 (McPherson 1982, p. 25). Furthermore, many of the South's industries were located in the Upper South close to coastal areas and were therefore always vulnerable to Union invasion (Millett and Mas-lowski 1984, p. 164).

Another great advantage for Northern manufacturers was the population base from which they drew their workers. In 1861 the North had twenty-two million people compared with 9 million in the Confederacy. Of the latter, three and a half million were slaves, and while the South increasingly tried to incorporate enslaved people into its manufacturing workforce as the war progressed, it found this a difficult endeavor (Tindall and Shi 1992, p. 642; Dew 1966, pp. 250–264). Not only did the North's population dwarf the South, the North was also more intensively engaged in industry at the outset of hostilities. Only forty percent of the Northern labor force worked in agriculture, while the slave states had 84 percent of their labor force occupied in farming. Consequently, the slave states had only ten percent of their population living in urban areas of 2,500 people or more, while the free states had 26 percent of their population living in such areas (McPherson 1982, p. 24).

The North's advantage in terms of population resulted from the steady flow of immigrants to the port cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, from which many of them fanned out across the North to take manufacturing jobs in inland towns. This influx of workers did not cease during the war, with more than 800,000 new immigrants arriving between 1861 and 1865 (Millett and Maslowski 1984, p. 163).

The Southern Response

Statistics like these certainly give the impression that the South faced an uphill battle in meeting its manufacturing needs. While it certainly did struggle to meet its needs, it made a great effort to do so. Historian Raimondo Luraghi has argued that despite the omnipresent issue of states rights, the Confederate government took a decisive role in managing its industries through what might be called the first instance of forced industrialization through state socialism. The South's industrialization program had no equal until the rise of the Soviet Union in the early part of the twentieth century (Lur-aghi 1978, pp. 112–132). The authors of Why the South Lost the Civil War point to some of the ways in which the Confederacy brought its manufacturers under its control. One was conscription, which allowed the government to exempt skilled workers. The other was the imposition of public domination over rail transportation. Thus the Confederate government in Richmond could force industrialists to do its bidding by denying them manpower or transportation (Beringer et al. 1986, p. 217). These authors then note that the government in Richmond also invested in manufacturing, establishing factories such as the Augusta Powder Works in Augusta, Georgia, which produced nitre (potassium nitrate, a chemical used to make gunpowder), lead, rifles, shoes, buttons, and other items. Moreover, this government-induced and controlled activity turned Southern cities into large industrial centers (Beringer et al. 1986, p. 217). Early in the short history of the Confederacy, the New York Herald reported on the frenetic pace of development that it saw occurring in the South:

The Sultana Disaster, April 27, 1865

The explosion of the Sultana, a Mississippi River steamship transporting Union soldiers recently released from Confederate prison camps, in April 1865 was the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. It is estimated that more passengers on the Sultana lost their lives than on the Titanic in 1912.

The Sultana had been built in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1862 for the cotton trade on the lower Mississippi. After 1864 the War Department commissioned the vessel for troop transport. On her last voyage, the Sultana left New Orleans on April 21, 1865, with livestock and about seventy-five cabin passengers bound for St. Louis, Missouri. The ship stopped at Vicksburg on April 24 to take on more passengers—Union soldiers recently released from prison camps at Andersonville and Cahaba. Although the Sultana had a legal capacity of 376 persons, more than 2,100 soldiers came aboard, filling every available space on the decks as well as the cabins. Many of these men had been severely weakened by wounds, malnutrition, and disease (Ambrose 2001).

The severe overcrowding helped set the stage for disaster. As the ship steamed north of Memphis, Tennessee, one of its poorly maintained boilers exploded at about 2 a.m. on the morning of April 27; two of the other boilers then followed. Many passengers were killed immediately by the blast; others were scalded by escaping steam or burned to death in the fire that engulfed the ship when hot coals from the exploding boilers set fire to the wooden decks. Still others drowned or perished from hypothermia after jumping into the cold waters of the Mississippi. For months after the disaster, bodies were found downstream as far as Vicksburg. Many victims were never recovered. About eight hundred people survived the initial explosion and fire, but three hundred of these died within a few days of severe burns or exposure. Estimates of the death toll range between 1,300 and 1,900.

It is thought that the boiler's explosion was the result of the Sultana's careening; that is, as the overcrowded and top-heavy ship struggled around the bends in the Mississippi, she tilted from one side to the other. The four boilers were interconnected in such a way that the tilting caused water to flow out of the uppermost boiler on that side of the ship. Since fires were still burning underneath the boilers, the empty boiler would develop hot spots. When the ship tilted in the other direction, water would rush back into the empty boiler, turn at once into steam, and create a temporary surge in pressure. This effect of careening could be prevented by keeping high levels of water in the boilers; however, the Sultana's boilers were leaky and one had been hastily and improperly repaired when the ship stopped at Vicksburg.

The Sultana disaster received surprisingly little press coverage at the time, most likely because the other events of April 1865— Robert E. Lee's (1807-1870) surrender, the end of the Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln's (1809-1865) assassination—were foremost in the public's attention. The tragedy was soon forgotten, though it cost nearly two thousand lives.

rebecca j. frey

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ambrose, Stephen. "Remembering Sultana." National Geographic News, May 1, 2001. Available from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/.

Potter, Jerry O. "Sultana: A Tragic Postscript to the Civil War." American History Magazine, August 1998. Available from http://www.historynet.com/.

Salecker, Gene Eric. Disaster on the Mississippi: The Sultana Explosion, April 27, 1865. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996.

We perceive that the States of the Southern confederacy are bestirring themselves in the manufacturing line, with a view to provide for their own wants in those articles for which they were heretofore dependent upon New England. Cotton mills, shoe factories, yarn and twine manufactorie are being put extensively into operation in Georgia and other States. An association of Southern merchants is busily engaged in locating sites for all kinds of factories, with the assistance of competent engineers, where the indispensable water power can be made available. In the neighborhood of Columbus, Georgia, there are already established cotton and woolen mills, a tan yard and a shoe factory, grist mills and saw mills, of the capacity and operations of which a description will be found in another column. In New Orleans there is a very large factory at work in manufacture of brogans, an article of immense consumption on plantations, and hitherto supplied by the factories of Lynn and other New England towns. It is evident that the Southern confederacy is straining every point to make itself independent of the North commercially as well as politically. (March 17, 1861, p. 4)

Besides largely being cut off from the importation of Northern goods, the North's blockade of the Southern coastline meant that items manufactured abroad would be severely curtailed as well. Early in the conflict, the government in Richmond tried to secure some necessary manufactured items from abroad. A Savannah, Georgia, newspaper reported on April 10, 1861, just a few days before shots were fired at Fort Sumter and only nine days before President Lincoln announced the blockade of Southern ports, that an American visiting a Prussian arms factory witnessed the manufactory of arms, where 60,000 rifles and 50,000 swords for the South were being produced (Daily Morning News, April 10, 1861, col. A). Whether this particular shipment of arms got through the blockade is unknown but it is likely that it did. Historians have estimated that despite the Union Navy's best efforts to maintain the blockade, the South exported at least a million bales of cotton and imported 600,000 rifles (McPherson 1982, p. 179). McPherson goes on to point out that while such large numbers may call the blockade's effectiveness into question, the blockade nevertheless cut the South's seaborne trade to less than a third of normal (McPherson 1982, p. 179). This impact meant that the Confederate government would have to get the most out of its own manufacturing base without being able to rely on help from abroad.

The most important manufacturing center of the Confederate States was in Richmond, where such factories as the Tredegar Iron Works provided the war effort with such essential items as cannons. The importance of Richmond's manufacturing establishments was one of the reasons that General Robert E. Lee sacrificed so much to prevent the city from falling under Union control (McPherson 1982, pp. 235–236). Other historians point out that while the South as a whole was largely agricultural, Virginia was a partial exception. "Virginians envisioned a Confederacy filled with large factories, teeming cities, and prosperous merchants… protected from more efficient Northern competitors, Virginia would give Southerners the industrial muscle they needed to sustain political independence" (Carlander and Majewski 2003, p. 335).

Early visions of turning the South into an independent manufacturing behemoth eventually came to naught. With a much smaller manufacturing base, the curtailing of imports due to the loss of trade with Northern states as well as the naval blockade, and the lack of an adequate supply of free labor for its manufactories, the South failed to develop an effective manufacturing base. The economic base of the South was weakened as the war continued. The real output of the Confederacy declined as many of the best workers left the factories for the army. The blockade cut the Confederacy off from the benefits of foreign trade, led to inefficient use of Southern labor, and compounded the difficulties of replacing worn-out or destroyed machinery. In addition, Union troops concentrated on destroying railroad equipment and entire factories and on cutting the supply lines of raw materials (Lerner 1955, pp. 20–40).

The Confederacy had simply started too far behind the Union in terms of manufacturing, and despite trying to catch up to the North, it faced too many obstacles to be successful. The antebellum South's planter economy was no match for the capitalist entrepreneurial spirit of the Northern manufacturers.

Northern Adjustments

Despite the North's advantages, however, it was unable to capitalize on them and overwhelm its weaker adversary early in the conflict. For the first few years of the war the South was able to take advantage of the North's inability to marshal its manufacturing resources. Initially, the North scrambled to meet its supply needs, even going abroad to import such essential items as rifles (Ransom 2006). For the Union the problem was not a lack of manufacturing facilities but a lack of coordination. During peacetime, manufacturers competed with one another and were not in business to cooperate. Moreover, most manufacturers in this period served local needs and did not ship their goods great distances or consider the needs of consumers in distant markets (Zunz 1990, pp. 12–15). Therefore military procurement officers had to encourage far-flung manufacturers to work together and pool their resources into large cooperative operations that met the military's needs. This wartime effort led to the development of a national market that linked distant consumers with manufacturers (Whitten and Whitten 2006, p. 5).

Even though effective coordination took some time, Northern producers were quick to see the money-making potential in supplying the needs of the Union Army and Navy. An article in the Chicago Tribune from the first year of the war illustrates some of the efforts taken by Midwestern manufacturers:

Every day brings with it illustrations of the widespread activity caused by the preparations of the government for a long war. Passing through an alley…we found it barricaded with packing boxes. The boxes are the work of a man who three months ago could hardly find any occupation. He is now making packing boxes for the government with all the hands he can employ…The receipts of clothing at the arsenal are enormous. To inspect the operations is well worth a day's time. One single establishment delivers daily 3,000 shirts and 2,000 pairs of drawers; from another is received an equal number of hose…The number of mills running solely upon army cloths and army flannel is becoming legion…scarce a day passes in which some cotton mill is not altered into a woolen mill, and set at work upon cloth and flannel. (October 21, 1861, p. 2)

To meet the needs of the war, many Northern manufacturers converted their operations to allow them to make goods needed by soldiers. For example, the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester, New Hampshire, at that time the largest textile manufacturer in the world, began making rifles (Hareven and Langenbach 1978, p. 10). The same newspaper article quoted above describes other wartime manufacturing conversions:

Where hayforks and scythes took the attention of a manufacturer, sword blades and bayonets are produced instead. Brass turners have left off making faucets and door keys, and are doubling the product of their industry in making trappings for cavalry and the more delicate workmanship upon gun carriages, sword sheaths, &c. Trunk makers have taken to the fashioning of knapsacks, and men who once made carriages for the wealthy, are now making ambulances for the soldier. (October 21, 1861, p. 2)

What all this activity meant for cities like Chicago is described further in the Tribune article:

The result is that the city is gradually becoming one vast workshop, and the hum of industry each day grows louder and louder. From the streets beggary has almost disappeared, and the demands upon the committee by the families of absent volunteers are daily diminishing from the abundance of employment offered to the industrious. The present war may pinch in some places, but it carries employment and comparative ease to others. (October 21, 1861, p. 2)

Despite the ambitions of Northern manufacturers to supply the military, however, many industries suffered economically during the initial months of the war due to the loss of their Southern customers and the accompanying sudden changes in market conditions. In fact, almost six thousand Northern businesses failed in the first year of the war, with financial losses totaling an estimated $178.5 million (Whitten and Whitten 2006, p. 8). Textile manufacturers suffered because of the loss of their cotton supply from Southern plantations, which resulted in a 74 percent drop in production (McPherson 1982, p. 372). Other manufacturers who suffered losses were iron producers, shoe manufacturers, and coal producers (McPherson 1982, p. 372). As manufacturers adjusted to wartime production needs, however, things began to turn around. The manufacturing index for the Union states alone rose to a level 13 percent higher by 1864 than that for the country as a whole in 1860 (McPherson 1982, p. 372). A Boston newspaper article describes the result of war production for Worcester, Massachusetts:

The manufacturing interests of Worcester have been favorably affected by the war. Most of the establishments are in full operation. Most of the establishments are in full operation, many of them running over time, and with much more than the usual complement of hands, in the manufacture of articles worn by soldiers, or in making tools and machinery for the manufacture of those articles. (Boston Daily Advertiser, November 29, 1861, col. D)

With the boom in wartime profits, some manufacturers must have worried about the end of the war and the accompanying drop in military orders. A Mississippi newspaper article from 1863 reports the claims of a traveler just from the manufacturing districts of the North who reported that Northern manufacturers were doing so well that they callously did not want to see the war end: "All are making money by contract, working night and day, and are willing to pay three hundred dollars for substitutes out of their profits. Manufacturers make no complaint of their taxes. They feel none of the horrors of war, and care nothing about it" (Natchez Daily Courier, June 25, 1863, col. D).

The Civil War indeed proved to be a boon to Northern manufacturers, who supplied their nation with the tools of war needed to carry it to victory. The United States emerged from the conflict with a rapidly expanding manufacturing base that would in a few decades be the largest in the world. The 1860s was a period of transition for manufacturers from the small to mid-size manufactory to the large factories that would come to dominate American life. While these changes would have occurred without the Civil War, wartime necessities served to nationalize markets, increase cooperation between government and industry, and expand the size of manufacturing operations. The war speeded up the modernization of American industry but was not the cause of it (McPherson 1982, p. 373). Many veterans returned to their cities to join a new army: the legions of industrial workers that soon filled America's factories (Johnson 2003).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beringer, Richard, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr. Why the South Lost the Civil War. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1986.

Boston Daily Advertiser, November 29, 1861, Issue 128, col. D.

Carlander, Jay, and John Majewwski. "Imagining A Great Manufacturing Empire: Virginia and the Possibilities of a Confederate Tariff." Civil War History 49, no. 4 (2003): 334-352.

Chicago Tribune, October 21, 1861, p. 2.

Daily Morning News (Savannah, GA), April 10, 1861, Issue 85; col. A.

Dew, Charles B. Ironmaker to the Confederacy, Jooseph R.Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1966.

Foote, Shelby. The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville. New York: Random House, 1958.

Genovese, Eugene D. The Political Economy of Slavery. New York: Vintage Books, 1965.

Hareven, Tamara K., and Randolph Langenbach. Amoskeag, Life and Work in an American Factory-City. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

Johnson, Russell L. Warriors into Workers: The Civil War and the Formation of Urban-Industrial Society in a Northern City. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003.

Lerner, Eugene. "Money, Prices, and Wages in the Confederacy, 1861-1865." Journal of Political Economy 63, no. 1 (1955): 20–40.

Luraghi, Raimondo. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation South. New York: New Viewpoints, 1978.

Maslowski, Peter, and Allan R. Millett. For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America. New York: The Free Press, 1984.

McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

McPherson, James M. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.

Natchez (MS) Daily Courier, June 25, 1863, Issue 193,col. D.

New York Herald (NY), March 17, 1861, pg. 4; col. C.

Ransom, Roger L. Confederate States of America. Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Online, eds. Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Stutch, and Gavin Wright. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Shi, David E., and George Brown Tindall. America, A Narrative History, 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton& Company, 1992.

Whitten, David O., and Bessie E. Whitten. The Birth of Big Business in the United States, 1860-1914: Commercial, Extractive, and Industrial Enterprise. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006.

Wright, Gavin. The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978.

Zunz, Oliver. Making America Corporate, 1870-1920. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Steven Barleen

Northern Manufacturing

At the beginning of the Civil War, neither side was prepared for the long, bloody struggle that lay ahead. The overwhelming superiority that the North enjoyed in its manufacturing capacity should have given it the clear advantage, but in 1861 the North's industries were not coordinated enough to efficiently supply the vast requirements of Northern armies. Furthermore, the majority of industries in the North were still small affairs, largely shops or mid-sized manufactories that primarily served local markets (Zunz 1990, p. 13). While there were many large factories as well, especially in textile manufacturing, where large factories with efficient modes of production had existed for some time, the widespread industrialization that would transform the country in the latter part of the nineteenth century was only in its beginning stages in most industries. For example, in Cincinnati in the 1850s, out of 1,259 manufactories only 21 employed more than hundred workers, while 1,207 establishments had less than fifty workers (Ross 1985, p. 80). Therefore, the Union government faced the task of coordinating disparate industries to produce maximum manufacturing efficiency in the service of its war machine. Over the four years of the war, government and manufacturers worked hand-in-hand to accomplish this goal, and in doing so paved the way both for victory and for the massive industries that would come to dominate much of American life in the decades following the conflict.

Despite its need to organize and consolidate industrial production, the North's stronger manufacturing base still gave it an advantage over the South at the start of the war, an advantage it would maintain and increase throughout the conflict. The 1860 census shows that the total number of manufacturing establishments in the free states and territories was 108,573, while the states that would make up the Confederacy only counted 20,573 establishments. In terms of capital investment, the North had $840,802,835 invested in industry, whereas the South had only $95,922,489 invested in its industrial base ("Manufacturing in the Slave States"). The North also had a huge population advantage, which enabled it to simultaneously supply its factories with workers and its armies with soldiers. Because of its commitment to free labor and manufacturing, the North had for decades attracted large numbers of immigrants, with most workers coming through ports in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston and then fanning out throughout the Northeast, where they supplied manufacturing establishments with an ever increasing workforce pool (Wright 1978, pp. 121–125; Stott 1990, pp. 68–84). Even during the war, immigrants continued to arrive in large numbers: From 1861 to 1865, over 800,000 immigrants disembarked in the North (Millett and Maslowski 1984, p. 163). Southern factories, on the other hand, had to rely on a much smaller supply of white laborers, who were augmented by the numerous slaves hired out to Southern factories by their owners (Dew 1966).

The problem for the U.S. War Department was not a paucity of manufacturing establishments or workers, but the lack of coordination between the many manufacturing establishments, which were used to competing with one another and were often narrowly focused on local markets. With the fall of Fort Sumter, federal officials realized that they would need to move quickly to consolidate the North's disparate modes of production, transportation, and communication by having government agents work closely with manufacturers (Whitten and Whitten 2006, p. 5). The challenges they faced were vast. At the start of the conflict, basic needs such as armaments and uniforms could not adequately be supplied by the nation's manufacturing system. In October of 1861, M. C. Meigs, quartermaster-general to the secretary of war, lamented the "imperative demand for more army cloth than the present manufacturing resources of the North can furnish." The supply situation, Meigs asserted, was so bad that governors "daily complain that recruiting will stop unless clothing is sent in abundance and immediately to the various recruiting camps of regiments." Soldiers were reported to be "compelled to do picket duty in the late cold nights without overcoats, or even coats, wearing only the thin summer flannel clothing" (Chicago Tribune, October 31, 1861).

Besides its problems with uniforms, the North found arms manufacturers unable to supply its soldiers with the weapons of war. At the start of the conflict, the Northern states produced 97 percent of the nation's firearms at factories such as the New Haven Arms Factory (which would become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company after the war), the Springfield Armory, and the Colt Manufacturing Company. However, massive government orders for weapons could not be met without vastly expanding arms production (McPherson 1988, p. 318). In fact, during the first year of the conflict, the North had to import 80 percent of its firearms (Morris 2005, p. 54). The Comte de Paris, Louis Philippe Albert d'Orleans, who served on the staff of General McClellan, described the North's inability to adequately supply its armies with arms:

The armory in Springfield had only the capacity for producing from ten to twelve thousand [weaponons] yearly, and the supply could not be increased except by constructing new machines…. During the first year of the war the ordnance department succeeded in furnishing the various armies in the field, not counting what was left at the depots, one million two hundred and seventy-six thousand six hundred and eighty-six portable firearms (muskets, carbines, and pistols), one thousand nine hundred and twenty-six field or siege guns, twelve hundred pieces for batteries in position, and two hundred and fourteen million cartridges for small arms and cannon. (Commager 1973, p. 103)

However, the situation began to improve as the war dragged on: "In 1862," according to the Comte de Paris, "the Springfield manufactory delivered two hundred thousand rifles, while in the year 1863, during which there were manufactured two hundred and fifty thousand there, the importation of arms from Europe by the Northern States ceased altogether" (Commager 1973 [1950], p. 103).

The war was a boon to manufacturers. The DuPont Company, for example, massively expanded its operations to meet the military's voracious appetite for gunpowder, and emerged from the Civil War as the nation's largest manufacturer of gunpowder and other explosives (Zunz 1990, p. 16). Other companies expanded production rapidly as well, as the following notice in the New Haven Daily Palladium from May 19, 1865 testifies: "The Meriden Manufacturing Co. have a contract for five thousand breech-loading magazine carbines, Triplett's patent, for the State of Kentucky. The arms are to be finished in July, and the armory is run night and day."

The massive expansion of the arms industry, along with the growing demand for other products and parts made out of metal—from iron plates for warships, to railroad track, to horseshoes for army horses—greatly expanded the North's steel industry. The demand for military goods even prompted manufacturers to convert their operations. For example, the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, the largest textile factory in the world, located in Manchester, New Hampshire, manufactured locomotives and rifles during the Civil War (Hareven and Langenbach 1978, p. 10).

Northern manufacturers also introduced several innovations. One of these was the repeating rifle, which allowed a soldier to fire several shots without reloading. According to the Comte de Paris, the rifle's reception by the troops was very favorable: "Many extraordinary instances have been cited of successful personal defence due to the rapidity with which this arm can be fired, and some Federal regiments of infantry which made a trial of it were highly pleased with the result" (Commager 1973 [1950], p. 104). John D. Billings, a member of the 10th Massachusetts battery of light artillery, recalled several other inventions produced by Northern manufacturers, such as the "combination knife-fork-and-spoon," the "water filterer," and the "fancy patent-leather haversack." One product that seems an essential for soldiers but, according to Billings, didn't catch on was an early form of the bulletproof vest:

These ironclad warriors admitted that when panoplied for the fight their sensations were much as they might be if they were dressed up in an oldfashioned air-tight stove; still, with all the discomforts of this casing, they felt a little safer with it on than off in battle…. This seemed solid reasoning, surely; but, in spite of it all, a large number of these vests never saw Rebeldom. Their owners were subjected to such a storm of ridicule that they could not bear up under it…. [T]he ownership of one of them was taken as evidence of faint-heartedness. ( Commager 1973 [1950], pp. 216–217)

A connection between manufacturers and the government had always existed in the United States, but the Civil War raised this connection to a new level. In the process, many manufacturers used their connections with government agents to secure manufacturing contracts that would make them rich. Many were able to stay home and let substitutes go do the fighting for them, because the 1863 Conscription Act allowed them to do so. A significant number of Civil War-era manufacturers and financiers, such as John Rockefeller, John Pierpont Morgan, Jay Gould, and Philip Armour, later went on to become the famous "robber barons" of the decades of rapid industrialization that followed the Civil War. An excellent case in point is J. P. Morgan, who as perhaps the most famous investment banker in American history became the archetype of the robber baron. Morgan, who got his start before the Civil War, and was well off before Fort Sumter, made a fortune during the war off of government manufacturing contracts.

Despite such corruption, and various road bumps and false starts, the North was able to use its superior manufacturing capacity, along with its vast numbers of workers and troops, to grind down the Confederate Army's ability to respond militarily to its invasion of the South. In 1865 Union armies marched in victory parades throughout the North to celebrate their efforts in preserving the Union. Northern manufacturers did not march in parades of their own, but they were also instrumental in their nation's victory as the suppliers of the instruments of war. Their efforts, too, laid the groundwork for the massive industrialization that was to follow, which by 1880 had transformed the United States into the world's foremost industrial power.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Commager, Henry Steele, ed. The Civil War Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents. New York: Bobbs-Merill, 1973.

Dew, Charles B. Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.

Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.

Hareven, Tamera K., and Randolph Langenbach. Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory City. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861-1901. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934.

"Manufacturing in the Slave States: Establishments, Capital Invested, Product Value, and Employment, by State: 1860-1870" (Series Eh40-49). In Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition, ed. Susan B. Carter et al. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Available online from http://hsus. cambridge.org/.

McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Millett, Allan R., and Peter Maslowski. For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1984.

Morris, Charles R. The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy. New York: Times Books, 2005.

New Haven Daily Palladium, May 19, 1865.

"The Purchase of Cloth Abroad." Chicago Tribune October 31, 1861.

Ross, Steven J. Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890. Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 1985.

Stott, Richard B. Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Whitten, David O., and Bessie E. Whitten. The Birth of Big Business in the United States, 1860-1914: Commercial, Extractive, and Industrial Enterprise. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006.

Wright, Gavin. The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: HarperCollins, 1980.

Zunz, Olivier. Making America Corporate, 1870-1920. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Steven Barleen

Southern Manufacturing

On April 14, 1861, after a short, bloodless battle, the Confederate States of America raised its flag over Fort Sumter, a coastal fortification in South Carolina, and in doing so initiated a war that its manufacturing base was ill equipped to deal with. One challenge among many for the Confederacy in the coming conflict was to make the best use of its much smaller manufacturing base in order to keep both the civilian population supplied with the necessities of life and the military supplied with the necessities of war. The manufacturing advantages of the North seemed overwhelming when compared to the South's largely agriculturally based economy, and yet many in the South were confident that their region could rise to the challenge and mobilize and equip an army that could successfully challenge the North, both on the field of battle and in the factory. In fact, some saw the arrival of conflict with their Northern neighbors as being a positive impetus for the development of the nascent Southern manufacturing base. For example, the June 1861 issue of the Southern Cultivator boldly proclaimed: "We notice with unfeigned pleasure the impetus which the secession movement has given to the manufacturing enterprises in the South. Old establishments are being remodeled, improved and enlarged, and new ones are springing up, while a much larger number still determined upon, are not yet, however, located" ("Southern Manufactures," 1861, p. 187).

Despite such optimism, the South began the conflict with a substantial disadvantage in terms of its industrial capabilities. In 1861, the United States was only a few decades away from becoming a global manufacturing superpower, but most of that incipient producing might was located in the North. The gross value of manufactured items produced in the states that made up the Union was more than ten times greater than the gross value of items manufactured in the states that made up the Confederacy, which collectively produced just 7.4 percent of the nations manufactured goods at the start of the war. Another stark statistic for the Confederacy was that the Union produced 97 percent of the nation's firearms (Tindall and Shi 1992, p. 642). The state of Massachusetts alone produced more industrial goods than all of the states of the Confederacy combined (McPherson 1982, p. 23). In terms of manpower for its manufacturing base, the North also clearly had the advantage: There were twenty-two million people in the states that made up the Union, whereas the Confederacy had a population of only nine million, with one-third of those being slaves (Tindall and Shi 1992, p. 642).

The reason for the South's distant position behind the North in manufacturing lay in a history of Southern investment in land and slaves, which had made the South largely rural in nature. At the start of the Civil War, the South had few cities of any size and the vast majority of its people lived in rural areas. Whereas around 35 percent of the population of New England and around 21 percent of the population of the Middle Atlantic States lived in urban areas, in the South only Virginia had an urban population that even came close to 10 percent of the state total, and the urban population of the South was less than 5 percent (Fox-Genovese 1988, pp. 74–76). The rural nature of the South,

Southern methods of agriculture—which were labor-intensive and thus did not require as many manufactured farming instruments as were typically used on Northern and Western farms—and heavy investment of capital in land and slaves did not provide strong incentives for the establishment of a local industrial base.

Despite these stark figures, the South had a great deal of wealth that could have been put into manufacturing. Robert Fogel and Stanely Engerman in their seminal Time on the Cross (1974) point out that the South as an independent nation ranked fourth in the world in terms of wealth. The South's wealth, however, was based largely on the ownership of slaves and land, and with these two resources, the South became a major exporter of crops such as cotton, tobacco, rice, and indigo. An article in the October 12, 1861, edition of the Raleigh (North Carolina) Daily Register asserts that in 1860 the North exported slightly less than 98 million dollars worth of products, whereas the South exported around 219 million dollars worth. Unfortunately for the Confederacy's quartermasters, the South's exports could not be used to equip an army (Nicholson 1861).

Despite being well behind the North in manufacturing, several historians have concluded that Southern manufacturing deficiencies were not the chief cause of the South's ultimate defeat. The Civil War was still largely a low-technology conflict and Southern manufacturers in conjunction with government planners did a fairly good job of maintaining production throughout most of the war. Also, because it took so long for the North to coordinate the full capacity of its manufacturing base, Southern manufacturing deficiencies were not felt for some time as strongly as they might have been.

Despite the lack of urban centers and the structure of the Southern economy, several Southerners during the decades leading up to the Civil War had provided the region with a nascent industrial base. Historian Chad Morgan points out in his study of manufacturing in Georgia that during the 1850s, while the number of manufacturing establishments only increased from 1,527 to 1,890, the amount of money invested in these industries increased from $7,086,525 to $16,925,564 (2005, p. 10). According to the 1860 census, the total number of manufacturing establishments in what would be the Confederate states numbered 20,631, with the lead being taken by Virginia, home to more than 25 percent of these enterprises, followed by North Carolina, with nearly 4,000. The 1870 census indicates that the South had 33,360 manufacturing establishments, an increase of 62 percent over the course of the decade, despite the destruction brought to the South by Northern armies (Carter et al. 2006). The problem was that while the South was developing its industries, the North was developing its own faster, so that even though the South had 20 percent of the nation's industrial base in 1840, by 1860, despite a strong attempt by Southern industrialists to catch up, the South's share of the nation's manufacturing output was only 16 percent (Morgan 2005, p. 6).

From the beginning of the war, the government in Richmond encouraged manufacturing in two ways: It established direct state ownership of essential industries, especially ordnance and munitions production, and at the same time promoted private enterprise through the use of various incentives and penalties. These ranged from giving further contracts to businesses that produced according to Richmond's demands, to punitively taking over businesses that didn't meet the requirements set for them. Conscription, which passed the Confederate Congress on April 16, 1862, also aided the wartime manufacturing effort by allowing the government to exempt certain industrial workers from military service. Many patriotic Confederates declared their intention to meet the manufacturing demands of war in the face of the Northern blockade of the South's coasts. In November 1861, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, wrote optimistically of the South's ability to meet its logistical requirements, even if doing so might require its citizens to sacrifice:

As long as hostilities continue the Confederate States will exhibit a steadily increasing capacity to furnish their troops with food, clothing, and arms. If they should be forced to forego many of the luxuries and some of the comforts of life, they will at least have the consolation of knowing that they are thus daily becoming more and more independent of the rest of the world. If in this process labor in the Confederate States should be gradually diverted from those great Southern staples which have given life to so much of the commerce of mankind into other channels, so as to make them rival producers instead of profitable customers, they will not be the only or even the chief losers by this change in the direction of their industry. (Davis 1906 [1861], p. 643)

Similarly, optimistic pronouncements came from many other quarters as well. An announcement concerning the production of gunpowder published in the September 14,1861, edition of the Raleigh Daily Register proclaimed: "We are glad to see that North Carolina is taking the lead in the manufacture of this indispensable article in the prosecution of the war….This company expects soon to be able to turn out one thousand kegs a day." And in an editorial titled "An Appeal to Planters," published in the March 19,1862, Savannah (Georgia) Daily Morning News, the following is found: "We must not only have soldiers sufficient to prevent our gallant army from falling prey to superior numbers, but we must encourage domestic manufactures that shoes and clothing may be furnished for that army."

Despite the best efforts of Southern manufacturers and politicians to ensure that the war effort would be supplied, problems with supply abounded. In his 1907 memoir, Edward P. Alexander, who had served as chief of ordnance for the Army of Northern Virginia, recalled some of the logistical successes and failures. On the one hand, the Ordnance Bureau in Richmond was notable "for its success in supplying the enormous amount of ordnance material consumed during the war" (p. 54). On the other hand, the quality of at least some of the material produced by Southern manufacturers was questionable: "Our arsenals soon began to manufacture rifled guns, but they always lacked the copper and brass, and the mechanical skill necessary to turn out first-class ammunition" (p. 54). Through the capture of Northern guns, Alexander remarks, his soldiers were able to get the arms they needed, but "we were handicapped by our own ammunition until the close of the war" (p. 54). Colonel William Allan, who was the chief of ordnance of the Second Army Corp, recalled that in 1864 the Ordnance Department was not providing his men with enough nails and horseshoes. To compensate, he combed his units for blacksmiths and put them to work, producing what Richmond should have been providing him. However, this innovative plan was disrupted by a lack of iron. Allan responded by sending his own wagons and men to Richmond to obtain the iron from a manufacturer there. The story demonstrates obvious problems with Southern manufacturing and supply during the Civil War. In this case, the supply of raw materials was available but not the ability to turn them into manufactured products that could get to troops in the field.

Of course, a major problem the South faced in trying to keep its factories running stemmed from its need to supply its armies with soldiers while also supplying its manufacturing establishments with workers drawn from a population much smaller than its enemy's. Also, while the North gained over 800,000 immigrants between 1861 and 1865, the Confederacy not only did not see a gain in immigration during the war, it also lost many of its skilled workmen at the start of the conflict, as they returned to their homes in the North or donned Confederate uniforms (Dew 1966, pp. 228–264; Millett and Maslowski 1984, p. 163). As many as 750,000 men fought for the Confederacy, and this near total mobilization of young Southern white men inevitably translated into a shortage of industrial workers (Millet and Maslowski 1984, p. 163).

Despite starting the war well behind the North in terms of manufacturing capacity, the Confederacy made a strenuous effort to supply its needs. However, in the end Southern manufacturing was no match for the producing power and manpower of the Union.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, Edward Porter. Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907.

Beringer, Richard E., Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones,and William N. Still Jr. Why the South Lost the Civil War. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986.

Beringer, Richard E., Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones,and William N. Still Jr. The Elements of Confederate Defeat: Nationalism, War Aims, and Religion. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Boritt, Gabor S., ed., Why the Confederacy Lost. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Carter, Susan B. et al., eds. "Manufacturing in the Slave States: Establishments, Capital Invested, Product Value, and Employment, by State: 1860-1870" (Series Eh40-49). Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Available from http://hsus.cambridge.org/.

Commager, Henry Steele, ed. The Civil War Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents. New York: Bobbs-Merill, 1973.

Davis, Jefferson Finis. "Letter from Jefferson Finis Davis, November 18, 1861." A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Including the Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861-1865, ed. James D. Richardson. Nashville, TN: United States Publishing Company, 1906.

Dew, Charles B. Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966.

Fayetteville (NC) Observer, July 17, 1862.

Fogel, Robert William, and Stanley L. Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1974.

Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

Genovese, Eugene. The Political Economy of Slavery. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.

J., H. H. "An Appeal to Planters." Savannah (GA) Daily Morning News, March 19, 1862.

Luraghi, Raimondo. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation South. New York: New Viewpoints, 1978.

McPherson, James M. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.

Millett, Alan R., and Peter Maslowski. For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1984.

Morgan, Chad. "The Public Nature of Private Industry in Confederate Georgia." Civil War History 50, no.1 (2004): 27–46.

Morgan, Chad. Planter's Progress: Modernizing Confederate Georgia. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.

Nicholson, A. O. P. "The Southern Confederacy Its Commercial and Financial Independence." Raleigh

(NC) Daily Register. October 12, 1861, Issue 82; col. A.

Raleigh (NC) Daily Register. September 14, 1861, Issue 74, col. C.

"Southern Manufactures," Southern Cultivator (1843-1906). Atlanta: June 1861; Vol. 19, Issue 6.

Tindall, George Brown, and David Shi. America: A Narrative History, 3rd ed. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1992.

Whitten, David O., and Bessie E. Whitten. The Birth of Big Business in the United States, 1860-1914: Commercial, Extractive, and Industrial Enterprise.

Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006. Wilson, Harold S. Confederate Industry: Manufacturers and Quartermasters in the Civil War. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2002.

Wright, Gavin. The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.

Steven Barleen

Factories

When the Civil War began in 1861, the large factory operation had not yet become the normal means of production in the United States. Instead, the 1860s were a transitional period between earlier forms of manufactur-ing and the factory system that would come to dominate the American landscape over the course of the decades to follow. While some industries, such as textiles and meat-packing, had already begun the transformation process from small shop and mid-sized manufactory to large factory, most industrial workers still labored in small manufacturing operations. These maintained a different rhythm and style of work than the factory system that would later transform the lives of workers and the landscapes of America's large cities and small towns.

Thus, most workers during the Civil War still worked in shops that reflected more traditional forms of manufacturing. For example, in New York City in 1860, small shops predominated in the metal trade: only fourteen out of fifty-eight establishments had more than ten workers (Stott 1990, p. 47). The smallness of shop operations meant that workers often labored alongside their supervisor, who was oftentimes the shop's owner. This individual was likely a skilled craftsman who had worked his way up in his profession to the point where he owned his own operation. The pace of work in such establishments was not regulated by the rhythm of machines, and labor was not usually subdivided into monotonous, simple tasks (Stott 1990, pp. 36–37).

One of the most important factors in the shift from small manufactories to large factories was the steam engine, which allowed factory owners to run larger and more complex machinery that could do the work previously done by several laborers. During the 1860s, around 50 percent of the country's manufacturing enterprises still relied on waterpower (Gutman 1977, p. 33). Waterpower fluctuated based on the amount of water available in streams or rivers, which rose and fell, and thus could limit the size and output of an industrial operation. Steam power, in contrast, promised a steady supply of energy, allowing costly work stoppages to be avoided. It also meant that there was no limit on the size of a manufacturing operation. The introduction of steam power also made it possible for a factory to be located anywhere, not just next to a river. Before the rise of steam power, the need to be positioned near a stream or river meant that many shops were located in rural areas, but with the rise of the steam engine these operations began to move to large cities and grow in scale (Hunter 1985, p. 104). The decade before the Civil War witnessed a massive growth in the use of steam power, and new industries using this technology sprung up. For example, in 1850 in Massachusetts, 43 percent of manufacturing operations used steam power, but by 1860, the percentage had increased to 56 percent (Hunter 1985, p. 110). This rise in the use of steam power directly contributed to the growth of American cities, with the accompanying rise of concentrated manufacturing establishments and the rapid growth of immigrant working-class populations that would fill the factories with workers. Between 1840 and 1880, the total U.S. population nearly tripled, the number of industrial workers more than quintupled, and capital investment increased more than eightfold (Hunter 1985, p. 112). Printing establishments provide an excellent example of how the steam engine enabled operations to grow to massive size. For example, just before the Civil War, the New York firm Harper's employed numerous workers with subdivided tasks, supervised by scores of foremen in a seven-story operation (Stott 1990, p. 50).

While the small shop and mid-sized manufactory were still dominant in American manufacturing at the start of the Civil War, many industries—such as meatpacking, textiles, and arms manufacturing—had begun to move toward the large factory model. Indeed, the textile mills that began springing up in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the 1820s can be considered the first modern factories. By the time of the Civil War, many of these were mechanized to an unprecedented degree, and employed large and highly regulated workforces of a thousand or more (Rodgers 1974, p. 20).

The rise of the factory system increasingly meant that artisans who had previously worked on a product from start to finish now found themselves either tending a machine or performing the same task all day, as managers sought to subdivide labor in an effort to create more efficient systems of production. While many think of the assembly line as originating with Henry Ford in the early part of the twentieth century, James Barrett (1987) points out that assembly line production was employed in the meatpacking industry well before Ford's Model T (p. 20). Whereas in a small butcher shop, a butcher performed every task in the processing of each animal, thereby requiring that butchering be done by a skilled craftsman, large meatpacking plants divided the slaughter of each animal among multiple workers along an assembly line that could be sped up at will by the foreman. Many other industries went through the same development from small shops where workers performed tasks by hand from start to finish, at their own pace, to factories where work was highly subdivided, regimented, and mechanized.

As the war began, both the North and South faced the necessity of putting hundreds of thousands of men under arms, while at the same time continuing to keep their factories running. This did not present as much of a difficulty for the North, with its large pool of immigrants, as it did for the South, with its much smaller white population and its large black population that consisted primarily of slaves living in rural areas. The Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, provides an excellent example of some of the unique difficulties that Southern factories encountered during the Civil War. By the time the Civil War began, Richmond was the most important center of iron production in the South, and the Tredegar Iron Works was the largest of the mills, employing over 1,500 workers (Dew 1966, p. 3). The start of the conflict meant that Tredegar would have to rapidly increase production to meet the needs of the Confederacy. However, Tredegar initially encountered problems in stepping up production due to several factors: First, a number of workers rushed to join the newly formed Confederate Army; second, immigration as a source of labor had dried up due to the war; and finally, many of the mechanics with manufacturing know-how who had been employed at Tredegar were from the North and returned home at the start of the war. To fill these gaps, the managers at Tredegar hired almost three times as many youths as they had the previous year, and they increased the number of slave workers to around 10 percent of the labor force (Dew 1966, pp. 90–91). By 1863, Tredegar's labor shortage had become so acute that its owners were forced to hire 113 black convicts (p. 253). With large numbers of slave workers, Tredegar's management also faced the constant problem of its workforce liberating itself by running away (p. 255). By 1864, even slave labor was in short supply, and slave owners were able to command higher and higher rates for the renting of their slaves. Tredegar found itself in a bidding war for the renting of slaves with other manufacturing interests and even the army itself, so that prices for renting slaves jumped from a low of $225 to as much as $400 in a short time. Additionally, federal raids throughout northern Virginia further reduced the supply of available labor (p. 259). Nonetheless, by the end of the war, Southern factories were almost completely dependent on slave labor. For example, during the last few months of the war, more than three-quarters of the workers at the Naval ordnance works at Selma were slaves (p. 263).

Southern factories were hampered throughout the war not only by labor shortages, but also by problems with the supply of resources needed for manufacturing war essentials. By contrast, the North was able to more-efficiently utilize its factories as the war progressed, a development that proved crucial to its eventual victory.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barrett, James R. Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Dew, Charles B. Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966.

Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.

Gutman, Herbert G. Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America. New York: Vintage Books, 1977.

Hareven, Tamara K., and Randolph Langenbach. Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

Hunter, Louis C. Steam Power. Vol. 2 of A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1780-1930. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985.

Morris, Charles R. The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy. New York: Times Books, 2005.

Rodgers, Daniel T. The Work Ethic in Industrializing America, 1850-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

Ross, Steven J. Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890. Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 1985.

Stott, Richard B. Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York City. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Steven Barleen

Arms Manufacturing

The manufacturing of arms during the Civil War occurred mainly at two sites: the U.S. Government Arsenal in Springfield, Massachusetts, commonly known as the Springfield Armory, and—on the Confederate side—the Virginia Manufactory of Arms at Richmond, known as the Richmond Arsenal. Together these sites produced the majority of the shoulder-fired muskets used by soldiers in both armies during the four years of the war.

The Springfield Armory

The Springfield Armory's origins dated back to 1777, when a site once used for military training on the Connecticut River in southern Massachusetts began making gun carriages and cartridges. It became a major ammunition and weapons depot, and was a target of the 1787 Shays Rebellion, when a group of disgruntled farmers led by Daniel Shays attempted to seize control of the site and the state in order to prevent foreclosures on their land. The Springfield Armory began making muskets in 1795, after President George Washington decided that a domestic manufacturing site was necessary in order to reduce the fledgling nation's dependence on foreign-made firearms.

The nearby village of Springfield grew in size and wealth during the first half of the nineteenth century as the Springfield Armory's output expanded. Highly skilled gunsmiths, often German or Irish immigrants, were the most vital members of the workforce, but in 1819 a new lathe was developed that allowed relatively unskilled workers to mass-produce the muskets. The U.S. Ordnance Department's decision to foster the development of interchangeable parts for muskets led to several more innovations at Springfield, including an early example of an assembly-line system, in which individual workers—some skilled, some unskilled—made various parts of a product. The writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited the armory, and the immense stockpiles of new weapons he saw prompted him to pen the 1843 antiwar poem "The Arsenal at Springfield."

Labor tensions arose at the Springfield Armory in the 1840s, prompting a Congressional investigation. Periodically, military control was imposed at the site in order to rein in workers who were determined to protect their job status and wages, which were extraordinarily high for the western Massachusetts area. Indeed, workers were paid so well that many remained there until retirement, and though the European-style apprentice system had long been officially abolished, many of them still managed to pass their jobs down to sons or other family members.

Military control resumed at the Springfield Armory in April 1861 when the Civil War began. Springfield became the sole federal armory after the site at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, was set ablaze by retreating federal troops at the onset of the war. The newly installed commandant at the Springfield Armory was Captain Alexander Dyer, who immediately required all workers to swear an oath of allegiance to the United States. Workers promised to "support, protect, and defend the Constitution and Government of the United States against all enemies… and… that [they would] well and faithfully perform all the duties which may be required… by law" (Whittlesey, p. 158). Dyer also instituted two ten-and-a-half-hour shifts, making the site a near round-the-clock operation, along with a raft of new rules prohibiting loitering, smoking, reading, and casual conversation on the job.

A Target of Espionage and Sabotage In 1861 the Springfield Armory employed 350 men and produced 1,500 rifle-muskets per month (Wilson 2006, p. 119). In 1864 nearly 2,500 workers were employed at the Armory, and production that same year reached a peak of 250,000 (Hattaway 1997, p. 38). During the war, however, the Armory had a difficult time maintaining an adequate workforce, as smaller rifle-musket manufacturers began springing up in the city to answer the demand of the Ordnance Department, attracting workers who sought both more money and less draconian working conditions.

The Springfield Armory was an obvious target for Confederate spies. It was ringed by an iron fence and heavily guarded by a Union Army detachment. After the war's end, revelations surfaced that in 1864 two enemy agents, possibly men disguised in women's clothing, had succeeded in planting a grenade-like device in the extremely flammable armory—but the gunpowder-filled iron pellet failed to ignite. A massive fire earlier that same year, in July, was attributed to spontaneous combustion, and destroyed the milling shop and dozens of milling machines. Because tables and other pieces of furniture were saturated with oil due to the nature of rifle manufacturing, the building was extremely flammable; however, firefighters on staff prevented the conflagration from spreading to other buildings.

The Richmond Arsenal

The Confederate states entered the war at a serious disadvantage in respect to armament stores. The decision to locate the capital of the Confederacy at Richmond, Virginia, was partly due to the fact that it was the most industrialized city in the largely agrarian South. One of Richmond's most impressive plants was the massive Tre-degar Iron Works, a privately owned foundry that had been making iron locomotive carriages and railroad tracks since the late 1830s. The city was also the site of the Richmond Armory and Arsenal, which had been in operation since the 1790s but operated at a far lower capacity than its Springfield counterpart. The Richmond site turned out an average of 2,130 muskets annually prior to war compared to the Massachusetts numbers of 1,500 muskets every month, but Confederate firepower increased with the help of machinery taken from the Union-sacked federal armory at Harpers Ferry (Bilby, 1996). The Richmond Arsenal began making the "C. S. Richmond," a .58-caliber musket that would be used by the majority of Confederate infantry.

Responsibility for finding a solution to the serious disadvantage created by the South's minimal supply of the raw materials and skilled artisans necessary for arms manufacturing fell to the Confederate Army's Ordnance Bureau chief, Josiah Gorgas. He ordered a massive material effort to be implemented: Church bells were taken down and melted to provide cannon-making material, and even the stills used by moonshine makers were seized for their copper parts, which were made into musket percussion caps. Because potassium nitrate was crucial to the production of gunpowder, Gorgas sent crews into Appalachian caves to collect saltpeter, its naturally occurring mineral form. He even decreed that chamber pots should be leached of organic nitrogen, a byproduct of human digestion.

The Tredegar Iron Works made cannons for the Confederate Army, and outfitted the South's first ironclad battleship, the C.S.S. Virginia; at the height of the war, it employed a thousand workers (Heidler, p. 1970). A natural target of enemy spies, it was guarded by the Tredegar Battalion, one of the Confederate side's home-guard units. Like the Richmond Arsenal, the Tredegar Works was forced to employ women and children as the war dragged on and labor shortages worsened; it also made use of slave labor. An article in the July 29, 1864, Richmond Whig reports the beating of a slave by the foreman of the arsenal's smithing shop, who whipped the man after he denied the accusations of other workers that he was stealing copper. The article focused not on the fact that a worker had been whipped, but on whether he had been excessively whipped, and if this punishment should be an issue for the local magistrate. "We do not advocate negro murder, or cruelty towards negroes, but certainly it is much better when negroes are caught stealing to thrash them soundly than to pester the courts with their cases," the newspaper opined (p. 2).

Spectacular and Tragic Explosions Rates of injury and even death were high at the Richmond Arsenal because of the dangerous nature of the work done there, and the large number of unskilled employees. Indeed, in July 1861 a respected scientist lost his life at the Confederate States Laboratory adjacent to the Arsenal: Joseph Laidley, a chemist working for the Confederate cause, reportedly walked into a building with a lit cigar, though this account was disputed even at the time. "The wooden out-building and the interior one in which the powder was manufactured, were found blown down, and many of the timbers wrenched, twisted and broken in a manner to show the almost inconceivable power of the powder," the Richmond Dispatch reported. "Mr. Laidley was found lying on his back, one of the most horrible objects of mutilated humanity which it is possible to conceive…. [N]othing remained to mark the features of a man, except a pair of whiskers and a portion of the neck" (July 4, 1861, p. 2).

A far deadlier explosion, which left forty-five women and children dead, occurred at the Confederate States Laboratory on March 13, 1863. A report published a week later in the Daily Morning News of Savannah, Georgia, recounted that victims jumped into the river with their clothes aflame, and a boy named Currie "had his clothing burned entirely off, and ran about crying, 'mother, mother!' He soon died." The paper attributed the fire's cause to "the ignition of a friction cannon primer." One of the employees, Mary Ryan, "was working taskwork, filling these [primers] on a board in which they were inserted. Instead of taking them from the board singly, she struck the board upon the bench in her haste to empty them, and the explosion of one of them by the concussion was the dire consequence" ("Explosion at the Confederate States Laboratory Works on Brown's Island," March 20, 1863).

As Union troops neared Richmond and the city was forced to evacuate, Confederate officials ordered troops to dump 25,000 rounds of artillery ammunition into the James River. Reportedly, they also ordered troops to set fire to the Richmond Arsenal, as well as other buildings—though some Virginians later disputed this account. The Tredegar Iron Works survived, but was consumed by flames a century later. The Springfield Arsenal continued to serve as a main supplier of rifles to the U.S. Army up until the Vietnam War.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bilby, Joseph G. Civil War Firearms: Their Historical Background and Tactical Use and Modern Collecting and Shooting. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1996.

"Charged with Cruelty to a Negro." Richmond Whig (VA), July 29, 1864, p. 2.

"The Explosion at the Confederate States Laboratory Works on Brown's Island." Daily Morning News (Savannah, GA), March 20, 1863.

Hattaway, Herman. Shades of Blue and Gray: An Introductory Military History of the Civil War. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997.

Heidler, David Stephen, Jeanne T. Heidler, and David J. Coles, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.

"Horrible Catastrophe." Richmond Dispatch (VA), July 4, 1861, p. 2.

Whittlesey, Derwent Stainthorpe. The Springfield Armory: A Study in Institutional Development. Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1920.

Wilson, Mark R. The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861-1865. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Carol Brennan

Shipbuilding

When hostilities began after the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in April 1861, both sides of the conflict geared up for war. Each side faced different challenges in order to accomplish its goals. Interestingly, both sides had to build a navy from very little, but it was the Northern states that were able to outproduce the Southern ones.

The Confederacy

When the Confederate government was formed in February 1861, its new Congress established a Navy Department on February 21. Its biggest challenge was to build a serviceable fleet completely from scratch. Over the course of the war the Navy Department, headed by Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory (1813-1873), scrambled to accomplish a great deal with limited means. Furthermore, the Confederate Navy competed with the Army for resources and transportation. These issues plagued the Confederate Navy because President Jefferson Davis and most of the rest of the government tended to ignore the navy in favor of the army.

The Confederacy acquired ten ships by purchase or capture in 1861 that mounted only fifteen guns. After the central government in Richmond began to operate, the various Confederate states handed over another fourteen vessels. Mallory made an effort to buy and convert merchant vessels for conversion to military purposes, but this initial move was meant only as a temporary measure until new warships could be built. The South, however, had only two major shipbuilding facilities in operation at the outbreak of hostilities. The more famous of these was the Gosport Shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia, which had its name changed in 1862 to Norfolk Naval Shipyard after the Union recaptured the facility; the other was in Pensacola, Florida, and was primarily a coaling and refitting station. There were also a number of private shipyards in the South, most of which were rather modest in size. The majority of these shipyards were in the coastal towns of the South; however, river towns like Columbus, Georgia, and Selma, Alabama, became focal points of ship construction as the war lengthened.

Secretary Mallory also sent agents abroad, particularly to Great Britain and France, to secure vessels of war from a variety of shipbuilders. The most famous of these vessels were the commerce raiders Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah. These ships would wreak havoc on the shipping of the United States.

Unable to compete with Northern industrial capacity, Mallory believed that quality was better than quantity. In a letter to a congressman, the secretary stated that he regarded the "possession of an iron-armored ship as a matter of the first necessity. [The] inequality of numbers may be compensated by invulnerability: and thus not only does economy but naval success dictate the wisdom and expediency of fighting with iron against wood" (Still 1987, p. 8). Ironclad ships became the hope of the Confederate Navy against the Federal Navy. Congress allotted two million dollars for building ironclads. There were several facilities in the South able to produce or roll iron, but only eleven were large enough to produce enough for the navy's needs.

Another way to combat the might of the Union Navy was to offer letters of marque and reprisal, which allowed private citizens to be considered enemy combatants; if these private vessels sank or captured an enemy vessel, prize money would be awarded. Several types of ships were built by civilians in order to take advantage of the letters and possibly become wealthy. These vessels tended to be experimental in design. One ironclad, the Manassas, and the submarines, like the H. L. Hunley, fell into this category. Some citizens also built ships to be given to the navy to use. One instance of this was David S. Johnson, who built the gunboat Chattahoochee in Saffold, Georgia, along the lower Chattahoochee River. In all, between 1861 and 1865, Southern shipbuilders laid down 150 vessels. The competing interests of the Confederate government, the states, and private citizens hampered the overall effort to build enough warships.

The Union

At the time of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, the United States Navy had ninety ships, of which forty-two were in commission. Most were stationed around the globe carrying out a variety of missions outside the United States. In the aftermath of Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for a blockade of Southern ports as part of the strategy to strangle the rebellious states into submission. With over three thousand miles of coastline, the Union needed more ships than it had in 1861. Within a year a vast construction program was under way. About 300 vessels were added to the Union Navy; these newer vessels started to make the blockade effective. By the end of the war, 418 vessels had been purchased, of which 313 were steamers. More than 200 other warships were built under contract, and over sixty of these were ironclads. These ships made the U.S. Navy one of the largest, most modern, and most powerful navies in the world.

The important shipyards in the North included: Philadelphia; Boston; New York City; Portsmouth, Maine; and the Navy Yard in Washington, DC. In addition, there were dozens of private shipbuilders on the coasts, the Great Lakes, and along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The state of Pennsylvania alone could outproduce the entire South. While the Merrimack was slowly going through its transformation, the shipbuilders and iron makers in New York built the Monitor in about ninety days. The average price of a Union ironclad ended up being about $400,000.

As wide-ranging as were the designs of Confederate ships, Union ships were just as varied, if not more so. There were fast cruisers to chase down the commerce raiders the South unleashed, as well as ironclads, a submarine program, and river vessels. The most successful of the river vessels may have been the double-enders, which were capable of going up- or downriver without having to turn around.

The size of the Federal Navy tipped the scales in favor of the Union during the war. Mostly it was the effort of the fleets to not only blockade the Southern coastline, but also to be able to attack shore fortifications at various points in order to slowly reduce the capacity of the Confederate war effort.

Labor

Interestingly, Northern shipbuilders also had problems with a scarcity of labor like the South. Many shipyard workers joined the military for patriotic reasons. Others went into the Navy hoping to strike it rich with prize money made from captures. Later in the war, some shipyard workers were conscripted. In the South, hundreds of qualified carpenters, mechanics, ironworkers, and many other workers simply left because they were foreign-born and had no reason to support the rebellion. Those who were left volunteered for the army or were later drafted. The army was reluctant to allow these individuals to leave the land forces in order to resume their trade. As the war dragged on, the increasingly stringent draft measures continually reduced exemptions to the skilled workers the shipyards needed. The U.S. Navy Department worked better with the Union Army to deal with these issues than the Confederates ever did. In addition, Union shipyards were willing to hire black workers who had fled northward from the Confederate states.

Because of these manpower shortages and the need to complete the ships rapidly, wages for Northern workers tended to rise throughout the war. From late 1862, wages rose from $1.42 per day to $3.51 in March 1865 (Roberts 2002, p. 135.) Even so, labor strikes were fairly common in Eastern shipyards. New York City's shipbuilders suffered through a number of strikes late in 1862 and early in 1863, well before the draft riots of the latter year. The Boston Navy Yard shut down three times during 1863. Because of a tighter labor market, the Western shipyards experienced very few strikes.

Strikes were also common during the first year of the war for Southern shipbuilders. One strike occurred in New Orleans during November 1861, when the workers pushed for an increase in pay, which delayed the construction of several vessels. A more revealing episode came in 1864 at Selma, when Commander Catesby R. Jones (1821-1877) was threatened by his workers that they would strike if not given a wage of ten dollars a day because they had heard that the Atlanta shops were paying that price (Still 1987, p. 73).

The Confederate Navy tried a variety of ways to supplement the work that required completion. There were generous offerings of overtime pay. The Navy also shifted workers from one facility to another hoping to catch up on the backlog of work. A rivalry developed among these establishments for workmen, however, which hampered cooperation when it was needed the most. Eventually, this caused the Navy simply to take control over many of the works; even then, the deteriorating value of Confederate money exacerbated the problems. When one facility raised its wages, the other local producers would also have to raise their wages or lose their workers. Further compounding the production issue was that workers were organized into local defense units. Lieutenant Robert D. Minor (1821-1871), placed in charge of the ordnance works at Richmond, complained that his men were in the field and could not supply ammunition.

Eventually Southern shipbuilders followed the example of their Northern counterparts and put African Americans to work. A cross-section of free skilled and slave unskilled laborers worked in Southern shipyards. In the ordnance works of the navy in 1865, more than half the workers were African American (Still 1987, p. 69).

In the end a greater industrial capacity and a more stable workforce allowed the Union to build a much larger navy than the breakaway states. Even though the Confederate Navy had several successes, it was eventually restricted to fighting a defensive war, always responding to the initiatives of its Union counterpart. As the coastal cities fell to Union forces, the Confederates adapted as best they could, but in the end it was not enough. Even the commerce raiders, which greatly annoyed Yankee merchants, were only a nuisance to the Union's war effort.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Canney, Donald L. Lincoln's Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization, 1861-65. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998.

Hackemer, Kurt H. The U.S. Navy and the Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex, 1847-1883. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001.

Luraghi, Raimondo. A History of the Confederate Navy. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996.

Roberts, William H. Civil War Ironclads: The U.S. Navy and Industrial Mobilization. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.

Still, William N., Jr. Confederate Shipbuilding. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1987.

Jeffery Seymour

Textiles

In the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War, America's transition from an agricultural economy to a nation of industry accelerated. The nation's manufacturing centers, located primarily in Northern cities, were connected to labor markets, suppliers, and wholesalers by an ever-expanding network of roads, canals, rivers, and railroads. Remarking on the mountainous wooded landscape that housed much of the nation's industry, Thomas Kettell wrote in his tract Southern Wealth and Northern Profits that "the mountain torrents of New England have become motors, by which annually improving machinery has been driven" (Kettell 1860, p. 52).

A significant portion of the nation's industrial output consisted of textiles, a word that literally means "that which is woven." During the nineteenth century, textiles were chiefly made from five natural materials—hemp, flax, silk, wool, and cotton—or combinations thereof. Textile mills powered by water or coal sprang up in every Northern state, producing spun thread, yarn, ribbons, and a range of woven fabrics. While the production of these materials had been a household function at the start of the nineteenth century, by the 1830s, family self-sufficiency was relinquished in favor of inexpensive mass-produced goods.

Technological ingenuity drove the Anglo-American textile industry. Following the development of the power loom in England in 1784, William Horrocks engineered mechanized improvements in 1813. Other advancements in textile manufacture included the transition from water power to steam; the use of iron in the carding process; advances in the techniques of bleaching; and the development of the first synthetic dyes in 1856. In a related advance, Elias Howe patented the lock-stitch machine in 1846, and Isaac Merritt Singer did the same with the flying-shuttle machine in 1851. The Singer Sewing Machine Company, which sold machines on installment and provided free instructions to homemakers, quickly became the leader in the home sewing machine business.

Cotton Becomes King

Although the United States produced a variety of raw materials for textiles, cotton quickly eclipsed all others. An early industrialist named Samuel Slater (1768-1835) established one of the first U.S. cotton mills in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793, a year after Eli Whitney's cotton gin automated the process of separating cotton fibers from cotton seed. New England retained its concentration of textile mills up until the Civil War, producing almost 70 percent of the nation's total textile output by 1840. According to Treasury Department reports, by the 1850s, the Northern states manufactured five times as much cotton goods as the Southern states (Kettell 1860, p. 37).

Silk, another textile produced for both import and local consumption, was also made in the North. The invention of the Jacquard loom in France in 1804 sparked an increase in the use of this fiber. Boasting the region's leadership role in the U.S. silk industry, a Philadelphia newspaper was able to boast in 1858 that "from indisputable data…textile fabrics are produced here on a scale which constitutes this city the great centre of that production for the whole United States" (North American and U.S. Gazette, March 5, 1858).

While the wool industry in the United States never achieved the export capacity of the cotton industry, it did keep pace with new technology and thus satisfied local demand. As Samuel Slater's biographer, George S. White, commented in 1836, England's leading position in the textile industry—particularly its share of the woolen market—might well be eclipsed by the United States, "where ingenuity and enterprise eminently mark the national character" (White 1836, p. 222).

Because of its versatility, raw cotton quickly established itself as one of the nation's primary exports. By 1834, the Southern cotton crop accounted for one-half the total cotton grown worldwide. Between 1835 and 1858, overseas demand—primarily from England—increased on average by 12.5 percent per year (Kettell 1860, p. 38); by 1860, cotton accounted for almost half of all U.S. exports. As an editorial in the New York Herald reported that same year, the Southern states exported four and a half bales of raw cotton, a quantity worth $25 million "before the merchant, the mariner, or the manufacturer had put a hand to it to double, triple and quadruple its value" (July 26, 1860, p. 4).

While U.S. cotton growers provided sufficient quantities of raw materials to keep factories in operation, quality also factored largely into the demand for Southern cotton. The highly desirable long-staple Sea Island cotton (with filaments of 1-1/8 inch in length and over) was grown only in Georgia, while New Orleans produced an especially soft and silky variety of cotton that could be had no where else. Goods produced in "the colonies" were "preferred to English, by reason of their superior texture; and also, that they shrunk much less in the process of printing," reported the Boston Daily Advertiser, quoting a London source (March 21, 1876).

England needed large amounts of raw materials in order to keep its urban industrial base growing. With regard to cotton, it found a source in the American South, and abolished import duties in order to make transatlantic trade more attractive. As a writer noted in the London Times, "the importation of cotton into this country [England]…is so large and so steady that we can steer our national policy by it; it is so important to us, that we should be reduced to embarrassment if it were suddenly to disappear" (Kettell 1860, p. 39).

Although cotton cultivation had been attempted—sometimes unsuccessfully—in India, Jamaica, Australia, China, and Africa, the quality of cotton grown in these areas proved to be inferior to that of the Southern United States. In addition, Southern growers had an efficient and cost-effective labor force: slaves. Ironically, while the slavery issue was hotly debated in the English Parliament, and some called for a ban on anything other than "Free Labour Cotton"—cotton harvested without employing the "domestic institution" of slave labor—the country's demand was so great that none but slave labor could fulfill it. The year after England repealed its import duty on raw cotton, the country's demand for plantation-grown cotton fiber increased sixteen-fold (Kettell 1860, p. 41).

"The jump which the consumption of cotton in England has just made [following the repeal of the import duty] is but a single leap, which may be repeated indefinitely," the Times writer predicted. "There are a thousand millions of mankind upon the globe, all of whom can be most comfortably clad in cotton. Every year new tribes and new nations are added to the category of cotton wearers." With cotton such a "universal necessity," England "must continue to hope that the United States will be able to supply us in years to come with twice as much as we bought of them in years past" (Kettell 1860, p. 41). Although demand from England remained strong, the moral questions swirling around the slavery debate in Parliament cast a pall over trade relations with the Southern states.

Fashion Trends

Related to the increasing demand for U.S. textiles were developments in fashion. The years just prior to the U.S. Civil War saw the advent of the hoopskirt or cage crinoline, which was introduced in 1857. This marvel of engineering—a metal cage supported at the waist and ingeniously hinged to allow for movement and collapsibility—encouraged stylish women to wear ever-more voluminous skirts, some of which reached 15 feet in circumference. Silk taffetas in plaid and striped patterns, as well as iridescent or "shot" versions—available in ever-increasing combinations of vivid hues following the invention of synthetic coal tar dyes in 1856—also gained popularity among more affluent ladies (Tortora and Eubank 1998, p. 302).

Among men, a new demand for cotton came with the 1850s introduction of blue jeans, a garment made from heavy cotton denim devised by the German-born entrepreneur Levi Strauss (1829-1902) in San Francisco to address the needs of miners for sturdy work overalls during the California gold rush. Such other items of clothing for men as frock coats, trousers, and vests, were now factory-made and easier to obtain. Manufactured in standard sizes rather than made to order, some vests and trousers featured hidden buckles that allowed their fit to be adjusted, as well as manufactured hooks and eyes, snaps, and buttons (Tortora and Eubank 1998, p. 302).

While the South exported its luxurious long-staple cottons to overseas markets and Northern textile mills, the garments worn by the men, women, and children at work in the cotton fields were crafted of cheap, rough-textured cotton or wool obtained from manufacturers in Rhode Island or Europe. Most slaves were issued two outfits per year, one for warmer months and one for cooler weather. A coarse white homespun cloth frequently used in garments worn by slaves in both the South and in the West Indies became known as negro cloth (Bishop 1866, p. 339).

Textiles in the Union

The Southern states were a primary market for Northern manufactured goods prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. Of the $60 million worth of purchases estimated to have been made by Southern consumers in 1860, over a third consisted of boots and shoes, while textiles came in a close second (Kettell 1860, p. 60). "The shipowners and the manufacturers of New England, the merchants and mechanics of New York, and the manufacturers and miners of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, all draw no small portion of their daily wages and profits from the stream that rises in the cotton fields of the South," asserted a New York Herald editorial in the summer of 1860, addressing this trade between North and South (July 26, 1860, p. 4). The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 interfered initially with this profitable trade. In addition to leaving Northern businesses holding trade losses totaling $300 million, the war disrupted the North's supply of raw cotton and labor (Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, July 7, 1864).

While Northern textile mills experienced a temporary setback in 1860, their initial losses were mitigated by the new orders that poured in from the Union Army. The Civil War generated an immediate and substantial demand for ready-to-wear uniforms. In the Union Army alone, over 1.5 million uniforms were required each year between 1861 and 1865, and the cloth for all these uniforms was a product of the Utica Steam Woolen Company, of upstate New York (Coates 2002, p. 103). Because textile mill machinery was already operated in large part by women, the transfer of men from the factories into the Union Army also affected wartime industrial output in the North far less than it did in the South.

In fact, the war accelerated the spread of mechanization and the efficiencies of the factory system. The number of sewing machines used by Northern factories doubled between 1860 and 1865, and shoe production increased as a result of the development of a machine for sewing the uppers to the soles (Depew 1895, p. 571). To supply the textiles needed for uniforms, tents, and other supplies, smugglers provided Southern cotton while wool came from New England and the Western states. To meet demand, Northern mills also turned to Britain and France, where English woolens and Egyptian and Indian cotton were readily available. This transatlantic trade was made easier because such Northern ports as New York City were already central to the textile export business, having eclipsed such Southern ports as Charleston years before.

Also affecting the Northern textile industry during wartime was the Morrill Act. A controversial measure supported by Northern Republicans and spearheaded by the Vermont congressman Justin Smith Morrill (1810–1898), the Act established a tariff wall designed to protect Northern industrial manufacturing from foreign competition. The Morrill tariff, which went into effect on April 1, 1861, imposed a protective tax of between twenty and fifty percent on imported silk, cotton, woolens, and iron. Although the tariff provoked some manufacturers in England to shift their support to the Confederacy, its impact was so minimal that two further tariffs were enacted during the war as a way to fund the war effort. Because of the favorable balance of trade resulting from the importation of raw cotton by the North, French and English markets continued to do business with the United States despite the costs on their products imposed by the Morrill tariff (Boston Daily Advertiser, March 21, 1876).

Textiles in the Confederacy

Textile manufacturing in the South, more specifically the manufacture of cotton fabrics, had increased dramatically during the 1850s. Such companies as the Charleston Cotton Manufacturing Company, which began business in the summer of 1850, inspired one business journal to note that "our Southern friends [seem]…destined to become largely interested in fostering at home those branches of industry to which their great staple owes its importance and value" (North American and United States Gazette, July 2, 1850). Despite this expansion and the advocacy of such individuals as the South Carolina businessman William Green, the industry was still in its infancy when war broke out in 1861.

As Edward A. Pollard explained in his The Lost Cause, "the South entered the war with only a few insignificant manufactories of arms and materials of war and textile fabrics. She was soon to be cut off by an encircling blockade from all those supplies upon which she had depended" (Pollard 1866, p. 132). With President Abraham Lincoln's proclamation in April 1861, ordering naval commanders to blockade Southern ports, the importation of foreign goods to the South slowed dramatically. Apart from a small amount of goods smuggled in by blockade runners, Southern stores quickly found their shelves emptied of inventory.

The slogan "Cotton is king" reflects the heady exuberance of many in the South following the formation of the Confederacy on February 4, 1861. Representatives of the city of Columbus, Georgia, even published an open invitation to Northern "men of reason" in the New York Herald. While regretting that "circumstances have made it necessary to dissolve the government of the United States," the writers proclaimed that "the boasted shuck and hay trade of the Northern States dwindles into utter insignificance compared to this great staple," cotton. "We invite…all the manufacturing and commercial men of the North, who are our friends, to leave the bleak republican North. Unite with us; make our homes your homes, and you shall share the prosperity and happiness in store for us" (April 9, 1861, p. 2).

Unfortunately for the residents of Columbus, Georgia, and elsewhere throughout the South, prosperity and happiness were not the end result of secession. Although the much-hated Morrill tariff applied only to Northern exports, the Confederate president Jefferson Davis's policy of free trade was undermined by the antislavery debates ongoing in England. Like England, Europe "entirely misapprehended the controversy between the Northern and Southern States of the Union," according to the London Times (March 5, 1861, p. 2). Observing the tensions between North and South only weeks before the firing upon Fort Sumter drew the new Confederate States of America into war, the Times writer maintained that "the slavery question… has been merely introduced as a blind… and the real point of contention lies in the national tariff." Southern interests, in fact, "have only one object, which is to get the highest price for the greatest quantity of cotton" (March 5, 1861, p. 2).

While the South had great quantities of cotton, it had few mills to process it, resulting in clothing shortages. Homespun clothes for civilians quickly became the norm. In order to reproduce anything even remotely resembling the crinoline, fashion-conscious Southern women relied on their wits and the textiles to be found in their homes to maintain their wardrobes. Like Scarlett O'Hara in Margaret Mitchells 1936 novel Gone with the Wind, they made use of everything from window curtains to bed hangings. Skirts and blouses were cut from aprons, shawls, and other large spans of cloth, while sleeves became tighter so that new sleeves could be cut out of fuller existing sleeves. Kid gloves were replaced by silk or lace mitts, new hair ribbons were a rarity, and white summer dresses were no longer trimmed with French lace. Women also patched their clothing with scraps cut from discarded garments. As Elzey Hay wrote in Godey's Lady's Book, recalling Southern fashion during wartime, "Before the blockade was raised all learned to wear every garment to the very last rag that would hang on our backs" (Hay 1866, p. 32).

Perhaps fortunately, most American fashion magazines were published in such Northern cities as Philadelphia and Boston. With the circulation of these periodicals now restricted to the North, Southern women felt less pressure to conform to the latest styles. "We knew very little of the modes in the outer world," Hay recalled (Hay 1866, p. 32). "Now and then a [fashion magazine]…would find its way through the blockade, and create a greater sensation than the last battle." According to Hay,

…the finest traveling dress I had during the war was a brown alpaca turned wrong side out, upside down, and trimmed with quillings [small rounded ridges in a piece of cloth] made from [an] umbrella cover. I will venture to say that no umbrella ever served so many purposes or was so thoroughly used up before. The whalebones served to stiffen corsets and the waist of a homespun dress, and the handle was given to a wounded soldier for a walking stick. (Hay 1866, p. 32)

As the supply of textiles continued to diminish throughout the South, prices correspondingly went up. In the bonnet market, for example, a well-connected milliner could pay the going rate for a simple bonnet, refashion it, and then sell it for four times her investment (Hay 1866). For the average Southern woman, however, wartime required a return to home industry. In addition to their own fashion needs, the wives and mothers of Confederate soldiers had to find a way to outfit their loved ones. Hand looms and spinning wheels were retrieved from attics, and the womenfolk set about transforming King Cotton into cloth. A popular song of the era, reportedly written by Carrie Belle Sinclair, captures the spirit of the times. "The homespun dress is plain, I know,/ My hat's palmetto, too; But then it shows what Southern girls/ for Southern rights will do," are some of the lyrics to "The Homespun Dress." "We scorn to wear a bit of silk,/ A bit of Northern lace,/ But make our homespun dresses up,/And wear them with a grace" (Silber and Silverman 1960, p. 68).

After the Reconstruction, in the New South Era, the cotton industry would resume its development, fueled by inexpensive water power, low taxation, and boosterism by the likes of Henry Grady. By 1880, over 14,000,000 acres were under cultivation in the South (Steele 1885, p. 306).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bishop, J. Leander. A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860. 3 vols. Philadelphia: Edward Young & Co., 1866.

Coates, Earl J. Don Troiani's Regiments and Uniforms of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002.

"Cotton and the Constitution: The Relations of Politics, Industry, and Trade." New York Herald, July 26, 1860, p. 4.

Depew, Chauncey M., ed. One Hundred Years of American Commerce: A History of American Commerce by One Hundred Americans. 2 volumes. New York: D.O. Haynes & Co., 1895.

"Factories at the South." North American and United States Gazette, July 2, 1850, p. B3.

Hay, Elzey. "Dress under Difficulties; or, Passages from the Blockade Experiences of Rebel Women."Godey's Lady's Book, July 1866, p. 32.

Kettell, Thomas Prentice. Southern Wealth and Northern Profits, as Exhibited in Statistical Facts and Official Figures: Showing the Necessity of Union to the Future Prosperity and Welfare of the Republic. New York:George W. & John A. Wood, 1860.

Letters from the 44th Regiment M.V.M.: A Record of the Experience of a Nine Months' Regiment in the Department of North Carolina in 1862-3. Boston: Boston Herald, 1863.

Lord, Daniel. The Effect of Secession upon the Commercial Relations between the North and South, 2nd ed. New York: New York Times, 1861.

"The Morrill Tariff in Europe." Daily Morning News, (Savannah, GA) March 27, 1861.

"Our Columbus Correspondence." New York Herald, April 9, 1861, p. 2.

Pollard, Edward A. The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates, 2nd edition. Chicago, IL: E.B. Treat & Co., 1890.

Silber, Irwin, and Jerry Silverman, compilers. Songs of the Civil War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.

Steele, Joel Dorman. A Brief History of the United States. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1885.

"Textile Fabrics: Their Production and Distribution." North American and United States Gazette, March 5, 1858, col. B.

"The Textile Trades: From the London Hour." Boston Daily Advertiser, March 21, 1876.

Times (London, England), March 5, 1861, as reported in the Daily (Savannah, GA) Morning News, March 27, 1861.

Tortora, Phyllis, and Keith Eubank. Survey of Historic Costume, 3rd ed. New York: Fairchild Publications, 1998.

White, George S. Memoir of Samuel Slater: The Father of American Manufactures, 2nd ed. Philadelphia, PA: privately printed, 1836.

Pamela L. Kester