Arms Fabrication in the Old Dominion

Even before organization of the Tredegar Works of Joseph R. Anderson, Virginia had a long history of efficient arms fabrication from Revolutionary times. The South was undergoing by 1860 an industrial revolution which the War accelerated. More than 1,600 mechanics were employed in iron works in Richmond by 1860; by 1855 at least 41 locomotives built in the Tredegar works were running on Southern rails; three other locomotive shops existed in Richmond, while in the western part of the state, at Wheeling, were two rolling mills. Five more rolling mills plus one at the Tredegar existed in the Southern states; two of these had been completed in Georgia in 1856 and 1858.
The South was not, as is often parroted by grade school children and their teachers, a purely agricultural society under “King Cotton,” fighting the industrial North. During the decade preceding 1860, Southern politicians promoted Southern industry; the Norfolk Navy Yard was a ship factory of major importance, with a boiler shop that was a significant contribution to the Southern cause. From it were obtained 1,200 pieces of ordnance, more than 50 of them big Dahlgren “pop bottle” naval guns of the latest type, which were rich prizes of War for the Confederacy. Young Lieutenants Catesby Ap Jones and George T. Sinclair, formerly USN, now CSN, Friday night, April 19, 1861, spirited away safely 1,300 barrels of gunpowder sent to Richmond and another 1,500 barrels secreted inland, without the knowledge of the commander of the Navy Yard. It was from Norfolk eventually that the iron-plated steam frigate Merrimac ventured forth to revolutionize naval warfare.

“Great as was the loss of the ships,” wrote Admiral David D. Porter, USN, later, “it was much less than the loss of guns.” The essential heavy ordnance was shipped to many parts of the Confederacy. Porter had cause to rue their loss, for it was such great guns at Forts St. Philip and Jackson on the Mississippi that he later had to pass in reaching and taking New Orleans.
A contract for artillery destined for Fortress Monroe across the water from Norfolk was held by Dr. Junius L. Archer of the Bellona Foundry, near Richmond. A million dollars having been appropriated January 29, 1861, by the Virginia legislature for the defense of the Commonwealth, it was decided to pay off Dr.

Blackened shell of Richmond industrial center greeted eyes of Union President Lincoln as he arrived at capital of South in 1865. View shows rail sheds at left, Tredegar partially visible in background right. Destruction by Union guns and official C.S. burning was complete as any saturation bombing attack on a city in WWII.

Archer and refund to Washington the money paid to Archer by the Federal Government. Then the guns were taken possession of by the superintendent of the State Armory who deposited them therein “for safe keeping.” The Tredegar was not the only cannon foundry in Virginia, but it was the greatest in all the South.
An enterprise of considerable size, the Tredegar Works was organized and rolled its first iron in 1837, just a few years after the first iron was puddled and rolled at Pittsburgh. Next were founded the Shockoe Manufacturing Company, later the great machine shops of the South, and the Virginia Foundry Company, and two more rolling mills. The Tredegar promoter, Deane, now took over the Virginia Foundry Company as a stock company in 1838, but the enterprise stumbled from lack of business foresight and was in real trouble when Joseph Reid Anderson stepped in, recently schooled at West Point and virtually a beardless youth (though he may have worn a mustache). Graduate of the Class of 1836, Anderson resigned in 1837 to become Chief Engineer of the Shenandoah Valley Turnpike, and built the road between Staunton and Winchester.
That a West Pointer should resign from the Army to take up a civilian career was not unusual in those days, regardless of placement in his Class or opportunities for promotion. West Point was nearly the only scientific school in the United States, and its graduates had a profound influence upon the industries of the United States from the earliest days. Anderson successfully saved the Tredegar by competing in Northern and foreign markets with English and Yankee ironmasters. Serving first as registered agent, he became in 1848 sole owner of the Tredegar Works. One of four major founders who supplied the United States with heavy ordnance, Anderson before 1860 had built the ironclad U. S. Revenue Cutters Polk and Colorado, and furnished the United States with 1,200 cannon. Tredegar iron was recognized as one of three leading American charcoal irons, superior to the English.
When a visitor in September, 1860, strolled through the Tredegar Works he beheld the Krupp of the South. Two rolling mills were busy supplying rails for the South; separate foundries were at work pouring artillery, railroad car wheels, and water pipe for Richmond. The blacksmith’s shop had a steam hammer and 25 forges; the locomotive shops were finishing shiny engines for Southern railroads, while marine, stationary, and other applications of steam engine were being constructed. An engine and sawmill had been boxed up for shipment to Cuba, a new market for the expanding and flourishing Southern industrial economy. The existing shops were from 140 to 180 feet long; there were two great machine shop buildings three stories and four stories high; the noise of tools at work in them deafening.
Nearby, a whole new plant for making cast steel, metal precious as diamonds for small arms manufacture, was being erected. Business troubles had shaken the Tredegar in 1859, but Anderson, quick thinking as a secessionist, and enterprising to take advantage of the demand for state armies, sent out a circular letter to the governors of ten Southern states, offering them his foundry and twenty years experience. “Will make anything you like, prices same as to United States Government” was its sentiment. Five days later South Carolina declared itself an independent country.
The record of the Tredegar in the years that fol-

Virginia State Armory was activated 1860, fitted out with new machinery and phased into Richmond’s War production to make Rifle Muskets of the latest Springfield pattern. Arms made and finished there were top quality.

owed was impressive. The powder rolls for the great gunpowder works which General Rains set up at Augusta, largest powder factory in the world, were made here. The plate of the Merrimac, rolled two inches thick and too tough to punch—it had to be drilled for the rivet holes—was the most famous production. But naval torpedoes, and Brooke guns, the iron “Napoleons” which replaced the brass cannon in C. S. service, were developed at Tredegar, as well as the Williams repeating cannon. To the rank and file, Colonel Anderson’s greatest contribution was in the machinery which he prepared to re-activate the State Armory in 1861. During an enlargement of the Armory in 1862, Tredegar supplied the boiler equipment and machine-base castings. On these tools, with partly captured fixtures and partly new fixtures designed and made by draughtsmen and machinists at Tredegar, General Gorgas built the Richmond Rifle Muskets and Carbines, and later the Sharps Carbines, with which the South opposed the might of the North. Between July 1, 1861, and January 1, 1865, the Richmond Arsenal issued 323,231 rifle muskets cleaned, repaired, renovated, and actually made there (estimated at about 40,000), and 30,067 cavalry arms, carbines principally. This was the spirit of Richmond.