month of active
operations, and not a pound was being made throughout its limits. To
enter upon a great war without a supply of this essential material, and
without effective means of procuring it from abroad, or of manufacturing
it at home, was appalling.

No one was so well aware of this condition of things as the President of
the Confederate States, who, being an educated soldier, was fully alive
to the requirements of war, and at once took active measures for the
creation of war material. Among these, was the erection of a great
gunpowder manufactory.

It is the custom of the different nations, in addition to the private
factories of gunpowder, to have erected at different points national
works to supply the demand for war. The very limited resources of the
Confederacy not admitting of division, had to be accumulated at one
point. Mr. Davis was necessarily acquainted with most of the officers of
the old army, as he was graduated at West Point, served with great
distinction in the war with Mexico, and had been Secretary of War under
the Federal Government; he was thus enabled to select his agents for the
different services required. Thus that very competent officer, General
Gorgas, was placed at the head of the Ordnance Department; I had the
honor of being appointed to take charge of the manufactory of gunpowder,
a _carte blanche_ being given. The necessary works were to be erected as
nearly central as practical; to be permanent structures, and of
sufficient magnitude to supply the armies in the field and the artillery
of the forts and defences.

On the 10th July, 1861, I left Richmond to enter upon this duty. Making
a rapid tour through the South to find a suitable site, Augusta was
selected, for several reasons: for its central position; for its canal
transportation and water-power; for its railroad facilities; and for its
security from attack--since the loss of the works would have been
followed by disastrous consequences.

The small amount, comparatively, of gunpowder captured with the Navy
Yard at Norfolk, with that on hand from other sources, had been
distributed to the army gathering on the Potomac, to Richmond, Yorktown,
Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, and other places; scarcely any being
left for the force assembling under the command of General Albert Sidney
Johnson, in Kentucky. The Federal forces, having the requisite
advantages for equipment and transportation, were assembling in large
bodies, and