05/25/2026
EXCERPT #10: Chapter 10: With What Will They Fight?
Once a week I post a small portion from each chapter. I hope you enjoy them and I do appreciate your comments.
Click here to read more on my forthcoming autumn book, including the must-read Introduction and the Bibliography: https://tinyurl.com/3dvax5wz
BACKGROUND: Scores of newspapers around the country before and after Fort Sumter discussed the gunpowder issue, often deeply and intelligently. Not only have historians skipped past this fundamental threshold issue, but I have yet to find ONE who is even aware of it. I have sent this chapter to several major historians, each of whom profess surprise and even shock at what they are reading.
DO NOT fool yourself with reverse engineered thinking, i.e., the war lasted four years so munitions were not an issue for the Confederacy in 1861. The reality on the ground impacted public speeches and grand strategy. The Lincoln administration's knowledge of the true state of affairs will shock you. You will never look at a basic history of the Civil War, or Confederate strategy, the same way again. I guarantee it.
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On May 18, five weeks after Fort Sumter, Ohio editor James Reed with the "Ashtabula Weekly Telegraph" put a fine point on the discussion by asking the central question that should have been on the mind of every serious military planner in the United States and the Confederacy: “Where is the Rebel army to get powder once it has burnt up the supply it has stolen from the government?”
Reed went on to pen a particularly important column under the headline “Where We Have the Advantage.” The editor listed the population differential and other issues before zeroing in on his central point: “The Rebellious states are very soon to be without the munitions of war.” The "Charleston Mercury" paper, continued the Ohio editor, “earnestly deprecates the waste of any more powder in firing salutes,” and the Nashville papers complain of gunpowder’s high price and that there was “very little to be had.” The material was scarce because the Southern states could not produce a pound of military-grade powder.
The government “will see to it that the Rebels get no [gunpowder]” from the border state mills, “nor can they obtain it from abroad while their ports are blockaded. In all other materials for war they are equally dependent,” he insisted, “and will be equally helpless when effectively shut in. In a stand-up fight we do not doubt the bravery or military skill of the Southerners,” Reed concluded, “but that is but a single one of the many things essential to success in a military campaign.”
A stunning series of articles by the "New York Times" in the spring and summer of 1861 meticulously set forth the difficulty of making military-grade powder and the South's lack of a single powder mill. It also noted that it would take perhaps as long as one year to build such a place. Jefferson Davis needs "time," explained the writer, which is something the United States simply could not give him. Pulling triggers anywhere would end the war quickly, regardless of who was the tactical victor on a given field.
If the editors of newspapers could do basic math and read and synthesize news from Southern papers, so could the Lincoln administration.
Click here to read more on my forthcoming autumn book, including the must-read Introduction and the Bibliography: https://tinyurl.com/3dvax5wz
