John C. Carter
Selma & Tredegar
Wed Jun 27 00:23:37 2001


Hayes...

The Iron works at Selma were an incredible example of what the Confederacy could do once it put its resources into something. It's too bad Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Government didn't "nationalize" more manufactories. The Confederate Iron Works across the South during the war went a long ways to refuting the claim that the South was not able to industrialize like the North.

I believe the source of your quote is from A.B. Moore in his "History of Alabama" in 1934. Malcom McMillan covers the Selma works very well in "The Alabama Confederate Reader" and quotes Moore in his chapter on Confederate Ordnance and Supply. While the Selma works were probably producing half of the cannon and two thirds of the ammunition for the Confederacy, it achieved that feat during the last two years of the war under the constant presence of Union forces in and around Alabama. Over the course of the war, however, it was second to the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia. According to Clement Eaton ("A History of the Southern Confederacy"), "the mainstay of the Confedercy in producing cannon was the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond." Also E. Merton Coulter ("The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865") believes that Richmond was the "greatest center of war manufacturies in the Confederacy." Along with Tredegar, Richmond also housed an armory (which made 5,000 small arms a month- the largest in the Confederacy according to Coulter), and the Confederate States Laboratory which made percussion caps, cartridges, and fixed ammunition. At the beginning of the war, Tredegar was the largest iron works in the South and one of the largest in the country- outproducing most of the northern works, with the noted exception of the R. P. Parrott foundry of Cold Spring, New York. Until the Confederate Government acquired Selma in 1863, no foundry in the South, other than Tredegar, was able to cast heavy artillery. In 1860 there was only one rolling mill in Alabama- the one at the Shelby Iron Works.

Selma and Tredegar suffered similar fates late in the war. Cavalry raids in Alabama destroyed the iron works in Selma, and cavalry raids in the Shenandoah Valley and Blue Ridge Mountains destroyed the source of most of Tredegar's resources, which cut their production in half during the last year of the war. Tredegar was fortunate in that it was located in Richmond and was benefit to a good defense to almost the end of the war. It was absolutely amazing what the works at Selma were able to due in so short a time and under such duress, as compared with Tredegar.

The best source on Tredegar is "Ironmaker to the Confederacy" by Charles B. Dew, which has just recently been released in a new edition.

John