But there were neither harness, saddles, bridles,
blankets, nor other artillery or cavalry equipments.
To furnish one hundred and fifty thousand men, on both sides of the
Mississippi, in May, 1861, there were no infantry accoutrements, no
cavalry arms or equipments, no artillery and, above all, no ammunition;
nothing save arms, and these almost wholly the old pattern smooth-bore
muskets, altered to percussion from flint locks.
Within the limits of the Confederate States the arsenals had been used
only as depots, and no one of them, except that at Fayetteville, North
Carolina, had a single machine above the grade of a foot-lathe. Except
at Harper's Ferry Armory, all the work of preparation of material had
been carried on at the North; not an arm, not a gun, not a gun-carriage,
and, except during the Mexican War, scarcely a round of ammunition, had
for fifty years been prepared in the Confederate States. There were
consequently no workmen, or very few, skilled in these arts. Powder,
save perhaps for blasting, had not been made at the South. No saltpeter
was in store at any Southern point; it was stored wholly at the North.
There were no worked mines of lead except in Virginia, and the situation
of those made them a precarious dependence. The only cannon-foundry
existing was at Richmond. Copper, so necessary for field-artillery and
for percussion-caps, was just being obtained in East Tennessee.
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