recently visited many sites showcasing its history. the city was founded in 1820 and given its name by alabama's only vice president, william rufus king. learn more about selma all weekend here on american history tv. >> during the civil war, selma became the second largest manufacturing and distribution point of war material within the confederate states of america. in the latter part of the year, the last year and a half of the war, it is estimated that selma supplied a half to two-thirds of all the munitions and supplies used in the western portion of the confederacy. at the time of selma's capture, the inventory of the arsenal was cataloged and made a matter of record and at that time within the arsenal was over a million small arm cartridges, over 60,000 artillery shells on, and on and on so selma was not insignificant. at the beginning of the war,

though, selma was not really involved in the manufacturing process and at the time of secession, selma was not in the role or even being looked at as becoming such a manufacturing and distribution site. in the first year of the war, selma contributed over 600 men into the war effort. beginning in 1862, as the federals began to tighten the noose on confederacy through the blockade of the ports and through the taking of vicksburg and memphis and mississippi river, the confederate leadership realized they needed to move their manufacturing and distribution points deeper into what was called the dark gray interior of the confederacy and at that point they begin to look at what areas would be conducive to producing war material and distributing. now, the confederacy really had two avenues of east-west distribution and that was

through the rail lines from chattanooga to memphis and then across the lower south through atlanta and west point, georgia, over into alabama to montgomery and westward into mississippi. now, the problem with this southern line, let's call it, was that is it was not complete. the rail lines came to montgomery but ended and then anything that was transported had to be put on steam ships, brought down to selma about 70 miles by river and then back on to the rails. so that was not ideal but when huntsville fell, when some of the northern areas fell, the northern route through the confederacy was not available so they began to look elsewhere. selma was prime for this. selma has deep river access to the port of mobile. selma has access by river to montgomery and the rail lines to the east, rail lines to the west. it also is a very short distance from the cahaba river valley coal and iron fields so we had an almost inexhaustible supply of coal and iron.

we also had woodlands supplying timber for ships. we also had agricultural areas that was essentially part of the bread basket of the confederacy nearby so selma had many positives going for it so it was moved to selma and shortly after that an existing foundry in selma, able to secure contracts with the new government to produce heavy cannon, iron plating and munitions. and that foundry would later develop in 1863 into a joint navy-army venture and eventually just a navy venture which would become known as the selma naval gun foundry and ordnance works. at that time it gave selma the focal point of manufacturing as well as distribution. the naval gun foundry was actually located on the site where we are today. we're on the side of the selma dallas county museum of history and archives.

at this site would have been found multiple buildings and it encompassed 13 steam engines and boilers. you had a facility of about eight acres that was designed and purpose built to manufacture great cannon at the time, smooth rifled cannons and they ranged in weights from about 8,000 pounds up to 25,000 pounds so these were not small weapons and at the time they were considered the finest weapon, muzzle loaded, for size, in the world. to manufacture a seven-inch brook rifle cannon required over a thousand man hours of machining. this was done not with our tools of today but with period tools run by steam power such as the lathe behind us here. this lathe is not an example of the largest they had here. this one would not handle a piece of casting, a cannon 20 feet long. this would have been used for smaller components to go along

with it but the manufacturing in these cannons was an exacting thing. and produced here was, as i've said, the brook rifle and smooth bore cannon, considered the finest of its day. we're on that property here but adjacent to the river was the shipyard which encompassed 13.5 acres. its importance was that selma produced more iron clad war ships than any other site in the confederacy during the war. there were four produced here. c.s.s. tennessee, c.s.s. huntsville in tuscaloosa as well as the c.s.s. phoenix sometimes known as the memphis. they were produced here and not as well known, a submarine was produced here as a proud adventure called the st. patrick. the most famous was the c.s.s. tennessee. to give idea of scale of ship here.

this is an iron clad vessel that was 209 feet long. to put that into perspective, think about the last football game you saw. this ship is two-thirds the length of that football field and prior to the war, there was no ship building industry in selma at all but yet they were able to produce this and they did it in such a rush that when the construction was started, the trees that made up the timbers were still standing in the forest around selma so this was an effort that was put forth by people who did not originally have the skills, manpower or wherewithal to do these things so what they were able to accomplish was nothing short of totally awesome that they could pull things together and become as important as they were. here we're on the banks of the alabama river at selma. in late march of 1865, general james harrison wilson moved on selma from his winter camps north of the tennessee river and he had spent the winter there training and equipping his

troops into what was the largest and best equipped cavalry force that the war and this country had ever seen. as they moved down on to selma, the confederate defenders were unsure of their destination, even though they suspected selma, they were not sure. at the same time wilson began to move, general frederick steele moved up from the coast and what general forrest and general taylor who were the department commanders thought was a movement upon montgomery so general forrest had wilson coming down from the north, steele coming up from the south and they weren't sure what to do with the limited manpower so forrest was forced to send some men towards steele in anticipation of that so it was not until wilson had been moving for four days that forrest realized with certainty that selma was the ultimate goal. wilson appeared before selma on the morning of april 2, 1865. and forrest met him in the

trenches at selma. selma had at that point been protected by a series of continuous earth works that stretched from the east side of selma near beach creek in an arc about 3 1/2 miles around to the west side of the city to the bank of the alabama river near valley creek. it was defended on the south side by the river, unapproachable by that way but general forrest was forced to defend the town with a cobbled together group. he only had 1500 men who were dependable troops. then you had militia and state troops, convalescents and he even pressed private citizens into service so general forrest did not have his normal complement of men in which to defend selma whereas general wilson had 9,000 battle hardened troopers equipped with the spencer rifle which allowed them to fire seven shots without

reloading whereas the confederates had muzzle loaders so they were at a distinct disadvantage to federal troopers. the battle of selma was a short, intense affair. as wilson's men had come down from the north to selma, they were attacking the city from the north and essentially on the north and east and north and west sides. in the middle was this militia, untried troops, older men, younger boys who were not battle tested. they were the weak link and wilson was aware of that and when long attacked, he attacked those men primarily and they put up little resistance and quickly collapsed under the pressure, allowing federal troops to come over the wall and within the fortifications, into what we would call the confederate rear. at that time confederate troops had to fall back to an unfinished inner line of works closer to town to try to

establish a second line of defense, which they did. the federal troops actively chased them over half a mile of ground into the woods and once they got to the inner line of defenses, general wilson, with his fourth cavalry escort, attacked in a charge down summerfield road, sabres in the air, horses flying, against what was known as readout number three or small fort. that attack was broken up and repulsed and general wilson reformed with dismounted, men on foot, to attack, at which point they carried that point but at that time the confederates had withdrawn. it had gotten dark. as federal troops came in, confederates were trying to get out of the city. you had short, intense combat on the streets as escaping confederates would run into federals. one troopers defined what he

-- put to pen what he experienced. he said women and children screaming, excitement high everywhere. it was most like the horrors of war, a captured city burning, demoralized army retreating and victorious one advancing, the scene in selma the night of april 2, 1865. that night, the city was open. to his credit, general wilson, the next day, would post a guard at any house that requested one but that night that did not happen. the troops had free reign of the city and there were outrages, there was robbery. no one was safe, no private citizen was safe, they all suffered outrages at the hands of the invading troops. the destruction of selma was almost complete. the federal troops by order had shot and killed 300 horses and 80 mules and left them where they were. the animals that the federal

troops brought in, that they rode in on, that were broken down, unusable, they killed and replaced with animals captured here. when they did this, they killed them where they stood. the commons areas were full of dead and dying animals and the locals had no way to move them. they had to bring in oxen from the countryside to drag the carcasses and throw them in the river. the food stuffs were ruined. what the federals could not use they destroyed. they would mix the syrup in with the flour to render it unusable so the people were left in an almost starving condition when they left so selma had gone far from being, at the beginning of the war, a very wealthy, rich, agricultural area, to one that at the end of the war was almost destitute and unable to care for itself but through the intrepidness of the people, they quickly rebuilt and became what

was by the latter part of the 1800's, was the political and economic center of the state of alabama. not much was heard of the fall of selma because april 2, when selma fell, was the same day general lee was forced out of petersburg and the evacuation of richmond began. the same day that federal troops left selma, april 9, 1865, was the same day general lee surrendered to grant at appomattox so selma was rendered to a footnote at the end of the war but had the loss of selma occurred six months or a year earlier, without a doubt the war would have ended sooner. cities city stuart taft -- tour staff recently traveled to selma, alabama. you can findor