michael o'donnell, who went missing in action during the vietnam war. sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's "q & a." next on american history tv, west point history instructor major david lambert discusses how gunpowder was outsourced and manufactured in the mid 19th century. the new york military affairs symposium hosted this event. it's about an hour and 40 minutes. >> major david lambert is a native of chicago, illinois, following high school he enrolled in the united states military academy at west point, new york, and there he majored in history and graduated with honors in 2007. he commissioned as an officer and served as a tank platoon leader and company executive officer at ft. hood and in mosul, iraq, from 2008 to 2010.

in 2011, he deployed to the republic of korea and commanded a tank company and a batallian headquarters company on the demilitarized zone between north and south korea. in 2014, he was selected for advanced civil schooling at georgetown university in washington, d.c. he graduated with a masters degree in history in 2016, and assumed the position as an instructor in the department of history at the united states military academy. at usma, he taught courses in both military and united states history, and currently directs the academy course civil war america, which studies america's society, politics, economy, and military from 1816 to 1877.

he's joined tonight by his wife, shannon, and together they've got three kids, nate, liam, and elizabeth, 12, 2 and 1-year-old. turn over things to major lambert. >> thank you. [ applause ] thank you so much mr. rowan for the introduction, and thank you all for being here tonight to learn a bit about civil war gunpowder and logistics. as always, although i am a major in the united states army, nothing i say tonight is the opinion or policy of the dod. all views are entirely my own. so that gives me a bit of free reign to tell some great stories and answer some great questions. now here's what we're all here for. gunpowder. i thought about bringing samples. shannon said i couldn't unless i brought enough for everyone so unfortunately there won't be any goodie bags of explosives tonight. that said though hopefully we're

going to learn a lot about it and there will be great information tonight that matters for your own research and for your understanding of america through the antebellum period and through the civil war. so the question i usually get from my students when i first bring up this topic is why gunpowder? why is it worth learning about? why does it matter and why should i sit through an hour of you talking about it? first off, it's really cool stuff. as my job, i'm a tanker, tank commander, so i have a lot of experience on being on the back end of cannons. what that means is you develop a real appreciation for what it actually takes to make a round go down range. you start to see the ways that what goes into the cannon affects what comes out. its accuracy, its performance, how far it travels, and it's effects, and understanding that is critical for understanding as a military historian. but beyond simply the gunpowder, it has so

much more to it than simply being used in cannons. gunpowder in so many ways becomes the commodity of empire when we consider military history in the gunpowder age. gunpowder is what powers the world. we have different goods that, like food, that power individuals. but gunpowder in so many ways powers the system of creating food. it clears land. it's the main way in premodern societies that have access to it that you clear out things like tree stumps. it produces infrastructure. it's used to mine, to dig, to blast ways for railroads. to level hills. it's the key substance for mining. as you start to need coal in order to power your locomotives or steamboats, gunpowder is the commodity that enables you to contain that. it's a key good in diplomacy in the united states' history. it's one of the main items that native american tribes want to trade for. one of the reasons why they actually main tained a relationship with the indian agents put in place by the

united states government to supervise the reservations or to supervise trade relations with them. and finally, the obvious one in so many ways, gunpowder is the key good for war. it's a good that drives the formation and the growth of states throughout the period where it's accessible. to simply put an idea of the scale of what's required for a state to maintain a gunpowder industry, look at the experience of a place like venice, thousands of miles away from the united states, during the 17th century. venice is going to maintain a military establishment just in the single fortress of bressica that costs 44,000 duckettes a year to keep their cannons. that will be more than they spend on their entire army on the italian mainland and in their mainland provinces. so gunpowder is this key commodity that's driving states to become larger, to tax more, to develop bureaucratic systems for how they'll maintain

supplies for their armies. now, not much research has been done looking at how this applies to the united states and whether we fall in the same sorts of dilemmas, in the same sorts of governmental choices that are made by european powers as they adjust to the gunpowder age. my research is focused on answering that question. i'm looking to what extent the experience providing gun powder salt peter and ordnance to the united states army has changed our government, has changed america and changed our economy. and i think this is a critical period for understanding both the military but also the industrial complex that support it. that's the topic of my research and my focus tonight. now, before i can do the fun parts of that, we need to get the science lesson out of the way in a way and to talk about what gunpowder is and where it comes from. so these are the ingredients of

gunpowder. gunpowder is a compound mixed from three basic ingredients. the first one and most largest as far as constituent portion is nitrate. now, the photograph here shows sodium nitrate. it's from a little bit different time period than we're going to talk about tonight and we'll get to the point of why sodium becomes an option but in history from 1776 to 1863, the compound used to manufacturer gunpowder is potassium nitrate. it's still a compound that you probably encounter in your everyday life. it's commonly used a preservative in items like cured meat, and more commonly it's sold as pure as stump remover in local hardware stores. so those are directions you encounter it. the other two constituents are charcoal and sulfur. charcoal and sulfur vary anywere from 15. to 10% of the compound each respectively. the basic recipe will remain the same but small tweaks in the proportions will happen based on

time period and manufacturer to give the powder different characteristics. within the compound, charcoal and sulfur are the fuels. they're what's actually burned up when gunpowder is ignited. potassium nitrate instead serves as the oxidizer. when potassium nitrate is heated, it gives off more oxygen than it takes to burn it. that oxygen goes in to the combustion process of the charcoal and sulfur and makes them burn faster. so much more oxygen is generated by the potassium's decomposition that the charcoal and sulfur start to burn at a vastly quicker rate and undergo a low explosion. what that means is that they burn it slower than the speed of sound instead of higher than the speed of sound. because of that, they produce very little chamber pressure on the gun, allowing black powder to be fired from weapons that are relatively weak in construction. so talking about the manufacturing process. i'll try not to be too technical

with this through the course of tonight, but a few key differences will be pointed out as we consider how the american powder industry is changing. so these are the steps with handy dandy pictures provided by the dupont corps, who will be our largest black powder manufacturer throughout the period we're studying. in the first step, those raw materials you saw on the last slide would be incorporated. in incorporation those materials were dumped into a large wheel mill and then moistened with water to prevent an explosion. the compounds are already flammable if you just put them in the wheel mill, so the water both makes them workable and less likely to explode. despite that, work in the powder mills continue to be exceptionally dangerous throughout the time period we're studying. during the civil war, dupont had 100 employees in their primary powder production facility at the hagely yards in wilmington, delaware. they lost 26 of those workmen to explosions over the course of

the civil war, giving them about a 26% casualty rate. the casualty for antithem was 20%. so let's put that in perspective right there. that working in the powder mills might have been as dangerous as being on the battlefield. now, after these materials were mixed, the second stage was to press the resulting material into cakes. so this wet mix slurry would be moved from the mixing wheel over to the pressing mill. now, the pressing mill would typically be two plates that would squeeze the powder inside a box to improve the density, fill in any air pockets, and better mix the material. what came out was called a mill cake. the mill cake was a slab about the size of this podium of pure gunpowder, but that mill cake was way too big and didn't have enough surface area to be used to shoot anything. so the next stage had to be corning. the mill cake would be fed into a grinder and ground up to the approximate size of the powder that was desired for the application used.

grinding was one of the key steps to the powder production process. so gunpowder is an interesting substance. it forms these little grains when you grind it up. based on the size of the grain, that is how quickly it's going to burn. gunpowder will only burn at its surface. if you have many teeny tiny grains in a pound of gunpowder, it will burn far quicker than if you have very big, large grains. that mattered for different applications of weapon. so for a rifle, which has a relatively short barrel, you would want the powder to burn before the bullet exited the barrel and stopped getting any faster based on the powder burning. for an application like an 1 1k inch 11 inch naval gun, though, you would want a much larger corn of powder because you had much larger for the powder to burn and accelerate the project tile. if it burned too quickly, it would produce too much pressure and burst the barrel, which would happen repeatedly

throughout the time period. so those big powder kernels or the small powder kernels decided the use it would be put to. now, the next step with those powder kernels though was to try and find a way to keep them at the appropriate size. powder could expect to have a very rough life, especially in military use, it could expect to be exposed to water, jostled, bumped along roads, stuck in some poor soldier's cartridge bag and eventually fired at the enemy. to survive that abuse and survive that exposure to moisture it needed to add protective coating called a glazing. so powder would be moved from the corning mill to the glazing mill. in the glazing mill, it would be rotated inside a large drum with a powder made of graphite typically applied. the graphite would form a protective layer on the outside of the powder grain, and the powder grain itself would have any little knicks, crannies, any sort of points that were on that grain sheared off.

the reason why that mattered is that matter would be removed from the glazing barrel. if that matter remained in the powder, it would break off during transport and you would have a lot of very small powder grains and dust. when you attempted to put it in the cannon that dust would burn quickly and probably burst your cannon, which is one of the reasons why properly stored and transported powder was so much safer to use than powder that had been abused. the final step of the power it production process would be packaging. so the powder would be pulled from the glazing mill and moved over to a packaging mill, where it would be loaded in cassings or cartridges and barrels that would then be shipped to field armies. those powder barrels were typically around 100 pounds although they had a capacity for 120 pounds to allow space for the powder to settle and to shift during transport instead of being hard braced into its barrels it made the powder more likely to survive

transport and expand when it encountered moisture. without bursting the barrel storage space. now, making powder is difficult. don't get me wrong. but it was relatively easy to understand as a mechanical process. with a mill, with a press, and with a grinder it could be done on almost any scale. although the best quality powder came from industrial concerns, you could actually do it in your basement or in your cabin or in the backwoods of kentucky as many people would do during this time period. like if this is so hard, why is it worth learning about? why can't the union confederacy just do this in someone's basement and get all the powder they need to fight the civil war? there's a second problem that factors in, and that's the problem of raw materials. so the first raw material was charcoal. we can all probably make it. right? all we need to do is burn wood in a controlled environment where it doesn't have enough oxygen. we've got that. the material after that is

sulfur. sulfur's a little more difficult. i don't think sulfur's sitting around my house but there's a number of production sites at the u.s., locations called sulfur springs. there's one in every state. there's also large deposits sp and large deposits of sulfur in texas that will be explored throughout this time period and almost all of the sulfur that's going to be used in the united states will come from sicily. sicily has large volcanic deposits of sulfur and there will be an industry shipping sicilian se sicilian sulfur to make weaponry. it's also good for a few other things and one of the other things is sugar refining. sulfur is used today to make bleached white sugar. because of that, in the beginning of the civil war there were massive stocks located in the confederacy. the confederacy will have half a million pounds of sulfur located throughout louisiana and it will rapidly impress those supplies

and use them for gunpowder manufacturing throughout the war. the north will maintain open trade relationships with italy and be able to import sulfur throughout the time period also. you also only need 10% as much sulfur as the gunpowder you want to make. they're enough to make 5 million pounds of gunpowder which is about what they're going to use during the entire civil war. so sulfur's not the limiting reagent. what ends up being the problem for both the union and the confederacy and honestly for policymakers throughout u.s. history is the supply of nighter. nighter saw an interesting material and it prevents gunpowder supply for countries around the world now it can come from a lot of places though. one nice thing is you don't have to be able to mine it. you can make it yourself and there are three main methods used to produce it. the first are salt peter

diggings and so i drew a picture of someone doing that process up there. salt peter will naturally be formed any time that you have soil where organic matter is decomposing and protected from water. desourcing conditions are common in the pre-modern world. think about the barns. think about the basements and the dung piles that exist in the society. well, the problem is it's highly soluble so you need ones that are protected from water like ones that are under a roof, and the other problem is they're in someone's barn or in someone's basement. now if you're a state looking to acquire salt peter by this method you have a choice to make. how do i get someone to let me dig up their basement? because that's what i need to be able to fight a war, the stuff that comes from their basements or let me tear down a barn. the states use a number of

different methods and they will offer large monetary incentives for individuals to do it. the european answer is simpler, though and that's to say that the king has possession of all salt peter and he has a right to give permission to dig up your base am, undermine your house and take the saltpeter there as long as they put the dirt back when they're done. that may not do me a whole lot of good after they've dug up my foundation, destroyed my house and knocked out my barn, but that right to dig or as the french will call it throughout the period is the foundation of the saltpeters in england and in france. in england, henry viii begins to assume that right in 1892 when he authorizes saltpeters to go out and start digging in people's homes, but in the english experience there will be great resistance to this. the action of saltpeter diggers, for example, are one of the items that's cited in the parliament during the english

revolution. so there is a vast amount of unhappiness with digging up people's homes to make your gunpowder. who knew? there's one other place you can find it that no one knows and that is caves. saltpeter will actually naturally form in caves mainly through the contact of backwano or bird droppings which are present in the cave with the limestone that makes up most caves around the world. that will form a compound known as calcium nitrate. if calcium nitrate is mixed with wood ashes or potash it forms potassium nitrate, what we look for that makes gun powder and the problem is there are orange so many caves around the world. you know what would be great? if we could make our own artificial cave conditions. so we're going to see people start doing that, predominantly in the netherlands and germany. the main reason is the prevalence of war to import nitroduring wartime so that will

become a method and i call grow it. the formation of saltpeter trenches. what these are are these are big piles of organic waste. it's nasty stuff. it's rotten vegetable, wood ashes and dead animals and it's feces. they'll collect up large amounts of feesies and urine in their cities to place on to these trenches, but over time and with several very unhappy workmen working to flip these piles, it grows saltpeter, vast amounts of it, and this is a way you can make your own salt peter and it takes centralized control and european states will be reluctant to do this because of how much money it costs to have a bunch of workmen who are permanently there tending these saltpeter beds and collecting up waste. so the third method will be the most preferred one for work history and that will be trade for saltpeter. it kind of sounds like we're

outsourcing our problem, right? because we have to have someone else who is doing one of these methods. well, there are places in the world where salt peter is more common. the primary one that's going to be used through our time period is going to be india. there are areas of specifically in behar or bengal where there are large amounts of saltpeter producing microbes that naturally occur in the soil and aren't found anywhere else in the world. so it turns out if enough urine goes into this soil be it human or animal, we are going to get a crust of pure saltpeter out of it. now, indian princes will supply their armies throughout the 17th century, but someone else will find out about it in 1624, the east india company and with that, their first shipments will begin to go back to england, removing the need for england to do this and cause another

revolution with the battle in 1757, the english gained virtual dominion over india that produces all of this explosive. it's very easy to manufacture and the east india company sets up a cast, whose job in india it basically is to pay taxes in the form of saltpeter and to provide it to the east india company. so they receive free supplies basically of this massively important military resource, and they will ship this home by the shipload. everyone thinks that the india trade is dominated by all those goods we learned about, by tea in calico while those may make up a lot of the value of those east india men. more than 50% of the cargo on your average east india man will be bags of saltpeter. they're both the ballast and the way the east india is paying to the british state. the french have gotten in on this, too by the 1750s and the french have their own mines that

are located in their own areas of ya of india and the dutch have set up in the dutch east indys and there will be a tragedy for the french. they'll fight this little thing call the called the seven years' war. during the seven years' war the french supply will nighter will be heavily interrupted and they'll blame their loss on a lack of gunpowder and nighter supplies. the solution adopted by the french court beginning in 1773 chosen by this fine guy named baron turgo which many of you might know from your napoleonic studies and he found antoine lavoisier. he's the first guy to make a scientific investigation of why things light on fire up. the big theory is flageston and

exuded by things that are flammable. le voisiers is first one to say it's the presence of atmospheric oxygen that makes things burn and he'll make his career as the best powder man that france has ever seen. he'll revolutionize gunpowder and set up the first major niter farms in france. so this is going to be where napoleon's gunpowder comes from. in terms of scale, france will go from being able to produce around 800 tons of saltpeter a year using its digging system with a lot of heartache from the people it's dug from to be able to produce it 1700 tons of saltpeter a year without having to dig up people's basements. >> this is the gun powder that will power napoleon's armies and the reason why he doesn't need permanent access to india.

they'll be using imported saltpeter and that will be a weakness for the british military as it considers its world position as we move toward this time period. now let's bring this to the u.s. experience the u.s. will focus on many of the same dilemmas as britain and the u.s. will declare its independence from britain in 1776 and we've been through a process of trying to figure out where the war supplies will come from. americans have been attempting to find their own sources of saltpeter since 1729 which virginia passed the prospecting for saltpeter and for the fine jamestownians to preserve their feces and wood ashes to set up niter beds in the colony. none of those actually pan out, though, and with the british navy able to bring an almost unlimited supply of saltpeter

from india, it just doesn't seem to be a need for us to be independent and that good and then we declare independence and it doesn't seem like the british will want to give us an unlimited amount of gun powder to shoot at them so we'll need to figure out what to do with that. >> that becomes the first question prompting the first continental congress to choose one of these three options when thai establish their first committee on saltpeter in 1774. they'll put some really intelligent guys on that committee. guys like benjamin franklin and benjamin rush and tasked them with figuring out how america is going to be able to produce enough explosives to take us through the revolutionary war. they have these three options on the table, but each of them has a problem. well, they're all scholars of why england had its own revolutions and civil wars. they know that people really didn't like having their homes dug up so that one's probably right out.

we just said we're going to have a revolution over unreasonable searchs and seizures coming in and taking over our homes and that will not work. okay. option two, we can set up these big, very complex beds and start farming our own niter or we're going to need a lot of bureaucrats or a lot of workers willing to devote a lot of time to running these and we'll need to pay a lot of money and plan ahead. those don't really seem like things we'll be able to do in 1774 and the final solution is to trade for saltpeter and the guys that own saltpeter are the ones we're about to declare independence from. in the end what americans tried to do is to go with digging through saltpeter and do it with a system of economic incentives by paying massive bounties over the market price of saltpeter. to put this in terms, americans are paying almost a 400% mark-up

on these key military good through 1775. so, for example, it's around 40 cents for one pound of massachusetts saltpeter. it doesn't sound too bad, but east india's saltpeter was trading at about 6 cents in 1774 prior to the revolution and on top of that there are major payment bonuses for delivering this commodity in bulk. so you can get a total of around 16 pounds just for turning in a 100-pound sack of saltpeter on top of what we're paying you on the value of the saltpeter. no plusses or minuses. this is an enormous economic insensitive and it brings in a lot of people you don't traditionally think of as involved in war industry. the principal manufacturers of this good are going to be women. think about the things it takes to produce saltpeter. you need to dig up some earth and you need to put it in a kettle and boil it for a long period of time, strain off the liquid and then watch that and boil it down until you get salts on the bottom of your pot.

well, a lot of women know how to dig. a lot of women have these kitchen implements and a lot of women are looking for a supplemental income source during the early days of the revolution. instructions on how to do this process are published all across churches, all across newspapers and even in bars in the united states based on that saltpeter commit committee's recommendations and this becomes a focus of female manufacturing during the revolution. even abigail adams, for example, trying her hand at making saltpeter for a quick extra buccal though i doubt she's doing the digging part. so we'll see women involved in this process heavily. the government will also start advancing capital to fine entrepreneurs who think that they can produce their own saltpeter works. massachusetts will attempt to set up a state-funded saltpeter farm and in virginia we'll see exploitation in saltpeter caves

in the west of virginia, but virginia has an interesting way of doing this. they don't have much money, but they have a source of labor they can direct to these producers. in 1776 virginia will remand all slaves currently held in state jails to a saltpeter manufacturer, and give him this free labor source in addition to a bounty on any saltpeter he produces as a method to attempt to produce more saltpeter. the other method that will be tried is in virginia and as a result, many tobacco barns and shelters will be dug up. the labor force on that is also enslaved african-americans and it will create this competency in peter manufacturer among the enslaved that will stick with americans during the next 50 years and many of the small producers we'll see later on in our story will be enslaved, but they'll remember the revolutionary experience in how to produce war material.

now the revolution doesn't last forever. although america's never really able to get self-sufficient and powder, let me get numbers on that. so by 1777, the united states has produced 115,000 pounds of domestic salt peter through these crash production programs. it sounds pretty impressive, right? that's a pretty good number. in the same period we would have imported half a million pounds from france and a million and a half pounds of completed powder produced by those fine powder works set up by levoisier. so we win our independence through other people's gunpowder, but to many americans it proves that it is possible with enough effort and difficulty for america to become self-sufficient on military goods. we have lots of guns. the guns we have after the revolution will be good for 20, 30, 40 years as we see it. if we have the gun powder to power them, maybe we could be self-sufficient militarily.

we make enough food. we make enough trade goods. it's that lack of security according to adams, that stops us from shutting ourselves off from the world. if we can do that, if we could provide security on our own then maybe we're a success. the post-revolution world is going test that, though. the biggest reason why is that the bottom will fall out of the salt peter market out of the revolutionary war and the saltpeter caves of virginia will be very, very competitive at war prices. in the post-war world the east india company comes to trading again and it will continue through 1792 with prices continually dropping, but something's going to ruin that unlimited supply. in 1789 the french begin to have their own issue again and a revolution with england and the rest of europe holed into that war, all of a sudden the powder

supplies begin to dry up and it looks like the u.s. government will need to stockpile this critical material and provide for our own defense. my personal favorite ever was put out by a guy named john kerry in 1791. he recommended to thomas jefferson, you know that new capital you want to build? i have a great idea. we're going to dig an enormous basement underneath and we're going to fill it full of salt peter. saltpeter comes from caves. caves are cold. therefore, if i pass the air to ventilate the capital through that saltpeter it's going to work like air conditioning. thomas jefferson saw several problems with packing the basement of the u.s. capital with explosive, right? first it probably wasn't going to cool things down. second off, it was going to be really flammable. so thankfully the basement of the capital isn't currently packed with explosives.

we have thomas jefferson to thank for that, i guess. but thomas jefferson was one of the people who was pushing for increased u.s. stockpiles of powder. both hamilton and jefferson began advocating for those increased stockpiles as early as 1790. the thing that undercut their case for developing a major government stockpile was the passage of jay's treaty in 1794. jay's treaty is one of the things that my students eyes would glaze over when we discuss. it just seems like it's fixing a bunch of borders that don't matter. there's a kicker in jay's treaty. jay's treaty opens up to india to u.s. trading vessels. now, the problem with why gun powder was so short in europe wasn't the amount of gun powder that could be produced in india. there was all the salt peter you needed. it was a lack of east indian men during the napoleonic war that were able to carry that war to

england and her allies, but now that the u.s. could send its own ships, the market was completely open. so all of a sudden there's a major trade moving from massachusetts to india to carry back this key strategic resource to build up stockpiles as the u.s. begins to worry about being pulled into the napoleonic wars. the u.s. also began to prospect from its own supplies, not to exploit them but to be prepared in case we were pulled into the wars. it leads to another thomas jefferson story. i'm absolutely full of them. as you know, thomas jefferson was perpetually in debt. but one of the big sidelines he attempted was setting up his own salt peter refinery so he could begin making gun powder. there were several caves that were located near monticello in virginia. he partnered with the salt peter prospecter named will crutsdzers and sent out teams of guys around to see if there were any resources he would be able to

exploit. car u coruthers and his prospectors didn't find very much in the way of saltpeter that was actually worth exploiting to make money off but the weirdest thing was they kept going into these caves and finding these strange giant bones preserved. but these bones were unlike anything else we had ever seen. they had massive claws and huge teeth and other weird features that didn't look like any known living animal. they began to take these bones back to thomas jefferson and to she them to him and asked what do you think this is? thomas jefferson corresponded with a number of his friends in philadelphia and they started to decide that these bones looked like they came from some sort of a giant sloth. i know it's crazy. like a sloth that's the size of a cow. but that's exactly what it was. these saltpeter prospectors were one of the groups that birthed modern palientology. they discovered the first. and some of the first known

specimens of preserved mammoth bones and saber tooth tiger bones. so palientology comes out of the source for explosives. who knew? now thomas jefferson b wasn't able to get his own gun powder off the ground but one of his friends did. he was very close friends with french exile known as dupont. now, he had a son who he considered kind of good for nothing but who was very intelligent. because of that he sent his son to intern at the french powder production site throughout the 1770s and 1780s. this son, dupont, would emigrate to america during the reign of terror with his family and establish the dupont corporation in wilmington, delaware. dupont would become the major

gunpowder provider for the u.s. government from 1802 up through the end of the gunpowder era. it is here the duponts enter our story. they were able to set up a manufacture relatively quickly and produce high quality powder as long as the raw materials kept coming in. but that proposed its own problems because of some other policies enacted by thomas jefferson. although importing salt peter worked very well, there were a number of issues that began to emerge with england as they carried on the napoleonic wars. by 1804 and 1805 the issue of england oppressing american seamen was becoming a major cause in american foreign policy. thomas jefferson's problem was nonimportation later followed by the embargo act. with the beginning of the embargo act, all of a sudden, the limitless supplies of east indian saltpeter dried up, so we had to figure out where american saltpeter could come from. luckily for thomas jefferson at the same time more and more americans were moving in to

kentucky, tennessee, and the limestone caves of america's region. what they found were some 34578 mammoth caves, like mammoth caves located in modern day kentucky. these became the primary site of salt peter production for america from 1805 through the war of 1812. these caves themselves are fascinating to study. entire communities arose around these caves. you had hunters. you had miner, you had people responsible for moving explosives and used to mine the explosives. you even have people pulled in to make sure that presses were set up that can squeeze every last ounce of salt peter out of the cave earth that was mined. the caves had several problems as well though. labor was never plentiful in frontier kentucky. the solution was to use a labor

source that knew something about refining salt peter. enslaved african americans. they were brought in and purchased on long-term contracts traditionally for around one year at a time. what's interesting is in the dark of the caves owners had almost no ability to supervise. because of that a very different system of slave supervision emerged. slaves would typically be paid either based on the amount of salt peter they were able to produce or paid a bonus for good performance and good behavior in the cave over a set period are of time. so although the owner of the slave received pay for the labor contract the slaves themselves might expect $10, $15 after the end of a morning of performing some sort of labor in the caves. as long as there was good

behavior and didn't damage the equipment. the other form that this took though was simply teams of two to three slaves that were sent out to salt peter prospectors. there were a large number of those in the literature of the period. good examples of monks still who were small producers by themselves. so one or two slaves would be sent out by their masters and told that in exchange for producing salt peter they could keep half of the value of whatever they produced. with salt peter selling for nearly 70 cents a pound during the embargo. if a slave could produce the salt, if they could produce a yearly income of $800. $800 was also the price of your freedom on the kentucky frontier in that time period. so salt peter manufacturing skills developed during the war of independence and became a route to freedom for many of the african-americans enslaved in kentucky during the embargo time period. now mammoth cave was well and good. right in we have an unlimited supply of saltpeter forever. a couple problems. first off, the soil itself from the cave would have to have been

put back in place to regenerate salt peter otherwise there's just bare rock. well, it takes a lot of time and not too profitable to do that. what the operators of these caves did instead was to build up huge piles of soil underneath the vats that they used to leave the soil. they would carry it up, put it in the vat and then raise up their manufacturers again. so the soil isn't going back so it's not regenerating. the other problem was this stuff was made of bats defecating, but the vats stop sleeping their people are in there 24 hours a did i running a factory. nature gets a vote on this too. the vote it will take is the new madrid earthquake in 1811. those vats are all on top of big, loose piles of wet earth. as soon as the earthquake hit the saltpeter cave sank straight into their spoil piles and were

ruined. now although there will be efforts to restart production from 1811 to 1812, the u.s. government by this points had built up a stock of 1.5 million pounds of saltpeter which was sufficient for it to fight the war of 1812. in 1815 the napoleonic wars were at an end and a far greater supply of east india saltpeter coming into the united states. so the manufacturing dried up. what is funny is the most prescient support made when this happened. we should stop mining the caves. we should safe that saltpeter in case we ever have another war that we fight that's going to require us to use domestic sources if we can't rely on england. wre well, that won't be the next war. the next war is the mexican war. dupont was able to sell 1.

2 million pounds of gunpowder to the united states government, all manufactured using english saltpeter, but a funny thing began happening to the u.s. gunpowder market during that time period. it doesn't go down anymore. more and more companies have entered the market. companies like laflin rand or the hazard powder company and even as that happened there were these amazing new railways and canals. during of war of 1812 a small number of powder produces began to spring up to supply the western territories. they were outcompeted by eastern producers with cheaper access to indian saltpeter. beyond that, though, we'll fight a war with mexico, but immediately after the war with mexico there's gold and there are all these new opportunities on the western plains. there are new native american tribes to trade with and there are mines to open in colorado. there's new land to occupy through the mexican secession.

so the powder business never goes down after the mexican war. it only goes up. that's compounded in 1853 with the beginning of the crimean war where it moves fast enough to pete demands of france and the war with russia. but how to industry is on a straight upward trajectory from it to 48 all the way through the beginning of the civil war. which begins to bring us to our interwar developers. technology hasn't been static during this time period. a new explosive is developed. called gun cotton in 1846. it's created by treating cotton with nitric acid. america has a lot of both of those things, but there's a problem. it's just too explosive. gun cotton explodes so rapidly and produces so much cass that it will shatter a can or shatter a musket of the period. until new techniques and new ways of sealing a breacher dwell is developed we have to figure

out other ways for the time being. the two the changes that will happen in gunpowder manufacturing is the discovery in 1850 of a method to make saltpeter out of guano, bird 10, bird guano. he will be active in developing new forms of canon powder. he will develop a new form of mammoth powder with brains that are the size of a golf ball that can be used in larger canons than anything the united states has ever seen before, but that takes us to the beginning of the war. at the beginning of the civil war, four companies control 70% of the union's powder supply. it's a unique commodity in civil war studies, too. it's the one thing the union actually produces enough of. someone else can probably stop me on that, but i find it so entertaining that of all of the goods the union is scrambling on

shortages, the powder companies don't need to be getting any bigger with the outbreak of the war. what they do is they convert over lines that have been making blasting powder out of bird guano into lines that use more expensive saltpeter and produce higher canon and rifle powder, but there's a problem with that. the government has a stockpile of 3 million pounds of saltpeter. that's more than we ever have before, right? there's no way we will go through 3 million pounds of saltpeter. they have given out that between union army -- between arming the union army -- we are completely out of saltpeter for you we need to get more saltpeter quick. all the saltpeter we have comes from england. and arming the fortifications all around the union we're completely out of saltpeter so we need to get more saltpeter quick, but all of the saltpeter

we have in the union comes from england. that's okay. let's just go over to england. right in we're going to send some representatives. one of the representatives is lamont dupont. he is working on behalf of the head of the dupont family. he's a fascinating guy. he's from my alma mater. he's a proud west point graduate, and served exactly one year active duty and he felt he was called to a higher calling, a higher duty. his duty to run the family business. although he's the head of the dupont family he never forgets his west point training. so he keeps a copy of his west point drill book on his desk and as soon as the civil war be gains he's nominated as a major general in the delaware militia. he has a solution of how he's going to handle delaware. delaware is a border state and it still has several hundred enslaved african-americans and a

number of plantations and counties that favor secession. henry's solution is simple, he called together 300 employees of the dupont company and tells them you can either take an oath of allegiance to the united states right now or you can take your hat and get out. if you take the oath of allegiance you'll get a pay raise. that one is a pretty easy sell for a lot of these powder workers and as soon as he does that he forms these gentlemen into two companies of militia. with dupont and the workers the delaware company heavily depends on them and you've seized wilmington where dupont is located with a military force. so as major general henry goes so goes the state of delaware during the civil war. he's approached by the war department relatively early on because of the interest of the gunpowder industry and his known loyalty and they tell him about the problem they're having supplying enough saltpeter. okay. he's going to send his best man

for it. he's going to sent lamont, the gifted chemist, but -- well, dupont doesn't really have enough money to do a bulk purchase. it's okay. it's okay. secretary of state seward, secretary of war simon cameron give lamont dupont a ship loaded with half a million dollars in u.s. gold bars from the u.s. treasury. and they send him over to england to buy as much saltpeter as england will sell. you have to feel sorry for this guy. he's 29 in 1861. he's had a bit of a career as a chemist and we are sending a 29-year-old over to england on a ship loaded with gold bars and doubloons and telling him we want you to buy the saltpeter. i'm sorry. how much saltpeter do you want me to buy? >> we want you to buy all of the saltpeter. wow! and he does an amazing job of it. lamont will show up in england on november 19.

he has a lot of trouble. while the gold is unloaded he needs credit to make purchases. he'll walk into bearing brother, the primary baker in london and he will tell them i need my family's line of credit. no one believes him. no one believes that some 29-year-old kid who just shown up and has a multimillion dollar line of credit in london -- it takes him three days to prove who he is. he needs to go to the american ligation to pro ligation to get help from charles adams. once his identity is sorted out, complete his mission. literally walking into the evening the adobe offices and saying i would like to buy the saltpeter, i want the saltpeter, all of it. so they have 2,000 tons currently in their warehouses. okay. i'll take it, snaps it all up, but also i want everything that's currently on a ship

coming to england. he will purchase not just the cargo in england with the key commodity and all of the cargo coming to england in the next year. he corners the world market on saltpeter in the afternoon you he begins to load this up and ship it back to the union. interestingly, getting there before confederate purchasing has been sent with the same mission, but there is a problem. no plan can go this well. on november 8th, before he even set foot in england, a male packet named the trent was stopped by the u.s. ship san jacinto. onboard were two representatives of the confederate government, mason and slidell. these two gentlemen were detained by the san jacinto. this caused a massive international incident. england retaliated for the u.s.' actions in two ways. it dispatched 10,000 soldiers to canada.

the other big thing england did was promote an embargo on saltpeter exports to the united states. they locked down lamont dupont's cargo in the london ports. that's all the gunpowder the union needs to fight the war. without gunpowder you can't have an army. you'd be armed with nothing, but clubs so this becomes the first big time when the u.s. saltpeter supply is threatened during the civil war. now cooler heads will eventually prevail after all of the war talk. by december 26th, lamont dupont is back in washington, d.c. he receives some very interesting laters according to the dupont family lore. none of this is proven when we're looking at dupont biographies, but an interesting aspect of that is he'll tell his son that he was given two letters by secretary of state seward. one threatens lord palmerston with war if the saltpeter isn't

released. the other letter instructs charles francis adams to break off diplomatic relation with britain, if it doesn't send materials to the united states. britain's claimed neutrality, right? shouldn't they not be exporting military materials to anyone? but if they ever enforce that, all of a sudden the union doesn't have supplies of gunpowder of this critical april we need to fight the war. lamont has several plans to get around this. you know what he thinks the english like? they like confederates. i'm going to buy confederate flags and i'll put them on all of my ships, i'm going to sail out like on a blockade runner, then i'm going to send a signal to cousin francis, the guy who runs the union blockading league. luckily he doesn't need to make this happen. mason and slidell are released

by the u.s. government and he's allowed to export his cargo. in doing so, stripping virtually all of the saltpeter from england. have fun with that, confederates, but it exposses this key weakness in the union effort. many people within the united states government, particularly in the united states navy, will realize the union can't afford to depend on england alone. if england ever shuts down the tap on this key material the union's war effort would grind to a halt. without gunpowder we don't have canons and we don't have a navy and we can't have sieges. we can't have battles. so we need some alternative sources, places england can't interdict. i have a good idea. let's go to japan. japan has guns, japan is open up to trade in 1855 by matthew perry. the naval department will send a series of naval ships led by the maybe the

uss wyoming to japan in 862 to attempt to open a secondary source of this material that isn't coming from england. it will turn out to be really low quality. the japanese aren't willing to sell good quality saltpeter to the united states. they're kind of going through their own thing right now called the bar. they are sucking up vast amounts of gun powder and vast amounts of resources to try and produce their own military that can stand toe to toe with the west. sorry, union. we like your money, but we're not sending you the good stuff been so this plan falls through. luckily, there is a third option. birds. lots and lots of birds. when you have this many birds together for a long period of time they poop a lot.

the poop will build up into mountains, and if this poop isn't affected by water that will leech out the nitrates it will build up massive, massive amounts of niter in it. this will be in the wrong form, though. this will be in the form of sodium nitrate instead of potassium nitrate and for a long time it won't be economical to convert this material, but a new process will be developed in 1863 by another chemist working with the united states navy. a chemist named john dwight from new haven chemical company will develop a new method of refining seabird guano into gunpowder. so the price will be higher from what's imported from england. english saltpeter will cost 11 cents a pound in 1863, but dwight's guano will only cost 14 cents and it comes without having to be nice to the british.

if by 1864, dwight's process is producing potassium nitrate at the same cost as british imports because of raises in the price. so from 1863 on he's producing potassium nitrate out of sodium nitrate at the same costs as just importing potassium nitrate from england. he's producing it also in massive batches of around 500 tons at a time. to put this in some sort of ter terms he's producing 500 tons of this stuff per year. the entire confederacy with all of their efforts to launch a crash nitrate production process is making about 20 tons less than a single guy is at one factory. he hasn't bothered to scale this up yet to more than one factory and he's still able to make all of the union's requirements for nitrate out of it. all this doesn't provide all of the union gunpowder it is a supply independent of england that gives the union additional

leverage in their diplomacy with britain from 1863 onwards. now there are several other issues that crop up with this and the two biggest ones that i get when i teach this lesson to my students, are the gun powder producers for the union price boujing? you know what's interesting, they are making every possible effort they can to squeeze every possible dime out of the united states government, but it is really hard to price gouge the united states government. only time you've ever heard that from academic talk, right? there are a series of problems for it, though. first off, although four big companies dominate 70% of the supply, there's another 30% of companies that don't traditionally get military contracts. those companies are attempting to use the civil war as an opportunity to break into a lucrative market so they regularly offer their gunpowder at below-market rates. to keep contracts the duponts and hazards are also forced to

sell the government powder at below the rays of sporting powder or civilian powder in the markets where they're trading. so the u.s. government's actually genning gunpowder, a 2 cent discounters have us per rate per pound in 1863. the other big problem they have is that the government keeps insisting that it's maintaining its own saltpeter stores. the dupont would love to have saltpeter government and charge a commission on it. instead, though, it's the navy department and the war department that are authorizing major purchases of sault salt peter in europe and the conversion of sodium nitrate into potassium nitrate. because they're issuing those contracts and then giving the powder to the duponts they'll only allow them to charge a commission to allow what it takes to commission the powder rather than rolling it out into a price. although there's dupont, hazards and attempting to fix prices and

complaining about the prices. the purchasing agents keep testing for quality. you c dupont has a large number of shipments back for failing to meet quality standards from 1862 and '63 by the ordinance department and the ordinance department's attitude throughout this is there's enough capacity to manufacture powder in the u.s. if they start sending their saltpeter to other manufacturers. you're out of luck, dupont. so despite what looks like an oligopoly as far as the market, you are going to see union powder manufactures and very low prices in the union for this key commodity throughout the war. let's talk about the other side of this though because it's a fascinating second way to understand powder manufacture in america. so let's talk the confederacy. at the beginning of the civil war the confederacy is about half a million pounds of powder

in various government magazines and civilian storehouses. sounds like a lot. here's the problem. josiah, the confederate lead of ordinance, will compute exactly what it will need to survive in 1861. he'll compute that the confederacy has 1700 ce artillery pieces. with 40 rounds per gun he'll need 600,000 pounds of powder just to set up the existing canons. for his field artillery he'll need 125,000 pounds and for small cartridges enough to equip the infantry he'll need 125,000 pounds of powder. thus he comes up with 850,000 pounds of powder and that's before he's shot one round and that's to fill up the ammo wagons on the confederate artillery. he's only got half a million pounds and the confederacy has not made a single pound of powder since the war of 1812.

and it doesn't make any saltpeter. so this will become one of the greatest crash production programs in american history. he'll select a west pointer named george w. rains. rains has a bit of experience in chemistry and has never run a powder works before. and by 1862, he'll go on to find this giant monstrosity behind us. the augusta powder works. . it will be a phenomenal facility in many ways and it will be innovative as far as the technology used to make powder, far more advanced than the north. it will use a steam system instead of infusing. he'll have new safety measures, too, that will make it one of the safest powder works to work in in the united states.

buckets will be set up over each of the mills, large ones that are able to douse the mill contents in case of any explosion to prevent a chain reaction. they'll be set off automatically by the pressure of an explosion and preventing the chain reactions causing the foreign exchangeries at dupont. so this is an amazing building and it's amazingly productive, too. over the course of the war it will produce 3 million pounds of powder and it is in excellent quality. a third of that is going to be large canon powder for columbia, a third of that will be canon powder and a third of that is rifle powder and he's covering his bases so far. it will stop in 1864 when augusta is threatened by sherman march. it will restart in south carolina in 1865 and only produced for two mocks before the powder works is broken down. >> rain faces the same reason that dupont is facing on its own

and that's the question of niter supply. so the confederates will turn back to one of the big crates we talked about. you can dig it, work for it or trade for it. trading would require saltpeter through the blockade and it is expensive and heavy. it will be 57% of the confederate supply of saltpeter. the other 25% will be produced in the confederacy as they a set. to establish their independence from international trade. so the confederacy will start by offering bounties. they'll offer approximately 75 cents per pound of niter by 1862. remember, i told you the duponts are paying around ten cents and 14 cents for the new-fangled manufactured chemical niter. they're paying a massive premium and they'll discover because of the premium they still aren't getting enough and it will be way more intelligent to produce

it themselves. the conned if rassy will main the niter and miter bureau. it will be led by major isaac st. john and he's going go and find all of of the caves in the south that will contain it and mine it out, but he's also going to follow two other strategies. he's going to begin going into barns and basements where necessary and impressing niter that aren't entirely positive on the confederacy and the final strategy is he's going to set up a massive series of saltpeter beds across the confederacy. there seems to be this myth about the conned if rasfederacy don't like central ieszed government. when it comes to producing explosives they're all about centralized government. they come from a state of t

state-of-the-art con f state-of-the-art confederacy. they have a total of million cubic feet of capacity. the bed enrichment alone has capacity for 256,000 cubic feet of waste. by the end of the war these niter beds will contain a total of 4 million pounds of salt peter. so more saltpeter than dupont will manufacture into gunpowder during the entire civil war. but there's problem, right? there are always problems when we talk about manufacturing saltpeter. this is one of the big ones. in order to produce niter, rains needs to run a constant operation bringing in fresh waste both human and animal. so he's going to establish a network of chamber pots all across the confederacy begging people to contribute their urine and feces to the confederate war effort and that's primarily going to be produced by women

since so many soldiers have entered the confederate armies and it will prompt these recorded by bell weil pep the other problems are a supply of animals. his big solution so that is he's going to -- in the case of selma, round up all of the stray dogs in selma alabama and drive out to the niter beds and kill them and throw them in the niter beds. these become the measures that the confederacy will turn to to supply the material. beyond that, they're checking up the garbage and raw sewage and 4,000 confederate men will be employed intending these trenches and caves at a time when that man of power is desperately needed in the confederate armies. despite their efforts, we have to sort of evaluate the performance of the confederacy meeting the niter dilemma. so they're able to produce a lot of the niter they need, but the problem they'll repeatedly face

is the question of how much it's going to cost and that's the great comparison between the union effort and the confederate effort. using these niter and using these methods and if they're willing to provide this at around 75 cents a pound and it costs around $1.08 a pound. it's high in quality. the production is owned from nose to tail from the confederate government, but it's $1.08 a pound. the union in contrast is relying almost entirely on private enterprise with government contracted provision of the raw materials but their niter is only costing 13 cents and that's a british independent source and the powder is going for 20 cents a pound. so you can get 5 1/2 pounds of union powder for what the confederacy is paying for a single pound. it's interesting, too, that the

union will seize the confederate niter works and you'll decide it simply, is it economical to manufacture powder using the confederacy's method. following the civil war, all of the niter manufacturing materials in the united states will be dismantled. as with those confederate powder works and issues it out to the u.s. army during the 1860s and reconstruction. but from that point on the union is running entirely on their own supplies, and these four successful corporations have been able to corner a majority of that market following the civil war contracts. with those contracts drying up, more and more of the money that's coming in from purchasing agents is directed to these four and they control more and more of the supply of u.s. government contracts as well as the civilian market because they got

too bigger during the war. in many ways you can ask what's the application of this. the applications for tactical historians or historians of resource policies. tactically, the confederacy is going to rely on a very consistent product from its own powder works from 3 million pounds of powder and another 2.5 million pounds of powder will come through the blockade. that blockade powder usually isn't the best powder that england has and it's the surplus powder. much of it is damaged. that powder is going to be worked into ammunition casons particularly in the eastern theater along with the high-quality powder. so who knows what you're shooting on a given day. the difference in the powder that's coming with the blockade can be up to 10% or 15% of your velocity. now think about setting artillery views and i'm shooting a thousand yards away and i set a one-second fuse. if my velocity is only 900 meters instead my shells are

blowing up a hundred yards in froup front of where i want them to or the difference like a naval canon, and the merrimac, through the armor of a combatant like the monitor or the alabama versus the keir sarge where they'll claim that that is one of the principal reasons why they're not able to defeat the armor. on the strategic level, one of the great questions is what count reit united stat country the united states wants to be and how independent we want to be from the world? the answers that come out are we can be france with the centralized production system or we can be england and we can outsource the production of this dirty, difficult, dangerous good and we decide to be england throughout our history. we make dpepexceptions to that the revolution when we are cut off during the war of 1812 during the embargo and through the confederacy's case during the civil war. it's not that it's impossible to

be self-reliant and self reliance comes at a massive cost over the external supply that it's not supportable for a large army for a long period of time. as soon as it goes away the u.s. army gratefully turns back to its imported and raw materials and we we come a world-looking army once again. in a way, america can never cut itselves off. the good which is ups our security and the livelihoods and the goods which provide the railroads and mine come from abroad and those ties to the world are why gunpowder remains so important in this era and u.s. history. thank you so much for your attention. [ applause ] >> thank you very much for your explosive talk. >> love it! >> but as far as thomas

jefferson being against having saltpeter underneath the capital with that acting as air-conditioning, you totally destroyed the fact that thomas jefferson was in favor of small government because i can't think of a better way of thinking of having smaller government than putting it under the capitol. >> fair enough. >> if you look at the environmentalism of the first international treaty that we had was regarding -- the first international treaty was regarding birds. so you look at bird guano and the guano islands act -- >> it was a very good exhibit at the american museum of -- the smithsonian of american history. >> i stole the pictures. >> i recognize the the pictures as far as if you go to that one and the one on the mound. >> so one thing that's interesting is it seems to me

that environmentalism which is never talked about, environmentalism, is it is very much connected to warfare. if you look at sweden they prevented cutting down the oak trees because oak trees were necessary necessary for the war effort, back in the middle ages, were tied to a, kind of curious your comments on that is. well in 1957 there was an afghanistan, geological survey that identified the rare battles enough to understand. it is one of the reasons that we are there now. are there any additional surveys that were done in india previously. that caused them to know that hey, we also saw that in the middle east, as far as the rothschilds understood there is a role

elsewhere, change foreign policy 20 years later, they got the jump-start on that. >> i'm getting three really good questions here, i'll try to answer them in, order the question is the first one, a guano is absolutely fascinating, is one of the big quantities is going to be pulling americans in specific, wrote the guano act is not particularly targeted at supplying garden part of, the first research that reduces guano powders. guaido has produced an 1850, six it's a major filler of elections of 80 50. going back to that. what's so interesting about, that is that investigating the process for making guano into gunpowder, is already as the 18 thirties, simply found no economic incentive for doing it, what begins to change by the time they get 1857, is a much larger market for blasting powders, which they can do economically with that powder, condition is

pointed out during the civil, order the loss of the supplies's issues with more. i think it's fascinating, i can't directly see though, the conservation being linked, to our protection of sea birds, the biggest reason why, is that fresh sea bird guano, isn't going to give you what you need to make gunpowder, a lot of the guano islands are going to be wetland, snowy places like johnson, and those have too much water, to be able to produce really good gunpowder. the places that make really good gunpowder, are going to places off of places like chile, like we see here, most of us have already been claimed by already nations. the reason why is that for enough nitrate to burn, or build up and soil, it has to be protected from water. so these are areas where it's incredibly arid but, also as large populations of sea birds. those fall a bit outside of

those international treaties. in a way conservation is that an interesting counter point for the man who already faction gum powder during the civil war. there's almost an anti confirmation as he faces, a very gold rush ethos. they see a good market in this product. we want to extract as much of it as quickly as possible, even if it's inefficient. with a view that there will always be another cave. mammoth cave, are almost entirely diluted of profitably exploitable soils, by the time we get to 1812, 1813,, they could just put the stuff back they could've let them alone for a few days. they probably would have had a better product and business model based on that, but that was never the goal, because they want to make as much money as possible, before trade reopened with england. the people producing salt here were not necessarily the people who have incentive, to maintain a

long term stable supply for the united states government uk some war, it's interesting how the do pots almost shore war of that conservation east coast saying well we should lead the soil keeps alone until we need them. and let them regenerate. which is the sense that they needed to take in the 18 thirties, at think it's fascinating how it's not the people utilizing the resource they want to preserve it, is the people water to step down on the chain., are the dew points make to manufacture government out of it. or the government that wants access. another question was buying and selling. what i can find from my research, is that there is definitely buying and selling of your own going on in the german states by the time we get to around 15 45,. it's also what i could find evidence in england which have the eighth attempting a bunch of experiments using a german manufacturer who he imported aubergine going to set up

german style. there's definitely a market for you are in there but it's hard to quantify the french don't appear to be purchasing your own, they appear to be using runoff and sewage from paris as their primary supply they also don't appear to be buying like stray dogs, they appear to be using slaughterhouses as their primary source of animal waste. it's interesting seeing that how waist becomes a commodity there's so little that are preserved in the early german experiments. >> as i understand, julie, peru, and bolivia had a nasty war, did the united states government get involved in this? >> i don't believe that the u.s. was directly involved in the guano war, i know they're serving, at one thing it's going to happen is by the time the guano workers, the u.s. has started shifting its powder

production, away, part of the reason why and my research, so there's about a five year ten-year period after the civil war, where the u.s. army shooting off all the extra powder they built up in there stop following that time we see new powders entering the market this french smoke was powder, against entering,, it's pretty common by the time you get into 18 sixties and seventies, quartzite enters, production in 18 seventies also, there's a shift away, from the military, i know that the u.s. is doing its initial -- there is less incentive to invest in this and fight words over, what's the 18 seventies is a period where trade relationships, are really pretty good, following the end of the civil, war is that

incentive to diversify, that we saw throughout so many other periods where that shooting lane surprise were prioritized. >> can you tell me what was the relationship between disease and these? they didn't figure out cholera. >> they didn't, but there's one thing that kept the relationship, when he set up a night or bad, you don't want the nighter to leak out, but it's incredibly sellable and, water the way they were set up they always had an impermeable clay base obviously beds to stop anita valuable sought from reaching, out they also typically have a roof or a tarp over them, where water will be able to come, in and affecting, it by the way night you're beds weren't producing a large problem amount of runoff,

during the runoff, in order to extract this all too hard to take it from the night about, you to leave, junior toilet, so the runoff that was then put in streams as a result of these nighter beds were dumped on the ground, was released loyal to, which probably cut down on the disease effects. there's a number of accounts of people saying just how horrible it was, to work with the nighter buds, carrying around large amounts of your own, turning it day after day, but they don't actually have too much in the first hand accounts, the points to a really large disease, that i could locate. >> >> thank you for your service, thank you for your briefing tonight, my question is is concerning, thomas jefferson, did he continue his influence in making gunpowder, after his presidency when he left the government, or do you do that as the secretary of state and his president.

>> no it's interesting he actually kept on it throughout his life but he, had someone else to do the actual gunpowder manufacturing there was a constant correspondent of his. there are several dozen letters, between him pierre discussing salt manufacturing. he had an interesting relationship, with who established the dew point. family going through don mister forces, papers i get this constant feeling that urinate is trying to bribe, him there's so many points where urinate is attempting to send him new gun powder, or new gun power's testing devices, he sends a bunch of scientific instruments for measuring gunpowder and then thomas jefferson keeps complaining, that he hasn't received the belief for all the things that he's received, but dupont's also maintain the, sideline the during this time,

so they also provide thomas jefferson wine cellar, they are treating agents in france are the ones who are doing a lot of his purchases, also purchasing the dupont's machinery, very beneficial race, who want to set up an american powder industry, on the british side, thomas jefferson has correspondents all the way through the 18 twenties, discussing powder manufactured and his own products, as you all know he was a prolific builder so his bills for example were constructed with powder and he had to be actually sure he found the right powder so he has all kinds of correspondents, in the technical properties, asking which will be bad, reckoning different courting and other things like that. here may didn't do see us, and not a direct producer throughout his life. >> major, i listen to your

training, they made when you really tended, that's excellent, i think it is online, and everyone should listen to that i think there is a tape that you made. 2003, 2004, i think it's all lined i like to talk about the marble man quickly he is idolized, general mcchrystal and his offices, had the marble man's picture and essentially, there's no question that the marble man, is the competence,

the most confident tactical leader, but in terms of being an age of mass armies, how well is the army executed the, one thing functions in the logistics field sanitation, and medical operations, or manage personnel, furlough illegal requirements, was and remains, as critical as the battlefield. while mcallen quickly, while mcallen was known for us overcautious maneuvers, he was also a gifted. or organized manus are, much appreciated by soldiers, and established the foundation upon which the army had success. these forces on

forces of supply, and personal in attention, remained less affected than they needed to be. if the sound title of this gunpowder, i wasn't getting to the people necessary. in terms of the north, the main problem with the north, seems to be, personnel. they did not have people. they needed people. how can you answer that question? >> i think the part i find the most intriguing. why is it the gunpowder getting more needs to go? why does it not seem to do is forced to do when it gets there i think that's a fascinating question by the way, part of the problem is the bureaucratic, i can control what type of, all my supply lines, i'm entirely dependent

to get it to my armies. will we get the gunpowder to those armies up to fill the gaps, a filter gaps in my own production, of this high quality, good with whatever works its way through the blockade, whatever people are able to make an embracements that seems like kind of a comparable product, that's not a good way to run the army, as the guy who shoots tanks for a looming, it's amazing what a small came, you see those changes repeatedly with confederate artillery, those become this entire historiography asking wires confederate artillery not shooting as well as union artillery lead it's a lot of credit for using his infantry what is artillery sort of takes a back burner, in many narratives, of the comfort of

army, partly reason why is that instances stunt, quality. it's nearly impossible to make good refuses, to train while, to know how far you're rounds gonna, go when you shoot the powder. and the powder isn't sufficient, remember i told, you it's going to be eight and a half thousand pounds of powder, just to be able to equip, it the problem is in one engagement, we've been issued out 300,000 pounds. during 2000 pounds, it confederacy is only producing 3 million, used to shot off, everything you can produce in a single battle, how long is it until the next set comes, in how long do you have? if you can drop multiple producers and if the point is now the powder if they don't have the powder. nobody is the powder. with the robust network of suppliers they're able to

smooth out, if you are depending on the shipments, they may come, they may not come they may not be there when you need them then we already be allocated, and after a battle you have shot off all the powder, and you're waiting for that replenishment. it's that gap so many of the confederate powder shortages. >> in an effort to is there is no relation there? >> i don't know off the top of my head, i really should, especially being from west

point, i would have to look that one up though., lots of times my cadets gave me hacked because they don't give the confederacy enough credit one of the greatest things stage but she was building a production program from scratch produce high quality advance from the union, the questions are narrative what the confederacy was if we had meant that in the way, people like to think the confederacy is about personal freedom, that it was decentralized in actuality, it is incredibly tightly weapons production system that's, producing high quality modern goods. they're entirely directed by the government, whereas the union group, this relying on individual initiative, and these individual companies, analysts control company.

>> i think you see in reenactments, not only the safety procedures, but also just how much smoke this created, if there is anything you can do, in the menu factory process, it can produce that smoke, so you could actually see, if you think it sit in experience subjects, anyone ever seen a sauna broadway, we know there's a song between john adams and abigail adams,'s actually in the cultural reference. next time you see the movie, you get a whole song about it we'll talk about the smoke aspect >> sure, the big reason why, is that smokers powder, is more close. the reason why it smoke us, is that materials that make

a small cost powder, almost completely transformed into a gas as a result of powder burning, black powder doesn't do that, instead, black powder has an accelerant, and a fuel accelerant makes a fuel, burn faster, but it isn't completely combusted, as a result about 50% fewer black powder charge, it is that stuff that makes that dark black smoke, the way that you minimize to smoke with the right proportions as close as, possible sophisticated slowly, is going to create more such and smoke. that said, 50% of your charge is still going to come, out as singer no matter what you do. the other thing you can do as you can attempt to minimize the amount of water and powder. very

calmly. if you see a lot of foot or centers in your powder, it means that your powder is somewhat damp. that is often result of poor blazing, very well glaze powder with coating a graphite on the outside. poorly glazed manufactured powder, would absorb lots of water, absorbing the water makes it both smoke here, and less powerful. as a result you could see reductions about 10:20 50% of your muscle velocity using projectiles that were fired. that matters, because think about a springfield rifle. it is about 100 years for second. because that is a really strong part. people like earl has to document a lot of the springfield rifle, firing 300 yards, as you're trajectory the takes about three feet, above the level of the target you're aiming. there isn't it enormous amount. you'll need a higher

lob to get a target with more dead zone or it's gonna fall very short, the arcing trajectory, is a very little chance of it actually hitting the target. poorly mattered or smoky powder. it's a very good indicator, that you're going to be fired with it. i will say, as the reenactor you're probably -- i've done it a few top three not just before. typically are using a cannon charge for six pound candidates only but announced powder, the rule used by civil war armies is you want to quarter as much powder as the size of the round you are firing, that ounce charge to the use to make smoke and civil war reenactment, should really be about a pound and a half, charge. even know the powder might have been owed worse, and a bit smoky, or particular food talk about confederate, you should be building five or six times as, much think about that would due

to the smoke problem. it's part of an explanation of why so many of these civil war battle social confused. and why so many people involved in these battles, after three or four rounds we couldn't see anything. i would think that's an interesting problem to bring up, the sort of what they, did they focused a lot of moisture, on composition, on placing. >> if we can draw a parallel now. understand the u.s. government, has a big mind, i think it's a grievance, somewhere, i don't know where, if you have any information about it, can you draw a parallel? >> i'm not sure quite what minds we are talking about. are we talking about the production of salt sources. what we saw

there was the u.s. government initially purchasing interest in some of, the salt peter refineries. they really focused on controlling the imports of these goods. they would purchase, or contract for the purchase, directly, raw materials from companies like east india company or mine operators, and then store that in centralize warehouses in places like philadelphia, or west point itself, and then distribute, that material, as a way to control production, rather than directly purchasing mines, or owning the companies that made the powder, the always maintain the strategic resources, the strategic petroleum reserve, it is good, we know we don't have enough of it in the way, the government to size, when prices are high enough, needs to release this material, in order to support u.s. economics, in many ways salt peter filled that role in the prestigious reserve, that's

essential for warfare, in this period, big problem with the cartridges must get. >> 71 particular decision, a direction, and also there's a hard chance of a misfire, if there's any technological changes in the construction, about the cartridges themselves, that increase the odds of not having fire, or direct more of the forces straight ahead, instead of all directions. for >> a blasting charge, that's where you would worry about it going in all directions, technologist has developed, one of the things, about the much finer grace, it was much easier to force it in the nooks and

crannies, that, said ignition is what your question comes down, to the finding better ways to ignite, the biggest thing that's going to happen, is the technological change from 1814, sixties and then weapons we switch over to mercury, as the primary primer and the use of the percussion cap, the percussion cap is going to be a cotton cap, the hammer comes down, it hits the percussion cap,, it's gonna be what goes under the charge and nights, it that was a far superior system, in terms of the amount of flames produced, and its ability to, weather that really became the standard on all u.s. infantry weapons, by the time we move to the eighties forties fifties and sixties. hands on the other hand his friction primaries, the friction prime was actually manufactured by the same arsenal as we looked at a sidelines manufacturing friction primers with sunlight manufacturing them during them in the polling on a period friction was initiated counted the friction farmers would use

a pressure compound together with some other sparking material and, they will be pulled by the artillery are meant to court would cause sparks to go down to the county barrel the powder got better at igniting, as they got better at manufacturing it but there weren't any technological changes to the powder themselves, to make ignition easier, it was primarily a question of priming technology. >> all right thank you. it is american history tv on c-span 3 for each weekend we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nations passed.. civil war

scholar timothy smith explores 1863 battle of champion hill, part of the expert campaign he discusses how general grants leadership contributed to a union victory in this mississippi engagement here's a preview. >> not exactly the same confidence that you are getting from the officers in the army of tennessee. probably the best place to look see what current is saying when you cross the river took little time to get together and then start to move

north to a leading champion hill he issues orders to soldiers whose army, marching orders, he says soldiers of the army out the tennessee soldiers of the army of tennessee, a few days continue of the same seal and constant will secure to this army the crowning victory over the rebellion. difficulties and permissions are before, us let us enter them, other battles are to be fought, let us fight them briefly. a grateful country will rejoice our success in history will record with a mortal honor. ready to go and britain is right. the men are much fatigued, and i fear will struggle very much directing this move i do not think you fully comprehend the position they will be left in but i comply at once with your order. you don't see it losing with anything more desperation. they're later on he asked i think it due to myself, and bring in this portion of our reporter conclusion to state

emphatically the defense movement of the army from edwards, was made against my judgment, in opposition to my privacy expressed intentions, and to the sub version of my claims. basically it ain't my fault, see the differences between the union high command of the federal high command here, champion obviously there's a tremendous difference, and leadership i'm convinced not getting the nitty-gritty of the tactics, but over all it's one of the battles turns out, that's how it was, on the campaign, it breaks the backbone of the confederate resistance, pemberton will try to get out those two avenue. three had become too, one of them quickly become's union forces, there's only one way out, one grants three, one of pemberton's freedom missions, is actually cut off. so

pemberton fumbles back to a big ridge. the confederate army is devastated, grant of course secures ground he is so much desired.. >> have you july for the fast 25 years the gettysburg has hosted a reenactment depicting cap life next we talked around actors, about victoria era marriage expectations and civil war brothels. >> my name is cheryl williamson i'm portraying today the reenactment what it would've been like to abandon victorian prostitute. the time of the american civil war which was at the mid smack victorian period. they were very very few