Confederate Industry: Manufacturers and Quartermasters in the Civil War (review)

This is a welcome multidisciplinary study. Unique in its approach, it should be consulted by military, economic, political, and social historians of the Civil War era.

Harold Wilson, an associate professor of history at Old Dominion University, has produced a persuasive argument that the South did not lack industrial might; rather, it mismanaged it. If the South were considered a separate nation in 1860, it would have been the fourth richest in the world and ranked among the industrial leaders. Focusing on the Quartermaster's Department and efforts to furnish the Confederate army with clothing, shoes, blankets, tents, and other field supplies, he provides answers to why the South failed.

A dichotomy between the planter and industrial classes was part of the problem. The former successfully maintained political influence over the latter, who were reluctant secessionists because of their ties with manufacturers in the North. Within the military, Col. Abraham C. Myers exacerbated the South's woes for two years as Quartermaster General with a regime that failed to mobilize resources and fostered corruption, leaving Confederate armies with inadequate supplies.

President Jefferson Davis replaced Myers with Alexander R. Lawton in August 1863. Within a year Lawton rectified his predecessor's bungling and had sufficient contracts in place with vital woolen mills to reach the pinnacle of Southern production; unfortunately for the Confederacy it came when its military fortunes were on the wane. Women composed the majority of this work force, aided by children and slave labor, as white adult males were summoned from industrial pursuits to military service. Replacement of parts and machinery from foreign sources was another of Lawton's objectives, but this effort came too late in the war.

There are numerous outstanding monographs on such subjects as the Atlanta campaign and William T. Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas. But only after reading nearly two hundred pages of Wilson's book and reaching his chapter on total war does one fully appreciate its impact. Readers better comprehend the Union army's devastation after digesting his chronicle of Southern economic capabilities and mobilization. Issuance in 1863 of General Orders No. 100, which was the military code for the destruction of public and private property of the Confederate States, was arguably one of the war's turning points.

Admirably, Wilson does not conclude his story with the South in ruins, leaving readers to speculate about its rejuvenation. He demonstrates how the lenient reconstruction attitude of Tennessee governor and then president Andrew Johnson paved the way for mills to recover. By 1870 manufacturing in the South approached its prewar level, and it was industry, which was disparaged by politicians in the ante bellum period, that was the economic foundation of the "new" South.

As one might suspect, this volume contains an abundance of facts and figures, supplemented by four appendixes. Nonetheless, the narrative is cohesive and readable, and seventy pages of endnotes attest to copious research with primary sources. The only admonition from this reviewer is that the index, while detailed, is not comprehensive; not every reference to people and places in the text is included.

Until now the subject of Confederate industry and supply distribution was explored in specialized studies of limited scope. There now is a single volume that will guide future historians.