Brig. Gen. Josiah Gorgas, (CSA)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Josiah Gorgas (July 1, 1818 – May 15, 1883) was one of the few Northern-born Confederate generals in the American Civil War. As chief of ordnance, he managed to keep the Confederate armies supplied with weapons and ammunition, despite the Union blockade and even though the South had hardly any munitions industry before the war began. He kept diaries during the Civil War which are now a popular subject of study for historians.

Early life:

Josiah Gorgas was born in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. He was graduated from West Point in 1841 and was assigned to the Ordnance Department. He served in the Mexican-American War and was promoted to captain in 1855. In 1853, he married Amelia Gayle, daughter of former Alabama governor John Gayle. Their first son, William Crawford Gorgas, was born in 1854. William would later become Surgeon General of the U.S. Army. Gorgas served in arsenals in different parts of the country before the Civil War broke out. He was commanding the Frankford Arsenal when he resigned from the United States Army.

Civil War

He followed his wife into secession, moved to Richmond and became chief of ordnance for the Confederacy. In this capacity, he worked to create an armaments industry almost from scratch. The South had no foundry except the Tredegar Iron Works. There were no rifle works except small arsenals in Richmond, and Fayetteville, North Carolina, plus the captured machines from the Union armory in Harpers Ferry. Gorgas established armories and foundries, found alternative sources for saltpeter, and created a huge gunpowder mill at Augusta, Georgia. Thanks to his efforts, the Southern armies never lacked weapons, though they were short on almost everything else. On November 10, 1864, Gorgas was promoted to brigadier general.

Postbellum

After the war, Gorgas accepted a position at the newly established University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. In 1878, he was elected president of the University of Alabama and moved to the house that is still known as Gorgas House. In 1883, he died, after which his wife became the university's librarian. The main university library is named the Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library.

_106. JOSIAH8 GORGAS (JOSEPH7, JACOB6, PSYCHE5 RITTENHOUSE, WILLEMYNTIE4 DEWEES, GERRET HENDRICKS3, HENDRICK ADRIAENSZ2 DE WEES, ADRIAEN HEYNDRICKS1) was born July 01, 1818 in Running Pumps, Dauphin County, PA, and died May 15, 1883 in Tuscaloosa, AL. He married AMELIA ROSS GAYLE December 29, 1853. She was born June 01, 1826, and died January 03, 1913.

Notes for JOSIAH GORGAS: General Josiah Gorgas (ref. encyclopedia Britannica) army officer who directed the production of armaments for the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

Born and raised in poverty, Gorgas had to put work before education as a youth. He won an appointment to West Point, however, and graduated sixth in his class in 1841. For the next 20 years Gorgas belonged to the ordnance service of the U.S. Army and was stationed at a number of posts. He eventually rose to the rank of captain and married an Alabama woman.

Motivated by his wife's sympathies and his own intense dislike of the abolitionists, Gorgas chose the Confederacy when the South seceded. In early April 1861 he resigned his commission, moved to Montgomery, Ala., and was appointed chief of ordnance in the Confederate Army. Within a week the North and South were at war.

Gorgas' fame rests on his outstanding performance in providing arms and ammunition for the Confederate forces. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the South had few modern weapons and virtually no manufacturing facilities for making them. Gorgas simultaneously sought arms from abroad while laying the groundwork for internal production of rifles, small arms, bullets, powder, and cannons.

An extraordinary administrator, Gorgas by 1863 had several factories producing weapons, mills making powder, and mines supplying needed raw materials. And despite the Confederacy's constant financial and political problems, Gorgas kept the ordnance service running at high efficiency. In recognition of his ability to keep Southern soldiers supplied, Gorgas rose from major to lieutenant colonel to colonel to brigadier general by the end of the war.

After the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, Gorgas took a job as manager of an Alabama ironworks and remained there until 1869. He then joined the teaching staff of the University of the South, in Tennessee, where he became vice-chancellor in 1872. In 1878 he was elected president of the University of Alabama, but he resigned a year later because of ill health.

______________________________________________

William Crawford Gorgas's parents were Josiah Gorgas (1818-1883) and Amelia Gayle (1826-1911). Josiah was the Chief of Confederate Ordnance, Amelia was the daughter of Alabama governor John Gayle. There are two important books on this matter: "Amelia Gayle Gorgas, A Biography" by Mary Tabb Johnston with Elizabeth Johnston Lipscomb, and "The Journals of Josiah Gorgas 1857-1878" edited by Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins. The former has a family tree in it.

William Crawford Gorgas was apparently named after his uncle-in-law, William B. Crawford, the husband of Amelia's sister Sara Ann Gayle.

Civil War Confederate Brigadier General. Born in Running Pumps, Pennsylvania, he was a poor boy who sought to improve himself by securing an appointment to West Point, he graduated 6th in the class of 1841 and spent most of his years as a junior officer studying and working in ordnance depots and arsenals. His marriage to an Alabama woman, together with his Southern friendships and resentment against abolitionist extremism, induced him to go south in April 1861 and offer his services to the Confederacy. He accepted a position as chief of the Ordnance Bureau and the enormous task of arming Confederate armies, directing the collection and distribution of weapons and ammunition available in the South. At the same time he dispatched agents to Europe to purchase arms and began establishing mills and factories throughout the South to manufacture the tools of war at home. His success was extraordinary. He displayed sound judgment and organizational genius in selecting his subordinates and managing what became a huge war industry. Very soon, however, the Confederacy began losing control of its manufacturing establishment because of military capture, and he spent his final year of the war attempting to patch up his organization and maintain as much efficiency as possible. At war's end he was a Brigadier General, but he and his adopted nation had lost all. After a brief attempt at business, he became an educator, first at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, then as president of the University of Alabama. He died at his home in Tuscaloosa.

Find A Grave Memorial# 10878

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Apr 10 2018, 1:48:16 UTC

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Gorgas_Josiah_1818-1883

Josiah Gorgas was a Confederate general and chief of the Ordnance Bureau during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Born in Pennsylvania, Gorgas was a veteran of the Mexican War (1846–1848) who married into a prominent political family in Alabama. His new Southern connections, along with dissatisfaction with his army career, helped fuel his decision to join the Confederacy. In 1861, he was the only experienced ordnance officer available to Confederate president Jefferson Davis's new government, and he almost single-handedly created a department charged with supplying Confederate armies with weapons and ammunition. He bought all the arms and supplies available in Europe and created a fleet of blockade-runners to transport them to Southern ports. At the same time, he worked to build Confederate industry and reinforce its railroads so that by 1863 the Confederacy was self-sufficient in military hardware. Following the war, Gorgas suffered financial difficulties and served briefly as president of the University of Alabama. He died in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1883.

Early Years

Gorgas was born on July 1, 1818, in Running Pumps, Dauphin County, in rural south central Pennsylvania. He was one of ten children, and his parents, Joseph and Sophia (Atkinson) Gorgas, were poor and relocated often. As a young man, Gorgas moved to Lyons, New York, where he lived with his sister Elizabeth and her husband, Daniel Chapman, and there he apprenticed for a newspaper and eventually studied law with Graham H. Chapin, the district's congressman. Chapin nominated Gorgas for appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, and he entered the school in 1837. In 1841, he graduated sixth in a class of fifty-two. (His classmates included the future Confederate generals Richard B. Garnett and Robert S. Garnett.)

Commissioned a second lieutenant of ordnance, Gorgas served at Watervliet Arsenal near Troy, New York, and the Detroit Arsenal before studying foreign ordnance in Europe from May 1845 until May 1846. During the Mexican War, he served under Winfield Scott at the battles of Vera Cruz (1847) and Cerro Gordo (1847), but was not awarded brevet ranks, possibly because of his prewar conflicts with U.S. secretary of state James Buchanan and the secretary of war, William L. Marcy, both of whom had resisted sending Gorgas to Europe. In March 1847 he was promoted to first lieutenant.

Following the war, Gorgas served in Pennsylvania and in November 1851 at Fort Monroe in Virginia. There he began his association with the Tredegar ironworks in Richmond—then called the Tredegar Iron Company—and conducted experiments on gun-barrel iron. In June 1853 he was transferred to the Mount Vernon Arsenal north of Mobile, Alabama. There, Gorgas suffered from yellow fever, which he first contracted in Mexico, but his sickness allowed him to meet the sister of the arsenal's surgeon, Amelia Gayle, whom he married in December 1853. Gayle was the daughter of a former governor of Alabama, and the prominence of her family exerted a profound influence on Gorgas's sense of political and social identity. The couple had six children.

As the political situation deteriorated, Gorgas faced a daunting decision: whether to stay with the regular army or resign his U.S. Army commission. His resignation on March 21, 1861 (effective April 3), seems to have been motivated as much by his various career resentments as by political principle. His Southern friends urged him in the direction of the Confederacy but not, apparently, his wife. "It was a heart-rending decision for him," Gorgas's biographer Frank Everson Vandiver has written, "and he made it alone, for Amelia remained a silent onlooker." The consequence was a permanent estrangement from his large family in Pennsylvania.

Civil War Years

Confederate president Jefferson Davis, on the recommendation of General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, appointed Gorgas the Confederacy's chief of ordnance. "Neither Beauregard nor Davis deserves credit for prescience in this appointment," Vandiver has written, "only for practicality." Apparently, Gorgas was the only ordnance officer available.

He accepted the position in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 8, 1861, and arrived in the new Confederate capital of Richmond in June. His most-pressing concern was the Confederacy's shocking lack of military hardware. An inventory turned up only 159,010 small arms and about a thousand cannon—many of which were old and obsolete—that had been captured at Norfolk Navy Yard and from forts along the Atlantic coast. Underdeveloped Southern manufacturing meant that initially the Confederacy would be forced to rely on importing goods, but the Union blockade of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts complicated this plan. Gorgas sent Major Caleb Huse to Europe to trade cotton for ordnance and provisions and eventually established the Bureau of Foreign Supplies to maintain the flow of imported goods, especially munitions, powder, copper, tin, saltpeter, and lead; he also organized a fleet of blockade-runners to bring them to Southern ports. Until 1863, about 90 percent of the weapons used by Confederate armies were either imported from Europe or captured from Union armies.

That balance began to shift because of Gorgas's efforts to increase Southern industrial capacity. He quickly established armories to manufacture weapons but was challenged by a lack of skilled labor and the proper machinery. He organized cannon foundries in Macon, Columbus, and Augusta—all in Georgia—and, in the last community, created the Augusta Powder Works, the largest manufacturer of its kind in North America. At its peak, a new ironworks in Selma, Alabama, was able to process thirty tons of pig iron daily; shot and shell, meanwhile, were manufactured in Salisbury, Virginia, and Montgomery, Alabama. To supply these facilities with raw materials, he created the Nitre and Mining Bureau, and reinforced preexisting railroads to ease shipment of both raw materials and finished goods.

All of these efforts contributed to Gorgas's ability to turn plowshares into swords, as the title of Vandiver's biography would have it. Ingenuity was important, as well. Saltpeter for gunpowder was discovered in limestone caves in the Appalachian Mountains and Southern women were encouraged to save the contents of their chamber pots, from which the same mineral could be leached. Church and plantation bells were melted down for bronze, and battlefields were combed for lead and repairable weapons. The historian James M. McPherson has called Gorgas; Isaac M. St. John, who headed the Nitre and Mining Bureau; and George W. Rains, superintendent of the Augusta Powder Works, the "unsung heroes of the Confederate war effort." Their contributions were crucial to waging war but they were not able to share in battlefield glory and the Confederate high command was slow to promote them. Gorgas did not become a brigadier general until November 10, 1864.

Still, Gorgas was rightfully pleased with his accomplishment. In 1864, he wrote in his diary, "Where three years ago we were not making a gun, a pistol nor a saber, no shot nor shell (except at the Tredegar ironworks)—a pound of powder—we now make all these in quantities to meet the demand of our large armies." Indeed, when the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, Confederate general Robert E. Lee's veterans had been without food for three days, but each emaciated infantryman nevertheless carried seventy-five rounds of ammunition.

Later Years

After the war, Gorgas purchased the Brierfield Iron Works, located near Ashby, Alabama, but high costs and other problems forced him to lease the works after just a couple of years. In 1868, he became head of the Junior Department at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Bankrupt and in declining health, he nevertheless managed the institution well, increasing the number of students and keeping the budget sound. In 1872, Sewanee's Board of Trustees appointed him vice-chancellor. Ongoing concerns about the school's finances led to strained relations with the board. Before Gorgas could be terminated, he accepted the position of president of the University of Alabama in 1878. Gorgas's stint in Tuscaloosa was successful but short-lived. A series of strokes left him incapacitated. He resigned as president and was appointed librarian, an honorific position he kept until his death in Tuscaloosa on May 15, 1883.

Time Line

July 1, 1818 - Josiah Gorgas is born in Dauphin County in rural south central Pennsylvania.

1841 - Josiah Gorgas graduates from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, sixth in a class of fifty-two.

1845–1846 - Josiah Gorgas studies foreign ordnance in Europe.

1846–1848 - Josiah Gorgas serves under Winfield Scott in the Mexican War, fighting at the battles of Vera Cruz and Cerro Gordo. He is not awarded brevet ranks, possibly because of prewar conflicts with his superiors.

November 1851 - Josiah Gorgas begins service at Fort Monroe.

June 1853 - Josiah Gorgas is transferred to the Mount Vernon Arsenal north of Mobile, Alabama.

December 29, 1853 - Josiah Gorgas marries Amelia Gayle, the daughter of a former governor of Alabama. The couple will have six children.

March 21, 1861 - Josiah Gorgas resigns his commission in the U.S. Army, effective April 3, in order to join the Confederacy.

April 8, 1861 - Josiah Gorgas accepts the position of Confederate chief of ordnance in Montgomery, Alabama.

June 1861 - Josiah Gorgas arrives in the new Confederate capital of Richmond.

November 10, 1864 - Josiah Gorgas is promoted to brigadier general.

1868 - Josiah Gorgas, former Confederate chief of ordnance, becomes head of the Junior Department at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.

1872 - The Board of Trustees for the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, appoints Josiah Gorgas vice-chancellor. Gorgas is the former chief of ordnance for the Confederacy.

1878 - Josiah Gorgas, former chief of ordnance for the Confederacy, accepts the position of president of the University of Alabama.

May 15, 1883 - Josiah Gorgas, former chief of ordnance for the Confederacy, dies in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.