Confederate Napoleons: Odds and Ends

In an earlier post, I pointed to the type classes assigned by modern historians to the various Confederate manufactured 12-pdr Napoleons. Over the last month, I’ve added articles about some of those types and their manufacturers. Those are now linked on my Napoleon gun page, under the Confederate section. Allow me to wrap up some odds and ends here before moving on to other ordnance.

I have a couple of surviving guns to “hunt down.” Or perhaps more accurately wait for the National Park Service to place back on display. Those are the Quinby & Robinson Type 2 gun and the elusive Tredegar Type 3 guns. Beyond that, I have a few “oddities” to track down, or in some cases obtain better photos of. These are mostly cases where markings deviate from the standard. In the case of one Columbus Arsenal Napoleon, I’m looking to get better photos of a fire table etched on the breech.

Columbus Arsenal Napoleon #52 at Fort Frederick

And there’s a few other loose ends to mention. Based on surviving guns, there are seven confirmed sources for Confederate manufacture (the four government arsenals, Tredegar, Quinby & Robinson, and Leeds & Company). But from time to time I come across documentation of other vendors. Usually, the mention is speculative at best. One of those appears in a letter from General P.G.T. Beauregard to Colonel Josiah Gorgas on March 25, 1862:

COLONEL: Notwithstanding that there was a scarcity of the materials for making bronze field pieces, and fearing moreover that my communications with the east might be cut off for a time at least, whereby I should be thrown upon my own resources, I issued a call upon the planters for their bells. Already that call has met with a patriotic response from all quarters, and a large number of these bells have been placed subject to my orders at points on the navigable rivers and at railroad stations.

The question now is how may these bells be most advantageously transmuted into cannon, to which end I must now invoke your assistance and advice. I desire to have 12-pounder Napoleon smooth-bore and 6-pounder (caliber) rifle guns, which I am advised by General Bragg can be manufactured in New Orleans, where Leeds & Co. have the proper models and all necessary experience. Propositions have also been made from parties at Natchez to cast some guns. I regard it as clearly advantageous to encourage the casting of such guns at different points in this valley, so that should a foundry unfortunately fall into the hands of the enemy we should not be wholly crippled and deprived of our resources, but have several centers of manufacture. I must therefore ask you to supply, through me, drawings and the necessary details and instructions for the Natchez foundry for both descriptions of guns just mentioned.

I must also ask you to establish some just rate of compensation for the work to be done, also the value of the bells, with such other details and instructions concerning their conversion into field pieces as you may deem needful to facilitate and insure the casting of proper guns of the character wanted.
Please answer in part by telegraph.

Beauregard’s request is for a specific set of patterns, identifying the most desired set of field artillery well in advance of authorities in the Ordnance Department. The letter also speaks, as we often see, to the lack of raw materials that hindered the Confederate war effort – bells into guns in this case. The general also correctly identifies a great shortcoming of the Confederacy, as the war effort lacked redundant, and secure, industrial centers. We’ve already seen Leeds & Company produced a small number of guns before the fall of New Orleans. But who were the authorities in contact with in Natchez?

The most likely candidate, identified by Larry J. Daniel and Riley W. Gunter in their book Confederate Cannon Foundries, is the firm of C.B. Churchill & Company. Newspaper reports in 1861 noted the firm had cast test guns early in the war at a facility in Natchez. Around the time of New Orleans’ capture, Churchill relocated inland. Eventually the firm started business again in Selma, Alabama. It supplied projectiles and other materials to the Confederate arsenal in Columbus, Mississippi. I should say a substantial number of projectiles, all things considered. Receipts indicate the firm delivered 387 32-pdr (6.4-inch) bolts for rifled guns in April 1862.

Yes, the stationary came from the Memphis depot. Just over a thousand Confederate dollars for a whole lot of iron bolts for rifled guns. Later receipts indicate the firm produced a wide range of projectiles from 3-inch to 10-inch calibers… but nothing on those Napoleons. After relocating to Selma, the firm ran into many difficulties securing iron, much less bronze, to meet its contract obligations (a story for another post some day that involves a claim against the C.S. government). It is very unlikely Churchill & Company produced any guns.

That said, Churchill & Company remains a question mark with regard to the Confederate Napoleon. I would not look for some surviving Churchill gun, but rather search for additional documents that might provide more details of the firm’s attempted production.

Related articles

• James River Napoleons: Tredegar’s light 12-pdrs in bronze (markerhunter.wordpress.com)
• Napoleons in Gray: Confederate light 12-pdr Field Guns (markerhunter.wordpress.com)
• Napoleons from Augusta: 12-pdrs from Augusta Foundry (markerhunter.wordpress.com)
• Memphis Napoleons: 12-pdr field guns from Quinby & Robinson (markerhunter.wordpress.com)
• Bashers from Bibb County: Macon Arsensal 12-pdr Napoleon Guns (markerhunter.wordpress.com)
• Napoleons from Muscogee County: Columbus Arsenal 12-pdr Guns (markerhunter.wordpress.com)

Richmond Battlefields Sesquicentennial Events Timeline

I like the way Richmond NBP laid out this year’s  sesquicentennial events in a side-by-side timeline.  On the left are the historical events.  On the right are scheduled observances.  A handy reference for those planning trips to Richmond in the next few weeks.

Sort of wish that as similar reference was around for the Shenandoah Valley events this year. (If anyone knows of such, please do pass it along in the comments.)

Richmond also has a downloadable guide to the 1862 sesquicentennial, covering out to mid-July.  (My Aide-de-Camp secured a copy while we were touring on Saturday, as a good ADC will do!)  Four living history weekends and scores of presentations… big named speakers mind you… packed into the next seven weeks.  But of course those same seven weeks were lively around Richmond in 1862.

Memorial Day: Two headstones on a batttlefield

Two headstones sit off to the front side of the small cemetery beside Willis United Methodist Church.  The cemetery and church, while not part of the national battlefield park, are part of the Glendale battlefield.

The 69th Pennsylvania Infantry marched past the church to fill a gap in the Federal lines, just a half mile northeast, during a critical phase of the June 30, 1862 battle.  One of the Confederate formation engaged was Brigadier General James Kemper’s brigade.  In his official report, Kemper wrote:

A more impetuous and desperate charge was never made than that of my small command against the sheltered and greatly superior forces of the enemy.  The ground which they gained from the enemy is marked by the graves of some of my veterans, who were buried where they fell; and those graves marked with the names of the occupants, situated at and near the position of the enemy, show the points at which they dashed against the strongholds of the retreating foe.

One of Kemper’s veterans was Captain Joel Blackard, of Company D, 7th Virginia Infantry.

Service records show Blackard hailed from Smyth County, in southwest Virginia.  He’d only months before been elected captain of the company.  Kemper singled out Blackard for special mention in his report, but offered no other details of the captain’s death.  Still his headstone marks, as Kemper said in that July 1862 report, the advance of the regiment.

Next to Blackard’s headstone is that of another fallen warrior.

Staff Sergeant John H. Park served as the flight engineer on a B-26 bomber in the 552nd Bomber Squadron, 386th Bombardment Group based in England in the summer of 1943.   On September 8, 1943, his plane, nicknamed “Margie”, took part in a raid on the Lille-Vendeville airfield in occupied France.  Over the target, “Margie” took a hit from anti-aircraft fire.  Lieutenant Romney J. Spencer, piloting “Margie,” managed to nurse the plane on one engine to within five miles of the Cliffs of Dover.  Losing altitude, Spencer ditched the bomber in the English Channel.  During the crash, Park fell into the bomber’s nose.  Park was either killed by the impact or otherwise unable to escape from the rapidly sinking plane.  He was the only member of the crew to go down with the bomber. (a very detailed account of the mission was written by Chester Klier, historian for the 386th Bomb Group, for the B-26 Crewmembers Website.)

Park’s name appears on a tablet of missing aircrews at the Cambridge American Cemtery and Memorial, Cambridge, England.  And an additional memorial headstone stands next to that of Captain Joel Blackard in the Willis Church Cemetery.

Two headstones that link wars and battles fought a half a world and decades apart.