Bull's-Eyes and Misfires: 50 People Whose Obscure Efforts Shaped the American Civil War by Clint Johnson

Author:Clint Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2010-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

Gen. Joseph Reid Anderson

(1813-1892)

THE CONFEDERACY ’S IRONMAKER

BULL’S-EYE

THE SOU TH HAD MANY MILITARY GENERALS LEADING soldiers on the battlefield. It had only one businessman general leading factory workers.

That was Gen. Joseph Reid Anderson.

Without the business acumen mixed with the engineering knowledge that Anderson possessed, the South never would have armored the CSS Virginia. It never would have armed that ironclad with the best cannon manufactured during the war. It never would have supplied Confederate forts and field artillery units with thousands of cannon. Without Anderson managing two thousand employees in the South’s largest manufacturing operation, the industrial North would have quickly smashed the South.

While “business sense” might not normally seem to be a fighting quality, it was just what the South lacked, what it most needed, and what Anderson had. Although he allowed his ego to cause him to make one almost fatal misfire on the battlefield, and he was too bull-headed to modernize his factory when he had the chance in antebellum America, it was Anderson’s skills behind the desk that make his overall war career a bull’s-eye. Thanks to Anderson, the Southern army had cannon and the Southern navy had iron plating for its formidable ironclads.

Anderson’s ambition after graduating from West Point in 1836 was to quickly move into the private sector where he could make much more money. After barely a year in the U.S. Army, Anderson resigned to take a civilian job as engineer on the Valley Turnpike. Designing such a highway would be a feather in the cap of any young civil engineer, but Anderson wanted still more money. Within a few months he was eyeing employment with Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond.

In the late 1830s Tredegar was a small iron works manufacturing railroad rails. As that market was drying up, Tredegar’s owners were looking for someone to open up new markets when they discovered Anderson. What they saw in Anderson was what he saw in himself—a bright young man who understood engineering and who had a driving ambition to make money. Anderson had the careful, analytical nature of an engineer combined with the marketing sense of a businessman. That was a rare combination of skills in a southern economy dominated by agriculture.

Anderson eagerly job-hopped again to become Tredegar’s chief commercial agent or salesman in March 1841. There he found his calling, staying at Tredegar for the next thirty-five years, first as employee, then as manager, then as owner.

Hitting the ground running, Anderson won contracts from the army to manufacture ammunition for existing cannon and contracts from the navy to manufacture cannon. Tredegar’s catalogs had never before contained cannon, but Anderson the salesman convinced his U.S. government buyers he could deliver.

The company’s reputation grew in the 1850s as Anderson pursued government and private contracts in the North as well as in the South. At a time when most northern factories were segregated by race and even European origin, Anderson integrated his work force by hiring slaves from local owners.

In 1859, as war seemed inevitable between North and South, Anderson and U.

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