Confederate Coal Production

CanadianCanuck

First Sergeant
Joined
Nov 21, 2014
Hey everyone! I'm sort of on an industrialization binge read right now and I've been looking up coal production statistics in the US for the Civil War, but specifics seem to have been maddeningly difficult to find. As far as I can suss out the United States in 1860 produced roughly 15,000,000 tons of coal, but I can't find how much of that was produced in the South.

If anyone has some numbers or some resources I could look at it would be much appreciated :smile:
 
This isn't the date you're looking for and probably something you've already seen, but might be close to representative of the 1860 time period, or then again maybe not... sorry not able to offer more help.

Coal Producing States, 1889
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81,719
Illinois 12,104
Ohio 9,977
West Virginia 6,232
Iowa 4,095
Alabama 3,573
Indiana 2,845
Colorado 2,544
Kentucky 2,400
Kansas 2,221
Tennessee 1,926
 
Hey everyone! I'm sort of on an industrialization binge read right now and I've been looking up coal production statistics in the US for the Civil War, but specifics seem to have been maddeningly difficult to find. As far as I can suss out the United States in 1860 produced roughly 15,000,000 tons of coal, but I can't find how much of that was produced in the South.

If anyone has some numbers or some resources I could look at it would be much appreciated :smile:

I don't have any numbers for you (I'd love to see them myself), but I can tell you there was coal production for the CSA in the following states:

Virginia -- Midlothian, Clover Hill, Hungry, Tuckahoe
North Carolina -- Deep River (the reason for the Western RR)
Georgia -- Nicojack
Tennessee -- Tracy City
Alabama -- Montevallo and others south of Birmingham
Texas -- north of Palestine

None of these mines produced much and Georgia factories in particular complained of the lack of coal. The quality of the coal in several places was at least "good" but lack of labor and materials prevented any of them from becoming major operations.

Production numbers are not there for most places, but serious Google work will bring up a lot of period and slightly later material about the locations, quality, etc.
 
Hey everyone! I'm sort of on an industrialization binge read right now and I've been looking up coal production statistics in the US for the Civil War, but specifics seem to have been maddeningly difficult to find. As far as I can suss out the United States in 1860 produced roughly 15,000,000 tons of coal, but I can't find how much of that was produced in the South.

If anyone has some numbers or some resources I could look at it would be much appreciated :smile:
I would argue it was not so much the lack of energy supplies that impeded Confederate military industrial production but the lack of skilled labor and ability to manufacture industrial tools. The Union had the advantage of unlimited immigration which allows for new skilled labor. The Confederacy has a vital need for white men to bear arms due to their heavy attrition rate from disease, death, capture and desertion. The Union has no problem importing labor and or industrial products of machinery as long has it the ships heading to their ports have a foreign flag. All confederate ports are subject to blockade vs none of the Union ports. While the Confederates did achieve self sufficiency in some areas of military production they simply lacked the ability to compete effectively with the Union.
Leftyhunter
 
This isn't the date you're looking for and probably something you've already seen, but might be close to representative of the 1860 time period, or then again maybe not... sorry not able to offer more help.

Coal Producing States, 1889
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81,719
Illinois 12,104
Ohio 9,977
West Virginia 6,232
Iowa 4,095
Alabama 3,573
Indiana 2,845
Colorado 2,544
Kentucky 2,400
Kansas 2,221
Tennessee 1,926

Thanks! I had seen these numbers before, but its useful to have for a comparison point! I've based my own numbers off of this article here which suggests the number above. Now obviously the majority of this would be produced in the North, but a not inconsequential number must have been produced in the South for it to be a nation that continued to function.

I'm aware some effort was made to expand coal production in Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama, but I can't quite find solid numbers.

Here is a link describing my home town's coal producing area - Midlothian, Virginia, a suburb of Richmond, which served the Tredegar Works during the war. It includes production figures.

https://www.dmme.virginia.gov/commercedocs/PUB_85.pdf

I love the article here! Some good production figures too :smile: now if only I could extrapolate from them!

I don't have any numbers for you (I'd love to see them myself), but I can tell you there was coal production for the CSA in the following states:

Virginia -- Midlothian, Clover Hill, Hungry, Tuckahoe
North Carolina -- Deep River (the reason for the Western RR)
Georgia -- Nicojack
Tennessee -- Tracy City
Alabama -- Montevallo and others south of Birmingham
Texas -- north of Palestine

None of these mines produced much and Georgia factories in particular complained of the lack of coal. The quality of the coal in several places was at least "good" but lack of labor and materials prevented any of them from becoming major operations.

Production numbers are not there for most places, but serious Google work will bring up a lot of period and slightly later material about the locations, quality, etc.

Ah that's some execllent information to know! Thank you! Maybe I'll be able to suss something out from searching each of these sites on Google.
 
Armes, Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama is a good source.
Dew, Ironmaker to the Confederacy has some info on VA mines and Tredegar's difficulty in getting coal.
There was plenty of correspondence regarding Shelby IW shutting down for want of coal, especially in 1865. They had bought their own mine, but could not get RR transportation. The only things I have seen have been in the UA library -- check my web site for some of them transcribed.

Years ago, I found on the web a geologist's report on the coal potential in Alabama and another one on Virginia. There should be one on North Carolina, too. Sorry, no links or names.
 
Something to keep in mind is that the Confederacy had no natural access to anthracite coal. This made all the difference in the world when it came to naval warfare and blockade running. Anthracite gives off much less smoke than the more common bituminous which the South did have access to. Ships burning the smoky bituminous gave away their position quite readily at quite a distance while those burning the anthracite were less conspicuous. This was especially important for the blockade runners.
 
Armes, Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama is a good source.
Dew, Ironmaker to the Confederacy has some info on VA mines and Tredegar's difficulty in getting coal.
There was plenty of correspondence regarding Shelby IW shutting down for want of coal, especially in 1865. They had bought their own mine, but could not get RR transportation. The only things I have seen have been in the UA library -- check my web site for some of them transcribed.

Years ago, I found on the web a geologist's report on the coal potential in Alabama and another one on Virginia. There should be one on North Carolina, too. Sorry, no links or names.

Just knowing these reports exist should make them somewhat easier to find :smile:
 
Just knowing these reports exist should make them somewhat easier to find :smile:
Do a site search on my web site, www-csa-railroads.com. Most of the hits will be of interest to you. Some transcribed documents show the amount of coal particular railroads provided certain customers in certain months -- not exactly production, but will help put you in the ball park.
 
Just knowing these reports exist should make them somewhat easier to find :smile:

It has been noted that the mining of coal practically ceased during hostilities. In 1861 and 1862, the annual production of coal in Virginia reached a new height of 445,000 short tons, but from 1863 through 1866 production dropped to 40,000 tons, or to about 10 per cent of the former output.

https://www.dmme.virginia.gov/commercedocs/BUL_46.pdf

HTH,
USS ALASKA
 

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Diamonds in the Rough by James Sanders Day

'Diamonds in the Rough: A History of Alabama's Cahaba Coal Field' by Dr. James Sanders Day Ph.D.

51nHeG2FlDL._SX346_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg


Diamonds in the Rough reconstructs the historical moment that defined the Cahaba Coal Field, a mineral-rich area that stretches across sixty-seven miles and four counties of central Alabama.

Combining existing written sources with oral accounts and personal recollections, James Sanders Day’s Diamonds in the Rough describes the numerous coal operations in this region―later overshadowed by the rise of the Birmingham district and the larger Warrior Field to the north.

Many of the capitalists are the same: Truman H. Aldrich, Henry F. DeBardeleben, and James W. Sloss, among others; however, the plethora of small independent enterprises, properties of the coal itself, and technological considerations distinguish the Cahaba from other Alabama coal fields. Relatively short-lived, the Cahaba coal-mining operation spanned from discovery in the 1840s through development, boom, and finally bust in the mid-1950s.

Day considers the chronological discovery, mapping, mining, and marketing of the field’s coal as well as the issues of convict leasing, town development, welfare capitalism, and unionism, weaving it all into a rich tapestry. At the heart of the story are the diverse people who lived and worked in the district―whether operator or miner, management or labor, union or nonunion, white or black, immigrant or native―who left a legacy for posterity now captured in Diamonds in the Rough. Largely obscured today by pine trees and kudzu, the mining districts of the Cahaba Coal Field forever influenced the lives of countless individuals and families, and ultimately contributed to the whole fabric of the state of Alabama.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0817317945/?tag=civilwartalkc-20

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 

'Diamonds in the Rough: A History of Alabama's Cahaba Coal Field' by Dr. James Sanders Day Ph.D.

View attachment 181082

Diamonds in the Rough reconstructs the historical moment that defined the Cahaba Coal Field, a mineral-rich area that stretches across sixty-seven miles and four counties of central Alabama.

Combining existing written sources with oral accounts and personal recollections, James Sanders Day’s Diamonds in the Rough describes the numerous coal operations in this region―later overshadowed by the rise of the Birmingham district and the larger Warrior Field to the north.

Many of the capitalists are the same: Truman H. Aldrich, Henry F. DeBardeleben, and James W. Sloss, among others; however, the plethora of small independent enterprises, properties of the coal itself, and technological considerations distinguish the Cahaba from other Alabama coal fields. Relatively short-lived, the Cahaba coal-mining operation spanned from discovery in the 1840s through development, boom, and finally bust in the mid-1950s.

Day considers the chronological discovery, mapping, mining, and marketing of the field’s coal as well as the issues of convict leasing, town development, welfare capitalism, and unionism, weaving it all into a rich tapestry. At the heart of the story are the diverse people who lived and worked in the district―whether operator or miner, management or labor, union or nonunion, white or black, immigrant or native―who left a legacy for posterity now captured in Diamonds in the Rough. Largely obscured today by pine trees and kudzu, the mining districts of the Cahaba Coal Field forever influenced the lives of countless individuals and families, and ultimately contributed to the whole fabric of the state of Alabama.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0817317945/?tag=civilwartalkc-20

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
As I live smack dab in the middle of the area and overlook the former site of the Oxmoore Furnaces, when I heard Dr. Day speak; it opened up a whole new appreciation of my state's industrial past and I enjoy seeking out the remains of the Cahaba Coal Field's infrastructure.
 
The more I learn about the Civil War, the more I find out how little I actually know!

Interesting thread and topic!

To all who have contributed to this thread, thanks for posting such information.

Sincerely,
Unionblue
 
The more I learn about the Civil War, the more I find out how little I actually know!

Interesting thread and topic!

To all who have contributed to this thread, thanks for posting such information.

Sincerely,
Unionblue
I fear that there are many, many aspects of Civil War America we know little of because those who write the histories have tended to concentrate on the military, political and diplomatic aspects of a time period, any time period, and even when getting into social history tend to concentrate on particulars that are complementary to the those aforementioned fields of interests. For example, in discussing slavery, historians frequently write about items like the 3/5 clause, Missouri Compromise, Dred Scott, Compromise of 1850. But how much effort has gone into marriage customs of the enslaved, wages paid to skilled slave workers in Southern cities, life expectancy of the enslaved versus those of the white population, causes of death of the enslaved population versus the white population. Were hookworm and pellagra diseases endemic in the entire Southern population or only of the rural portion of it? If so, why? Now, one might argue that knowing the particulars of the Compromise of 1850 was more important to the outbreak of the Civil War but to a yeoman family in the Piedmont of North Carolina in 1850 it might have been a matter of the "milk sickness" that most occupied his mind that summer. How did Southerners cope with the shortages caused by the blockade? What did they do when those Sulphur Lucifer's (matches) disappeared from the marketplace? Or going up North at the same time period. There, parents still expected to lose about half of their children before they reached adulthood. Just look at the heartbreaking statistics on the tombstones of any mid 19th century cemetery. Why did so many infants and children die? Was the infant and child mortality rate the same in the North and South in 1860? Did it change in the South from the impact of the war? Perhaps Lee ordered Pickett's Charge against the advice of Longstreet for no other reason than he was suffering from the effects of a coronary embolism and was not thinking straight.

History is the record of what one generation finds noteworthy in another and to a great extent, because most writers of history, and their reading audience, prefer military strategy to microbial forensics, to prefer parsing speeches to dissecting cadavers, we probably always will have huge gaps in our understanding of any period of time. There is so much we do not know that there will never be a time when we can say we know enough to reach certitude about our understanding of what it was like to have lived at any period of history earlier than our own, and probably not even that. Perhaps if destructive hurricanes begin with a butterfly fluttering its wings in a tropical rain forest, wars are lost because one cannot find a match to light a lantern. Yes, indeed, we do what Socrates admitted, we admit that wise men are only wise because they recognize that they know far less than they think they do.
 
I fear that there are many, many aspects of Civil War America we know little of because those who write the histories have tended to concentrate on the military, political and diplomatic aspects of a time period, any time period, and even when getting into social history tend to concentrate on particulars that are complementary to the those aforementioned fields of interests. For example, in discussing slavery, historians frequently write about items like the 3/5 clause, Missouri Compromise, Dred Scott, Compromise of 1850. But how much effort has gone into marriage customs of the enslaved, wages paid to skilled slave workers in Southern cities, life expectancy of the enslaved versus those of the white population, causes of death of the enslaved population versus the white population. Were hookworm and pellagra diseases endemic in the entire Southern population or only of the rural portion of it? If so, why? Now, one might argue that knowing the particulars of the Compromise of 1850 was more important to the outbreak of the Civil War but to a yeoman family in the Piedmont of North Carolina in 1850 it might have been a matter of the "milk sickness" that most occupied his mind that summer. How did Southerners cope with the shortages caused by the blockade? What did they do when those Sulphur Lucifer's (matches) disappeared from the marketplace? Or going up North at the same time period. There, parents still expected to lose about half of their children before they reached adulthood. Just look at the heartbreaking statistics on the tombstones of any mid 19th century cemetery. Why did so many infants and children die? Was the infant and child mortality rate the same in the North and South in 1860? Did it change in the South from the impact of the war? Perhaps Lee ordered Pickett's Charge against the advice of Longstreet for no other reason than he was suffering from the effects of a coronary embolism and was not thinking straight.

History is the record of what one generation finds noteworthy in another and to a great extent, because most writers of history, and their reading audience, prefer military strategy to microbial forensics, to prefer parsing speeches to dissecting cadavers, we probably always will have huge gaps in our understanding of any period of time. There is so much we do not know that there will never be a time when we can say we know enough to reach certitude about our understanding of what it was like to have lived at any period of history earlier than our own, and probably not even that. Perhaps if destructive hurricanes begin with a butterfly fluttering its wings in a tropical rain forest, wars are lost because one cannot find a match to light a lantern. Yes, indeed, we do what Socrates admitted, we admit that wise men are only wise because they recognize that they know far less than they think they do.
One reason you do not read about the many topics you mentioned is because the publishing world does not see these subjects as having enough of a base of interested readers to enable the publisher to make a profit on publishing such works.

In my own case, I found several publishers who would not even acknowledge receiving my proposal. The one who did acknowledge it said the work sounded like a great story, but he doubted he could sell enough to break even -- at least he was honest. With the choices left to me (self-publish, on-demand publish or electronic publish), I chose to self-publish. Getting the word out about my book has taken a lot of time and has been less effective than I expected, but I will probably use that route again next time and not even offer the books to commercial publishers.

Hopefully, the increased variety of ways to get your book/study "published" will cause more uneconomic subjects to be published.
 
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