Sir, as stated above, up to and including the ACW, the poor used candles, lanterns used oil - whale oil - and the privileged used town gas where and when available. Before the electrification of the world, kerosene lamps were the preferred method of lighting, and kerosene was cheaper than whale oil. Abraham Gesner came up with an alternative for whale oil, distilled from coal in 1846. Once the distillate of kerosene was extracted from petroleum, it quickly became a popular lighting fuel. The crude oil was collected from seeps where it rose to the surface of the ground naturally. Advanced forms of the kerosene lamp were fabricated by Polish inventor Ignacy Łukasiewicz in 1853. Lamps had been created to use this source but a bountiful supply of crude wasn't discovered and exploited commercially until 'Colonel' Edwin Laurentine Drake's well came in on August, 1859. There are other prior claims such as wells in Azerbaijan, Ontario, West Virginia, Myanmar, Persia, Arabia, Sichuan and Poland. Drake's is the best known. The problem, which we have to this day, was transportation - getting the crude from where it was found to the places it could be most used. The ACW put a damper on the growth and capitalization of this industry using the anciently known resource that was looked upon as a nuisance if not worse. Modern chemistry was about to change all that. Post ACW, by the end of the 1860s, kerosene had almost completely driven whale oil from the economy and had taken a dominating position from the town gas / coal gas market. Before the advent of the automobile, the big product that spurred the oil industry was kerosene.
As a sidelight, along with the ravages of Confederate Commerce Raiders, without the oil revolution, the continued mass slaughter and over-harvesting of marine mammals, (and not just by the US), was going to force its own market correction to the size of the whaling fleets.
A Compact with the Whales: Confederate Commerce Raiders and New Bedford's Whaling Industry 1861-1865
The odd thing about it is that the New England shipping industry and the southern cotton producers had been economic allies. The shipping industry had helped bring the slaves to the colonies and the later US states. It had shipped the cotton to England and then helped distribute English textiles...
civilwartalk.com
The Rise and Fall of New Bedford Whaling, as Documented by the Whalemen 's Shipping List and Merchants' Transcript
Main Source:
'The Prize : The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power' by Daniel Yergin
HTHs,
USS ALASKA
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