One dedicated Southerner collected wagons full of women’s urine to make gunpowder for the Civil War

Ha! Really interesting post @Bee :bounce::bounce:

I had read of this practice before but not this particular article. Nitre was big business and I suppose they were determined to do whatever was necessary to obtain the supply. There were a number of caves in north AL where whole squads of men were detailed to dig dirt from the floor of the cave in order that the nitre could be extracted.

I suppose collecting and hauling urine was a bit less labor intensive than digging it from the floor of a cave and transporting it?

Id be interested to know the amount of nitre obtained from say a pound of cave dirt and a quart of urine (or whatever amount would be equivalent?) :D @7th Mississippi Infantry do you know?

Bat guano! This is actually a familiar ingredient in my past/present work with fertilizer b!ends. Highly explosive if stored incorrectly (in the form of fertilizer). Even more explosive when used purposely in home made bombs:bomb:
 
How about poems about it?

From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitre_and_Mining_Bureau ...

Night Soil


Desperate for saltpeter necessary for the making of gunpowder, the Confederacy sent out agents around the South to collect deposits of it. John Harrelson, an agent in Selma, Alabama of the Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau, advertised the following in the local paper: "The ladies of Selma are respectfully requested to preserve the chamber lye collected about their premises for the purpose of making nitre. A barrel will be sent around daily to collect it." These poems were soon to be written by the soldiers and civilians on both sides:

The Southern version: "An appeal to John Harrelson" John Harrelson, John Harrelson, you are a wretched creature, You’ve added to this war a new and awful feature, You’d have us think while every man is bound to be a fighter, The ladies, bless their pretty dears, should save their p** for nitre, John Harrelson, John Harrelson, where did you get this notion, To send your barrel around the town to gather up this lotion, We thought the girls had work enough in making shirts and kissing, But you have put the pretty dears to patriotic p*ssing, John Harrelson, John Harrelson, do pray invent a neater And somewhat less immodest mode of making your saltpeter, For "tis an awful idea, John, gunpowdery and cranky, That when a lady lifts her skirt, she’s killing off a Yankee.

A little while later came the Yankee version: John Harrelson, John Harrelson, we’ve read in song and story How a women’s tears through all the years have moistened fields of glory, But never was it told before, how, ‘mid such scenes of slaughter, Your Southern beauties dried their tears and went to making water, No wonder that your boys are brave, who couldn’t be a fighter, If every time he shot a gun he used his sweetheart's nitre ? And, vice-versa, what could make a Yankee soldier sadder, Than dodging bullets fired by a pretty woman’s bladder.


Drink up!
USS ALASKA
 
he showed or pretented to show the results of his personal tryout with the French recipe

There is no Pretend.

Only Tomatoes.

Okay, how do you know that?

Burn wood in chimenea on chilly night, enjoy beer(s).
Empty used beer into kitty litter pail before Lights Out.
Add wood ash from chimenea.
Close pail lid. Allow time to ferment.
Apply to garden.
Enjoy results.

d16943enz.jpg
 
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yes but today a lot of the urine awailable (one's own) is condaminated with meds (eg against high pp)

Keine Medikamente. Keine STDs. Keine Unregelmäßigkeiten.

Mein Urin ist rein, wie das Bier, das ich trinke.

0d5b3652e94cadfcfd445ec8fda7c285.jpg
 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine

Gunpowder


Urine was used before the development of a
chemical industry in the manufacture of gunpowder. Urine, a nitrogen source, was used to moisten straw or other organic material, which was kept moist and allowed to rot for several months to over a year. The resulting salts were washed from the heap with water, which was evaporated to allow collection of crude saltpeter crystals, that were usually refined before being used in making gunpowder.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate


Joseph LeConte


Perhaps the most exhaustive discussion of the production of this material is the 1862
LeConte text. He was writing with the express purpose of increasing production in the Confederate States to support their needs during the American Civil War. Since he was calling for the assistance of rural farming communities, the descriptions and instructions are both simple and explicit. He details the "French Method", along with several variations, as well as a "Swiss method". N.B. Many references have been made to a method using only straw and urine, but there is no such method in this work.

French method

Niter-beds are prepared by mixing manure with either mortar or wood ashes, common earth and organic materials such as straw to give porosity to a compost pile typically 4 feet (1.2 m) high, 6 feet (1.8 m) wide, and 15 feet (4.6 m) long. The heap was usually under a cover from the rain, kept moist with urine, turned often to accelerate the decomposition, then finally leached with water after approximately one year, to remove the soluble calcium nitrate which was then converted to potassium nitrate by filtering through the potash.

Swiss method

LeConte describes a process using only urine and not dung, referring to it as the Swiss method. Urine is collected directly, in a sandpit under a stable. The sand itself is dug out and leached for nitrates which were then converted to potassium nitrate via potash, as above.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
Didn't realize how many uses there was for this stuff - and all these years I've just ben pi**ing it away...so to speak... :bounce:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine

Cleaning


Because urea in urine breaks down into ammonia, urine has been used for the cleaning properties of the ammonia therein. In pre-industrial times urine was used – in the form of lant or aged urine – as a cleaning fluid. Urine was also used for whitening teeth in Ancient Rome.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
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The use of urine to produce ingredients for gun powder goes back to medieval times. An interesting aspect of the beliefs of the times was that it was believed urine was good, but the urine of clerics was better, and the urine of a bishop was best of all. Apparently some monasteries did a brisk business collecting and selling the urine of their monks to gun powder makers.
 
Only used as a filler for grenades.

[Holding the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch]

King Arthur: How does it... um... how does it work?

Sir Lancelot: I know not, my liege.

King Arthur: Consult the Book of Armaments.

Brother Maynard: Armaments, chapter two, verses nine through twenty-one.

Cleric: [reading] And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the Lord did grin. And the people did feast upon the lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats, and large chu...

Brother Maynard: Skip a bit, Brother...

Cleric: And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.

Brother Maynard: Amen.

All: Amen.

King Arthur: Right. One... two... five!

Galahad: Three, sir.

King Arthur: Three!


USS ALASKA
 
Urea is a poor substitute for nitrates. Here's a simple explanation of the process:

https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/54387/extracting-urea-from-urine

You would need to convert the urea to ammonia and the ammonia to a usable form of nitrate for gunpowder production.

http://www.3rd1000.com/chem101/chem104y.htm

As a former government investigator, I have a war story or two regarding nitration plants that went boom. My favorite was a small fireworks related manufacturing plant in the Ozarks. They custom manufactured fuse cord and a few associated products. The plant had gone up in one great explosion, killing one employee. I was the guy sent in to investigate the accident and was taking a statement from the Owner. He described the events to me in an unusually frank and open manner. He said that his Plant Manager and one employee, a female were operating the fuse machine. His plant used Potassium Nitrate as it's nitrate source and the gunpowder was gently folded into the fuse cord strands, then cut off in lengths by this special machine. The Mgr. fed the inputs into the front end of the machine, while the employee caught the finished fuse links in a plastic five gallon bucket. According to the Owner, the machine had gotten balky and wasn't cutting off the fuse lengths properly, so the Mgr. picked up a ball-peen hammer and struck the side of the machine. The hammer strike caused a spark, which catastrophically ignited the gunpowder in the machine. The Plant Manager was blown out through the side of the building, as it collapsed, but the female employee was incinerated in place. He said there wasn't enough left of her to gather up and collect in the five gallon bucket.
 
..I am probably going to live to regret this thread. At least it is an equal opportunity for us to have a little fun and post together on a thread, regardless of our views on other topics :smile:
 
Nitre was big business and I suppose they were determined to do whatever was necessary to obtain the supply.

Bat guano! This is actually a familiar ingredient in my past/present work with fertilizer b!ends. Highly explosive if stored incorrectly (in the form of fertilizer). Even more explosive when used purposely in home made bombs:bomb:

Once considered a strategic resource - so much so the USA had a Federal Law on the topic.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act

The Guano Islands Act (11 Stat. 119, enacted August 18, 1856, codified at 48 U.S.C. ch. 8 §§ 1411-1419) is a United States federal law passed by the U.S. Congress that enables citizens of the United States to take possession of unclaimed islands containing guano deposits. The islands can be located anywhere, so long as they are not occupied and not within the jurisdiction of another government. It also empowers the President of the United States to use the military to protect such interests and establishes the criminal jurisdiction of the United States in these territories.

Whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other Government, and not occupied by the citizens of any other Government, and takes
peaceable possession thereof, and occupies the same, such island, rock, or key may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States.

— Section 1 of the Guano Islands Act
The Act continues to be part of the law of the United States. The most recent Guano Islands Act claim was made to Navassa Island, however, the claim was discarded because a court ruled the island was already under American jurisdiction (a claim Haiti disputes).[1]

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
This definitely has to be one of the more eclectic articles that I have run across in my Civil War perusals. At a glance, this article from a collection of vignettes seems plausible, but on the far edge of peculiar. I am curious if anyone has heard of this practice in the manufacturing of gun powder? Perhaps a little late for April Fools :smile:

One dedicated Southerner collected wagons full of women’s pee to make gunpowder for the Civil War
How the South laid waste to the Union army

On October 1, 1863, the women of Selma, Alabama, opened the newspaper. There in black and white was a young man asking for their pee.

“The ladies of Selma are respectfully requested to preserve all their chamber lye,” wrote John Haralson, “for the purpose of making Nitre.” It was the tail end of the Civil War, and the South was desperate for ammo. “Nitre,” also known as saltpeter, was a main ingredient in the manufacture of gunpowder, you see. And to make saltpeter, you needed nitrogen, and urine had plenty of that.

Why women? Not only were Confederate belles already heavily involved in the war effort — knitting socks and dyeing wool for uniforms — but they were some of the only ones left in town. Roughly 300,000 men were serving in the Confederate army at the time, and by the end of the war, more than 483,000 had died. more here https://timeline.com/civil-war-gunpowder-pee-79f8d21327f0

“That When A Lady Lifts Her Skirt, She Shoots A Horrid Yankee.” The Story Of Confederate Women’s Urine And The Manufacture Of Gunpowder.
https://civilianmilitaryintelligenc...-yankee-the-story-of-confederate-womens-urine-and-the-manufacture-of-gunpowder
 
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