Kirby's Augusta - Don't Take a Day Off!

Don’t take a day off!! Taking a day off can be dangerous. The best example I can think of took place 150 years ago this week when a somewhat obscure manufacturing foreman named Gibson wasn’t on the job. What followed was probably the most deadly military-related incident in Augusta during the War Between the States. Mr. Gibson, according to newspaper accounts, was the foreman for a section of the famed Confederate Powder Works, a series of buildings that took up about two miles of real estate along the Augusta Canal. As a supervisor, Gibson was known as a stickler for rules. And one of the top rules at the Powder Works was “No Smoking.” That late August day, it was reported, Gibson was off, and somebody thought if he was careful he might pull out a pipe or a cigar and take a puff or two. BOOM! The explosion might have been the loudest sound in Augusta history. Seven men in the room were blown to bits and those “bits” sent about 500 feet into the air. A sentry standing outside remained intact but was killed by the shock wave. A boy and a mule in a lot next door were knocked down. The boy died; the mule’s status, The Chronicle wryly reported, was unknown. Glass from all the windows was not only shattered, but splintered into thousands of little projectiles that shredded the leaves off trees in the immediate neighborhood. It was a terrible explosion. It was a deadly situation. But did it stop gunpowder production? Not really. And that was just another example of the genius of the Powder Works designer and supervisor – George Washington Rains. The Confederate Powder Works was an engineering marvel. It produced 2.75 million pounds of gunpowder between 1861 and 1865 from its 28-building complex along the canal. When the war began, the federal war chiefs thought the South would fall quickly because they lacked many military necessities, including gunpowder. The Confederacy realized this as well, and Jefferson Davis commissioned Rains, a West Point grad with military experience, to solve the problem. He surpassed all expectations. He chose this site because, while connected by railroads to various battle fronts, it was somewhat insulated from the war. And it had a canal, which provided water power to aid manufacturing. And then Rains showed his true brilliance. In 1861, the works was built in a series of separate buildings to avoid total destruction if one blew up The biggest of this string of buildings – a saltpeter refinery – was designed as replica of England’s Parliament. When he finished, Rains was running the second largest gunpowder refinery in the world, producing 3.5 tons a day. It has been said the Confederacy never lost a battle for lack of powder. Despite the efforts of Col. George Washington Rains, the war came to its sad close in April 1865 and powder works was surrendered. Rains wanted it to remain standing as monument to war’s inspiration, but others decided to take it down and use is bricks for new manufacturing mills and even city culvert and road projects. But they did leave the old chimney standing. In the late 1870s, Confederate memorial groups received from the city council a deed for the spot as a memorial. Rains, then a professor of chemistry at the Medical College of Georgia, spoke at its dedication. When he died in 1896, his will asked that the Confederate garrison flag he had hauled down at Augusta in 1865 be buried beneath it. It still stands today, and is believed to be the last remaining example of Confederate architecture. And if you decide like Mr. Gibson 150 years ago to take a day off …. you might come down and look at it.