Cannon Foundries

The Industrial Revolution brought many industrial technology changes to America at the time of the Civil War, none of which were more apparent than the new methods for producing weapons of war.  In cannon manufacturing, these changes involved new methods for casting and rifling the barrels.  Tennessee, a major producer of cannons for the Confederate Western Division, implemented some of these new ideas in the manufacturing processes of her native foundries.

Prior to the Civil War, Tennessee had no cannon foundries.  Consequently, several Tennessee machine shops converted to the production of cannon and shot in an attempt to support the war effort.  After the war, the operational foundries converted back to machine shops and discontinued their short-lived manufacture of military materiel.  Below is a list of the cannon foundries located in Tennessee at the time of the war.
 
 

For further information, refer to Larry J. Daniel's Confederate Cannon Foundries (Union City, TN: Pioneer Press, 1977), the major source (along with the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies) of cannon foundry information used on these pages.  Additional works on cannons may be found in the cannon bibliography.
 

(Thanks to Nathan Kinser, assistant to the Research Coordinator, for the cannon foundries research used in these pages.)

  Civil War Technology & Industry in Tennessee

Last update:  December 12, 2000