The Confederacy Established A Well-Organized Manufacturing And Delivery System

The Confederate War Department controlled the manufacture and delivery of war supplies beginning in the second half of 1861 by centralizing authority over the country's industrial capability through the Quartermaster and Ordnance Bureaus. In time, a considerable number of the Confederacy's industrial complexes which included textile mills, foundries, and machine shops which performed work for the Ordnance and Quartermaster Bureaus under contract.

Only those factories that directly served the requirements of the army were under the administration of the confederate government. These were divided into two categories: the ordnance bureau was in charge of the weaponry and ammunition; the quartermaster's bureau was in charge of the more varied group, which comprised clothing, blankets, tents, shoes, wagons, saddles, and harness. The fact that the Confederate government never created or even made an attempt to create any civil machinery for the management or regulation of the industries on which their heavily dependent production depended appears noteworthy. The cause is obvious: the army's supply was only seen as a military issue. It was an army matter; let the war department handle it! Even though it was urgent, the issue was only going to last until the end of the war. After all, these issues were unavoidable in a government that was just scraping by and reliant on insufficient and underdeveloped resources.