1862 LETTER re GEORGIA SALTPETER CONTRACTORS Edited by Marion O. Smith ae Pe Rome Ga July 26' 1862 on Randolp Sec of War CSA Dear Sir C M Pennington? & Co of this place are contractors with the government for the manufacture of Salt Petre & Potash. Henry W Dean & Milford E Pentecost* are contractors as members of this company and are intended to be practically engaged in the work. We are desirous to procure the exemption to which they are entitled under section 2" of General orders no 41.4 These men both belong to Yeisers’ Light Battery now a part of Gen' E Kirby Smiths® Division Department of E. Tenn. This company have possession of a very rich cave’ & are anxious to have their work progressig but are suffering very much for the want of suitable men to superintend the hands. As we shall work negro men it needs that we have men accustomed to controlling them & such men are exceedingly hard to find in the country, at least such as can engage in this work-- Dear Sir you will confer a special favour by having these men detailed as soon as possible; the work has been delayed for the want of them, & must necessarily drag on till we can get them to take hold of it. We are in a country favourable to the production of both potash & saltpetre & when once fairly started hope to turn out quantities’ of these articles provided Buels® forces now threatening Chatanooga & this section generally should not break in upon us-- Hoping you may be able to give the matter early attention’® I am dear sir yours resp” C H Stillwell” Sec & Treas’. of CM Pennington & Co Letters Received by the Confederate Secretary of War, 1861-1865, File S (WD) 701, Record Group 109 (Microcopy 437, Roll 72), National Archives. 1. George W. Randolph (1818-1867), a grandson of Thomas Jefferson, was a Richmond, Virginia, lawyer. An exponent of secession, he was a Confederate artillery colonel and brigadier general before briefly (March 22- November 15, 1862) serving as secretary of war. Dictionary of American Biography. 2. Cunningham M. Pennington (c1812-1885), a civil engineer, was often engaged in surveying railroad lines. In 1859 he was chief engineer of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad and in 1865 he was engineer and superintendent of the Rome Railroad. 1860 Census, Ga., Floyd, Rome Dist., 167; George M. Battey, Jr., A History of Rome and Floyd County (Atlanta, 1922), 620; Huntsville Southern Advocate, September 7, 1859; Rome Weekly Courier, October 12, 1865, September 21, 1866; Augusta Daily Constitutionalist, December 5, 1869. 3. Dean (1833-1896), a farmer, had been a private and 2nd lieutenant, Company I, 29th Georgia Infantry, October 1, 1861-May 7, 1862, before enlisting in the Cherokee Artillery company. Pentecost (c1835-/11892) before the war was a bookkeeper and afterwards was a dry goods merchant. 1860 Census, Ga., Floyd, North Carolina Dist., 264; Rome Dist., 181; (1870), North Carolina Dist., 19; Rome, 3rd Ward, 13; Lillian Henderson, comp., Roster of the Confederate Soldiers of Georgia 1861-1865 (6 vols., Hapeville, Ga., 1958-64), 3: 485; Shirley Kinney, Madge Tate, and Sandra Junkins, eds., Floyd County, Georgia Cemeteries (2 vols., Cave Spring and Rome, Ga., 1985-89), 1: 131; Shirley Kinney and James P. Kinney, Jr., Floyd County, Georgia 1890: A Census Substitute (Rome, Ga., 1990), 8. 4. General Orders, No. 41, were issued May 31, 1862, by General Samuel Cooper of the Confederate Adjutant and Inspector General’s Office. The second section stipulated that "All persons in the employment of the Niter Bureau, whether contractors for manufacturing saltpeter, or laborers in their employment, are exempt by law from enrollment." The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 70 vols. in 128 books (Washington, D.C., 1880-1901), Ser. 4, Vol. 1: 1139. 5. James G. Yeiser (c1826-1895), a Mexican War veteran and Rome druggist, was a lieutenant and eventually captain of the Cherokee Artillery. Later in the war he became colonel of a regiment of Georgia State Guards. Battey, History of Rome, 137, 538, 598; 1860 Census, Ga., Floyd, Rome Dist., 191; (1870), Rome, 2nd Ward, 1; Clement A. Evans, ed., Confederate Military History: History Extended Edition (12 vols., Wilmington, N.C., 1987 [1899]), 7: 141, 145. 6. Edmund Kirby Smith (1824-1893), an 1845 West Point graduate, was a Mexican War veteran and career U.S. army officer until 1861. He entered the Southern forces and attained the rank of full general, commanding in East Tennessee and from late 1862 until 1865 all the Confederacy west of the Mississippi River. After the war he headed an academy in Nashville and taught mathematics at the University of the South. Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Gray (Baton Rouge, 1959), 279-80. 7. It is not known which cave the Pennington Company mined. 8. The only known output by C. M. Pennington and Company was during September, 1862: 714 pounds of saltpeter and 3,414 pounds of potash. Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, Record Group 109 (Microcopy 346, Roll 789), National Archives, C. M. Pennington & Co. File. 9. Major General Don Carlos Buell (1818-1898) during the spring and summer of 1862 commanded a large army of Union troops, scattered from Nashville, Tennessee, to Huntsville, Alabama. When the Confederates invaded Kentucky he stopped them at Perryville, but failed to mount a vigorous pursuit. He was relieved of command October 24, 1862, and eventually resigned. He settled in Kentucky where he made iron and operated a coal mine. Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue (Baton Rouge, 1964), 51-52. 10. It is not known if Dean and Pentecost were detailed or released from the army. The only notations on the covering sheet of Stillwell’s letters are "Recd. aug. 1, 1862" and "File." 11. Charles H. Stillwell (1806-1882/87) was pastor of Rome’s First Baptist Church. After the war he was also a sawmill operator. Kinney, Tate, and Junkins, Floyd County Cemeteries, 1: 407; Battey, History of Rome, 139, 594; Allen D. Candler and Clement A. Evans, eds., Cyclopedia of Georgia (4 vols., Atlanta, 1906), 3: 379, 380.