Fighting The Forces Of Darkness

By Gould Hagler · Originally published June 2017 · p. 35

Light! Light! Light! Blockade or No Blockade! Natchez Daily Courier, Apr. 4, 1862 In the first two articles of this series we explored the ways in which the people of the Confederacy coped with shortages of two everyday household items: soap and coffee. Here we shall see how war affected families’ ability to light their homes. In the present age we easily turn night into day. Artificial light for indoor and outdoor use comes from electric lamps at a minimal cost. We give little thought to this miracle, either as we read at home or watch a night game on a baseball field. Satellite images of the earth show that for much of the inhabited world there is no night, at least no night as our remote ancestors knew it. In the mid-nineteenth century artificial lighting was less pervasive and efficacious, and more expensive, than it is today. However, great strides were made during the Industrial Revolution. Improved lighting allowed people of that time to engage in many nighttime activities in ways their forebears could not. For the people of the Confederacy, war stole these modern conveniences, forcing them to spend more, consume less, innovate, make do, do without and revert to outmoded lighting technologies.

By the time of the Civil War, oil lamps and (in many cities) lamps fueled with manufactured gas were the main sources of lighting for domestic use. Electricity was to come later, but lights burning oil and (to a greater degree) lights using gas technology were vast improvements over messy, smelly and smoky tallow candles. The materials needed for lighting were, like many other goods, imported from the North and from overseas. Georgia’s Albany Patriot (Jan. 19, 1860) contained an announcement that a local merchant had returned from Europe with a large and varied stock of goods for sale. Among items in the shipment were coal oil lamps and fluid lamps. The lamps and other goods were offered cheaply, according to the ad. This would change. “Light! Light! Light! Blockade or No Blockade!” shouted an ad in the Natchez Daily Courier (Apr. 4, 1862). A New Orleans company had begun to manufacture “Confederate Illuminating Oil.” The proprietors were also selling a special attachment to adapt coal oil lamps to accommodate the patriotic fuel. The Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel (Dec. 12, 1861) reveals that oil was becoming hard to find. “The necessity of something to give us light in the place of the oils and fluids we have been in the habit of using, is becoming every day more pressing. The consumers of kerosene fluid, the article being so dear and inferior in quality, will be glad to resort to tallow candles for lighting.” Necessity drives people to find substitutes. On June 6, 1862, the Augusta, Ga., paper reported that kerosene lamps could be altered to burn terebene, derived from turpentine. There was no shortage of pine trees. Turning to another abundant product, two Georgians “commenced the manufacture of oil…from the pea nut.” Whale oils, we are told, “have almost entirely disappeared” (Savannah Republican, Jan. 16, 1862). Two months later, on August 6, the Athens Southern Banner contained an ad for a local drugstore selling terebene and adapting oil lamps for its use. From the Savannah Republican (June 7, 1862) we learn that terebene was going for $1.60 per gallon. The Charleston Mercury twelve days later told of a substitute known as Palmetto Oil, “equal to kerosene oil at a cost of only a quarter of a cent per hour.” Texans were extracting oil from the castor bean (Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel, Oct. 9, 1861). Of course, one had to ignite the gas or oil. Matches were imported too and, like all other imports, would become more dear as the blockade tightened. In the Charleston Mercury (Sept. 9, 1861) we learn of a newly established match factory in that city, which seems to be the first such facility in the South. “We hail with pleasure this new effort of native industry,” said the editors. On May 22 the following year the Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel announced the opening of a match factory in nearby Hamburg, S.C. “Imported matches are now about used up in this community,” the paper reported, so the new enterprise across the river was met with great relief. On Sept. 22, 1862, the Southern Match Works advertised its wares in the Memphis Daily Appeal (by then exiled to Grenada, Miss.) and advised buyers to act fast “before it is too late.” Match works were also established in Galveston (San Antonio Herald, Nov. 2, 1861) and in Macon (Savannah Republican, Nov. 2, 1862). From the latter paper we learn that the factory cost $20,000 to build and that it employed thirty families. We discover the price of matches in the San Antonio Herald (Sept. 13, 1862) was $1 per thousand. The blockade also created supply problems for municipal gas works. On Oct.16, 1862, the Savannah Republican advised that the supply of coal was exhausted and that wood gas was being used instead. The results were not satisfactory, the paper reported just two days later. The Charleston Mercury reported on Dec. 16, 1863, that “nearly all our Southern cities are now supplied with gas manufactured from pine.” This “blockade gas” may not have been optimal, as the Savannah paper said the previous year, but with the noose tightening it had to do. By 1864 the situation had worsened considerably. The Charleston Mercury (Feb. 2) lamented that there were no lights on the city’s streets and argued that “the cessation of the gas supply is too great an inconvenience to last, and a remedy of some kind ought to be provided without delay.” The paper offered no suggestions as to ways and means of accomplishing this. The prediction about candles made in the Augusta paper in December 1861 soon proved true. On May 2, 1862, the paper announced that a local entrepreneur was producing candles—which the newsmen tested and found to be excellent. Facing shortages of oil and gas, people everywhere reverted to candles and other more primitive methods of creating light. A candle factory was established in Natchez in 1861 (Natchez Daily Courier, Oct. 25). At least seven papers, from Georgia to Texas, offered recipes for homemade candles made of tallow and various other materials. The Weekly Columbus Enquirer (July 7, 1863) suggested a way to get “good light at light expense” by firing up grease (of any kind) stuffed into a sycamore ball. The Natchez Daily Courier (Nov. 8, 1861) reported that a local lady had devised a candle that was 60 yards long and would burn six hours per night for six months at a cost of a mere 50 cents. It seems the wonder-candle was a wick, thinly coated with beeswax and rosin, and wound up in a ball. Four papers in three states re-ran this news. No word about fact checking this interesting item. Fake news? Times were hard. People at home struggled in their quotidian lives as their fighting men battled at the front. The newspapers of the time tell us how they managed. As I was researching for this article, I learned something about candles that I never knew. In former days, in times of severe famine, desperately hungry people sometimes resorted to eating candles made of tallow—the solid part of animal fat. Times were hard in the Confederacy, but not that hard. I am sure that as these hard-pressed people prayed at bedtime, they thanked the Lord for that day’s blessings, meagre as its blessings might be.

Sources: The newspaper accounts used for this article were compiled by Vicki Betts, a librarian at the University of Texas at Tyler. Betts, Vicki “Lighting: Candles, Lamps, and Matches” (2016). Special Topics. Paper 14. They can be found online at http://scholarworks.uttyler.edu/cw_newstopics

Gould Hagler is the author of Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation (Mercer University Press, 2014), available from Mercer University Press, retail outlets, online sellers, and directly from the author (gould.hagler@gmail. com). His new book on Alabama’s Confederate monuments is to be published by Indiana University Press.