The Jackson Arsenal Explosion
By: Raina G. Egan
A deadly
explosion occurred at the Jackson Arsenal in Jackson, Mississippi on November
5, 1862. Like other cities with
arsenals, Jackson was a crossroads of railroad traffic, as well as a center of military
hospitals and stockpiles. The building
in which the explosion occurred was a large, two-story brick one, formerly a
boys’ schoolhouse that had been converted to an arsenal just that year. The site was known as College Green, with it
bounded by High Street to the north, Mississippi Street to the south, Jefferson
Street to the east, and North Street to the west. The upper level of the building was used for
the construction of ammunition, the work being performed by women and
children. The lower level was used for
making artillery shells.[1] The officers in charge of the arsenal were
Colonel A.P. Stockton, Captain W. Tams, Lieutenant R.S. Kinney, and Captain H.
Fisher.
In the
cartridge assembly room, loose grains of powder – often scattered on the tables
- would sometimes stick to the bottom of the copper pans of wax used to
waterproof cartridges. That day, a fresh
barrel of powder had been opened in the room.
Earlier, at around 11 AM, one male worker had complained to the foreman
about powder flashing when he would put the pan over the flame of a lamp in
order to melt the wax. The foreman did
nothing and the young man quit that day in frustration; he was the last known
worker to leave the building alive.[2]
At
around 3:30 PM, the young man heard an explosion and he ran back to the
arsenal. The “little Gem Engine” had
been brought from the firehouse, but could not do much due to lack of
water. Shells and cartridges were still
exploding. No one was known to have
escaped from the building. This incident
killed roughly forty-seven people; of those known to have been killed, at least
seventeen were women and girls.[3]
The
November 7th The Weekly Mississippian
described the state of the victims in gory detail, including a man with his leg
torn off and his brains blown out, and a girl hanging by her foot on a tree
limb, with her clothes still burning.
Other bodies were blown from fifty to 150 yards, and packages of
cartridges blew up for a while after the initial explosion.
On the
day of the explosion, the only officer in charge of the arsenal that was
present was Colonel Stockton. The
building only held a few hundred rounds of ammunition and about 200 pounds of
powder at that time. Twenty-nine bodies
were gathered for burial, most of them burned and mutilated beyond
recognition. The dead were buried in
mass graves somewhere in Greenwood Cemetery (then the Old City Cemetery), but
the locations of them are unknown.
In 1953, Anabel Powers, a Mississippi
columnist, described the former arsenal, which was then the home of the Barr
family, purchased in 1897. When the back
portion had been excavated to use for a garden, workmen found the brick
foundation of the arsenal. Reportedly,
during heavy rains as late as the 1950’s, minie balls and shell fragments would
be brought to the surface. Even among
local inhabitants, this explosion has been largely forgotten.[4]
[1]
“The Explosion of the Rebel Arsenal at Jackson, Miss.,” New York Times, reprinted from the Grenada Appeal, 23 November 1862.
[2] H.
Grady Howell, “The Most Appalling Disaster: Jackson, Mississippi Arsenal Explosion,
November 5, 1862,” 2002, http://battleofraymond.org/howell.htm.
[3] Brian
Bergin, The Washington Arsenal Explosion:
Civil War Disaster in the Capital (The History Press: Charleston, SC,
2012), 41.
[4]
Howell, “The Most Appalling Disaster.”
 |
|
Map showing the site of the
Jackson Arsenal on College Green.
From H. Grady Howell’s “A Most Appalling Disaster.” |
There is a connection with women soldiers and arsenals. The following article is from the Indianapolis Daily State Sentinel of
September 14th, 1863. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find
anything else about these two women who applied for work there. I have a
hunch who one of them might be.
The woman who called herself Loreta Janeta Velazquez did indeed
work at the arsenal in Indianapolis. DeCaulp (Velazquez) was hired a little less than two months after the two women mentioned above were turned away. The work was dangerous and
Thomas, her husband, was uneasy about her employment there.
Nevertheless, Lauretta
worked during the months of November and December 1863 rolling
cartridges. She made $10 the first month and $6 the next. However, she
hinted that money wasn't the reason for her employment at the Indianapolis arsenal.
She claimed in her memoirs, The Woman in Battle, that her goal
was to blow it up as part of her undercover work that she allegedly
performed for the Confederacy. But she never did because she said she
would not be able to bear having the deaths of so many innocent women on
her conscience. Her presence at the arsenal raises questions. Namely, if her intentions had been truly nefarious, wouldn't she have carried out her plans fairly soon after employment began? Yet, two months went by. As with most parts of her life, it is debatable.
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| Indianapolis Arsenal, 1916 Library of Congress |
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