Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 by Various

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In each case the salt is mixed saltpetres.

_Artificial_.

France, 100 lbs. earth from
plantations afford 8 to 9 oz.
Hungary and Sweden, from
the same, 1/2 to 2-3/10 per cent.

It may be calculated that the flesh of animals, free from bone,
carefully decomposed, will afford ninety-five pounds of saltpetre for
one thousand pounds thus consumed.

In the manufacture of saltpetre, the earths, whether naturally or
artificially impregnated, are mixed with the ashes from burnt wood, or
salts of potash, so that this base may take the place of all others, and
produce long prisms of potash saltpetre.

In this country there are numerous caves of great extent in Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Missouri, from which saltpetre has been manufactured.
Under the most favorable conditions of abundance of labor, obtainable
at a low price, potash saltpetre can be made at a cost about one-fourth
greater than the average price of India saltpetre, and those sources of
supply are the best natural deposits known on this side of the Rocky
Mountains. Where there is an insufficient supply of manure in a country,
resort to the artificial production of saltpetre is simply a robbery
committed on the resources of the agriculturists, and it is only during
the pressure of a great struggle like that of the wars of Napoleon, that
the conversion into saltpetre of materials which can become food for the
community would be permitted.

Hitherto, in peaceful times, our supply of saltpetre has come from India
through commercial channels; but twice within a few years this course of
trade has been interrupted by the British Government, and the price of a
necessary article has been greatly enhanced,--leading reflecting minds
to the inquiry after other sources whence to draw the quantity required
for an increasing consumption. On the boundary between Peru and Chili,
in South Peru, about forty miles from the ports of Conception and
Iquique, is a depression in the general surface of a saline desert,
where a bed of soda saltpetre, about two and a half feet thick and
one hundred and fifty miles long, exists. The salt is massive, and,
occurring in a rainless climate, it is dry, and contains about sixty per
cent. of pure soda saltpetre. In Brazil, on the San Francisco, the same
salt is found extending sixty or seventy miles,--and again near the town
of Pilao Arcado, the beds being about two hundred and forty miles from
Bahia, but at present inaccessible for want of roads. The Peruvian
native saltpetre is rudely refined in the desert, and then transported
on the backs of mules to the shipping-port. As found in commerce, it is
less impure than India saltpetre; and it might be usefully substituted
for the latter in the manufacture of gunpowder, were it less
deliquescent in damp atmospheres. For chemical purposes it now replaces
India saltpetre, but the larger consumption is perhaps as a fertilizer
of land, in the cool and humid climate of England, the low price it
bears in the market permitting this consumption.

We have found that the various saltpetres of natural production, or
those obtained in artificial arrangements, are converted by the use of
potash salts into potash saltpetre, and among the products so changed is
natural soda saltpetre. Now to us in this country, so near the sources
of abundant supply of soda saltpetre, this substitution becomes a matter
of great interest. We possess and can produce the alkaline salt of
potash in almost unlimited quantity, and, excepting for some special
purposes, it is consumed for its alkaline energy alone. When soda
saltpetre in proper proportion is dissolved and thus mixed with potash
salt, an exchange of bases takes place, and no loss of alkaline energy
follows. The soda in a quite pure state is eliminated from the soda
saltpetre, and will serve for the manufactures of glass and soap; while
the potash, taking the oxygen compound of the soda saltpetre, produces,
as a final result, a pure and beautiful prismatic saltpetre, most
economically and abundantly.

Instead of working on a hundred pounds of earth to obtain at most eight
or nine pounds of saltpetre, a hundred pounds of soda saltpetre will
afford more than one hundred and nine pounds of potash saltpetre, when
skilfully treated. Here, then, we have, by simple chemical treatment
of an imported, but very cheap salt, a result constituting a source of
abundant supply of potash saltpetre, _without the loss of the agent_
concerned in the transformation.

We have traced slightly in outline the formation of saltpetre to the
action of ozonized oxygen on nitrogen compounds, in the atmosphere, or
in the earth,--the conditions being the same in both cases. If we pursue
the study of this action of ozonized oxygen farther, we shall not
restrict its combining disposition to these compounds, but prove that it
has the power of uniting directly with the nitrogen naturally forming
part of the pure air. While nitrogenized bodies are present, however,
in the atmosphere, or in the humid artificial heaps of saltpetre
plantations, the action of ozonized oxygen is on these, and the nitrous
compounds formed unite with the bases lime, soda, and potash, also
present, to form saltpetre.

Under all the conditions necessary, we see the permanent gases, oxygen
and nitrogen, leaving the atmosphere and changing from their gaseous to
a solid dry state, when they become chemically combined with potash, and
there are 53-46/100 parts of the gaseous matter and 46-54/100 parts of
the potash in 100 parts of the saltpetre by weight.

Having now found what saltpetre is and how it is formed, let us advance
to the consideration of it as a source of power.

Through the exertion of chemical attraction the gaseous elements of the
atmosphere have become solid in the saltpetre; and as we know the weight
of this part in a cubic inch of saltpetre, the volume of the gases
combined is easily ascertained to be about eight hundred times that of
the saltpetre. Hence, as every cubic inch of condensation represents
an atmosphere as large as the cubic inch of saltpetre formed, we may
roughly estimate that the condensing force arising from chemical
attraction in this case is 800 times 15 lbs., or 12,000 lbs.!

Strictly speaking, only about four-tenths of a cubic inch of potash
holds this enormous power in connection with it so as to form a cubic
inch of saltpetre, which we may handle and bruise, may melt and cool,
dissolve and crystallize, without explosion or change. It contains
conserved a force which represents the aggregate result of innumerable
minute actions, taking place among portions of matter which escape
our senses from their minuteness and excite our wonder by their
transformation. Closely similar are these actions to the agencies in
vegetation which build up the wood of the tree or the material of
the coal destined to serve for the production of fire in all the
applications of steam which we have briefly noticed in illustration.

In availing ourselves of the concentrated power accumulated in
saltpetre, we resort to bodies which easily kindle when fire is applied,
such as sulphur and finely powdered charcoal: these substances are
most intimately mixed with the saltpetre in a powdered state, and the
dampened mass subjected to great pressure is afterwards broken into
grains of varied size, constituting gunpowder.

The substances thus added to the saltpetre have both the disposition and
the power of burning with and decomposing the nitrous element of the
saltpetre, and in so doing they do not simply open the way for the
energetic action of the gases escaping, but, owing to the high
temperature produced, a new force is added.

If the gases escaped from combination simply, they would exert for every
cubic inch of saltpetre, as we have here considered it, the direct power
of 12,000 lbs.; but under the new conditions, the volume of escaping gas
has a temperature above 2,000 deg. Fahrenheit, and consequently its force
in overcoming resistance is more than four times as great, or at least
48,000 lbs.

Such, then, is the power which can be obtained from a cubic inch of
saltpetre, when it is so compounded as to form some of the kinds of
gunpowder; and the fact of greatest importance in this connection is the
control we have over the amount of the force exerted and the time in
which the energy can be expended, by variations in the proportions of
the eliminating agents employed.

We have used the well-known term Gunpowder to express the compound by
which we easily obtain the power latent in saltpetre; and the use of the
term suggests the employment of guns, which is secondary to the main
point we are illustrating. As the enormous consumption of power takes
place during peaceful times, so the consumption of saltpetre during a
state of war is much lessened, because the prosecution of public and
private works is then nearly suspended.

The value and importance of saltpetre as a source of power is seen in
the adaptation of its explosive force to special purposes. It performs
that work well which we cannot carry on so perfectly by means of any
other agent, and the great mining and engineering works of a country are
dependent on this source for their success, and for overcoming obstacles
where other forces fail. With positive certainty the engineer can remove
a portion of a cliff or rock without breaking it into many parts, and
can displace masses to convenient distances, under all the varying
demands which arise in the process of mining, tunnelling, or cutting
into the earth.

In all these cases of application we see that the powder contains within
itself both the material for producing force and the means by which that
force is applied, no other motor being necessary in its application.

Modern warfare has become in its simplest expression the intelligent
application of force, and that side will successfully overcome or resist
the other which can in the shortest time so direct the greater force.
In artillery as well as infantry practice, the control over the time
necessary in the decomposition of the powder has been obtained through
the refinements already made in the manufacture, and the best results
of the latest trials confirm in full the conclusion that saltpetre is a
source of great and easily controlled power, which can act through short
or extended space.

Under the view here presented, it is evident that saltpetre is
indispensable to progress in the arts of civilization and peace, as well
as in military operations, and that no nation can advance in material
interests, or even maintain strict independence, without possessing
within its boundaries either saltpetre or the sources from which it
can be drawn at all times. In its use for protecting the property of
a nation from the attacks of an enemy, and as the means of insuring
respect, we may consider saltpetre as an element of strength in a State,
and as such deserving a high place in the consideration of those who
direct the counsels or form the policy of a country.

Has the subject of having an exhaustless supply of this important
product or the means of producing it been duly considered?

* * * * *

WEATHER IN WAR.

It is not very flattering to that glory-loving, battle-seeking creature,
Man, that his best-arranged schemes for the destruction of his fellows
should often be made to fail by the condition of the weather. More
or less have the greatest of generals been "servile to all the skyey
influences." Upon the state of the atmosphere frequently depends the
ability of men to fight, and military hopes rise and fall with the
rising and falling of the metal in the thermometer's tube. Mercury
governs Mars. A hero is stripped of his plumes by a tempest, and his
laurels fly away on the invisible wings of the wind, and are seen no
more forever. Empires fall because of a heavy fall of snow. Storms of
rain have more than once caused monarchs to cease to reign. A hard
frost, a sudden thaw, a "hot spell," a "cold snap," a contrary wind, a
long drought, a storm of sand,--all these things have had their part in
deciding the destinies of dynasties, the fortunes of races, and the fate
of nations. Leave the weather out of history, and it is as if night were
left out of the day, and winter out of the year. Americans have fretted
a little because their "Grand Army" could not advance through mud that
came up to the horses' shoulders, and in which even the seven-league
boots would have stuck, though they had been worn as deftly as Ariel
could have worn them. They talked as if no such thing had ever before
been known to stay the march of armies; whereas all military operations
have, to a greater or a lesser extent, depended for their issue upon the
softening or the hardening of the earth, or upon the clearing or the
clouding of the sky. The elements have fought against this or that
conqueror, or would-be conqueror, as the stars in their courses fought
against Sisera; and the Kishon is not the only river that has through
its rise put an end to the hopes of a tyrant. The condition of rivers,
which must be owing to the condition of the weather, has often colored
events for ages, perhaps forever. The melting of the snows of the
Pyrenees, causing a great rise of the rivers of Northern Spain, came
nigh bringing ruin upon Julius Caesar himself; and nothing but the
feeble character of the opposing general saved him from destruction.

The preservation of Greece, with all its incalculable consequences, must
be credited to the weather. The first attempt to conquer that country,
made by the Persians, failed because of a storm that disabled their
fleet. Mardonius crossed the Hellespont twelve or thirteen years before
that feat was accomplished by Xerxes, and he purposed marching as far as
Athens. His army was not unsuccessful, but off Mount Athos the Persian
fleet was overtaken by a storm, which destroyed three hundred ships
and twenty thousand men. This compelled him to retreat, and the Greeks
gained time to prepare for the coming of their enemy. But for that
storm, Athens would have been taken and destroyed, the Persians having
an especial grudge against the Athenians because of their part in the
taking and burning of Sardis; and Athens was destined to become Greece
for all after-time, so that her as yet dim light could not have been
quenched without darkening the whole world. When Xerxes himself entered
Europe, and was apparently about to convert Hellas into a satrapy, it
was a storm, or a brace of storms, that saved that country from so sad a
fate, and preserved it for the welfare of all after generations of men.
The Great King, in the hope of escaping "the unseen atmospheric enemies
which howl around that formidable promontory," had caused Mount Athos to
be cut through, but, as the historian observes, "the work of destruction
to his fleet was only transferred to the opposite side of the
intervening Thracian sea." That fleet was anchored on the Magnesian
coast, when a hurricane came upon it, known to the people of the country
as the _Hellespontias_, and which blew right upon the shore. For three
days this wind continued to blow, and the Persians lost four hundred
warships, many transports and provision craft, myriads of men, and an
enormous amount of _materiel_. The Grecian fleet, which had fled before
that of Persia, now retraced its course, believing that the latter was
destroyed, and would have fled again but for the arts and influence
of Themistocles. The sea-fights of Artemisium followed, in which the
advantage was, though not decisively, with the Greeks; and that
they finally retreated was owing to the success of the Persians at
Thermopylae. Between the first and second battle of Artemisium the
Persians suffered from another storm, which inflicted great losses upon
them. These disasters to the enemy greatly encouraged the Greeks,
who believed that they came directly from the gods; and they made it
possible for them to fight the naval battle of Salamis, and to win it.
So great was the alarm of Xerxes, who thought that the victors would
sail to the Hellespont, and destroy the bridge he had thrown over that
strait, that he ordered his still powerful fleet to hasten to its
protection. He himself fled by land, but on his arrival at the
Hellespont he found that the bridge had been destroyed by a storm; and
he must have been impressed as deeply as Napoleon was in this century,
that the elements had leagued themselves with his mortal enemies. After
his flight, and the withdrawal of his fleet from the war, the Persians
had not a chance left, and the defeat of his lieutenant Mardonius, at
Plataea, was of the nature of a foregone conclusion.

It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of the assistance which
the Greeks received from the storms mentioned, and it is not strange
that they were lavish in their thanks and offerings to Poseidon the
Saviour, or that they continued piously to express their gratitude
in later days. Mankind at large have reason to be thankful for the
occurrence of those storms; for if they had not happened, Greece must
have been conquered, and all that she has been to the world would have
been that world's loss. It was not until after the overthrow of the
Persians that Athens became the home of science, literature, art, and
commerce; and if Athens had been removed from Greece, there would have
been little of Hellenic genius left for the delight of future days. Not
only was most of that which is known as Greek literature the production
of the years that followed the failure of Xerxes, but the success of the
Greeks was the means of preserving all of their earlier literature. The
Persians were not barbarians, and, had they achieved their purpose, they
might have promoted civilisation in Europe; but that civilization would
have been Asiatic in its character, and it might have been as fleeting
as the labors of the Carthaginians in Europe and Africa. Nor would they
have felt any interest in the preservation of the works of those Greeks
who wrote before the Marathonian time, which they would have regarded
with that contempt with which most conquerors look upon the labors of
those whom they have enslaved. That most brilliant of ages, the age of
Pericles, could never have come to pass under the dominion of Persia;
and the Greeks of Europe, when ruled by satraps from Susa, would have
been of as little weight in the ancient world as, under that kind of
rule, were the Greeks of Ionia. All future history was involved in the
decision of the Persian contest, and we may well feel grateful that the
event was not left for the hands of men to decide, but that the winds
and the waves of the Grecian seas so far equalized the power of the
combatants as to enable the Greeks, who fought for us as well as for
themselves, to roll back the tide of Oriental conquest. We might not
have had even the Secession War, if there had been no storms in the
Thracian seas in a summer the roses of which perished more than two
thousand three hundred years ago.[A]

[Footnote A: When the Athenian patriots under Thrasybulus occupied
Phyle, they would have been destroyed by the forces of the Thirty
Tyrants, had not a violent snow-storm happened, which compelled
the besiegers to retreat. The patriots characterized this storm as
Providential. Had the weather remained fair, the patriots would have
been beaten, the democracy would not have been restored, and we should
never have had the orations of Demosthenes; and perhaps even Plato might
not have written and thought for all after time.]

The modern contest which most resembles that which was waged between the
Greeks and the Persians is that war between England and Spain which
came to a crisis in 1588, when the Spanish Armada was destroyed by the
tempests of the Northern seas, after having been well mauled by the
English fleet. The English seamen behaved well, as they always do; but
the Spanish loss would not have been irreparable, if the weather had
remained mild. What men had begun so well storms completed. A contrary
wind prevented the Spanish Admiral from pursuing his course in a
direction that would have proved favorable to his second object, which
was the preservation of his fleet. He was forced to stand to the North,
so that he rushed right into the jaws of destruction. He encountered
in those remote and almost unknown waters tempests that were even more
merciless than the fighting ships and fireships of the island heretics.
Philip II. bore his loss with the same calmness that he bore the victory
of Lepanto. As, on hearing of the latter, he merely said, "Don John
risked a great deal," so, when tidings came to him that the Invincible
Armada had been found vincible, he quietly remarked, "I sent it out
against men, and not against the billows." Down to the very last year,
it had been the common, and all but universal opinion, that, if the
Spaniards had succeeded in landing in England, they would have been
beaten, so resolute were the English in their determination to oppose
them, and so extensive were their preparations for resistance. Elizabeth
at Tilbury had been one of the stock pieces of history, and her words of
defiance to Parma and to Spain have been ringing through the world ever
since they were uttered _after_ the Armada had ceased to threaten her
throne. We now know that the common opinion on this subject, like the
common opinion respecting some other crises, was all wrong, a delusion
and a sham, and based on nothing but plausible lies. Mr. Motley has put
men right on this point, as on some others; and it is impossible to
read his brilliant and accurate narrative of the events of 1588 without
coming to the conclusion that Elizabeth was in the summer of that year
in the way to receive punishment for the cowardly butchery which had
been perpetrated, in her name, if not by her direct orders, in the great
hall of Fotheringay. She was saved by those winds which helped the Dutch
to blockade Parma's army, in the first instance, and then by those
Orcadian tempests which smote the Armada, and converted its haughty
pride into a by-word and a scoffing. The military preparations of
England were of the feeblest character; and it is not too much to say,
that the only parallel case of Governmental weakness is that which is
afforded by the American history of last spring, when we had not an
efficient company or a seaworthy armed ship with which to fight the
Secessionists, who had been openly making their preparations for war for
months. The late Mr. Richard Rush mentions, in the second series of his
"Residence at the Court of London," that at a dinner at the Marquis of
Lansdowne's, in 1820, the conversation turned on the Spanish Armada; and
he was surprised to find that most of the company, which was composed of
members of Parliament and other public men, were of the opinion that the
Spaniards, could they have been landed, would have been victorious. With
genuine American faith in English invincibility, he wondered what the
company could mean, and also what the English armies would have been
about. It was not possible for any one then to have said that there were
no English armies at that time to be about anything; but now we see
that those armies were but imaginary bodies, having not even a paper
existence. Parma, who was even an abler diplomatist than soldier,--that
is, he was the most accomplished liar in an age that was made up of
falsehood,--had so completely gulled the astute Elizabeth that she was
living in the fools' paradise; and so little did she and most of her
counsellors expect invasion, that a single Spanish regiment of infantry
might, had it then been landed, have driven the whole organized force
of England from Sheerness to Bristol. Those Englishmen who sneer so
bitterly at the conduct of our Government but a year ago would do well
to study closely the history of their own country in 1588, in which they
will find much matter calculated to lessen their conceit, and to teach
them charity. The Lincoln Government of the United States had been in
existence but little more than thirty days when it found itself involved
in war with the Rebels; the Elizabethan Government had been in existence
for thirty years when the Armada came to the shores of England, to the
astonishment and dismay of those "barons bold and statesmen old in
bearded majesty" whom we have been content to regard as the bravest and
the wisest men that have lived since David and Solomon. Elizabeth, who
had a beard that vied with Burleigh's,--the evidence of her virgin
innocence,--felt every hair of her head curling from terror when she
learned how she had been "done" by Philip's lieutenant; and old Burleigh
must have thought that his mistress was in the condition of Jockey of
Norfolk's master at Bosworth,--"bought and sold." Fortunately for both
old women, and for us all, the summer gales of 1588 were adverse to the
Spaniards, and protected Old England. We know not whence the wind cometh
nor whither it goeth, but we know that its blows have often been given
with effect on human affairs; and it never blew with more usefulness,
since the time when it used up the ships of Xerxes, than when it sent
the ships of Philip to join "the treasures that old Ocean hoards." Had
England then been conquered by Spain, though but temporarily, Protestant
England would have ceased to exist, and the current of history would
have been as emphatically changed as was the current of the Euphrates
under the labors of the soldiers of Cyrus. We should have had no
Shakspeare, or a very different Shakspeare from the one that we have;
and the Elizabethan age would have presented to after centuries an
appearance altogether unlike that which now so impressively strikes the
mind. As that was the time out of which all that is great and good in
England and America has proceeded, in letters and in arms, in religion
and in politics, we can easily understand how vast must have been the
change, had not the winds of the North been so unpropitious to the
purposes of the King of the South.

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