Everyone understood that powder was the actual bottleneck of armed resistance.

Think about that the next time you're stocking primers and powder before a match or hunting season. The colonial version of that problem wasn't inconvenience — it was existential. Muskets were available. The powder to run them was not. Lord Dunmore knew exactly what he was doing when he raided that Williamsburg magazine.

The Brandywine works produced an estimated 4 million barrels of powder during the Civil War — roughly one-third of all Union gunpowder requirements.

One-third of all Union gunpowder. From one mill complex on one river in one small state. That's the kind of industrial leverage that actually decides wars — not battlefield heroics alone. And Henry du Pont holding the line on Confederate sales while his own agents tried to circumvent the policy is a story that deserves more attention than it gets.

Over 119 years of black powder production, the Brandywine works recorded serious explosions with mounting casualties — 288 explosions, 228 deaths.

Every guy who's ever had a squib or a hangfire at the range gets a little jumpy. These workers were milling and packing bulk black powder by hand, six days a week, and they kept showing up after explosions that killed their coworkers. The 1818 blast killed 36 people. The mills ran the next morning. Different era, different calculus — but it puts some perspective on modern powder handling complaints.

The antitrust breakup in 1913 forcing DuPont to spin off Hercules and Atlas is a chapter most shooters skip entirely — but those companies supplied powder for both World Wars and fed the commercial handloading market for decades afterward. The reloading bench has longer roots than most of us think.

What's the oldest piece of firearms history local to your area — range, manufacturer, battle site, whatever — that most shooters around here probably don't know about?

Read the full article in The Handbook → | By The Boise Gun Club Team