Manufacturing Independence

During the Revolutionary War, Philadelphia became the center of military production to support the United States' war effort. Thousands of craftspeople — from shoemakers to hatters, sailmakers to shipwrights, and tailors to flag makers — took military contracts and worked as enlisted "artificers," soldiers employed to produce goods for the army. You can see a stunning portrait of one such artificer — Philadelphia hatter Benjamin Flower, who took command of a regiment of artillery artificers and helped manage military production in the city — on display at the Museum. His sister, Rebecca Flower Young, made cartridges, drum cases, and other goods for the military.

Amid the new opportunities and demands of a wartime economy, people like the Flower siblings turned Philadelphia into the arsenal for independence. In Manufacturing Independence: Industrial Innovation in the American Revolution, historian Robert F. Smith places the work that happened in Philadelphia and elsewhere in the larger context of the burgeoning Industrial Revolution and takes readers inside the complex operations of Philadelphia's wartime factories.

Excerpt

The Philadelphia Arsenal contained eight components spread out around the city that were remarkably interconnected. The armory and ordnance yard were most likely near the State House or Carpenter's Hall. The department rented several buildings on Chestnut Street, and any one of these could have been a workshop, as could the area around the State House, which is known to have housed ordnance during the war. The leather shop was probably Henry Lisle's tanyards along Dock Creek, which was the dye and tanning center in the city. This site could have also housed the drum factory owing to the need for leather, though Chestnut Street was also a likely candidate. The Continental Air Furnace was first rented from Pennsylvania in Southwark but seems to have moved to the grounds of Carpenters' Hall In 1781. The Fifth Street Laboratory was in a building at Fifth and Sassafras (now Race) streets, while the Knight's Wharf Laboratory was at Peter Knight's Wharf in Northern Liberties, but the exact location of that wharf is unknown.

… The Fifth Street Laboratory did not materialize instantly in summer 1778 but rather was the result of earlier efforts by Congress to supply the army. [Benjamin] Flower rented buildings and put men to work producing munitions in Philadelphia sometime in 1777. Munitions production was moved from the capital to Lebanon, Pennsylvania, during the occupation. The latest evidence of the Lebanon site in operation was dated July 31, 1778, and the Fifth Street Laboratory was in operation by the end of the preceding August. Thus it appears that Flower made the decision to move cartridge-production operations back to the capital when the campaign season was winding down. At this point, Flower rented a building at Fifth and Arch Streets for the cartridge makers.

Operations at the laboratory were organized to keep the production of cartridges constant and to ensure that quality cartridges were prepared for shipment to the front. Flower and [Samuel] Hodgdon kept all necessary production inputs for the laboratory in the departmental magazine at Carpenters' Hall. They sent lead to the furnace for conversion to ball and acquired powder, paper, and thread from domestic and foreign suppliers, sending each item to the factory when requested by Joseph Boehm, the laboratory superintendent, who received and signed for all supplies. Once delivered, all input materials were organized for production. Paper was delivered to cutters, who sized it for the cartridge formers, while powder was measured out in pint-sized batches for each former. Cut cartridge paper looked like a triangle with one corner cut off to make a trapezoid that measured six inches, by five and a half inches, by two inches, by seven and a half inches. Also, lengths of thread were cut for each worker.

Robert F. Smith, Manufacturing Independence: Industrial Innovation in the American Revolution (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, LLC, 2016).