Josiah Gorgas

Josiah Gorgas was born in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from West Point in 1841 and was assigned to the ordnance corps. He served in the Mexican-American War and was promoted to captain in 1855. In 1853, he married Amelia Gayle, daughter of former Alabama governor John Gayle. In 1854, their first son William Crawford Gorgas, who later became Surgeon General of the United States, was born. Gorgas served in arsenals in different parts of the country before the Civil War broke out. He was commanding the Frankford Arsenal when he resigned from the U.S. Army.

He followed his wife into secession, moved to Richmond and became chief of ordnance for the Confederacy. In this capacity, he worked to create an armaments industry almost from scratch. The South had no foundry except the Tredegar Iron Works. There were no rifle works except small arsenals in Richmond, and Fayetteville, North Carolina, plus the captured machines from the Union armory in Harpers Ferry. Gorgas established armories and foundries, found alternative sources for saltpeter, and created a huge gunpowder mill at Augusta, Georgia. Thanks to his efforts, the Southern armies never lacked weapons, though they were short on almost everything else.

In January 1864, Gorgas was approached by Andries Rhoodie who demonstrated a new repeating rifle. He was impressed and wrote a letter of introduction to General Robert E. Lee. Lee too was impressed with the AK-47 but, not wanting to be dependant on any one group of men, wrote back asking Gorgas to investigate the weapon with the objective of manufacturing duplicates. In June 1866, Gorgas presented Lee with two hand made copies and the hope that he could set up mass production in about a year.