15 Facts About Josiah Gorgas

Josiah Gorgas was a Confederate general in the American Civil War and was later president of the University of Alabama.

Josiah Gorgas kept diaries during the Civil War which are now a popular subject of study for historians.

Josiah Gorgas was born near Elizabethtown in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Josiah Gorgas was graduated from West Point in 1841 and was assigned to the Ordnance Department.

Josiah Gorgas served in arsenals in different parts of the country before the Civil War broke out.

Early in his career, Josiah Gorgas served at Watervliet Arsenal near Troy, New York, and at the Detroit Arsenal.

Josiah Gorgas went on to serve at the Mount Vernon Arsenal north of Mobile, Alabama beginning in 1853.

Josiah Gorgas was commanding the Frankford Arsenal when he resigned from the United States Army on March 21,1861.

Josiah Gorgas made requests for transfer to arsenals in the South on multiple occasions.

Josiah Gorgas established armories and foundries and created the Nitre Bureau to search for alternative sources of nitre.

Josiah Gorgas implemented President Davis's wish and helped facilitate the commissioning of George Washington Rains, a North Carolina native and West Point graduate with extensive military service who was working as a Northern industrialist when the war broke out.

On November 10,1864, Josiah Gorgas was promoted to brigadier general.

In 1870, Josiah Gorgas accepted a position as the 2nd vice chancellor of the newly established University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.

In 1878, Josiah Gorgas was elected 8th president of the University of Alabama.

Josiah Gorgas died at the age of 65 in Tuscaloosa in 1883, and was buried at Evergreen Cemetery.