Gorgas, Josiah

Gorgas, Josiah

(1818–83) soldier; born in Dauphin County, Pa. While in command of the U.S. arsenal near Mobile, Ala., he married an Alabama girl; meanwhile, he had come to loathe abolitionists, and with the secession he resigned his commission and joined the Confederate army as chief of ordnance. He set up a series of arsenals and organized the production of arms and ammunition so that Confederate forces were amazingly well supplied to the very end of the war. From 1869–78, he taught engineering at the University of the South (Sewanee, Tenn.); elected president of the University of Alabama in 1878, he never served because of poor health.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.