American Steel Cannon

The Pittsburgh Gazette says: – “When Gen. Fremont was in command of the Western Department he sent an agent to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, with orders to procure if possible, some cast-steel field pieces.  Fremont we suppose not being trammeled with opinions picked up forty or fifty years ago at West Point, thought that if there was any advantage in cast steel the Government needed it, and our brave soldiers were entitled to its use.  He evidently thought also that whatever a Prussian or an Englishman could make, of steel, could be made in Pittsburgh.  And he was right.  Singer, Nimick & Co., who were just at the time trying some costly experiments in steel guns, agreed to make a single battery of six guns.  About the time the battery was finished Gen. Fremont was suspended, and the beautiful pieces of artillery are now lying in the warehouse of the manufacturers.  The guns are rifled, 3-inch bore, about six feet long, weigh 830 pounds and to one’s eye look perfect.  To Pittsburgh belongs the credit of the only cast steel cannon which have yet been made in the United States, the so-called “Sickles’ battery,” the “Wiard,” are made of puddle or semi-steel.”

– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 12, 1862, p. 2

Washington News

WASHINGTON, March 26. – The amendments thus far made to the tax bill are not decisive, but, needing the action of the Committee of the Whole, the House having finally to act on them.  It is believed Congress will, in conformity with the proposed bill by the Secretary of the Treasury, increase the tax on tobacco, whiskey and other luxuries.  The hasty clause taxing the stock of whiskey now in the hands of dealers, will probably be reconsidered.  The bill with this clause stricken out will be uniform and more acceptable.

WASHINGTON, March 27. – The causes which prevented a safe conveyance of the mails and the collection of revenues upon the route from Jefferson City to Tuscumbia having been removed, the Postmaster-General has ordered the restoration of full service.

The bill to secure the officers and men actually employed in the Western Department or Department of Missouri their pay, bounty and pensions is now law.

(Special to Commercial Advertiser.)

WASHINGTON, March 27. – News has been received at the Navy Department confirming the statement that the Merrimac is again ready for sea.

Lieut. Jeffries, of the Monitor, sent word up this morning to Capt. James Green that he had no fears of the result of the next contest.

The House of Representatives will strike off the tax on liquors manufactured previous to the first of May.

The Committee of Ways and Means agree to modify the taxes on leather made from hides imported from east of the Cape of Good Hope, and on all damaged leather to half cent per pound; all other hemlock, sole and rough leather is to pay three-quarters of a cent per pound; all leather tanned in part or in whole with oak to pay one cent.

The Republican to-day has positive information that the Democratic caucus night before last agreed to oppose the President’s emancipation plan and favor McClellan’s war policy, which is for a short and desperate, and for our glorious Union as a whole.  This is emphatically Mr. Lincoln’s war policy.

As soon as the bill making appropriations for the Navy comes up in the Senate amendments will be adopted to complete the Stevens battery and for the construction of a number of iron-clad vessels of war.

Secretary Welles is asking congress for thirty millions of dollars to make arion-clad ships and heavy ordnance.

Gen. Adam Duria has arrived here from Baltimore and will act under orders of General Wadsworth.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 29, 1862, p. 3