THE KENNEBEC ARSENAL, AUGUSTA, MAINE By
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THE KENNEBEC ARSENAL, AUGUSTA, MAINE by Marius B. Pe'ladeau The northernmost United States arsenal of the 19th cen- Canada. An outpost, with barracks, stockade and other tury - and the one most perfectly intact today - still com- structures, was erected on Garrison Hill, just east of present- mands its attractive site on the banks of the Kennebec River day Houlton, ~aine?Thestate militia wascalled out by Gov. in Augusta, ~aine.~It is probably one of the most unchanged Benjamin Lincoln and the U.S. Government was alerted to U.S. military posts in the nation. potential border troubles. The ten granite structures built in 1828-31 survive today The closest depot of military stores was at Watertown in an excellent state of preservation. Only temporary wooden Arsenal in Massachusetts, more than 200 miles to the south. buildings erected over the years have disappeared. If Robert Experience from the War of 1812 showed that water commu- Anderson, who commanded the arsenal in 1834-35 (and later nication (the only way to move heavy stores of arms and went on to national fame at Fort Sumter in Charlestown ammunitions expeditiously in those days) could be easily cut Harbor at the outbreak of the Civil War) was to return to the off by an enemy fleet along the New England coast. Col. grounds today he would find little changed from when he was George Bomford was ordered north to study the situation and there over 150 years ago. Soperfectly preserved is the arsenal he reported that a "part of the country so much exposed, and complex, and so excellently does it exemplify a typical 19th liable to become the seat of war, required that an arsenal upon century U.S. Army military post, that the State of Maine has a scale adequate to furnish the military supplies for its defense nominated it to the National Register of Historic Places, should be e~tablished."~ administered by the National Park ~ervice.~ In the meantime, Sen. William Henry Harrison of Ohio, on Nearly all of the great U.S. arsenals of the 19th century 16 January 1827 reported out of the Committee on Military have been demolished or so completely altered that their original appearance has been lost. Students of American military history would find it rewarding to visit the Kennebec Arsenal today since it preserves for them the best impression possible of how aU.S. arsenal was laid out and constructed in the last century. The powder magazines, the massive arsenal building itself, the classically designed quarters for officers and enlisted men, guard houses and so forth still stand, basically unchanged. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Maine's location at the eastern extremity of the United States placed it in the midst of national and international developments. The British had ranged up and down the Maine coast during the Revolu- tion and War of 1812, and both times had occupied several suategic penninsulas and fortresses along the seacoast. The threat of invasion from Great Britain, either from across the sea or Canada to the north, remained a very distinct possibility throughout the first quarter of the 19th century. Storm clouds gathered on the northern horizon only two decades after the Treaty of Ghent in 1815. Disputes between Maine and Canada over the exact location of the border between the two caused conflicts throughout the "hump" of present-day ~aine.~Origins of the crisis lay in the uncertain boundary provisions of the Treaty of Paris which ended the Revolutionary War in 1783. Article I1 of this Treaty seemed clear in its delineation of the American-Canadian boundary between the then District of Maine (a part of the Common- wealth of Massachusetts) and Canada. Yet the inability to correlate these boundary provisions with the geographic features of the area generated a long, tedious debate over the northeastern boundary which lasted until ratification of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain in 1842. In 1828 the U.S. Government sent regular army troops to FIG 1 the northern frontier as a possible deterent to invasion from The arsenal, ca. 1834, after its completion. FIG 2 This 1894 view of the arsenal shows it at its fullest general storage buildings in front. extent. In the foreground is the riverside wharf with The three laboratories, two magazines, blacksmith inclined ramps for the loading of heavy cannon. From shop, carriage makers shop and armory shop are out of left to right the granite buildings are: Officers' Quarters view on the top of the hillside and the guard house is not No. 2, the Arsenalitself (with OfficerslQuartersNo. 1for visible to the left of the Officers' Quarters No. 2. Photo- the Commandant barely visible on the hillside above it), gravure from Art Work of the Kennebec County (Chi- Enlisted Men's barracks, Officers' Quarters No. 3 for cago: W.H. Parish Publishing Co., 1894) in the collec- NCO's, the Carpenter's Shop in back, and two wooden tion of the author. Affairs a bill to establish such an arsenal at Augusta. It passed report, however, which made the point that Augusta and both Houses of Congress and was signed into law by Presi- Watertown might be cut off from communication in case of dentJohn Quincy Adamson 3 March,only ten days after Gov. war, causedcongress to reconsider, and it was decided finally Lincoln signed a bill designating Augusta as Maine's new to erect an arsenal complex large enough to fabricate military capital city.6 supplies and be semi-independent if war did break out. The act required the Secretary of War "to purchase, as Congress appropriated an additional $30,000, and on 14 June soon as can be effected on reasonable terms, a site for an 1828 the cornerstone of the main arsenal building was laid. arsenal in the town of Augustain the Stateof Maine, and cause Construction commenced on 15 buildings, ten of them made to be erected such an arsenal as may be deemed'proper for the of unhammered granite, laid in ashler courses, from the safe keeping of arms and munitions of the United States for already famous nearby Hallowell quarry.1o All in the chaste the northern and eastern fr~ntier."~ and simple Greek Revival style, they stand today as the best In June Maj. George Talcott of the Corps of Engineers surviving example of military architecture of the period. visited the Augusta area, made surveys and viewed a number As is so often the case when the Government is involved, of possible sites on each side of the Kennebec ~iver.~The construction costs exceeded original estimates, and Congress Kennebec, oneof Maine's principal rivers, was tidal up to and had to bail out the Corps of Engineers with an additional above Augusta and was deep enough to allow large vessels to $45,000 on 27 March 1829.l navigate upriver from the ocean with no difficulty. Already The entire 40-acre lot was enclosed by a heavy iron fence, Augusta and neighboring Hallowell were becoming impor- eight feet tall, erected on a substantial granite foundation.12 tant river ports. The arsenal location on the east bank of the A heavy bank wall of granite was laid along the river's edge Kennebec, on a gently sloping 40-acre lot which faced di- and work was started on a granite wharf at which vessels rectly across the river to the new state capitol building then drawing ten feet of water could dock even during the lowest under construction on its west bank, was purchased by the level of the river during a summer's drought. The main Government. In September proposals were issued for mate- arsenal was 100 feet long by 30 feet wide, three stories high rials to construct the arsenal buildings. Lieut. J. Hills, also of over a spacious basement. In the first story 2,640 boxes of the Corps of Engineers, was placed in charge of construc- National Armory muskets could be stored, 2,376 on the tion? second story, and 2,112 on the third, giving it a total capacity Since the arsenal was originally envisioned as a small of 142,760 muskets (considering the regulation 20 muskets depot for military stores to be supplied from Watertown, a per box). mere$15,000 was appropriated by Congress. Col. Bomford's The largest of the two magazines couldcontain 600 barrels Pittsburgh. He suggested that Lieut. Robert Anderson be temporarily detailed for ordnance duty and assigned to com- mand Kennebec Arsenal during his absence. l6 This request was granted and Anderson relieved Ripley on 3 November. Anderson continued in command until Ripley returned to Augusta the following May. Little did either Anderson or Ripley realize when they were stationed at peaceful Augusta that they would someday play major roles in the defense of the Union: Ripley as mastermind of the largest armory in the nation, and Anderson as the defender of Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861. In June 1835 Ripley was again temporarily relieved for a few months, this time by Lieut. George S. Green. Returning, he continued in command until May 1841 when he was appointed superintendent of Springfield hory.17 Ripley shepherded the Kennebec Arsenal through some of its most active years. War seemed even more imminent with Canada in the mid-1830's. The Maine-Canadian border problems FIG 3 flared up again. In 1837 a Maine land surveyor was arrested This modern view of the arsenal shows that several of by New Brunswick officials for trespassing into Canada the buildings have been torn down in this century, such (Maine said the land was her's).18 Maine informed the as the Armory, and Machine and Carpenter shops.