Stupid Question ™
By John Ruch
© 2000
Q: I saw a museum
exhibit that said the Confederacy in the Civil War collected women’s urine for
making gunpowder. Is this true? And why was women’s urine considered better
than men’s?
—Daisy Duke
A: This is apparently true, and actually isn’t that surprising in the urine-soaked history of gunpowder.
“Black powder,” the basic type of gunpowder, is composed of charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter. Saltpeter, also known as niter, is any of several nitrogen-based compounds. (Potassium nitrate is preferred.)
In early times, saltpeter was harvested from the walls of stables and cellars as a white encrustation. Nobody knew that it came from urine and manure in the soil, which, as byproducts of protein metabolism, are nitrogen-rich substances. (Urine is the best source, but is usually all mixed up with dung.)
When the nitrogen connection was made, armies started stockpiling animal dung. “Niter beds” were built—giant compost piles of rotting manure, urine, flesh and bone from which saltpeter would eventually leach out.
Natural
guano deposits in bat-infested caves or on bird-covered islands also were
highly prized. Saltpeter mining in
Sniffing out all possibilities, saltpeter companies also used human waste from public outhouses. “Night-soil collectors” would empty the facilities into a big wagon, then haul it off for saltpeter processing.
Thus, it’s
not surprising that, strapped for supplies of all kinds,
the Confederate government would make a plea for urine donations. On
“Chamber ley” is an alternate spelling of “chamber-lye”—a euphemism for urine. Specifically, it described urine used as a household detergent and water-softener, which wasn’t that uncommon.
There’s nothing special about women’s urine; it’s just that women were the ones who ran the house while the men were off killing each other. The government wanted the whole household’s urine.
The request inspired a wag to circulate a satirical poem called “Rebel Gunpowder,” which in one version muses that, “When a lady lifts her shift/She shoots a bloody Yankee,” and protests, “We think the girls do work enough/In making love and kissing/But you’ll now put the pretty dears/To patriotic pissing!”
Such sacrifices are, thankfully, no longer necessary. Today, most saltpeter for gunpowder is made from nitric acid, which is made from nitrogen extracted from the air.
If the
South had better chemists, it could have forgone urine collection and simply gone
with the wind.