Abstract:
Tredegar Iron Works had been the fourth largest iron manufactory in the nation during the antebellum period, the principal supplier of armaments to the Confederacy during the Civil War, and a mainstay of southern economic recovery in the post-War era. With the onset of the Panic of 1873, however, Tredegar faced financial ruin when its railroad markets collapsed. Technological obsolescence threatened as the emergence of the steel industry slowly, but inexorably, eclipsed portions of the iron industry during the 1870s and 1880s.
