N MONTHS AFTER FT. SUMTER, IN THE CONFEDERACY'S WESTERNMOST state the Texas legislature enacted the means to acquire ordnance for protection of the state and the new country that it had joined in March 186 . The Ninth Legislature created a board with the authority to cast artillery and obtain other implements of war. Known as the Texas Military Board, it used money and state assets to establish, in Austin, a foundry on the banks of Waller Creek where the board hoped to produce military ordnance

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... sufficient to equip locally raised units with bronze six-pound field pieces. The foundry's major achievement, however, would be its support of regional farmers. Blacksmiths and mechanics were scarce across rural Texas, and the outbreak of the Civil War led many of them into military service. The state foundry at Waller Creek filled the gap created by the absence of these men, thereby redeeming its failure to produce artillery.1 The Texas Military Board became the only governmental agency charged specifically with providing for the state's wartime defense. The