<P> Positioned on the Fall Line along the James River, the city had ready access to an ample supply of hydropower to run mills and factories . </P> <P> The Tredegar Iron Works, sprawling along the James River, supplied high - quality munitions to Confederacy during the war . The company also manufactured railroad steam locomotives in the same period . Tredegar is also credited with the production of approximately 10,000 artillery pieces during the war which was about half of the South's total domestic production of artillery between the war years of 1861--1865 . The foundry made the 723 tons of armor plating that covered the CSS Virginia (the former USS Merrimack), which fought the first battle between ironclad warships in March 1862 . The Tredegar works were adjacent to the Richmond Arsenal, which was recommissioned in the lead - up to the war . On Brown's Island, the Confederate States Laboratory was established to consolidate explosives production to an isolated setting in the eventuality of an accidental explosion . </P> <P> Numerous smaller factories in Richmond produced tents, uniforms, harnesses and leather goods, swords and bayonets, and other war material . As the war progressed, the city's warehouses became the supply and logistical center for much of the Confederate forces within the Eastern Theater . </P> <P> Richmond was also a transportation hub . It was the terminus of five railroads: the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad, the Virginia Central Railroad, the Richmond and York River Railroad, the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad, and the Richmond and Danville Railroad, as well as the James River and Kanawha Canal, together with a seaport with access to the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean . At the fall of Richmond in April 1865, all but the Richmond and Danville Railroad and the canal had effectively been cut off by Union forces . </P>

Capitals of the confederacy in the civil war