Filling Cartridges at the United States Arsenal, at Watertown, Massachusetts

Winslow Homer spent the summer following the outbreak of the Civil War in Belmont, Massachusetts, not far from Watertown, which was the site of a major arsenal from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Eight hundred people were working there, making supplies for the new war effort. The men put powder into the cartridges, while the women assembled the bullets. The accompanying an article noted, “It is evident that, in the course of a few weeks, there will be no lack of this material of war, at all events.”