The Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau had charge of the production of iron in Alabama for the use of the Confederacy. The mines were principally in the hilly region south of the Tennessee River, where several furnaces and iron works were already established before the war. Two or three new companies, with capital of $1,000,000 each, had bought mineral lands and had commenced operations when the war broke out. The Confederate government bought the property or gave the companies financial assistance. The iron district was often raided by the Federals, who blew up the furnaces and wrecked the iron works.[371] The Irondale works, near Elyton, were begun in 1862, and made much iron, but they also were destroyed in 1864 by the Federals.[372] Other large iron furnaces, with their forges, foundries, and rolling-mills, were destroyed by Rousseau's raid in 1864. The government employed several hundred conscripts and several thousand negroes in the mines and rolling-mills. It also offered fifty per cent of the cost of equipment to encourage the opening of new mines by private owners.[373] There is record of only about 15,000 tons of Alabama iron being mined by the Confederacy, but probably there was much more.[374] The iron was sent to Selma, Montgomery, and other places for manufacture. The ordnance cast in Selma was of Alabama iron; and after the war, when the United States sold the ruins of the arsenal, the big guns were cut up and sent to Philadelphia. Here the fine quality of the iron attracted the attention of experts and led to the development by northern capital of the iron industry in north Alabama.