 The larger DuPont and Hazard Powder Company mills each provided approximately one-third of the Union gunpowder supply for the civil war.The fourth major supplier was Lester Laflin's cousins' mill which later evolved into the early smokeless powder manufacturer Laflin & Rand.The DuPont mill was uncomfortably close to the battle line and considered potentially vulnerable to sabotage from southern sympathizers in the slave state of Delaware.