I was amazed when I ran across this recently. To think that some people were even considering such at any point, much less during the opening days of the war, is indeed scary as anything I've read lately. I'm just glad Americans didn't use such against Americans, and that it would be 50 more years before the poison gas attacks of W.W. I.
I guess war is indeed hell.
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A novel Method of taking Pickens.
--Red Pepper.--A correspondent of the Mobile Register has a novel plan for capturing Fort Pickens. He says:

‘ It is well known that there are some chemicals so poisonous that an atmosphere impregnated with them, makes it impossible to remain where they are, as they would destroy life, or interfere so much with respiration, as to make fresh air indispensable. That the whole atmosphere of Fort Pickens can be so impregnated, in a short time, can be shown to be no means chimerical; and only not chimerical, but easily effected.

It will not cost so much as to be impracticable, and may cost infinitely less than a regular siege, not only in money, but life.--Every body almost knows that burning red pepper, even in small quantities — a teaspoonful — will clear the largest room of a crowd in a few minutes; that the least sniff of veratria will make one cough himself almost to death, and run great risk of coughing himself into consumption; that some gases are so poisonous to life that the smallest quantity will kill — hydro-cyanic acid and arseniuretted hydrogen, for instance. By mixing red pepper and veratria with the powder with which the shells are filled, or by filling larges shells of extraordinary capacity with poisonous gases and throwing them very rapidly into the fort, every living soul would have to leave in double quick time — it would be impossible to breathe there. If the bombardment is effected in a dead calm, the result would be certain; and often at Fort Pickens there is not a breath of air stirring from daylight until ten o'clock in the morning.
’
The Daily Dispatch (Richmond, VA) 04 Jun 1861