Salt (41 page)

Slaves on long shifts kept the wells operating twenty-four hours every day. The saltworks were so close to each other that the area became a single undulating gnarled mass of slave labor. Land was set aside for a graveyard, which quickly filled as shivering slaves fell over from malaria or smallpox. Shoving and bumping against each other as they frantically labored to produce salt, slaves slipped and fell into boiling pans. Some died a quick death, but others died only after days of pain.

There were few white workers because most of the white men were drafted into the Confederate army. A handful of supervisors were draft rejects or wounded discharged veterans. As the war went on, more and more works were supervised by wounded veterans, usually amputees. In April 1862, when the first Confederate draft was declared, there were no exemptions for salt makers, but by August Jefferson Davis revised the conscription to exempt them. Making salt became a way to avoid military service. Deserters also drifted to the saltworks, hoping either to be safe in the swamps or to earn an exemption as a salt worker. In the last year of the war, the army searched wagons headed for the salt-works, looking for deserters among the exhausted slaves, the amputees, and the draft dodgers. By then, so many had deserted the Confederate army that there was even an organized deserter association in Virginia.

Refugees from attacked areas came to saltworks hoping to find a way to survive. Soon gamblers added themselves to the mix. Baptists and Methodists sent ministers to this increasingly iniquitous labor camp.

T
HE SHORTAGES IN
the South presented opportunities to speculators. One way to earn a considerable fortune was to buy up a salt-producing area and control the local salt price. A single proprietor in Apalachicola controlled all of West Florida. To prevent such schemes, laws were passed in Georgia restricting coastline ownership.

Salt workers wanted to be paid in salt rather than money so that they too could profit from the inflated prices. Officials in the central government at Richmond, realizing the declining value of their money and the rising value of salt, stored large quantities of salt for possible barter arrangements.

A small packet of salt became a fashionable and much-valued gift. One such packet was a wedding present to George Edward Pickett, who later reached the most northerly point of any Confederate in combat when, on July 3, 1863, he led a ruinous charge up a sloping Pennsylvania field—the climax of the Battle of Gettysburg.

By 1862, Governor John G. Shorter of Alabama said, “The danger of a salt famine is now almost certain.” From Mississippi, Governor Pettus wrote to Jefferson Davis that meat was being wasted and vanishing from diets because there was no salt to preserve the animals after slaughter.

A woman in South Carolina wrote:

It happened that my host at Radcliffe, just previous to the breaking out of hostilities, had ordered a boatload of salt, to use upon certain unsatisfactory lands [for fertilizer], and realizing that a blockaded coast would result in a salt famine, he hoarded his supply until the time of need should come. When it became known that Senator Hammand’s salt supply was available, everyone from far and near came asking for it. It was like going down into Egypt for corn, and the precious crystals were distributed to all who came, according to the number in each family.

Family salt supplies were carefully hidden like a stash of jewels. Cheap salts cut with such substances as ash went on the market.

Tallahassee Sentinel
warns its readers of the folly of buying the dark and impure salt that is brought along the coast. It The will not save meat but spoil it. We are informed that some of the salt makers, who are making for market, make an inferior article, for which they charge six and eight dollars a bushel. It were better to give twelve dollars or more per bushel and get a good article, than to buy that which is comparatively worthless at half the price. If our people will refuse to buy the inferior article it will soon induce salt makers to make a good salt. Pure salt is white, and that which is best for saving meat is large-grained. A word to the wise is sufficient.—Southern Confederacy
, Atlanta, August 28, 1862

Rumors spread of possible salt substitutes. In 1862, there was a rumor of a substitute for curing bacon and beef. A newspaper in Alabama reported that pyroligneous acid, a vinegar made from hard wood, could preserve meat. A phenomenally popular British book of the period warned against it.

A very impure variety of pyroligneous acid, or vinegar made from the destructive distillation of wood, is sometimes used, on account of the highly preservative power of creosote which it contains, and also to impart the smoke-flavour; in which later object, however, the coarse flavour of tar is given, rather than that derived from the smoke from the combustion of wood.—
Isabella Beeton,
Beeton’s Book of Household Management,
1861

One southern publication suggested three ways to preserve fish without salt:

With oil: Put the fish in jars and pour over them salad oil until they are covered, then tie them up air tight. This is a rather expensive method in this country, but for fish that is afterward fried, it is excellent.

With acid: Dip them into or brush over them pyroligneous acid and then dry them by exposure to the air. This gives a smoky flavor, but if strong vinegar or pure acetic acid be used, no taste will be imparted. It may be applied by means of a painter’s clean brush over a large surface. Fish and flesh so prepared will bear a voyage to the East Indies and back.

With sugar: Fish may be preserved in a dry state, and kept quite fresh by means of sugar alone, and even with a small quantity of it. Fish may be kept in that state for some days, so as to be good when boiled as if just caught. If dried and free from moldiness, there seems no limit to their preservation, and they are much better in this way than when salted. The sugar has no disagreeable taste. The process is particularly valuable in making what is called kippered salmon, and the fish preserved in this manner are far superior in quality and flavor to those which are salted or smoked. If desired, as much salt may be used to give the taste that may be required.—Southern Cultivator,
Augusta and Athens, Georgia, March–April 1863

People tried curing beef with saltpeter and bacon with wood ash, neither of which worked very well. Newspapers were constantly revealing alternative techniques for curing, most of which were ineffective. Frequently these newspaper recipes, to inspire their suffering readers, made references to the salt shortages of the American Revolution. In 1861, a Richmond paper told the story of a Tory of Albemarle who had been refused salt because of his political sympathies. Still, his wife made good bacon with only one peck of salt and a large quantity of hickory ashes.

In applying the ashes, it is well to have a bucket of molasses, and apply a portion with a white-washing brush to each joint. When well smeared, rub on the ashes, which will thus adhere firmly and make an impenetrable cement.—Daily Richmond Examiner,
November 23, 1861

New ideas for salt conservation were a constant topic between neighbors. Those who lived by coasts would cook their starch—rice, hominy, or grits—in seawater, which would provide the only salt in a meal. When eating salted meat, people would carefully brush off every loose salt crystal for reuse. The brine in troughs and barrels used for pickling was afterward boiled down and made into salt to use again. The earth around smokehouses, made salty from years of drippings, was dug up and placed in hoppers designed for leaching ashes in soap making. This technique yielded a brine that could be evaporated, leaving a dull, darkish bed of salt crystals.

Coal consists mainly of the carbon in wood, which in burning forms a very dry heat. Most of our readers are familiar with the usual process of barbecuing large pieces of meat over coals. If such meat were too high above the coal-fire to roast, it would soon dry. When dry, a very little salt and smoking will keep it indefinitely. Like cured bacon, it should be packed in tight casks, and kept in a dry room.

After one kills his hogs, if he is short of salt, let him get the water out of the meat by drying it over burning coals as soon as possible, first rubbing it with a little salt. Shade trees around a meat house are injurious by creating dampness. Dry meat with a coal-fire after it is smoked. You may dislike to have meat so dry as is suggested, but your own observation will tell you that the dryest hams generally keep the best. Certainly sweet, dry bacon is far better than moist, tainted bacon, and our aim is simply to show how meat may be cured and long kept with a trifle of salt, when war has rendered the latter scarce and expensive.—
Dr. F. P. Porcher of the Confederate army,
Economy in the Use of Salt,
1863

HOW TO MANUFACTURE SALT FOR HOME USE

Take a towel, or any piece of cloth—say, two yards long—sew the two ends together, hang it on a roller, and let one end revolve in a tub or basin of salt water; the sun and air will act on the cloth, and evaporate the water rapidly. It must be revolved several times throughout the day, so that the cloth is well saturated. When the solution is evaporated to near the bottom, dip from the concentrated brine and pour it in a large flat dish or plate; let it remain in the sun until the salt is formed; taking it in every night, and placing a cover on it. This is accomplished by capillary attraction, and can be manufactured for $1 per sack, on a large scale. Each gallon of salt water will produce two and a half ounces of salt when evaporated.

p.s. To make salt requires a little patience, as it is of slow formation.—
John Commins, Charleston tannery,
Charleston Mercury,
June 11, 1862

J
UST BEFORE THE
war began, French geologist M. J. Raymond Thomassy wrote that Louisiana, with its sugar and cotton, needed only to add salt production to its economy to become truly wealthy. He warned:

Just as this element of future prosperity, this vital food, almost as necessary to their economic independence as gunpowder has been to the national independence, is furnished them exclusively by strangers, and is found in hands, which, in spite of all the dreams of perpetual peace, could easily some day become those of an enemy, and be made into an instrument, if not of domination, at least of famine and internal trouble.—Géologie Pratique de la Louisiane,
1860

Thomassy had a theory, dismissed by most people in Louisiana at the time, that certain areas in the southern part of the state—in particular, a swampy area once known as Petite Anse, meaning “little harbor”—were sitting on beds of rock salt. Petite Anse was covered with ferns and long-rooted trees dripping in moss and broad-leafed growths so thick, only a skilled local would be able to see it was an island, a raised area of 2,200 acres, surrounded by dark waterways connecting bayous that ran into the Mississippi and the nearby Gulf of Mexico at a harbor called Vermilion Bay.