Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Battles for the Salt 1.2 Confederacy Salt Laws 1.3 Production of Salt 2 Sources

Introduction

Salt is more precious than gold in a society without practical refrigeration.

During the U.S. Civil War era, salt was necessary for curing meat to feed the residents. and more significantly, the armies of the Confederacy. It was also vital for the curing of leather and preventing hoof and mouth disease in animals.

As an import item in the South, it became a strategic commidity early in the War. As a mineral contribution, perhaps none held more importance to both the general population and the military forces of the Confederacy than Salt. Early in the conflict, Union Major General William Tecumseh Sherman branded salt as a fundamental strategic resource: “Salt is eminently contraband, because of its use in curing meats, without which armies cannot be subsisted.” Besides preserving meat and other perishables, salt is essential in the human diet and in the Civil War, every soldier’s ration included salt. Livestock required salt as well; In 1862, a lack of salt fostered an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease among the cavalry horses of Lee’s army. Making leather involved salt and armies of that day need large amounts of leather for soldiers’ shoes and accessories, and for horses’ bridles and saddles. Salt had a host of other applications in manufacturing pharmaceuticals and other chemical compounds. ^[1]

In Civil War times, salt production typically involved one of three methods:

• evaporation from saline springs or wells (the most common),
• boiling down sea water or water from salt lakes, and
• mining ancient layers of rock salt.

At the outbreak of fighting, the Southern states had five primary salt operations, these being

• on the Kanawha River near Charleston, Virginia (after June 1863, West Virginia);
• along Goose Creek in southeastern Kentucky;
• in Clarke County in southwestern Alabama;
• at Avery Island in southern Louisiana; and,
• in southwestern Virginia at Saltville.

As the War progressed, other operations were started:

• the coastal states contributed by using salt ponds to collect ocean water and then process it, especially Florida's salt plants between Saint Andrews Bay and Saint Marks, Florida
• the extensive salt wells near Mobile, Alabama

Meanwhile, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia all worked out separate agreements with local businesses to procure the mineral or erected their own operations.

The South lost the Goose Creek works almost immediately after the war started, as well as those on the Kanawha. The fall of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, denied all of the extensive Louisiana sources to the eastern Confederacy. Thus, by mid-summer 1863, even though the Alabama brines still produced salt in the Gulf Coast area, Saltville was by far the major supplier to the states east of the Mississippi, with Florida coming in a poor second.

One way Southern families acquired salt was to boil the dirt in areas where they had previously cured meats.^[2]

Battles for the Salt

Considered contraband of war after July 1862, salt became the particular target of aggressive action by both the Union Army and Navy. In late October of that year, federal troops destroyed the salt works in Kentucky, and a month later those in western Virginia’s Kanawha River Valley. In 1863 Union forces raided salt-producing facilities in Texas, and in July they captured the recently discovered salt deposits at Avery Island. After four unsuccessful attempts, Union troops finally captured Saltville in Virginia in late December of 1864. It was the last prominent source of salt for the eastern Confederate states. The October 1864 First Battle of Saltville saw the Confederate able to repulse the charge, but the next December in the Second Battle of Saltville Union forces under George Stoneman managed to destroy the vital saltworks for a time. Two months later the saltworks were back to work for the Confederacy, although the destroyed railroad system around the area hampered its distribution.^[3]

The Union Navy matched the Army’s aggressiveness. Four ocean fleets — the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, East Gulf and West Gulf — carried out raids on a regular basis from 1862 until the end of the war. One such expedition against St. Andrews Bay by the East Gulf Squadron on 10 Dec 1863, illustrates their destructive nature. Over the course of a single day, Union forces burned over 350 buildings, 27 wagons and five flat boats; destroyed over 600 steam boilers and 2,800 kettles; and ruined over 2,000 bushels of salt, supplies of corn meal, bacon, syrup and other food stuffs. Spies assisted in this orgy of destruction, showing Union troops where kettles had been buried. The superintendent for some of the works considered the destruction of the salt industry in St. Andrews Bay “a greater blow and more severely felt than the falling of Charleston.”

The war over salt was ultimately just one small part of the Union’s strategy of economic starvation against the South. But its extent and viciousness demonstrated the extent to which many Union officers and soldiers – not just those on the hills of Georgia or eastern Virginia – were willing to grind the South into submission.^[4]

Confederacy Salt Laws

• Confederate law exempted salt makers from the draft, which rendered saltmaking a popular profession in wartime Florida. The estimated workforce involved in saltmaking there numbered 5,000.^[5]
• The Alabama State General Assembly passed Act 38 on 9 Dec 1862 creating the Alabama Salt Commission. From that point forward the regulatory agency was placed in charge of the purchase, manufacture, and transport of salt.

Production of Salt

• In Saltville, Virginia, the first steps usually took place at the extraction site where workmen placed the saltpeter in tubs or barrels, then mixed it with water and potassium salts obtained by soaking wood ashes. Next came boiling in cast iron kettles until the crystals of potassium nitrate appeared^[6].
• In Clarke County, Alabama, they excavated the salt, then boiled it in cast iron kettles to clean it and retrieve the salt..
• In Florida, workers pumped saltwater into shallow ponds, where some of the water evaporated. They then boiled the remaining water in large pans until only salt remained
• Outside of Mobile, Alabama, men dug wells that they lined with timbers for the ocean to fill at high tide which they later used to fill large cast iron kettles to boil the water to retrieve the salt.

Sources

1. ↑ M. Kurlansky, Salt: A World History, Penguin ed. (New York: Walker, 2002), 260
2. ↑ Moody, Sharon (October 12, 2008). "Can You Imagine Life Without Salt?". Tampa Bay Online. Archived from the original on August 12, 2011
3. ↑ Dautartus, Angela. "The Battles of Saltville". Thomas' Legion. Retrieved October 13, 2008
4. ↑ Rick Beard, "Disunion: The Salt Wars," 26 Dec 2013 Opinionator | The Salt Wars
5. ↑ Davis, William (1913). The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida. Columbia University. pp. 203–205
6. ↑ Whisonant, Robert C.; "Arming the Confederacy: Virginia's Mineral Contributions to the Confederate War Effort", https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/arming-the-confederacy-virginias-mineral-resources.html, extracted 4 Aug 2023