Salt was an article of great scarcity in the South. Coming over from Liverpool in ante bellum times as ballast, made it so cheap that little attention was given to the salt industry, and most of our best salt mines were in the hands of the enemy. But the Southern people were equal to any emergency. Men were put along the sea coast and erected great vats into which was put the salt sea water, and by a system of evaporation nice, fine salt was made. Farmers, too, that had the old-time "smoke" or meat houses with dirt floors, dug up the earth [494] in the house and filtered water through it, getting a dark, salty brine, which answered exceedingly well the purpose of curing their meats.
All taxes, as I said before, were paid in "kind," and the tenth of all the meat raised at home was sent to the army, and with the few cattle they could gather, was sufficient to feed the troops. There were no skulking spirits among the people. They gave as willingly and cheerfully now as they did at the opening of the war. The people were honest in their dealings with the government, and as cheerful in their gifts to the cause as the Israelites of old in their "free will offerings" to the Lord. There were no drones among them, no secretion or dishonest division. The widows, with houses filled with orphans, gave of their scanty crops and hard labor as freely as those who owned large plantations and scores of slaves. In fact, it was noticeable that the poorer class were more patriotic and more cheerful givers, if such could be possible, than the wealthy class.
Negroes were drafted to go upon the coast to work in salt mills or to work upon the fortifications. This duty they performed with remarkable willingness, until, perhaps, some Federal gunboat got their range and dropped a few shells among them. Then no persuasion nor threat could induce them to remain, and numbers of them would strike out for home and often get lost and wander for days, half starved, through the swamps of the lower country, being afraid to show themselves to the whites for fear of being "taken up" and sent back. Many were the adventures and hair-breath escapes these dusty fugitives had, and could tell them in wonderful yarns to the younger generation at home. It may be that the negro, under mental excitement, or stimulated with strong drink, could be induced to show remarkable traits of bravery, but to take him cool and away from any excitement, he is slow at exposing himself to bodily dangers, and will never make a soldier in the field.
CHAPTER XL
Opening of 1865—Gloomy Outlook—Prison Pens—Return to South Carolina of Kershaw's Brigade.
The opening of the year 1865 looked gloomy enough for the cause of the Confederacy. The hopes of foreign intervention had long since been looked upon as an ignis fatuus and a delusion, while our maritime power had been swept from the seas. All the ports, with the exception of Charleston, S.C., and Wilmington, N.C., were now in the hands of the Federals. Fort Fisher, the Gibraltar of the South, that guarded the inlet of Cape Fear River, was taken by land and naval forces, under General Terry and Admiral Porter. Forts Sumter and Moultrie, at the Charleston Harbor, continued to hold out for a while longer. The year before the "Alabama," an ironclad of the Confederates, was sunk off the coast of France. Then followed the "Albemarle" and the "Florida." The ram "Tennessee" had to strike her colors on the 5th of August, in Mobile Bay. Then all the forts that protected the bay were either blown up or evacuated, leaving the Entrance to Mobile Bay open to the fleet of the Federals.