This salt famine was almost as serious as any result of the war, and it hung over the State until the close of the contest. In thousands of instances the planters who had been prodigal of salt before the war, dug up the dirt floors of their smokehouses, and managed to extract a small supply of the costly article. The Legislature was compelled to organize a salt bureau, and for that purpose half a million dollars was appropriated. The State, in self-defense, took into its own hands the monopoly of manufacturing salt and of distributing it to the people.
The next difficulty with which the people of Georgia had to contend was the Conscription Act. This act passed the Confederate Congress in April, 1862. It had been recommended by Mr. Davis in a special message, and Congress promptly passed it. Nobody in Georgia could understand why such a law had been recommended, or why it had passed. It was the most ruinous blunder of the Confederate Government during the war. If such a law was necessary, it showed that the Confederacy had fallen to pieces. If it was not necessary, its enactment was a stupendous piece of folly; and such it turned out to be. Under the last call for troops for Confederate service, Governor Brown had no difficulty in furnishing eighteen regiments. He could have gone on furnish ing troops as long as there was any fighting material left in the State; but as soon as the Conscript Act went into operation, the ardor of the people sensibly cooled. The foolish law not only affected the people at home, but hurt the army in the field. It was a reflection on the patriotism of the whole Southern population. The law was the occasion of a controversy between Governor Brown and President Davis, in which Brown, in the nature of things, had a decided advantage; for the Conscript Act wiped out the whole theory of State rights, on which the people of the South depended to justify secession. But Georgia did not stand in the way of the law. It was enforced, and the terms of its enforcement did the work of disorganization more thoroughly than the hard times and the actual war were doing it.
In March, 1863, the governor issued a proclamation convening the Legislature in special session to discuss the subject of bread. This was a very important subject at that time. In his message, the governor said that the time had come for the farmers to raise bread instead of cotton. He also laid before the Legislature' the reports of the distribution of the fund of two and a half millions of dollars for the support of the indigent families of soldiers. These reports showed what havoc the war had created among the people of a State which, not much more than two years before, was one of the most prosperous in the country. The fund had been distributed among more than eighty-four thousand people. Of this number, about forty-six thousand were children, twenty-four thousand were kinswomen of poor living soldiers, eight thousand were orphans, four thousand were widows of dead soldiers, and five hundred were soldiers disabled in service. Governor Brown, out of his own barn, gave the people of Cherokee County four thousand dollars' worth of corn. These events show the straits to which the people had been reduced by two years of actual war.
It should be borne in mind, however, that the people had to fight the Union army in front, and the speculators and extortioners in the rear. Governor Brown tried hard to make the lives of this latter class entirely miserable, and he succeeded in a way that delighted the people. Wherever he could get his hands on a speculator or extortioner, he shook him up. He made many seizures, and confiscated the hoards of a great many men who had influence with some of the newspapers; and in this way life in the State was made almost as exciting as the experience of the soldiers at the front.
In 1863, Governor Brown wanted to retire from office. The strain on his health and strength had been very severe, and he felt that he was breaking down. He wanted to make Toombs, who was then a general in the army, his successor. But Brown's friends insisted that he should make the race. The public opinion of Georgia and of the whole South insisted on it. So he became a candidate for a fourth term. He had two opponents,—Joshua Hill, who had been a strong Union man; and Timothy Furlow, who was an ardent secessionist and a strong supporter of the Confederate administration; but Governor Brown was elected by a large majority over both candidates.
The war went steadily on, and during the year 1864 Georgia became the battle ground,—the strategic point. This fact the Union commanders realized very early, and began their movements accordingly. Virginia was merely the gateway to the Confederacy, but Georgia was very near the center of its vitality. This was shown by the fact that when Atlanta fell, and Sherman began his destructive march to the sea, it was known on all sides that the Confederate Government was doomed. This movement, strange to say, was hastened by the Confederate authorities. General Joseph E. Johnston, one of the greatest commanders of the war, was removed at a critical moment, when his well-disciplined army had reached Atlanta. He was ordered from Richmond to turn his army over to the command of General Hood, and within a very few days the fate of the Confederacy had been decided. Hood at once ordered an attack on Sherman's lines. He was repulsed, and then compelled to evacuate the city. General Sherman detached General Thomas from his main army to follow Hood on his march toward the Tennessee, and moved across the State to Savannah. Within a very few months thereafter the war was brought to a close. Colonel I. W. Avery, in his "History of Georgia," says that on the thirty-first day of December, 1864, one dollar in gold was worth forty-nine dollars in Confederate money. The private soldier received eleven dollars of this money for a month's service. He could buy a pound of meat with his month's pay. He could buy a drink of whisky, and have one dollar left over. With four months' pay he could buy a bushel of wheat. General Toombs once humorously declared that a negro pressman worked all day printing money, and then until nine o'clock at night to pay himself off. There was a grain of truth in this humor,—just enough to picture the situation as by a charcoal sketch.
A DARING ADVENTURE.
On the 12th day of April, 1862, the anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter by the Confederates, a passenger train pulled out of the old car shed in Atlanta. It was a "mixed" train, being composed of three freight cars, a baggage car, and the passenger coaches. The train started from Atlanta at an early hour, arrived at Marietta about daylight, and stopped at Big Shanty, about seven miles north of Marietta, for breakfast. At Marietta, early as the hour was, quite a crowd of passengers were waiting to take the train. This excited no remark. There was a good deal of travel and traffic on the State Road at that time, for it was the key to the Confederacy—the one artery that connected the army at the front with its source of supplies.