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The
Civil War has been called by some historians "The War Between the
Salts" because salt was only slightly less important to the Union
and Confederate armies than ammunition.
The Union had plenty of salt but the South did not. As a result, you
might say that the North salted away the South. Or you may say nothing
of the kind.
Much of the salt used by the Confederate Army was produced about eight
miles south of where Lometa is now, at a place called Swenson Salines.
Before that it was called Salt Creek, one of about two dozen so-named
creeks in the state.
Salt was a precious commodity long before the Civil War. The City
of Jericho was founded almost 10,000 years ago as a salt trading center,
and the demand for salt established the earliest trade routes. Marco
Polo used it like money. Homer called it a "divine substance." The
English word "salary" comes from the Latin word "salarium," which
was a soldier's pay in salt.
Military leaders from Napoleon to George Washington learned, often
the hard way, the value of salt to an army, which was also used as
a medical disinfectant; Napoleon lost many soldiers during his retreat
to otherwise simple wounds because his army had run out of salt.
Salt was used in the Civil War as part of a soldier's diet and for
the cavalry horses and work horses that hauled supplies and artillery.
The herds of livestock necessary to feed an army also depended on
salt.
"Salt is eminently contraband, because of its use in curing meats,
without which armies cannot be subsisted," Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
wrote in 1862.
By 1865, when the Southern cause was all but lost, the Confederate
manual had this bit of advice for its soldiers: "To keep meat from
spoiling in the summer, eat it early in the spring."
The
Confederate Salt Works at Lometa
operated in a manner common to France and Germany but almost unheard
of in the south.
The process began with water pumped from the springs into a trough
placed on a 40-foot high scaffold. This was done by means of a horse-drawn
rotary lift. The water was then spread over cedar boughs to partially
evaporate. The briny remains dropped from the trees into two rows
of vats, 25 to a row, situated under the trees. A rock chimney provided
the draft.
In such a manner, the Confederate Salt Works produced about a bushel
of salt for every 20 bushels of brine. A bushel of salt sold for about
a dollar.
The Lometa operation produced a great deal of the salt used by the
southern army, especially after a series of Union raids on salt works
in Florida and Louisiana depleted Confederate supplies.
The Swenson Salines (or Salt Creek) rises about three-and-a-half miles
northwest of Lometa
and flows 12 miles to the Colorado River. Indians are believed to
have used Salt Creek for hundreds of years before Anglo settlement.
They used it as an infirmary and what might be viewed today as a crude
day spa.
Texas
had its fascination and frustrations with salt long before and after
the Civil War. The Chisholm Trail zigzagged like it did not only to
pass by watering holes but to take advantage of salt licks.
The people of San
Elizaro and other villages along the Rio Grande River near El
Paso used a salt basin in northeastern Hudspeth
County as a road to transport salt. When Anglo politicians claimed
ownership and tried to levy fees, war broke out - that old taxation
without representation thing again.
The
Confederate Salt Works in Lampasas
County continued for a few years after the war. Cyras James, William
Kea and Thomas Seale were operating a salt work there as late as 1870,
but it was abandoned soon after that.
The site of the old salt works is on private property now, along with
three graves that are believed to be a man, woman and child who used
to live near the works.
A historical marker commemorating the salt works is located about
half a mile west of the junction of U.S. Highway 183 and 190.
© Clay Coppedge
"Letters from Central Texas"July
15, 2005 column |
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