Confederate Makeshifts [pp. 71-79]

Confederate Makt-Shifts.
and fifty dollars: sugar was to be had
at the low rate of seventy-five dollars
a pound. It cost about twenty-five cents
to pepper one's eggs, for pepper brought
three hundred dollars a pound. Whis ky was thirty dollars a drink, and the
man that treated a party of friends had
his pockets considerably lightened;
while to buy a horse required almfnost as
much money as the horse could pull.
An ordinary horse often sold for ten
thousand dollars.
Among the first things that our people found themselves in want of, were
dyes for coloring their thread. These
were all the more needed from the fact
that on the patterns of their checks, and
hence on the brightness and variety of
the colors employed, greatly depended
the beauty of the ladies' dresses, and
even in the darkest days of war women
never neglect to have their attire as
attractive as possible. Wood and meadow were ransacked for Dlants that would
impart a color. Roots, leaves, and barks
were brought home, and all kinds of
decoctions were made and experimented
with. Black walnut furnished a rich
brown, and various shades of intensity
were obtained, according to the strength
of the dye. Swamp maple gave a clear
purple, and poke-berries a bright but
not durable solferino. An inferior blue
was obtained from wild indigo, and
sumach berries afforded a dark red. A
satisfactory black was rarely to be had,
though this somber color was most
needed in those dark days when war
and death stalked through the land,
transforming every home into a house of
mourning. Elder-berries gave a tolerable black, but no experiment with bark,
root, leaf, or berry gave a good substitute for logwood, and blockade runners
were not long in profiting thereby.
At one time salt was as precious in
many localities as gold, and like gold it
was sought in the soil. The earthen
floors of smoke-houses and the ground
around kitchen doors or beneath the
kitchen windows and similar localities,
where the needed mineral might have
been secreted in ever so small a quantity,
was dug up and given to the cattle, or
treated with water to dissolve out the
saline matter. The brine thus obtained
was then evaporated and the salt deposited. Boxes and barrels that had contained salt pork or fish were treated in
like manner, so great was the scarcity of
this important mineral food. Speculators held it at extortionate prices, cattle
were denied it altogether, and even the
rich were extremely sparing in their use
of it.
The government at Richmond came
to the rescue, and by a rather highhanded measure saved the people from
a salt famine. The salt works throughout the country were seized, and during
the rest of the war it was to be had at
nominal prices. Moreover, salt companies were formed, the labor of one slave
being the price per share. One slave
was detailed from each of twenty or
thirty adjoining plantations, and placed
under the control of a competent man,
who took them to the coast and obtained
salt from sea water.
For no substitute did the Southern
people seek with greater assiduity than
an equal for coffee, and in few of their
makeshifts did they succeed so poorly.
They were a coffee-drinking people,
and it was almost like depriving the
opium-eater of his drug suddenly to put
coffee out of the South. Everything
was tried that could possibly suggest the
appearance or flavor of the popular beverage, but nothing gave even transient
satisfaction, and every attempt to forget coffee in the enjoyment of some
other infusion but added to the tantalizing effects of the situation. Rye and
wheat were roasted and ground, but
they were miserable substitutes: parched
meal gave a sad suggestion of coffee.
Somebody hit upon the idea of chipping
and drying sweet potatoes, and a more
palatable drink was thus obtained; but
1889.]
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