The War On Salt - 1776

Tell me what you would do if tomorrow refrigeration disappeared. How would you preserve your food? How would the market preserve their food? You'd have to shop every single day. That is what happens when you take away salt in early America. Today most of us think of salt as something that adds flavor to our food, that adds savor. But in early America that aspect of salt is probably the least important part. Salting was the main food preservation technique of this time period. They're using it industrially with huge quantities of salt fish, salt pork, and salt beef. But not only in this huge setting, but it's also used in every household. They're salting meat, but they're also salting vegetables. Without salt food preservation, certain things are just not possible in our time period. You cannot travel overseas unless you have salt provisions. You really can't do a military campaign without salt provisions. And you can't even live through the winter without some kind of food preservation. And salting was the main one. Salt was so important that the first patent that was issued in North America in 1641 was for the process of making salt. If salt is that important, where does it come from? There are methods of getting salt all over the world, but there are certain places where salt is much easier to get that were commercial sources, especially in the 17th and 18th century. Spain, France, and Portugal were a very, very important salt center. They were right there on the coast where they could let salt flow into these shallow pans and pools. They would let it evaporate, and they would collect the crystals there. And that salt was called bay salt. It was not a great quality of salt, but they had a great quantity. There's also a lot of salt coming from the West Indies in this time period. So Barbados, and the Turks Islands, and some other places in the Caribbean. They also had certain kinds of pools that would collect salt crystals, and they would be able to gather this up and fill up ship loads of salt. Salt is also coming from places like Germany, where they would take sea salt and they would boil it down to create the salt crystals. And of course, there are salt mines from more like Central Europe and some places in England. They would be able to mine salt in its rock salt form. And they had huge caves, and still do have huge caves, where they will mine salt like it was stone. In the early 17th century, when colonies were being formed in North America, there was a big problem. Food was meant to be a major export from North America, especially fish from New England. The Plymouth Company sent over fishermen, they sent over boat builders, they even sent over a salt farmer, or someone to harvest salt. He was a failure. He created salt ponds, but they weren't made in the right spot. He created a big salt warehouse, but then he burnt it down. They gave up on really harvesting their own salt, and they relied on imported salt. You can't send off or export your fish without lots of salt. During the 17th century, other small salt harvesting operations start to pop up, up and down the East Coast. They were somewhat successful, but they could never truly supply what was needed in the colonies. This local salt lacked both quality and quantity, so inevitably the colonies turned more and more to outside sources. For 150 years, the demand continued to increase, but the salt continued to pour in. There wasn't a problem, not until we get to 1776. Now we have a problem. The British see that there's a great demand for salt, and that is something they can attack. The British immediately start to destroy salt making operations in North America, and they blockade salt for the colonies. They know that if they can cut off the salt supply, the Americans will not be able to continue to rebel. They will have to give up. The British are blockading the East Coast of the United States. They're sending their ships up and down, and specifically to areas where they know that the colonial ships would have to congregate and go around different specific regions, and they took many and many a salt ship that was headed to the colonies. Salt became more important than getting arms, ammunition, uniforms, even other kinds of food. That was the item that they needed most to wage war. You can't send out ships into the ocean to fight a war unless you have salt provision. You can't send your armies out to march for a week without salt provisions. You've got to have salt. It was so important that they made plans to take their military ships out of service to load them up with tobacco and flour to send them out to trade for salt. The military knew that it was so important that they were willing to take their ships out of service to go get salt. I am happy to have it in my power to inform your lordship that by depriving the rebels of every supply of salt, rum, or sugar in my power, the first, as I observed to your lordship before, is raised from one shilling per bushel to 15. As we get into 1777, the price of salt skyrockets, and the merchants in the colonies see a great opportunity. They start to send messages to their agents in the West Indies. They say, do whatever you can do to charter or purchase ships, fill them with salt, and send them up to the colonies. They didn't care whether half of the ships or even two-thirds of the ships were taken. The ones that got through would pay for all the rest. It was that expensive. Joseph Plum Martin, in his memoir, gives us a wonderful example. In one situation, he finds a barrel of salt, and he's so excited. It's very, very expensive. He fills his pockets with salt, as much as he can carry, because he knows it's that rare and that expensive. And he also runs into problems with not having enough food. And the reason why he doesn't have enough food is because they can't make enough salt provisions to supply the army. I was as near starved with hunger as ever I wished to be. I strolled into a large yard where there were several sawmills and a gristmill. I went into the latter thinking it probable that the dust made there was more palatable than that made in the former. But I found nothing there to satisfy my hunger. There was a barrel standing behind the door with some salt in it. Salt was valuable as gold with the soldiers. I filled my pockets with it and went out. This salt shortage affects every person in the colony's every family. If you don't have food preservation using salt, people are going to starve. People are going to go hungry. Because of the great demand and the high price, many people are looking for solutions. Things start to happen. The salt does get through the blockade and more people do create salt. And after a year or two, the great salt crisis does seem to go away. Maybe the British kind of give up on blockading the salt. It really worked for a little bit, but then the whole system kind of came together and salt was available again. The price came down. So what do I learn from this salt crisis? Two things. Number one, the colonies were reliant on something that they did not have control over. That worked out for a long time, 150 years. And then it was a problem. They had to come up with all kinds of solutions. It worked out. And I think that's the other part of what I've learned from this specifically. Even though the system kind of broke, it didn't break entirely. And the great network that we have in the world, even in the 18th century, it came together and repaired itself. Those massive price increases in salt made it so that more salt came onto the market in different and new ways. And so the price of salt came back down. Everybody did have the salt they needed within a year or two. The system repaired itself. We live in times of crisis today. We've seen exactly the same kinds of problems. Studying this kind of history does give me comfort in seeing what resilient people have done in the past, how they have solved their problems. Maybe we can solve our problems the same way.