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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 11, 1963)
Civil War Do-It-Yourself ers MKDrOrlD MAiL HUBUrtK. MLDrOHD, OREGON By MERTON T. AKERS UPI Correspondent The Confederacy ran out of salt, shoes and medicine in 1863. Salt was a precious com modity in Civil War days. Without refrigeration, meat could be preserved only with salt. No salt, no meat. And meat was the staple article of diet along with corn meal and sweet potatoes. Not only did the Confederate army need meat it never had enough from war's start to end but the plantations where the food was produced needed a big supply to feed the slaves who did the work. Before the war the South consumed about six million bushels of salt every year. Most of it came from Europe and the West Indies, some from the North. The Federal blockade cut off all this sup ply early in the war and by 1863 the salt situation was critical. At the start of the war salt sold for 75 cents a bushel. Later it went to $12.50 and at war's end black marketeers were asking and getting $40 to $50 a bushel. Luxury Profits Higher Salt was too bulky for blockade runners to bring in and, anyway, profits on lux uries were higher and ship captains crammed in cham pagne and pate de fois gras among the munition cargoes. The profits on these were fan tastic and often patriotism ran a bad second to money. Salt boiling soon became a profitable industry and Flori da, with its easy access to the sea and comparative freedom from war ravages, offered the best facilities. By 1863 the coves on both coasts of Flor ida were dotted with salt boil ers. Besides these commercial salt works, many families camped on the beach and boiled a season's supply as they vacationed. Susan Bradford, teen-age daughter of a plantation own ef near Tallahassee and a keen observer of wartime life, recorded in her dairy one such salt boiling expedition in 1863. "The great big sugar kettles were filled full of water and fires made beneath the ket tles. They are a long time heating up and then they boil merrily ... A white foam comes at first and then the dirtiest scum you ever saw bubbles and dances over the surface; as the water boils away it seems to get thicker and thicker, at last only a wet Joint Boardman Briefing Talked Salem - IUPII - A joint ses sion of the legislature may be called Friday for a briefing on progress in the Boardman space age development proj ect. The possibility of a special joint session merged after four-way talks between Gov. Mark Hatfield, Sen. Wayne Morse, Senate President Ben Musa, and House Speaker Clarence Barton. It was revealed Saturday that Morse had accepted Hat field's invitation to join him here Friday afternoon for a discussion of the Boardman project with the Army Corps of Engineers. Musa and Barton indicated they would invite Hatfield and Morse to address a joint session if they felt progress had leached a point where details of the negotiations should be aired before the full legislature. Local Insurance Men Are Awarded Trophies Wayne H. Safley, Medford, was awarded the "Man of the Year" trophy for 1962 by the Portland Agency of the Aetna Life Insurance com pany for writing more than $1,000,000 worth of life, group and accident and health insurance, according to George C. Fraser, general agent. Curt Hopkins of the Med ford agency was awarded the "Man of the Year" award for the highest group production. He wrote in excess of $4,000. 000 of group insurance busi ness for 1962. mass of what looks like sand remains. This they spread on smooth oaken planks to dry. In bright weather the sun does the rest of the work of evaporation, but if the wea ther is bad, fires are made just outside of a long, low shelter where the planks are placed on blocks of wood. The shelter keeps off the rain and the fires give out heat enough to carry on the evaporation. "The salt finished in fair weather ij much whiter and nicer in every way than that dried in bad weather, but this dark salt is used to salt meat or to pickle pork." Squirrel Skint Tanned Susan also ran out of shoes in 1863. "I had no shoes," she wrote, "except some terribly rough ones . . . and Cousin Rob tan ned some squirrel skins and made me a pair of really beau tiful shoes, nice enough to wear with my one and only silk dress (made from one of her mother's old ones)." Later when the squirrel shoes wore out Susan impro vised another pair. "Today I have on railroad stockings and slippers," she wrote. "Guess what these slip pers are made of? Whenever I go to Uncle Richard's I see an old black uncle hard at work plaiting shucks and weaving the plaits into door mats. It seemed to me a light er braid might be sewed into something resembling shoes, so I picked out the softest shucks and soon had enough to make one slipper. So pleased was I that I soon had a pair of shoes ready to wear. They are a little rough so I have pasted inside a lining of velvet. Everybody laughed but I feel quite proud." Mary B o y k i n Chestnut, whose dairy has become a Civil War classic, was visit ing her ill mother in Alabama in 1863. Her uncle gave her a pair of shoes. "What a gift!" she record ed. "For more than a year I have had none but some dreadful things that Armi stead makes for me, and they hurt my feet so. These do not fit, but that is nothing; they are large enough and do not pinch anywhere. I have abso lutely a respectable pair of shoes!" Makeshift shoes were fash ioned differently in southern Alabama. Miss Parthenia An toinette Hague, a school teach er, left an account of impro vised shoes as made on a plan tation. "Our shoes, particularly those of women and children were made of cloth or knit,' she wrote. "Some one had learned to knit slippers, and it was not long before most of the women of our settle ment had a pair of slippers on knitting needles. They were knit of homespun thread, ei ther cotton or wool . . . the slippers or shoes were lined with cloth of suitable tex ture . . . "Sometimes we put on the soles ourselves . . ripping the soles off (of old shoes), placing them in warm water . . . then stitching (on) our knit slip pers or shoes . . ." Homemade Remedies Medicine was barred by the blockade. What little there was went to the army. Women who remained at home to run the plantations reverted to pioneer days for their home made remedies. "The woods were our drug stores," Miss Hague recorded. "The berries of the dog-wood tree were taken for quinine ... A soothing and efficacious cordial for dysentery and sim ilar ailments was made from blackberry roots; but ripe persimmons, when made into a cordial, were thought to be far superior to blackberry roots. An extract of the barks of the wild cherry, dogwood, popular, and wahoo trees were used for chills and agues. For coughs and all lung dis eases a syrup made with the leaves and roots of the mul lein plant, globe flower, and wild cherry bark was thought to be infallible. Of course the castor-bean plant was gath ered in the wild state in the forest, for making castor oil. "Many also cultivated a few rows of poppies in their gar dens to make opium, from which our laudanum was cre ated; and at this time was very needful. The manner of extracting opium from pop pies was of necessity crude. PRE-INVENTORY STOCK REDUCTION & SALE NEW AND USED TYPEWRITERS Undtrwood Olivetti Royal Smith-Cofon Rtmington NEW ADDING MACHINES HAND 79.50 plus tax ELECTRIC 83.73 to 159.50 Minuhird in USA SEE THEM 1 TRY THEM AT VOIGHT'S 8th & Grape The heads of bulbs of the pop pies were plucked when ripe, the capsules pierced with a large-sized sewing needle, and the bulbs placed in some small vessel for the opium gum to exude and to become inspissated (thickened) b y evaporation. The soporific in fluence of this drug was not excelled by that of the im ported articles." Southern housewives also took to the woods for their blue dye. 'Mud' Extracted They gathered indigo plants and extracted "indigo mud," a brilliant blue coloring. Miss Hague described an "indigo churning": "When the weed had ma tured sufficiently ... the plants were cut close to the ground, our steeping vats were closely packed with the weed, and water enough to cover the plant was poured in. The vat was then left eight or nine days . . . Then the plant was rinsed out, so to speak, and the water in the vat was churned up and down with a basket for quite a while: weak lye was added as a precipitate, which caused the indigo par ticles held in solution to fall to the bottom of the vat: the water was poured off, and the 'mud' was placed in a sack and hung up to drip and dry." wi:V ijj- vvniLii Pan-American Notes Increase in Earnings New York Pan-American World Airways report ed last week that 1962 earn ings rose 62.6 per cent and revenues reached the half billion - dollar mark for the first time last year. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11. 1963 J History Is Repeated In Roman Gravel Pit New York - (UPI) - Several . ercd an ancient plaque in La- years ago Trans World air lines workmen in Rome were under instructions to dig grav el for ballast for piston-engine Constellations from one cen tral pit in an effort to stop spoiling the site with a multi tude of holes. tin which, loosely translated, was an admonition to Roman workmen from their super visor instructing them to dig gravel for ballast for Roman ships from one central pit rather than the area with While digging they discov-1 a multitude of holes. PEOPLE IMPROVISED Jn early 1863 the South began to run out of things such as salt, shoes and medicine, and the people of the Confederacy began to improvise. Salt was boiled out of sea water, shoes were made from hides and corn shucks and the woods became drug stores. Other items had to be fashioned in the homes, too. There was no shortage of cotton, just of manufactured cotton cloth. 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