Salt

SALT. Salt was vital to the American economy, because it was needed to preserve meat and fish. While salt-making was one of the earliest industries attempted in the colonies, the commodity was not produced in sufficient quantity and had to be imported. Turks Island in the West Indies was the principal source, and the Royal navy was able to cut off this supply to all but smugglers and privateers during the War for American Independence. (Naval vessels could carried salt as ballast and would trade it for fresh provisions whenever possible.)

The great Onondaga salt deposits in New York were known in the seventeenth century, but they were not worked until after the war, nor were the large deposits of rock salt that later supplied the country. When the shortage became critical, the Americans set up salt factories along the coast, from Cape Cod to Georgia, to produce salt by evaporating sea water. Bounties were offered and state works were established, and even Benjamin Franklin turned his talents to drawing up instructions for salt production. During the war era, non-combatants went to considerable lengths to procure the commodity. On 29 August 1777 John Adams wrote to his wife from Philadelphia that "all the old women and young children are gone down to the Jersey shore to make salt. Salt water is boiling all around the coast." Nonetheless, the shortage was never alleviated. Profiteers did a thriving business, and mobs rioted for salt. Salt works themselves were prime objectives for British sea-borne raiders, and many were destroyed by the coastal storms for which the North Atlantic seaboard is noted.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1851.

Smith, Paul H. et al., eds. Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789. Vol. 7: 1 May-18 September 1777. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1981.

                            revised by Harold E. Selesky