overseer during the crucial years, his distant
relative Lund Washington, addressed a letter to him in 1775:

The people are running mad about salt. You would hardly think it
possible there could be such a scarcity. Five and six shillings per
bushel. Conway's sloop came to Alexandria Monday last with a load.

A couple of months later the crisis was reached:

I have had 300 bushels more of salt put into fish barrels, which I
intend to move into Muddy Hole barn, for if it should be destroyed
by the enemy we shall not be able to get more. There is still fifty
or sixty more bushels, perhaps a hundred in the house. I was
unwilling to sell it, knowing we could not get more and our people
must have fish. Therefore I told the people I had none.

Two more years of adversity went by. Lund wrote in 1778:

I was told a day or two past that Congress had ordered a quantity
of shad to be cured on this river. I expect as everything sells
high, shad will also. I should be fond of curing about 100 barrels
of them, they finding salt. We have been unfortunate in our crops,
therefore I could wish to make something by fish.

He proposed that he cure fish "for the Continent" and make "upwards of
200 pounds":

I have very little salt, of which we must make the most. I mean to
make a brine and after cutting off the head and bellies, dipping
them in the brine for but a short time, then hang them up and cure
them by smoke, or dry them in the sun; for our people being so long
accustomed to have fish whenever they wanted, would think it very
bad to have none at all.

All ended well for that season. Lund wrote:

I have cured a sufficient quantity of fish for our people, together
with about 160 or 170 barrels of shad for the Continent.

One of the most interesting diarists of Revolutionary days was young
Nicholas Cresswell, an Englishman of 24 when he arrived in America for
a three-years visit. He was in Leesburg, Virginia, in December 1776
when he recorded this occurrence:

A Dutch mob of about forty horsemen went through the town today on
their way to Alexandria to search for salt. If they find any they
will take it by force.... This article is exceedingly scarce; if
none comes the people will revolt. They cannot possibly subsist
without a considerable quantity of this article.

The raiders were pacified by an allotment of three p