hite ladies
of the South?

Hats and caps were made at home from the colored jeans. Beautiful
hats were made out of straw, and so adapt had the makers become in
utilizing home commodities, that ladies' hats were made out of wheat,
oat, and rice straw. Splendid and serviceable house shoes were made
from the products of the loom, the cobbler only putting on the soles.
Good, warm, and tidy gloves were knit for the soldier from their
home-raised fleece and with a single bone from the turkey wing. While
the soldiers may have, at times, suffered for shoes and provisions,
still they were fairly well clothed by the industry and patriotism of
the women, and for blankets, the finest of beds were stripped to be
sent voluntarily to the camps and army. As for tents, we had no need
to manufacture them, for they were invariably captured from the enemy.
Think of going through an army of sixty or seventy thousand men, all
comfortably housed, and all through capture upon the battlefield.
As for cooking utensils, nothing more nor better were wanted by the
soldiers than a tin cup and frying-pan.

Salt was an article of great scarcity in the South. Coming over from
Liverpool in ante bellum times as ballast, made it so cheap that
little attention was given to the salt industry, and most of our best
salt mines were in the hands of the enemy. But the Southern people
were equal to any emergency. Men were put along the sea coast and
erected great vats into which was put the salt sea water, and by a
system of evaporation nice, fine salt was made. Farmers, too, that had
the old-time "smoke" or meat houses with dirt floors, dug up the earth
in the house and filtered water through it, getting a dark, salty
brine, which answered exceedingly well the purpose of curing their
meats.

All taxes, as I said before, were paid in "kind," and the tenth of all
the meat raised at home was sent to the army, and with the few cattle
they could gather, was sufficient to feed the troops. There were
no skulking spirits among the people. They gave as willingly and
cheerfully now as they did at the opening of the war. The people were
honest in their dealings with the government, and as cheerful in
their gifts to the cause as the Israelites of old in their "free will
offerings" to the Lord. There were no drones among them, no secretion
or dishonest division. The widows, with houses filled with orphans,
gave of their scanty crops and hard labor as freely as those who