A WAR INCIDENT. HOW SALT WAS MADE DURING THE FOUR YEARS' STRUGGLE. The following interesting article from the pen of Capt. J A Bozman is clipped from the Mobile Register: On December 2, 1862, General Grant, was with his entire army, landed at Miliken's Bend, Mississippi river. for the purpose of cutting a canal on the west side of the river to Young's Point, in ;a direct line, pot more than three miles through a, beavily-timbered swamp.
This piece of military strategy, when completed, would enable the Federal gunboats and transports to pass through and avoid the Confederate batteries 1o- cated on the heights of Vicksburg surrendered. July 4, 1863. At the above stated time I was successfully planting in Louisiana, a few miles below Grant's point o8 landing. My negroee, about one hundred in number, though aware of the apt roach of their so-called friends, remained loyal to us, and. without compulsion packed "bag and baggage" into their pix-mule wagons and started for Alabama, via Vickeburg, leaving behind the best improved plantation in the parieb, with about six hundred ba'ea of cotton, ten thou and bushof corn, a large stock of cattle and bogs, and other plantation products too numerous to mention all of which were confi:cated or appropriated for the use and benefit of the Federal army soon to fol low in our wake.
As we approached Vicksburg, the Federal gunhosts, patrolling the river, espied in the distance our whitetop wagons, no doubt thinking they contained provisione&coming in from Texas for the Confederate soldiers then occupying that then Jeri to impregnable city, commenced shelling} our fleeing cavalcade, to the disgust and frigbt of their socalled friend [and brother. The Confederates too, no doubt, shared the supposition with|their river foe, and commenced replying over our heads, a veritable duel going on, shot and shell falling all aronnd us, not an enviable place to be in, I assure you. Before reaching our destination Colonel Catesby ap R Jones, BUperintendent of the naval gun foundry located at Selma, impressed forty of my men for the use of the Confederate government, paying me $40 a month for each, I protested, I had matured plans which would enable me to use these men to great advantage. Salt was worth $20 per bushel throughout the Confederate States. We bad in Alabama salt wells sufficient from which we could make salt without diffialty, but we lack, ed the implements or utensils such as caldrons, eto.
With these forty men I could overcome these obstacles. My father-in-law, Captain James H Dearing, being one of the pioneers of Alabama, built at St. Stephens, above Mobile, the firet steamboat, that 88- cended the Alabama river, in 1819 She ran successfu ly to and from Tuskaloosa to Mobile until 1824, then, by some e mismanagement, the rank at the wharf near Tuskaloos8. All that remaiued of this historical craft was her boiler, seventeen feet long and six feet in diameter, three-fourths of an inch thick. If I could get this monster boiler out of the river and cut it open lengthwise I would bave tWo caldrons sufficient to make a great quantity of salt, Loxplainod to Colonel Jones my poa.
were feasible and practical and proposed loaning me the men for two weeks, my pay to commence.
commence inamediately, as the ate government would be benefited to the extent of one-tenth of all the sales (we were paying a tithe of all product* etc., made to the government during the war.) My uodertaking W88 8 perfect suc. C888. I engaged Dr. Leach, a practi tical foundryman, paying him sufficient remuneration to assist me. Wel got the boiler out upon the bluff, where he superintended the cutting of this buge boiler open lengthwise, as proposed, after which he inserted staples 80 as to attach a rudder for steering at the end of each, fixed attachments at each side for the support of two seats: near which were oarlocks riveted for the use of two oars; staples upon each side for half-dozen bent hoops or wa" goo bowe, which were covered with common wagon cover, so as to protect the occupants from wind and rain.
The iron monsters were (now completed. They were provisioned for a cruise of ten days. These improvised boats were lauched into that water where they had rested near half a century. Three men getting on board of each, one steering and two plying their oars, they started on their eruiseof 260 milesto Clarke county, Alabama. Upon arrival there, the boilers were placed upon brick furnaces and in them were made thousands of bushels of salt.
With this staff of life, I was enabled to clothe, feed and shoe my other negroes, which others found very difficult to do during this four years siege which we were subjected to, env* ronments being thrown around us on every side. J. A. B. Tuskaloosa, Ala, Dec.
4, 1895..
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