The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Atkinson

In warfare, salt was almost as much a unum necessarium as gunpowder. Without the preservative, armies and navies could not stockpile meat and fish. Two bushels of salt—more than a hundred pounds—were needed to cure a thousand pounds of pork. Beef required even more. Salt also was used to tan leather, fix the dyes in military uniforms, churn butter, and supplement livestock feed. Before the war, Americans had imported 1.5 million bushels annually, half from the West Indies and half from Britain or southern Europe. The British trade embargo strangled two-thirds of those imports. Profiteers and hoarders drove up the price, from two shillings a bushel to fourteen by late summer; it would soar as high as seventy-five shillings by July 1777. Salt bandits were reported in Virginia. “This article is exceedingly scarce,” a diarist wrote. “If none comes in, the people will revolt.”