Everybody knows no battles that could have changed the course of the Civil War occurred  around St. Andrews Bay or Panama City Beach but the Union naval blockade and the United States' continued attacks upon the salt makers of present-day Bay County to eliminate the supply of salt represents, in my humble opinion, the GREATEST CONTRIBUTING FACTOR TO THE CONFEDERATE DEFEAT. The study of the Confederacy's salt famine gives new meaning to the terms "dirt poor" or "salt of the earth". The following newspaper clippings from the 1880s tell the story of how Southerners made their salt from smokehouse dirt. http://www.historynet.com/insight-ahead-her-time.htm

 In the end, insisted Lonn, the “fact that salt could become a major problem to the confederacy reveals strikingly its complete dependence on outside sources for primary needs and emphasizes that fact as the most serious of its disadvantages in the unequal struggle.”


https://www.jstor.org/stable/30151279?read-now=1&googleloggedin=true&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents


Madison County Florida "On the farm the salt soon ran out and there was none to buy. In the Florida heat, this was a deadly problem. Sarah had heard that the floors of the plantation smokehouses were being boiled and the salt distilled from the dirt. No one could be spared from the fields, so she and Mary, her negro mammy, began spading the smokehouse dirt and carrying it in buckets to the sugar kettle. They filled half the kettle with dirt and the other half with water. As the water got hot the salt dissolved into it. It was then dipped out of the kettle and boiled away leaving a little bit of salt. Day after day they would dig, carry and boil until it seemed as if they could never lift a foot again. All this for just a taste of salt and there were so many that needed it. In all there were about 19 people who needed that salt. But the distilling process took so long that things just kept getting farther and farther behind." https://www.familysearch.org/service/records/storage/das-mem/patron/v2/TH-904-61514-2984-13/dist.txt?ctx=ArtCtxPublic

September 1864 – "Due to the Federal blockade of our ports, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain even the most basic necessities of life. With no source of purchasing salt, we who struggle at home have adapted to previously unheard of scavenging. Under the smokehouses which are still standing the soil is somewhat saturated with salt that has dripped from the curing meat. This smokehouse dirt is boiled until the salt can be separated and skimmed from it. Now even this source has become depleted. We have learned that a Freeboater has brought a barge of salt to Mobile and by permission was allowed to come up the Tombigbee River to Columbus, Miss. to sell this salt. The asking price is very high and it can only be purchased with gold. Several of our friends and neighbors are sending wagons to make purchase of this salt. I am sending a wagon and my sons, Oswald and Robert, are each sending one also. This is a dangerous journey as they will be carrying gold for payment and the salt on the return trip is very valuable. It was fortunate that they were well armed in case of attack by Tories for there was a minor attack on their return home but no one was injured." (Letter from J. H. Spangler to F. R. King August 22, 1925, the precise date of this journey can not be verified) http://www.algw.org/colbert/bio-king-burchetc.htm