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 owned large plantations and scores of slaves.  In fact, it was noticeable that the poorer class were more patriotic and more cheerful givers, if such could be possible, than the wealthy class.