An exhaustive study of the role salt played in the drama of the War Between the States
 
It is only when a prime necessity thrusts itself upon public attention by its absence that a person ceases to take it for granted. Only when he no longer has it, does he realize what an important ingredient for his palate and digestion is plain, ordinary salt, necessary alike for man and beast. He then recalls that the salt licks and salt springs have from the earliest times been centers of interest and development.
 
The author has searched into the archives of most of the states of the old confederacy, and also into departments of knowledge remote from her own, so that she has had to delve into geological libraries, consult colleagues in the fields of chemistry and physiology, and do more sums in arithmetic than have fallen to her lot since she was in the primary school. But it has been a pleasant and profitable search.
 

Ella Lonn (1879–1962) was a scholar of American history. She is author of Desertion During the Civil War.
 

“In her investigation of this neglected but vital problem of the Confederate people, Professor Lonn made an extensive and careful search. . . . [H]er story covers every phase of the subject.”
—American Historical Review
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“Has accomplished its purpose in full. . . . [A]lthough the title seems prosaic enough, the style is lively, and numerous dramatic incidents pregnant with human tragedy are enumerated.”
—Annals of the American Academy
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“[A]n admirable piece of work on a most abstruse subject. [The author] has clarified not a few tangled aspects of the Confederacy and has added valuable information regarding the work of the quartermasters. . . . No one whose interest lies in the Civil War will fail to realize the magnitude of the task undertaken and performed, nor undervalue the careful and accurate scholarship manifest not only in the text but [also] in the documentation and the bibliography.”
—Boston Evening Transcript
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