I stumbled upon a Wikipedia article about the USS Midnight, a steamship of the US Navy in the Civil War. In the article, it notes that the Union's "systematic attacks on salt works seriously impaired the Confederacy's ability to remain at war". The section seems lacking in sources and it made me wonder.
Was salt critical to the Confederate food supply chain? And if so, did lack of access to it really have a measurable impact on the outcome/longevity of the Civil War?
Salt was critical to everyone during the Civil War. So critical, in fact, that even on a micro-level it caused acts of violence. One previous topic I covered addressed The Shelton Laurel Massacre in Western North Carolina (west of Asheville). Salt was such a vital commodity that it was rationed out at the state level by salt commissioners and then further rationed out around the state. In Shelton Laurel, the Shelton family became targets because of their Union sympathies and the local Confederate leadership withheld their salt ration, essentially a death sentence for the coming winter. You can read more on that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dt9vfb/im_a_hillbilly_living_a_secluded_life_in/
On a larger level, salt was vital to the entire Confederate war effort. This meant that the government in Richmond (the Confederate capital) had to not only be cognizant of their army's need for salt and provisions but also their citizens across the Confederate states. The Richmond Bread Riots are a good example of the struggles that the CSA faced during the war with rations. As food (and salt) become harder to come by, this trickled down to the civilians as well. A group of women became so upset at the Impressment Law and Tax in Kind (laws that allowed CSA government to confiscate goods and materiel necessary for the war effort) that they eventually rioted in the streets of Richmond.
But salt was vital to several food sources. It allowed for the preservation of meat, allowed one to make bread and biscuits, and pickling/brining. So much so that the CSA had to spend considerable amounts of time and resources protecting their limited salt mines. Aptly named, Saltville, Virginia played a vital role in the CSA war effort to produce enough salt. Historian Drew Swanson writes "Frank Ruffin, a Confederate commissary of subsistence, wrote to his superior officer of the challenge of salt procurement. The Confederacy needed salt pork, but it had relatively little existing infrastructure for slaughtering, salting, and packing meat. Ruffin estimated that in the last year before the war roughly three million hogs had been salted and packed in the United States, but less than twenty thousand of those had been processed in the South. If the salines of southwestern Virginia were lost or unproductive, the rebellion might be doomed." That is an extreme disparity between food production for the Confederates. This dependency on salt was exploited by the Union using naval raids as well. The Union Navy would harras salt factories along the coast of Florida in order to limit their abilities. Access to salt and food may not be the only reason that the CSA ultimately surrendered, but it absolutely played a significant role in undermining morale and the war effort.
sources:
Swanson, Drew A. "Salt: Saltville’s Civil War." In Beyond the Mountains: Commodifying Appalachian Environments, 74-93
Lonn, Ella. "The Extent and Importance of Federal Naval Raids on Salt-Making in Florida, 1862-1865." The Florida Historical Society Quarterly 10, no. 4 (1932): 167-84
Garner, James Wilford. "The State Government of Mississippi During the Civil War." Political Science Quarterly 16, no. 2