Name Salt as a Factor in the Confederacy by Ella Lonn Price $35.00 Brief Description (Hardcover) Published in 1965, Ella Lonn's book was a forerunner among the flood of outstanding books concerning the American Civil War. "Salt as a Factor in the Confederacy" is a basic work that will last one of the best ones among the books dealing with the lack of industrial development in the States of the Southern Confederacy. During the Civil War, salt was the only preservative for food, and its scarcity in the South contributed significantly to the failure of the Confederate venture either by weakening the boys in gray on the battlefields either by starving the "home front" behind the lines.