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12
The Journal op Mississippi History
contracted for 100,000 bushels of salt at thirty-five dollars a bushel.40 In one letter Claiborne suggested, ?If you could shell those places, & seize the salt-boilers, we should get rid of the guerrillas and their sympathizers.?41 In subsequent memorandums he reported that saltmaking was proceeding at a rate of five hundred bushels a day,42 and that twenty wagon loads of salt had been shipped to General Joseph E. Johnston?s army.43
As the war progressed and Union victories became more frequent, Claiborne sent more valuable information. In July, 1863, he told Banks of fortifications being erected at Mobile, of the location and size of Johnston?s army, of the movements of General William J. Hardee, and of the location of a Confederate train of four hundred wagons.44 Claiborne was particularly energetic in 1863 in informing Banks of the smuggling trade carried on between New Orleans, the Rigo-lets, and Mississippi coastal towns, naming ?the Alice, the Venus & other vessels? that ?regularly bring out contraband? and implicating the suttler at Fort Pike.45 Early in the following year he reported the construction of seven Confederate rams on the Alabama River. ?Two of them, the Tennessee and the Nashville, are very powerful, mounted with six guns,? Claiborne wrote, ?It is believed that they can sink any vessel of the blockade fleet; and there is good reason to believe that the attempt will shortly be made.?4*
On two occasions Claiborne was able to supply General Banks with the names of persons serving the Confederacy in New Orleans, the general?s own headquarters. On July 10, 1863, Claiborne wrote:
40	Ibid.
41	J. F. H. Claiborne to Banks, July 22, 1863, ibid.
42	[J. F. H. Claiborne] to Banks, July 27, 1863, ibid.
43	[J. F. H. Claiborne], Memorandum to Banks [enclosed with letter of July 28, 1863], ibid.
44	Ibid.
45	[J. F. H. Claiborne], Memorandum to Banks [enclosed with letter of December 12, 1863], ibid.
46	[J. F. H. Claiborne] to Banks, January 12, 1864, ibid.