by Mark Allan Johnson (Author)
John Hart Crenshaw was the "Salt King" of Southern Illinois before the Civil War. The salt works he leased at Half Moon Lick near the town of Equality made him the richest man in the state. To mine the salt, he legally leased slaves from bordering states where the peculiar institution was believed to be blessed by biblical verse. But, he had other ways of obtaining the resources required to build and hold his fortune. "Salt of the Earth" is the story of the Reverse Underground Railroad, the cruel custom of kidnapping runaway slaves, freemen and families and returning them to servitude or selling them south, feeding King Cotton's insatiable hunger for strong backs. John Hart Crenshaw's mansion, Hickory Hill, was a way station on this road of anguish, its attic constructed with manacled cells and breeding rooms while downstairs guests as prominent as State Representative Abraham Lincoln attended formal dinners and dances. But the smoke was rising on the shifting wind and the fires of emancipation would soon burst into flames that would threaten this way of life John Hart Crenshaw believed God had ordained.