How about poems about it?
From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitre_and_Mining_Bureau ...
Night Soil
Desperate for saltpeter necessary for the making of gunpowder, the Confederacy sent out agents around the South to collect deposits of it. John Harrelson, an agent in Selma, Alabama of the Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau, advertised the following in the local paper: "The ladies of Selma are respectfully requested to preserve the chamber lye collected about their premises for the purpose of making nitre. A barrel will be sent around daily to collect it." These poems were soon to be written by the soldiers and civilians on both sides:
The Southern version: "An appeal to John Harrelson" John Harrelson, John Harrelson, you are a wretched creature, You’ve added to this war a new and awful feature, You’d have us think while every man is bound to be a fighter, The ladies, bless their pretty dears, should save their p** for nitre, John Harrelson, John Harrelson, where did you get this notion, To send your barrel around the town to gather up this lotion, We thought the girls had work enough in making shirts and kissing, But you have put the pretty dears to patriotic p*ssing, John Harrelson, John Harrelson, do pray invent a neater And somewhat less immodest mode of making your saltpeter, For "tis an awful idea, John, gunpowdery and cranky, That when a lady lifts her skirt, she’s killing off a Yankee.
A little while later came the Yankee version: John Harrelson, John Harrelson, we’ve read in song and story How a women’s tears through all the years have moistened fields of glory, But never was it told before, how, ‘mid such scenes of slaughter, Your Southern beauties dried their tears and went to making water, No wonder that your boys are brave, who couldn’t be a fighter, If every time he shot a gun he used his sweetheart's nitre ? And, vice-versa, what could make a Yankee soldier sadder, Than dodging bullets fired by a pretty woman’s bladder.
Drink up!
USS ALASKA