Old Niblett's Bluff stood on a high point southeast across the Sabine in Louisiana and was the busiest East Texas port of entry in the Civil War. Repeatedly targeted for enemy movements west across Louisiana in 1862-64, it served as a Confederate defense post, a supply depot supporting constant troop movements for fighting, patrols, and recruiting, and a crossroads for land and river traffic. It was a ferry point on an old road through swamps, a cotton concentration point, and a boom town with gambling, saloons, and night life. Texas troops patrolled both sides of the Sabine to protect troop movements, commercial shipping, stagecoach travel routes, freighters' trains, and herds of cattle and hogs driven east. Thousands of Texas troops passed through there eastward by marshlands and sloughs toward Brashear and New Orleans or upper Mississippi River crossings to eastern battlefields. Many units traveled by rail from Houston to Beaumont, then to Sabine Pass and up the river by steamer. Niblett's Bluff received steamers unloading guns, ammunition, clothing, medicines, and other goods vital to the Confederacy, exchanging them for Texas and Louisiana cotton, called "Money of the Confederacy" because of its purchasing value in world trade.
