Peter W. Gray, a Virginia-born man who came to Texas in 1838, aided the 1839 removal of the Texas Shawness and served as an officer in the Milam Guards of the Texas Republic. He became a political and cultural leader in Houston and in the Republic, State, and Confederacy, serving as district attorney, judge, justice of the Texas Supreme Court, and legislator in Texas and the C.S.A. As a delegate to the Texas Secession Convention, he helped raise troops to seize U.S. forts, provide for Texas frontier defense, and ratify the C.S.A. Constitution. In 1864 Gray became Treasury Agent for the "amputated" C.S.A. sector west of the Mississippi River, effectively acting as Treasury Secretary for a region in chaos. Smuggled currency was scarce and often hijacked, no western press could be found to print notes, and couriers and the Pony Express served as Gray's "wireless" to the Confederate capital. Ammunition, arms, medicines, and factory goods vital to the war effort had to be imported for Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Texas, while blockade-runners exported cotton through Havana to Europe and cattle and cotton went to market in Mexico.