King Ranch, C.S.A., founded in 1853 by Capt. Richard King, became a major South Texas way-station on the cotton road, a Civil War lifeline for the southern states, providing water, food, mules, oxen, and bunks for wagon drivers hauling cotton to trade for war goods, and also sheltering Confederate troops on the march. By 1861, King and his partners Mifflin Kenedy and James Walworth owned 20,000 cattle and 3,000 horses, and during the war Walworth was a delegate to the Texas Secession Convention while King managed the ranch and coastal salt works for Texas and the Confederacy. Kenedy operated the partnership's 22 boats from the Gulf to Rio Grande City, moving Texas cotton to Matamoros, Mex., where it was exchanged for guns, factory goods, ammunition, medicines, and coffee that were scarce in the Confederacy, and carrying cotton from Bagdad, Mex., to ocean vessels on the high seas beyond the Federal blockade. As supply agents for the Rio Grande military sub-district, King and his partners made the ranch a concentration point for goods that attracted bandits and drew Federal raids aimed at disrupting cotton road activity and seizing beef, cotton, and horses for a planned Texas conquest, after which Confederate cavalry under Col. John S. (RIP) Ford patrolled the area.