Eagle Pass C.S.A.

From 1863 to 1865, while Union forces held the lower Rio Grande, Eagle Pass was a major terminus of the Cotton Road, a customhouse, and the Confederate port of entry into Mexico. Cotton, called the lifeblood of the South, moved through Texas as a lifeline and storehouse west of the Mississippi, and Confederate, state, and private agents sent thousands of bales through Eagle Pass to trade for guns, ammunition, clothing, blankets, leather goods, and medical supplies. One Arkansas train contained more than 100 wagons loaded with cotton. After arriving from San Antonio over a hot, dusty road threatened by Indians and plagued by bandits, the bales were removed from oxcarts and taken across the river on barges, then sent down the River Road to Matamoros or carried inland, sometimes as far as Mexico City. Confederate customs took one-half of all private cotton passing through as export duty, and at one time bales spread from the river bank to the edge of town. Fort Duncan and Camp Rabb, Confederate garrisons, protected the wagon trains and controlled Eagle Pass, which had voted 80 to 3 against state secession. Union sympathizers, renegades, and sulkers seeking to avoid the war fled across the Rio Grande in attempts to settle in Mexico, and many slipped back into Texas to prey on wagon trains and isolated ranches. One large party of raiders overcame Fort Duncan and attacked Eagle Pass, but alerted citizens fighting from behind barricades of cotton bales drove them off.

Eagle Pass, Texas · United States