Newton County was a supply and military center in the Civil War and a target for Federals trying to move up the Sabine or across Louisiana and take Texas. Confederates built breastworks and maintained an arsenal at Burkeville. A major supply route, the Old Beef Trail, begun in 1823, ran through the area later known as Newton County, and thousands of cattle were driven along it from Texas to feed armies and civilians as far east as Mobile, Ala. Sabine ferries were equipped with cattle pens, and ferrymen kept oxen trained to lead herds swimming across the river; some local beef also went eastward. Farrsville, a town founded about 1850 on Cow Creek, had a military campground and corrals furnishing fresh stagecoach teams. Its tanning vats and shops made boots and shoes for the Confederacy, and its water mills ground corn for bread, sawed lumber, and ginned cotton for use in supplying the South. The commissioners court made appropriations to outfit military units by buying horses for men unable to furnish their own, to aid dependent families, and to supply the people with cotton cards to turn lint into batts for spinning, weaving, and knitting. The county, which had voted 178 to 3 for secession, sent about 400 soldiers into the Confederate army.