The Cotton Road

Guest Post by Sherry Shindelar

I have been an avid student of the Civil War for a couple decades. However, until I started researching for my last book, I had no clue that the Yankees ever invaded Texas. But they did in November 1863. Why? Because of cotton. By 1863, the Federal blockade of the Confederate coastline was fairly secure, and Texas became the golden gateway for funding the Confederacy.

Cotton from Arkansas, western Louisiana, and East Texas traveled the Cotton Road. This dusty trail ran from the railroad terminus in Alleyton, Texas (about seventy miles west of Houston) by way of King’s Ranch near Corpus Christi to Brownsville and across the Rio Grande to Matamoros, Mexico, the largest cotton market in the world during the war. In regard to commercial activity, it rivaled pre-war New Orleans or Baltimore.

A young teamster wrote that from the watchtower at King’s Ranch, the main stop on the way to Matamoros, he could see hundreds of wagons on the road at one time, a long train of dust rising up as they traveled toward the Rio Grande.

At some points, the trail was almost a mile wide, and more than one hundred miles of it was desert with no water. Puffs of cotton clung to the sagebrush and cacti along the way and lingered for years after the war.

When the cotton reached Matamoros, it was loaded onto steamboats and/or wagons owned by Mexicans and transported to the mouth of the Rio Grande at the Gulf of Mexico. International ships from Britain, France, and other countries hovered there, sometimes hundreds at a time, waiting to fill their hulls . And the Yankees couldn’t stop them. If a Federal ship fired on a ship of another nationality, it could have been considered an act of war.

By 1863, cotton, which had sold for .10 cents a pound in 1860 sold for as much as $1.89 a pound, and one bale averaged 450 – 500 pounds. In just one week in August, twenty thousand pounds of gunpowder arrived in Brownsville, purchased with proceeds from the sale of cotton.

That’s why the Federal Army invaded Brownsville in early November 1863. Their mission was to stop or at least seriously hinder the cotton trade. The Yankees reached the city without resistance. However, they found a meager one hundred and fifty bales of cotton on the Texas side of the river and could only gaze at the more than ten thousand bales stacked along the Mexican wharves. The Rebs had moved or destroyed everything of value.

The invasion lasted for several months and forced the Confederates to find new trails for the cotton shipments, hauling the loads via San Antonio to Eagle Pass and Loredo. Unfortunately, the Yankees only netted a hundred or so bales.

Cotton continued to reign until the war efforts in the East bled the Confederacy dry. But for those few months at the end of 1863, hopes were high, especially amongst the two regiments of Texas cavalry fighting for the Union, soldiers who had left their state to avoid being forced into the Reb army. These men returned with the Federal troops in November 1863 to restore Texas to the Union and wreak havoc on the Cotton Road. 

Originally from Tennessee, Sherry loves to take her readers into the past. A romantic at heart, she is an avid student of the Civil War and the Old West. When she isn't busy writing, she is an English professor working to pass on her love of writing to her students. Sherry is an award-winning writer: 2023 ACFW Genesis finalist, 2021 & 2023 Maggie finalist, and 2022 Crown finalist. She currently resides in Minnesota with her husband of forty years. She has three grown children and three grandchildren. 

Texas Divided releases March 25. https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Divided-Lone-Star-Redemption-ebook/dp/B0DBM4WMRN/

Can she trust the man who ruined her life to rescue her future? 

Driven by the expectation of becoming a proper lady, Morning Fawn is determined to escape her uncle's plantation and return to her adoptive Comanche tribe. But with each failed attempt, her hopes dwindle. The last thing she needs is help from the frontier soldier who put her there in the first place. 

Disillusioned with the Confederacy and his role in Morning Fawn's kidnapping, Devon Reynolds returns to Texas as a Yankee spy to make amends. But can two wounded souls find solace and love amidst the chaos of war?