UNT Press

Texas Cotton and Confederate Finance: Blockade Runners, Border Merchants, and Government Agents

— Vol. 3: of Randolph B. "Mike" Campbell Series

Published: September, 2026  Pages: 464  Features: 34 b&w illus. Map. Notes. Bib. Index.

Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, the commander of the Confederate Department of the Trans-Mississippi, wrote in January 1864 about the Cotton Bureau, “In my judgement it is destined to be one of the most powerful agencies upon which we must rely in the inevitable struggle for supremacy in this Department.” Kirby Smith had taken command of the department in 1863 only to discover that efforts to support the Confederate military in that region with cotton, the primary local resource, were failing. The Trans-Mississippi relied on cotton more than any other Confederate department, and Texas was the main source of cotton for the western Confederacy. Kirby Smith struggled to develop a better way to swap that commodity for military goods. The bureau became his principal supply agency, and it did remarkably well in tandem with other efforts to benefit from cotton. In the end Kirby Smith got far more from Texas cotton than he got from Richmond officials. more... about Texas Cotton and Confederate Finance: Blockade Runners, Border Merchants, and Government Agents