The Matamoros cotton trade collapses with the Confederacy
1865, Matamoros, Mexico.
- Date
- 1865
- Where
- Matamoros, Mexico
- What happened
- Closed
- Event
- 144 of 174
Matamoros and its port of Bagdad, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, could not be blockaded and became the Confederacy's outlet west of the Mississippi, trading cotton for arms, medicine and dry goods. By 1865 Matamoros had grown to 30,000 people. When the Confederacy fell its markets shut, business nearly stopped and most of Bagdad's residents left.