nfederacy's most important port. In pre-war years, New Orleans was the largest cotton port in the world, and it had exported 1,738,678 out of the 3,133,200 bales exported by the South from September 1860 to August 1861. New Orleans had also accounted for over half of the South's total foreign commerce: it had done $128 million out of $217 million of the South's total foreign commerce from June 1858 to June 1859.[51] After New Orleans was eliminated from the trade, Mobile, Alabama, became the center of rebel traffic. Mobile had also done well in the early stages of the war, and from April to June 1861 entrances and clearances were matters of daily occurrence.[52] With the largest port in the South captured, in 1862 and 1863 the Union blockade in the Gulf was greatly tightened and after the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, more blockaders were available to bottle up Mobile.[53] Then the blockade-running switched mainly to the Texas ports, primarily Galveston. In the summer of 1864, Mobile was put under siege and its trade virtually stopped as the ships moved to Galveston. In January and February of 1865, fleets of fast iron steamers moved from the collapsed Carolina trade (after Wilmington's capture) to run between Galveston and Havana, proving the inefficiency of the enforcement even at such a late day, since just the steamers there had a 94 percent success rate.[54] On the other hand, the blockade-running wasn't very beneficial to the South because Texas had poor railroad and road conditions with the East so that cargoes usually ended up staying around Texas and weren't sent to Virginia's great armies as Wilmington's cargoes had been.[55] By the time Galveston was captured on June 5, 1865, thus closing the last Confederate blockade-running port, the war had already been decided. According to Marcus Price's study, a total of 2,960 attempts were made to run the Gulf blockade and 83 percent were successful. There were 156 steamers and 987 s...
