The war and the blockade brought about an economic revolution in Texas, for both the exportation and importation of goods stopped altogether, except for the limited trading that could be done through Mexico and by "blockade runners." The absence of most of the able-bodied men in the army threw the whole burden of providing the necessities of life upon the women, who, with the assistance of the slaves, produced both food and clothing from the raw material to the finished products.
"By the first of 1862," says 0. M. Roberts, "the people in most parts of the state set about providing themselves with the necessaries of life. From that time to the end of the war a person traveling past houses on the road could hear the sound of the spinningwheel and of the looms at which the women were at work to supply clothing for their families and for their husbands and sons in the army. Thus while the men were struggling valiantly with all their martial efforts in camp and in battle, the work of the women was no less heroic and patriotic in their homes. Nor was that kind of employment all; for many a wife or daughter of a soldier went out on the farm and bravely did the work with plow and hoe to make provisions for herself and little children.
Shops were extensively established to manufacture domestic implements. Wheat and other cereals were produced, where practicable, in large quantities; hogs and cattle were raised more generally; and before the passage over the Mississippi was closed by the Federal gunboats, droves of beef cattle and numerous wagonloads of bacon and flour were almost constantly passing across the river from Texas to feed the soldiers of the Confederate army.
"An almost universally humane feeling inspired people of wealth as well as those in moderate circumstances to help the indigent families of soldiers in the field and the women who had lost their husbands and sons by sickness or in battle. There were numerous slaveholders who had only a few slaves, such as had been raised by themselves or by their parents as part of the family, and so regarded themselves. In the absence of the husband in the service, the wife . . . assumed the management of the farm and the control of the negroes on it. It was a subject of general remark that the negroes were more docile and manageable during the war than at any other period, and. for this they deserve the lasting gratitude of their owners in the army. . . .  | 
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