 Civilian Blockade Runners largely evaded the Union blockades, bandits, and Union-sympathetic Mexicans in order to smuggle cotton out of The Port of Bagdad, Mexico at a premium in exchange for goods on European and black markets, as Texas offered an unparalleled and significant opportunity to export Southern cotton out of the Confederacy.President Lincoln referred to the strategic importance of this economic movement through the Rio Grande to the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton in 1863 stating, "no local object is now more desirable.