Book excerpt: In the last months of the American Civil War, the upper Texas coast became a hive of blockade running. Though Texas was often considered an isolated backwater in the conflict, the Union's pervasive and systematic seizure of Southern ports left Galveston as one of the only strongholds of foreign imports in the anemic supply chain to embattled Confederate forces. Long, fast steamships ran in and out of the city's port almost every week, bound to and from Cuba. Join author Andrew W. Hall as he explores the story of Texas's Civil War blockade runners--a story of daring, of desperation and, in many cases, of patriotism turning coat to profiteering.