Originally aired on September 27, 1996 - In part 109 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson discusses the post-1865 emigration of Southerners to Central and South America and the influence they had there.
#109 – The Confederados (Southern Emigration)
How far afield the influence of the Civil War extend oftentimes defies belief. For example, dramatic reminders of the war between North and South live still in (of all places) Central and South America. Why, and how, this is so adds another little-known nugget to a large and fascinating subject.
The surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s army at Appomattox in 1865 signaled the end of a four-year conflict. In the first days of the defeat, most Southerners heeded South Carolina General Wade Hampton’s call to “devote their whole energies to the restoration of law and order, the reestablishment of agriculture and commerce….and the rebuilding of our cities and dwellings which have been laid in ashes”.
Hundreds of Southerners, on the other hand, could not accept defeat, or else they feared the consequence of the occupation of the South by Union armies. Many former confederates saw the need to depart their war-ravaged homeland and to seek new economic opportunities elsewhere. Scores of Southerners in the post-1865 period were motivated by the age-old call to adventure.
A number of associations came into being with the collective aim of finding territory abroad for colonization by enterprising expatriates. Small Confederate settlements came into being in Mexico, Venezuela, and British Honduras. Yet the largest of such colonies developed in the one nation that had granted belligerent rights to the wartime Confederate government: namely. Brazil. Its emperor offered help with transportation and gave easy citizenship as well as promises of a semi-independent agricultural commune for former Confederates in southeast Brazil. Thus did that nation become the principal attraction for self-exiled Southerners in search of a new dream.
The major settlements there were in jungle clearings and amid sugarcane fields. Communities took shape with such names as Santa Barbara and Americana. A steady influx of former Southerners, combined with the hearty nature of those already there, caused population to swell eventually to 4,000 people. Among themselves, they were ex-Confederates; to their Brazilian neighbors, they were Confederados.
Transplants and natives worked together for a common future. The emigres prospered in Brazilian economy, and they greatly influenced Brazilian society. Southerners introduced agricultural techniques and received land in return. They contributed to the establishment of the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist denominations as well as a number of missionary schools in Brazil. They demonstrated not only that Protestant and Catholic could live in harmony in a common land, but that men of different tongues and different backgrounds could work in harmony through the vehicle of friendship.
The most amazing aspect of this story is that the Confederados are still there. What was long described as “the lost colony of the Confederacy” is not part of the mainstream of Brazilian society. Once or twice each year, descendants of Confederate expatriates gather at a small chapel and cemetery near Santa Barbara. Dressed in costumes of mid-19th Century America, farmers and small businessmen sing old revival hymns and listen to vintage-style sermons. Afterwards they share a communal dinner consisting in the main of Southern fried chicken with biscuits and gravy.
They speak a quaint English dialect instead of the Brazilian language. Such features as red hair, blue eyes, and freckles are visual evidence that these people are not Brazilian natives. Occasionally they have the baptized name of Juan, Carlos, or Benito. However, their surnames are Carlton, Cobb, Moore, Smith, Steagall – common family names in the deep South whence their ancestors came.
Those ancestors lie in the small cemeteries of the colonies. Their overall feeling is embodied in the words on one tombstone. The man buried there, his marker states, “died in Perfect peace”.
