UPDATED:AUG 31, 2018ORIGINAL:JUL 25, 2018
After the Civil War, more than 10,000 Southerners left the U.S. rather than submit to Yankee rule.
JESSE GREENSPAN
By the time the Civil War ended in 1865, much of the South lay in ruins, physically, economically and socially. Fears of Yankee reprisals and racial conflict percolated through society. Black slaves had been freed; Confederate President Jefferson Davis was imprisoned. For William H. Norris, a former Alabama state senator and staunch Confederate, it was all too much to bear.
Rather than rejoin the United States, he and a son traveled to southeastern Brazil in late 1865 and purchased about 500 acres of rolling hills and reddish soil that reminded them of Alabama. They then bought three slaves, planted cotton, sent for the rest of the family and proceeded to live as if the Confederacy hadn’t just collapsed.
The Norris family was not alone in their desire to avoid Yankee rule. In the decade after the Civil War, roughly 10,000 Southerners left the United States, with the majority going to Brazil, where slavery was still legal. (Others went to such places as Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Honduras, Canada and Egypt.) Though hardships prompted most to come right back, descendants of these so-called Confederados maintain a presence in Brazil even today.
Amid the post-Civil War chaos, several countries tried to entice Southerners, largely for political and agricultural reasons. In Mexico, for example, Emperor Maximilian I (soon to be executed before a firing squad) awarded land and tax breaks and hired Confederate oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury to be his “imperial commissioner of immigration.” In Venezuela, the authorities also provided land and tax breaks. And in Egypt, an Ottoman viceroy brought over ex-Confederate and ex-Union officers to help invade Ethiopia.
The best incentives, however, came from Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II, a Confederate ally who had sheltered and supplied Southern ships during the Civil War. He offered land to the Confederados for as little as 22 cents an acre, subsidized their transport to Brazil, provided temporary lodging upon arrival, promised them quick citizenship and, at times, even personally greeted them as they disembarked.
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