By: Hasan Belgaumi, a HISTOYOUTH Writer
It's a well-known fact that the Confederate States of America—a society based on slavery in the American South—fell after the Civil War in 1865. While it is true the confederacy fell, that doesn’t mean it was dead. Rather, the confederacy was alive, thousands of miles deeper south than its founding land, in the Brazilian jungle.
Following the Civil War, the South lay in ruins. The bloodiest conflict in American history had left the slave-holding region battered and bruised. Its well-established slave economy, on which it so heavily relied, had been abolished. Its land was war-torn. Racial tensions and the threat of conflict were on the rise. Slave-holding southerners believed their "way of life" was no more.
Under Presidents Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant, the United States underwent the era of reconstruction (1865–1877), attempting to re-unify the broken republic. While many Confederates accepted their defeat, others refused to live under the union's control. Many fled to Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries further south. Countries like Mexico and Venezuela offered cheap land and tax breaks to Confederate settlers. But the majority favored Brazil.
The Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II was a proponent of the American Confederacy and provided aid to the rebellion during the war. Pedro’s government had set up informational agencies across the South to entice American settlers to come to Brazil. Slavery remained legal in the country, giving the Confederacy renewed hope of revitalising their slave economy further south. Brazil stood to gain from this exodus as well. Pedro II wanted Americans to come and settle in Brazil in order to bring with them their innovative agricultural techniques and methods. Furthermore, Dom Pedro II wanted to "whiten" Brazilian society. Brazil had imported millions more slaves from Africa than the United States had, meaning they made up a significant chunk of the population. Dom Pedro II believed increased settlement by European-descendant Americans would increase Brazil’s white population and maintain its rigid racial hierarchy.
Once they'd relocated to Brazil, Confederate settlers were known as Confederados in Portuguese. Many Confederado settlements in Brazil failed in their first years due to hardships. The soil differed from that of North America, and many Americans struggled to adapt to Brazilian society. Many returned to the US, while some moved to other Confederate settlements. However, one majorly successful settlement was that of former Alabama State Senator William H. Norris, who established the town of Americana near present-day São Paulo. After a few years, it was the only one of its kind left. Norris, along with thousands of other southerners, fled to reestablish their slave society. The settlement grew as an increasing number of southerners made the journey south, while other settlers from failed settlements made their way to America.
Although both the American South and Brazil had slavery in common, cultural, political, and religious differences led to growing tension between the settlers and Brazilians. Conflicts, such as the War of the Triple Alliance in Brazil, put additional strain on the settlement and made life more difficult. Furthermore, Brazilians were predominantly Catholic, whereas Americans were predominantly Protestant. This isolated the group from Brazilian society. For instance, their dead couldn’t be buried in the same Catholic cemeteries, and they had to build their own churches. There were also differences between the interpretations of race in Brazil and the Confederacy. Many settlers didn’t support racial integration in Brazil’s military and police forces, the liberty of free blacks, or the high prevalence of inter-racial marriage. Their interpretations of white also differed. What Brazilians considered white was deemed "mulatto" by the settlers. Those who left the United States wanted to reestablish the Confederacy and maintain white dominance, and they saw liberty and integration as a threat.When the settlers first settled in Brazil in 1865, the abolitionist movement was non-existent. However, by the 1880s, the movement had developed. This led to the lynching of an abolitionist police chief in 1888 near Americana. Once slavery had been abolished in Brazil in 1888, a handful of settlers returned to the Jim Crow South.
While the settlement was founded on a long-dead republic and a long-gone institution, its southern Confederate traditions continue to this day in Americana. Although Brazilians have moved into the town since, remnants of American culture remain. There is a thriving protestant tradition, and many in the town continue to watch western movies and listen to country music. Every year, in the small town of Americana, 2000 Brazilians come together to celebrate the 10,000 Confederates who fled to South America after the Civil War. Men dress in gray Confederate military uniforms, and women dress in flowy skirts. There is dancing, barbecue, and emblems of the Confederate flag all over.
Although contemporary American society views the Confederate South as a region hell-bent on slavery, the Confederates viewed their slave-holding tradition as one small aspect of their southern culture. They saw their rigid racial hierarchy as a tradition and continued to fight for it long after it had been abolished in their home country. While the Confederate States of America fell over a hundred and sixty years ago, remnants of its legacy lived on further south. The small Brazilian town of Americana and its confederate legacy provide a modern-day glimpse into the long-gone southern way of life.
References
Greenspan, Jesse. “The Confederacy Made Its Last Stand in Brazil.” HISTORY, 25 July 2018, https://www.history.com/news/confederacy-in-brazil-civil-war.
Robinson, Melia. “The American Confederacy Is Still Alive in a Small Brazilian City Called Americana.” Business Insider, 7 May 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-us-confederacy-americana-brazil-2017-5.
“The Confederados.” Encyclopedia of Alabama, http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3461. Accessed 21 Dec. 2022.
Image Sources
See page for author, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Hutchinson_Norris.jpg
See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Casa_dos_Norris.jpg
See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jimmy_Carter_visits_Americana,_Brazil_(1972).jpg
The First American Residing in Brazil, 1927, Steagall, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons,
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