THE CONFEDERATE EXODUS TO LATIN AMERICA
I
During the three or four years following the close of the Civil
War no fewer than eight or ten thousand people left the south-
ern states and sought new homes in Mexico, Central America,
and South America. Before attempting to follow these heroic
souls on their interesting ventures into the wilds of the tropics
it may be well to make brief inquiry into a few factors which
prompted their going-
It is certain that southern interest in the tropics reaches back
into the era of "manifest destiny," when the "Young Ameri-
cans" were saturating the atmosphere with their fulminations,
filling books and newspapers with their chauvinistic philosophy,
and dispatching advance agents into the domains of their Latin
neighbors. Among the thousands of enthusiasts of this wild era
none had more influence in arousing interest in tropical regions
than Matthew Fontaine Maury. A Virginian of Huguenot
descent, Maury's unbounded enthusiasm and imagination had
brought to him honors and distinctions in many fields. Scien-
tists everywhere recognized his achievements in astronomy, geog-
raphy, and hydrography; his own government made him super-
intendent of the United States hydrographical office and astron-
omer of the naval observatory at Washington, which positions he
held for many years. These honors and rewards increased his
prestige in general; they caused the southern people in all ranks
of life to make him the repository of confidence in any field
upon which he chose to expatiate.
So far as his writings show, Maury's interest in the tropics
at first centered on the Amazon Valley. In the decade just prioi
to the outbreak of our Civil War he wrote voluminously and
spoke frequently to southern audiences on the importance of this
region. He thought "the Garden of the Hesperides," covering two
million square miles, was one of the most marvelous areas of the
earth, especially for the scientist and the agriculturist. To the
scientist, it offered for study a thousand species of plant and
animal life; to the agriculturist, it afforded a variety of prod-
ucts unsurpassed, indeed if not unequaled, by any other region
of the globe. In the Virginian's imagination, the possibilities
were so great as some day to allure a hundred million human
beings for their exploitation and enjoyment. It is an interest-
ing observation that the next three-quarters of a century were
to witness the fulfillment of one one-hundredth of this prophecy.
But, were the prophet living today he would muster a convinc-
ing argument explaining why his prophecy had gone awry.
In expatiating upon the wonders of the Amazon Maury struck
the practical as well, as the academic chord. The Amazon Val-
ley, perhaps the result of nature's design, was complementary to
the great valley of the Mississippi. Each produced what the
other lacked; together they supplied all that the human mind
craved. The wind and ocean currents facilitated the exchange
of products of one region with the other. A chip thrown into
the Amazon, or one of its thousand tributaries, would eventually
pass through the Gulf ports of the United States. The great
scientist did not tell how the same natural forces might retard to
equal degree the commerce from the Mississippi toward the
Amazon. He was primarily concerned in the material progress
of his beloved South.
Maury's ideas were given to the southern people in various
ways. Between 1849 and 1855 several of his articles appeared
in De
Bow's
Review,
the National
Intelligencer,
the Southern
Literary
Messenger,
and the Washington
Union
--all of which had
wide circulation. Some of the articles at first appeared under the
attractive pseudonym of "Inca"; many of them reached a larger
reading public through reproduction in Letters
on
the
Amazon
and
Atlantic
Slopes
of
South
America,
Maury popularized his
ideas and ambitions through the southern conventions, such as
those at New Orleans in 1851 and Memphis in 1853, which
adopted and printed his memorials, as well as through the pub-
lications of the national government. Two facts greatly aided
the process of dissemination: Maury was a scientist of world
repute; Maury wielded the pen of a wizard. If he could induce
hard-headed government officials to appropriate funds for the
exploration of the Amazon Valley and for the necessary negoti-
ations leading to the opening of its great river, he could with
less difficulty capture the hearts of an imaginative, simple-
minded public. The fact that the post bellum southerners re-
membered his writings is evidence of the facility with which he
accomplished the lesser task.
1
At a later period Maury became fully as enthusiastic--he was
an enthusiast par
excellence
--about the wonders and the impor-
tance of the developments of Mexico as he had been about the
possibilities of Brazil. Indeed, soon we shall learn that early in
the post-bellum period he became the chief instrument in an am-
bitious plan to colonize thousands of southerners in Mexico.
But Maury had assistance in advertising tropical Brazil to
the southern people; and Daniel P. Kidder, a missionary who
perhaps was personally unknown to the Virginian, may be con-
sidered his chief collaborator. In Kidder's Sketches
of
Resi
-
dence
and
Travels
in
Brazil
(published in 1845), the author told
of thrilling personal experiences extending over two and a half
years' travel in nearly all the empire's provinces, and gave de-
scriptions of the many natural wonders encountered therein.
Almost every page of the two volumes gripped the attention
and stirred the souls of its readers; and the readers were not
few, for many a southern collection contained, and several still
contain, copies of the book. The romance and beauty, the habits
and customs of the dwellers in that enchanted land, made a
broad appeal.
2
If through these and other sources the ante-bellum southern-
ers acquired a lively interest in Brazil, they acquired even
greater interest in the tropics of Middle America (Central
America and Mexico). If one may judge by the space which
the newspapers and periodicals devoted to the region, interest in
Middle America during the decade and a half preceding the Civil
War was fully as great as interest in the far West. Indeed, in
this era the fingers of "manifest destiny" pointed southward as
frequently as westward, though most so-called "American" his-
torians have not yet discovered the fact. All the forces that
impelled in one direction also impelled in the other; hence the
unanimity of interest.
The means by which the southerners acquired a knowledge of
and an interest in Middle America were many and varied. The
adventures of a great host of prospectors and the daring exploits
of the filibusters, such as William Walker, afforded sensational
materials for dozens of books and hundreds of magazines and
newspapers that had circulation in all parts of the country.
Moreover, the forum, the pulpit, and the platform contributed
their parts in saturating the atmosphere with news from the
southland. The post-bellum southerners would have had short
memories had they forgotten all. They did not forget all.
Largely romantic, this ante-bellum interest of the South in
the tropics carried over to post-war days, when it was trans-
formed into practicability. The transforming force was the state
of complete desperation that came over the South following the
surrender at Appomattox. Nothing short of living in the South
at the time could fully explain this unhappy state; but a cur-
sory examination of conditions there will furnish a partial ex-
planation.
Wreck and ruin, desolation and starvation covered the land
from Virginia to Texas. A battleground for contending armies
throughout the war, Virginia had been converted from a garden
into a desert. Marching armies had left the beautiful and fer-
tile Shenandoah Valley a waste; Sheridan's "barnburners" had
stripped it so bare that "a crow could not fly over it without
carrying his rations with him."
3 Between Richmond and Wash-
ington only heaps of ashes and solitary chimneys remained to
tell the story of death and destruction; between Alexandria and
Charlo.ttesville the country was "horrible to behold."
4 Around
Petersburg the farmers had to remove the dead animals and the
iron which cannon had belched forth before they could plough
the blood-soaked soil. Richmond itself was only a mass of black-
ened ruins.
5
Conditions in the Carolinas, particularly in South Carolina,
were no better. Sherman's army of Vandals had left Calhoun's
state so bare that a northern visitor declared that "you can have
no idea of the desolation of this country."
6 Only the soil of
the state escaped the desolation of war. "The banks were ruined.
The railroads were destroyed. Their few manufactories were
desolated. Their vessels had been swept from the seas and
rivers. The live-stock was consumed. Notes, bonds, mortgages,
all the money in circulation, debts, became alike worthless. The
community were without clothes, and without food. Every thing
had gone into the rapacious maw of the Confederate Govern-
ment; vast estates had crumbled like paper in a fire. While the
shape was not wholly destroyed, the substance had turned to
ashes. Never was there greater nakedness and desolation in a
civilized community."
7
Columbia, the capital of South Carolina and one of the most
beautiful cities on the continent, was after the war "a wilder-
ness of ruins." "On each of twelve streets" for "three-fourths
of a mile" only "blackened chimneys and crumbling walls" re-
mained. On the eighty-four blocks swept by flames 1386 build-
ings had been consumed. Where once flourished in the open air
the japonica, the cape jasmine, the English and Spanish laurel,
the Chinese hawthorn, the holly, the Australian pines, the live-
oaks, the mock-orange, the magnificent magnolia now remained
rows of blackened trunks. Of the five railroads which had en-
tered the city, one now ended twenty-nine miles away, one thirty,
another thirty-two, another forty-five, and a fifth fifty. The
irons found twisted around trees and telegraph poles told the
story of vandalism.
8
The grand old town of Charleston had fared little better. Five
months after the close of the war a northern visitor saw it "a
city of ruins, of desolation, of vacant houses, of widowed women,
of rotting wharves, of desolated warehouses, of weed-wild gar-
dens, of miles of grass-grown streets, of acres of pitiful and
voiceless barrenness."
9 The wharves were so overgrown that they
resembled a wilderness; droves of army mules grazed in the
streets; St. Michael's Church, once the center of the city's fash-
ionable and aristocratic life, gave silent testimony to the bom-
bardment; northern soldiers' graves identified the famous old
Race Course.
10
But South Carolina--indeed the entire South--was a rural
community; and in the country the end of the war found condi-
tions bad enough. In hundreds of places country, mansions lay
in ashes; in many others the buildings remained, but their in-
teriors had been stripped of the libraries, paintings, and even
family portraits by northern soldiers. Confiscations, mortgages,
and loans to the Confederate government left many a wealthy
landholder a pauper. One scion of a Carolina estate that yielded
$150,000 a year in ante-bellum days peddled tea by the pound
and molasses by the quart on a corner of the old homestead to
the former family slaves in order to gain a livelihood. Planta-
tion lands that before the war brought twenty-five and thirty
dollars an acre were now to be had at two, three, four, five, and
ten dollars an acre, with small chance of sale. The poor peo-
ple of the country had lost less, but the little was their all.
11
Conditions in Georgia were fully as bad. With the excep-
tion of a single block, the entire business district of Atlanta
had been laid in ruins. Blackened jumbles of brick and. mortar,
charred remnants of upright timbers, scattered pieces of sheet-
iron roofing, and all other sorts and shapes of rubbish told of
General Sherman's visit. The desolation marking the sixty-
mile path made by the general's army in its advance from the
capital to the sea almost defies description. The havoc wrought
by Attila's Huns in their invasion of the Roman Empire could
not have been greater. The products and handiwork of civiliza-
tion that could not be carried away were destroyed. In nearly
every other part of the state the ruins were "heart sickening."
12
In the eastern half of the lower Mississippi basin the desola-
tion was also appalling. A contemporary, one Greene of Mont-
gomery, wrote that it was "scarcely possible to exaggerate the
effects of the late desolating war. Where five years ago every-
thing wore the cheerful aspect of affluence and refinement, where
happiness and prosperity abounded, where were apparent do-
mestic and social amenities such as can scarcely be found in
any other portion of men's heritage, there is now desolation,
poverty, sorrow and suffering; fields are lying waste and un-
fenced that were then teeming with rich abundance; heaps of
ashes and naked chimneys now mark the sites of thousands of
splendid dwellings; hopeless misery and helpless despair now
brood in sullen silence where but recently princely hospitality
and every social and domestic virtue were found in their most
attractive forms. In fact, in almost every part of the South the
march of hostile armies, the deadly carnage of fiercely contested
battles, and all the horrors and devastations of ruthless war may
be traced in ruins, blood, and new-made graves."
13
A northern visitor to the state of Alabama just after the close
of the war found that the "railroads were not in running order"
and were not "likely to be for some months. The war had de-
stroyed their rolling stock. Some were left without cars; nearly
all without good locomotives. Bridges were burnt; rails were
torn up and twisted for miles and miles; the companies them-
selves were utterly impoverished; and unless they could get
unlooked-for aid, most of them would have to go into liquida-
tion." On entering Mobile he saw the "planks had been torn
up for squares along the levee to make firewood, and the bare
sleepers were rotting from exposure; elsewhere the decayed
planks rattled ominously under carriage-wheels, and disclosed
here and there ugly holes that might prove dangerous to unwary
walkers. Half the warehouses and shops along the levee seemed
closed; a few transports only lay at the landing." In the city
proper he discovered "universal torpor of business."
14
In New Orleans, where federal authorities had been in con-
trol for three years, signs of desolation were less numerous. But
even here conditions had changed. The old social order had
been supplanted by a new one dominated by northern soldiers
and cotton jobbers. Such landmarks as St. Charles Hotel and
the old French Market still survived, but their glories had
vanished.
15
The western portion of the lower Mississippi basin was in a
still better condition at the close of the war. For the most part
it had not been the battleground for contesting armies. Never-
theless a New York newspaper correspondent found Galveston,
Texas, "a city of dogs and desolation." Eansacked stores and
houses made "no other city of its prominence so utterly insig-
nificant and God-forsaken in appearance."
16
But it was the scarcity of money and food and the imminence
of starvation throughout the South that threatened the gravest
consequences. The Confederate currency that gradually declined
in value during the contest became absolutely worthless at the
close. As a result, the rich became poor and the poor became
beggars.
17 Generals who had thousands of acres of land and
hundreds of negroes before the war found themselves with in-
sufficient funds for paying transportation home at the close;
women who had large incomes before were unable to purchase
postage stamps at the end; indeed some hitherto wealthy people
came to the end penniless and with heavy debts hanging over
their heads.
18 What was worse, there was no food in most quar-
ters. On many plantations corn bread and sassafras tea were the
only forms of sustenance. In all the towns from Richmond to
Mobile hundreds and even thousands of idle and destitute people
of all colors depended upon the government and private agencies
for food. In some communities one-half the people looked to
these sources for support.
19
No great stretch of the imagination is required to understand
the state of mind of the Confederate soldier when he returned
home in the late spring or early summer of 1865. He had lost
the cause which he had been made to believe was his dearest
possession. He returned to a dilapidated home: the dwelling was
without window shades or curtains, cardboard took the place of
broken window panes, doors were half off their hinges, the piano
was untuned, and the mural decorations had gone north never to
return; the outbuildings needed much repair or replacement; the
fences were down; the crow and the bittern cried hungrily over
the weed-grown fields; the farm implements lay rusting in un-
known places; the skeleton of the once-friendly dog scampered
away at the sight of his old master. No hand could. be had to
clear the fields; the negroes had gone to the northern army camps
to be fed or else they were attending the lectures of the agents
of the Freedman's Bureau in order to learn the tenets of Repub-
lican faith. Until they were disillusioned through the working
of time, the former slaves could not be induced to labor. The
farm could not be sold, for there was no buyer. Taxes were high
and money could hardly be found. Little wonder that several
thousand of these victims of war were ready to flee from their
native land and seek new beginnings under foreign flags! Four
years of grim war had been hell! A yawning hell enveloped the
future! It was too much for romantic souls !
20
The brutalizing effects of four years of war had made condi-
tions in the South frightful. They were made infinitely worse
by the reconstruction program which the federal government
undertook to impose upon the conquered section. The execution
of this program involved the stationing of thousands of loyal
agents from the North throughout all sections of the southland.
Among these agents imposed by governmental authority were the
stern and vindictive soldiers and the soft-hearted missionaries--
an anomalous and impossible combination. Ostensibly in order to
prepare them for their new responsibilities, many thousands of
the freedmen were given responsible positions in reconstruction.
Indeed, more than a hundred thousand were taken into the mili-
tary forces detailed for southern duty. This plan to make ex-
tensive use of the former slaves in the reconstruction process
was most unfortunate. Whatever the motive, the southerners
could see in it only vindictiveness and a woeful ignorance con-
cerning the nature of the problem to be solved.
Under the circumstances it was inevitable that clashes be-
tween the reconstruction agents and the southern people would
be frequent and grave. Indeed they were both. Sometimes the
clashes represented minor altercations and were quickly settled;
sometimes they assumed the proportions of formidable riots and
lasted several days. In any event the reconstruction agents had
their way. They closed churches; they suppressed civic organ-
izations; they censored newspapers; they supplanted duly elected
municipal officials with their own inefficient puppets.
This poorly conceived and badly executed plan of reconstruc-
tion brought to the already distracted South further disorder
and hopelessness. It gave the irresponsible elements of society
a fine atmosphere in which to perpetrate their foul deeds. As
a consequence, nearly every community witnessed almost all the
crimes known to civilized living. Arson, murder, and theft fol-
lowed each other with monotonous regularity.
Southern hope for better times was none too strong in the
spring of 1865. The widespread desolation and poverty discour-
aged even the stout-hearted. At the end of two years of vin-
dictive peace this weak hope was only a flickering candle. Then
came the hurricane that swept all in its path. Known as radi-
cal reconstruction, it was the most dastardly conceived and exe-
cuted crime in the history of the American people. Hatched in
the brain of petty politicians, who hoped to enrich, themselves
and their satellites, it took control of southern society from
decent hands and placed it in the hands of untutored blacks,
unprincipled northerners, and unscrupulous and irresponsible
southern whites. The corruption and unbridled passions that fol-
lowed in the wake of this crime fully justified the fears of the
southern people.
21
Thus the general answer to the question why the exodus from
the South during the few years following the close of the war is
to be found in the state of mind of the southerner caused in part
by the desolution which the war itself wrought and in part by
the vindictive reconstruction program which followed. Naturally
the specific factors responsible for the attitude of mind of the
individual or of different groups varied considerably. With some
individuals, as well as with some groups, the most discouraging
factors were the dilapidated farms and the absence of a labor
supply. To these the idea of using free Negro labor was pre-
posterous, for the liberated man could never be induced to work.
Some despaired because the future promised no society in which
Negroes would not function equally with their children. This
was unbearable. To some chief disappointment resulted from the
fact that dearest friends sold their souls for a mess of pottage
and accepted service along with the Negroes and carpet-baggers.
To some the politicial situation was anomalous: Parson Brown-
low's government in Tennessee was a travesty on decency; the
riots of Memphis and New Orleans, the rape and murder in every
hamlet were the rumblings of a terrible impending disaster. Many
feared that the wave of vengeance upon which Charles Sumner
and Thaddeus Stevens were mounting would rise until it de-
manded the lives of at least the higher officials of the Confederate
army and government. And the fear was no idle dream.
Many quotations from the utterances of those who decided
upon expatriation could be produced to substantiate the above
remarks, but two excerpts must suffice. The first is from a let-
ter written by Major Joseph Abney, president of the Southern
Colonization Society, to a kinsman in Kentucky in an attempt to
explain why the writer and many of his friends were planning
to establish new homes in Brazil. He said it was because
One can not close his eyes upon passing events, and situated
as we are, entirely ignore the lessons of experience, and the
solemn admonitions of history. The future is enveloped in clouds
and darkness, and we were less than men if we made no efforts
for the preservation of our families and to avert the manifold
dangers that lie in our way. We are just beginning to solve a
problem, in reference to the capacity of the negro to labor with-
out coercion, the solution of which, will make manifest the pov-
erty, decay and bankruptcy of the whole south. Our substance
had already been consumed by the war,--our people overwhelmed
with debt, and sorrow, and disappointment; and now at one fell
dash of the pen, to set free the negroes who constituted three
fourths of all the property that remained to us, and nearly the
whole of the laboring power of the country, and quarter them
among us, where they will defy our authority, remain a subject
of continual agitation for fanatics, engender a festering wound
in our side, and discourage and utterly hinder the introduction
here of a better class of laborers, is enough, without the most
marked interference of Divine Providence, to drive any people
to despair and desperation. A deeper degree of destitution and
want is inevitable, and as the negro will not work, and must
eat, hunger, and starvation, and madness and crime will run riot
through our borders and there is no. earthly power that can in-
terpose to save us and our children from the last extremities to
which man can be reduced. We are even now, prostrate, stran-
gled, submerged in
"A gulf profound as the Serbonian bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mt. Cassius old;
Where armies whole, have sunk."
I utter these sentiments with pain and sorrow, for I have long
ceased to be angry, and there is no service I would withhold
from my government, that might contribute to redeem and save
our people. Laboring under these sad convictions, and being as-
sured that vast numbers of our friends who are destitute of good
farming lands, and now also destitute of labor, and yet are em-
barrassed with debt, must be brought to beggary, unless they ex-
change their accustomed habitations for a more genial clime and
more fruitful soil, it is our purpose to form a Southern Coloniza-
tion Society. . . .
22
The second excerpt is taken from a letter of an ex-Confeder-
ate who had already found a new home in Brazil to a friend back
home. In urging former friends to join them, he told them they
had the strongest motives for emigration
that ever goaded any people to extremities. The political power
which they wielded for self-protection, has been ruthlessly
wrested from them and placed in the hands of their former
slaves,, who once were very valuable laborers, but who are now
consuming the substance of the country as does the caterpillar
its great staple; and now Southerners must endure, unless they
flee it, such abuses of that power as inevitably result from the
vice and stupidity of the negro, directed by the most malignant
enemies that ever tyrannized over any people; and they must
pay the most exorbitant tax ever imposed on property, which tax
supports the Government that has ruined them and still pursues
them in their humilation as unrelentingly as ungenerously,
and will it be credited by history that Southerners voluntarily
remain and pay tax to pension the soldiers who ravaged their
country like barbarians and robbed them of liberty ?
These and many others were the reasons why his southern friends
should join him.
23
The seriousness of the state of mind to which many southern
people brought themselves by reflection upon the past, by brood-
ing over the desolation all about them, or by gloomy forebodings,
expressed itself in many ways. Some spent their "time in seclu-
sion--reading law for employment and pastime and wandering
in the woods like a 'melancholy Jacque,' or Jack Ass . . .
refusing to be comforted";
24 some decided to flee from their
native land and establish themselves anew under foreign flags;
some took themselves and their scant belongings to the Gulf-coast
regions, where they kept in readiness to flee in case the worst
came to pass; while a few--like Edmund Ruffin of Virginia--
after fighting throughout the war went to the extremity of tak-
ing their own lives.
25
As already intimated, most of those who decided upon expa-
triation chose the tropics of Mexico, Central America, and
South America. The choice was determined in part by the pres-
ence of fertile lands, which were adapted to cotton-growing and
which could be had on liberal terms, in part by the social in-
stitutions--slavery in the case of Brazil--of the countries offer-
ing the inducements, and in part by the lingering romantic in-
terest which writers and travelers had aroused in ante-bellum
days.
The romantic interest aroused in earlier days burst forth anew
in some of the heroic souls as they contemplated ventures into
the tropics,
Where the flowers ever bloom and the beams ever shine,
and all, save the spirit of man is divine."
One "Defunct Reb" while contemplating making his future home
in Brazil composed the following amusing lines:
How sweet all day, on diamond reefs to lie,
While 'long the wanton waves sweet mermaids hie,
While far above, the Condor bird does sore, [st'c]
Proud breasts his native air,
Sweeping in circles there!
0, give me a ship with sail and with wheel,
And let me be off to happy Brazil!
Home of the sunbeam--great kingdom of heat,
With woods evergreen, and snake forty feet!
Land of the diamond--bright nation of pearls,
With monkeys a plenty, and Portuguese girls!
How sweet all night in hammocks to swing,
While grief and woes to the devil we fling!
Up among the leaves of the lofty cocoa,
Unceasingly to go
To and fro, to and fro!
0, give me a ship with sail and with wheel,
And let me be off to happy Brazil!
I long to rest 'neath the broad spreading palm,
To gaze at her rivers so placid and calm--
Pluck her gold fruits so delicious and sweet,
And try a taste of her guanaco meat!
How sweet in death, in dismal swamps to sleep,
While 'bove you, buzzards sad vigil keep,
While o'er your bones slimy reptiles crawl,
Eating, devouring all,
Till you in pieces fall!
Oh, give me a ship with sail and with wheel,
And let me be off to happy Brazil!
I yearn to feel her "perpetual spring,"
And shake by the hand Don Pedro, her king,
Kneel at his feet--call him, "My Royal Boss"!
And receive in return "Welcome, Old Hoss" !
26
Whatever else may be said of the southerners who expatri-
ated themselves, they did not pull up and leave their old homes
precipitately. Quite to the contrary, most of them gave care-
ful consideration to the evidence pro
and con.
No doubt the
deliberation and careful planning were largely results of ominous
and timely warning from friends and newspaper editors. There
was hardly a southern paper that did not attempt to discourage
expatriation, though most editors submitted that conditions in
the South justified a resort to extreme measures.
1
The task of preparation for the exodus was in the main a
cooperative enterprise between the governmental agencies of the
Latin-American countries concerned and representatives of irrec-
oncilable groups of southerners. The cooperation worked effec-
tively in part because the Latin-American nations were at the
time offering liberal inducements to foreign immigrants in gen-
eral. The southerners, who had reputations of being provident
and progressive, were especially welcome everywhere. The Max-
imilian government in Mexico believed that the sturdy landhold-
ers would offer much support against the turbulent masses led
by Benito Juárez; the British colonial administration at Belize
found special need for the southern sugar planters; Dom Pedro
II was convinced that the imperial regime of Brazil would be
strengthened greatly by accretions to the landholding aristocracy.
The governments at Mexico City, Belize, and Rio de Janeiro
resorted to various expedients in order to make effective attempts
to induce southerners to migrate to their respective domains.
All advertised extensively in southern newspapers their liberal
inducements to immigrants, the natural beauties of their land-
scapes, and the unsurpassed fertility which their virgin soil
afforded agriculturists; all spent large sums of money to enter-
tain and to facilitate the labor of the inspecting agents sent out
by the southerners; the Maximilian and Brazilian governments
appointed prominent southerners to important positions on their
immigration staffs.
--southerners were preparing to avail themselves of these induce-
ments. In many localities they pooled their efforts and formed
associations for the purpose of assembling information concern-
ing conditions in the Latin-American countries.
2 These associa-
tions, sometimes singly and sometimes in conjunction with other
similar bodies, raised funds and dispatched agents abroad on in-
spection tours in order to gain first-hand information on a
variety of subjects connected with home-building. When the pros-
pecting agents returned, their reports were often published by
the associations which sponsored them.
Of the many associations that came into being during this
period, perhaps the best known--at least to the writer--was the
one which had its initial meeting at Edgefield Court House,
South Carolina, on August 21, 1865, and which resolved itself
into the Southern Colonization Society at the second meeting
held on the first Monday in September of the same year. At the
August meeting
it was resolved to send two or more Agents with as little delay
as practicable to explore the Southern and Western Territories
of the United States and especially the great Empire of Brazil,
to ascertain what inducements they might offer for the immi-
gration of our people, and, in the event of a favorable report
[apparently on Brazil], to make all necessary arrangements for
the procurement of lands, and for the establishment of a good
and permanent settlement there. Dr. Hugh A. Shaw and Major
Robert Meriwether were the agents selected for the mission and
Dr. Hugh A. Shaw, B. C. Bryan, Wm. M. Williams, Major Isaac
Boles, and T. B. Reese were appointed a Committee to collect
funds for the subscribers and friends to the enterprise, in order
to equip them for their journey. ...
At the second meeting, held on the first Monday in Septem-
ber, the name of Southern Colonization Society was taken, a
constitution adopted, and the following officers elected: Major
Joseph Abney, president; Colonel D. L. Shaw, vice-president;
Colonel A. P. Butler, secretary; Major John E. Bacon, corre-
sponding secretary; and Thomas B. Reese, treasurer. At this
meeting the society also affirmed what had been done at the pre-
vious session and authorized the president to reconstitute and
enlarge the committee appointed to raise funds for defraying the
expenses of the prospecting agents.
3
"Probably owing to the extreme exhaustion of our people,
subscriptions came "in very slowly, and in great disproportion
to the interest apparently manifested in the enterprise."
4 Never-
theless, by continuous appeals a sufficient sum was finally raised
to enable agents Meriwether and Shaw to start for Brazil. They
secured passage on the North
America,
a steamer of the Brazil
and the United States line, left New York on October 30, and
arrived at Rio de Janeiro exactly four weeks later.
The first of May, 1866, the president of the Southern Colon-
ization Society gave to the press the report which Dr. Shaw and
Major Meriwether had submitted to the organization. Covering
more than three closely printed columns in the Edgefield Adver
-
tiser,
where it apparently first appeared, it presented to many
eager readers a vivid picture of those sections of Brazil which
the inspectors considered best adapted to southern emigrants. At
a later time the report appeared again in the Advertiser,
as well
as in several other places. In another connection it will be given
more consideration.
5
The writer knows nothing concerning the activities of the
Southern Colonization Society after publication of the Shaw-
Meriwether report. Perhaps it had fulfilled its function in stim-
ulating a general interest in Brazil and in locating a suitable
home for all who wished to emigrate. That many of the promi-
nent members of the organization--and these included some of
the elect of South Carolina and Georgia—went to the South-
American country and established themselves anew is beyond
dispute.
While the organization formed at Edgefield Court House was
probably the best known and the most influential of the period,
many similar societies functioned in all parts of the South. In-
deed, there was not a single state south of the Potomac and Ohio
rivers that did not have its society for the promotion of emigra-
tion; many of them had numerous organizations which served
this purpose. About two dozen societies from Mississippi and
Louisiana alone cooperated in sending General William Wallace
Wood of the former state on an inspection tour in Brazil the
latter half of 1865.
6 Other societies aided in other prospecting
itineraries into the tropics.
Although most of the tours of an investigatory nature were
sponsored by the colonization societies, it would be erroneous to
think that all were made under such auspices. For example,
Reverend Ballard S. Dunn, rector of St. Phillip's Church in New
Orleans, and Major Lansford Warren Hastings seem to have made
their extended journeys on their own initiative and responsibil-
ity. Interestingly enough, the latter, although he had served in
the Confederate army with distinction, was a native of Ohio. But
we shall hear more of the rector and the major anon.
At this point it may be of interest to note the general nature
of the plans for southern emigration and to follow a few pros-
pecting agents on their itineraries into the tropics. Arising out
of negotiations between the diplomatic agents of the Confederacy
and the imperial government of France, the first schemes to
evolve were those for settlement in the neighboring country of
Mexico. By virtue of a grant, dated April 27, 1865, from Max-
imilian, Napoleon III's puppet emperor of Mexico, twenty Ameri-
can citizens organized in St. Louis the American and Mexican
Emigrant Company. The prospectus which the company drew
up and distributed in the United States called attention to Mex-
ico's agricultural, forest, and mineral resources and promised to
make all arrangements incident to transportation to and settle-
ment in the promised land. The organization announced the
intention of establishing offices and officials in all the principal
cities of the South, as well as in Chicago and New York, to take
care of its business. Temporary expenses were to come from the
$10 fees charged for honorary membership--only members could
avail themselves of the organization's services--while future
profits would result from the sale of lands which the company
expected to purchase in large quantities. To disguise appear-
ances, the scheme invited general emigration, though the appeal
was to southern people. So far as can be ascertained, no person
left the United States under the auspices of this organization.
Curiosity asks whether the Washington government interfered
too soon or whether other plans overshadowed.
7
The second plan for colonizing southerners in Mexico was
much more ambitious and probably came nearer the goal of suc-
cess. It, too, was hatched out in Paris as a result of confer-
ences between the French emperor and bold Americans who were
either sympathetic toward the southern cause or were willing to
employ southern anguish to further selfish ends. Known as the
Gwin plan by virtue of its promotion in the New World through
Dr. William M. Gwin, ex-senator from California, the scheme
proposed to open four states of northern Mexico--Chihuahua,
Durango, Sonora, and Sinaloa--to all southerners who would
escape the bloody agony that was believed to await them in their
homeland, and to other persons of the United States and other
lands who might choose to embrace the opportunity. Dr. Gwin
predicted that "the crusades will be surpassed in the emigration
to the country of my future home." Inhabited by the greatest
people that ever assembled, what a country it would be!
The ex-senator was to go out as director-general of emigra-
tion, and eight thousand French troops were to back him in the
exercise of his extraordinary powers. With these crack soldiers
trained in the military tactics of Europe, and with the southern-
ers who would rally by the thousands to the call of Gwin, there
would be no fear of an American army. An amusing complex,
this impassable bulwark against Yankee aggression! A peculiar
sort of breastwork for the protection of a clown draped in im-
perial mantle and a few politicians anxious to exploit the min-
eral resources of a helpless nation!
In the summer of 1865 Gwin and his cohorts professed little
doubt that their project would go through. It had the approval
of the influential men who counselled Maximilian; it awaited
only the emperor's signature. Still it failed. The cause of fail-
ure may have been pressure from Washington upon Maximilian
wrought by way of Paris, for several communications which Dr.
Gwin dispatched from Mexico to Europe fell into the hands of
Secretary Seward. Though unsuccessful directly, the plan caused
hundreds, if not thousands, of Confederates to flock to Mexico.
8
The third scheme for Mexico followed close upon that of Dr.
Gwin, and achieved a degree of success. Its chief promoter was
Matthew Fontaine Maury, who, as we have seen, in ante-bellum
days wrote voluminously on the wonders of the tropics and the
possibilities of their development in the interest of the southern
people, and who during the war served the Confederacy in the
capacity of scientist and diplomat. A friend of Maximilian for
some years, when the Austrian decided to accept the New World
venture Maury sent him a letter of congratulation. This friend-
ship had a chance to become more intimate in June, 1865, when
the Confederate reached the Mexican capital, whither he had
gone from Havana upon learning of General Lee's surrender.
After declining a ministerial post tendered by the emperor,
though accepting the title of honorary councillor of state, Maury
was made director of the imperial observatory of Mexico. Soon
thereafter he and Maximilian agreed upon a plan for colonizing
southerners in Mexico. This plan made Maury imperial commis-
sioner of colonization and General J. B. Magruder—also of the
Confederate army--chief of the land office, and provided for the
appointment of agents in all the southern states and California,
as well as at convenient points in Mexico, whose duty it should
be to facilitate arrangements for those who desired to take ad-
vantage of Mexico's inducements. The inducements set forth in
Maximilian's decree and commissioner Maury's regulations offered
to heads of families 640 acres of land, to single men 320 acres,
to poor immigrants free passage, and to all freedom from taxa-
tion for one year, from military service for five years and re-
ligious toleration.
Toward the close of 1865 Maury appointed two committees of
distinguished Confederates to investigate the possibilities for set-
tlement in the Cordova and tierra
caliente
region of the east and
in the Tepic and Pacific coast section of the west. The investi-
gation favored the eastern district, and plans went forward rap-
idly for the establishment of a colony. But in February of the
following year the commissioner placed his work in the hands of
General Magruder and others and left the land of his natural-
ized citizenship to join his family in England. Although he
avowed his intention of returning, events decreed that he should
never do so.
Maury remained in Mexico only about eight months; but while
there he championed the cause he represented with all his dy-
namic nature. In the numerous communications which he sent
for publication in the southern newspapers he displayed the tal-
ents which only a learned man of the world can exhibit, talents
which are truly reminiscent of the author's writings on the tropics
in ante-bellum days. In these later communications he scorned
the rumor that Mexico was not a safe place in which to live:
the doors to his house had no locks; he never went to the trouble
of closing them before going to bed at night. He frowned upon
the idea that Maximilian was not a capable ruler: his policies
were enlightened; his government was stable and strong, and
respected everywhere. With his pen dipped in wizard's ink,
Maury described the natural charm of his adopted land and de-
picted the ease with which the southerner could make it satisfy
his every whim. To all disconsolate southerners, "ho for
Mexico !"
9
The routes taken by the Confederates, the mode of travel, and
the difficulties experienced in getting from the South to Mexico
necessarily varied greatly. But the account given by Isham G.
Harris, ex-governor, ex-senator, general in the Confederate army
and otherwise prominent among the insurgents, in a letter to his
Georgia friend George W. Adair of Atlanta just after his arrival
in Mexico is not far from typical. In his own words penned at
Cordova November 12, 1865, he says:
I lingered near Grenada, endeavoring to arrange some business
matters, until the 14th of May. In the meantime I had a skiff
built, and on the morning of the 14th I embarked, some six miles
east of Greenwood, and set sail for the trans-Mississippi, the
party consisting of General Lyon, of Kentucky, myself, and our
two servants. We navigated the Blackwater for one hundred and
twenty miles, and on the morning of the 21st, just before day-
light, I crossed over to the Arkansas shore. I crossed at the
foot of Island Number 75, just below the mouth of the Arkansas
river; proceeded westward as far as the Blackwater was navi-
gable, and on the morning of the 22d I left my frail bark, bought
horses, mounted the party, and set out for Shreveport, where I
hoped to find an army resolved on continued resistance to fed-
eral rule; but before reaching Shreveport I learned that the army
of the trans-Mississippi had disbanded and scattered to the winds,
and all the officers of rank had gone to Mexico.
Having no further motive to visit Shreveport, I turned my
course to Red River county, Texas, where a portion of my negroes
and plantation stock had been carried some two years ago. I
reached there on the 7th of June; was taken sick and confined
to my bed a week. On the 15th of June, with my baggage, cook-
ing utensils, and provisions on a pack-mule, I set out for San
Antonio, where I expected to overtake a large number of confed-
erate civil and military officers en route for Mexico. Beached San
Antonio on the 26th, and learned that all confederates had left
for Mexico some ten days or two weeks before. On the morning
of the 27th I started to Eagle Pass, on the Rio Grande, the fed-
erals holding all the crossings of the river below Eagle Pass. I
reached Eagle Pass on the evening of the 30th, and immediately
crossed over to the Mexican town of Piedras Negras. On the
morning of the Ist of July set out for Monterey; arrived there
on the evening of the 9th. Here I overtook General Price and
ex-Governor Polk, of Missouri, who were starting to the city of
Mexico next morning, with an escort of twenty armed Missourians.
As I was going to the city, and the trip was a long and danger-
ous one to make alone, I decided to go with them, though I was
literally worn out with over one thousand five hundred miles of
continuous horseback travel. I exchanged my saddle-horse, sad-
dles, &c, for an ambulance, put my two mules to it, gave the whip
and lines to Kan, bought me a Spanish grammar and dictionary,
took the back seat, and continued the study of the Spanish lan-
guage. We made the trip at easy stages, of about twenty-five miles
per day, and reached the city of Mexico on the evening of the 9th
of August. The trip was one of the longest, most laborious, and
hazardous of my life, but I will not tax your time or mine with
its details, many of which would interest you deeply if I were
to give them to you. . . .
10
Agents from the South, some representing organizations and
others sponsored solely by a few friends or by their own initia-
tive, went also into several of the Central-American and South-
American states. In September, 1865, the southern correspondent
of the New York Herald
estimated that 50,000 people would leave
the South within a short time and said that twenty agents re-
cently had been dispatched to Brazil alone to make prospecting itin-
eraries.
11 Fortunately, excellent reports made by some of these
agents who went to Brazil are extant to inform us on the nature
of the itineraries.
One of the first prospecting agents to go to Brazil was General
William Wallace Wood. A native of Mississippi, though for a
long time a resident of New Orleans, a lawyer, an editor, a fluent
public speaker, the general was about middle age when in the
summer following the surrender at Appomattox about six hundred
despondent southern planters started him to the South-American
country on a tour of inspection.
12 With him were Dr. James H.
Warne and Dr. J. P. Wesson of Tennessee, Robert L. Brown, an
Alabama planter, and W. C. Kernan of Florida. Upon arrival
at Rio de Janeiro in October, Wood's party was accorded a re-
ception not soon to be forgotten. Public processions, church
bells, and Dixie-playing bands interspersed the hours of three
full days of entertainment furnished by the dignitaries of the
imperial government. What was more important, the imperial
government placed at the generaPs disposal every facility that
heart could desire for inspecting any portion of the Brazilian
hinterland purported to be suitable for occupation. Accompanied
by engineer, guide, and interpreter, and with letters of introduc-
tion to all provincial officials who might render aid, the inspect-
ing party left the Brazilian capital on October 17. Going to
Santos by government steamer, thence to Sao Paulo by railroad,
the party continued to the northwest on horses and mules. At
the end of several days of travel and observation, a section of
country on the fringes of civilization captured the attention of
the prospector. The El Dorado embraced about eight million
acres lying on both sides of the Jahú and near the larger, west-
ward-flowing Tieté. Building timber, an equable and healthful
climate, soil adapted to cotton growing, and a good site for a
town were the deciding factors in the choice near Araquara.
Instead of proceeding to examinations in the provinces of
Paraná, Santa Catharina, and Rio Grande do Sul, as previously
intended, General Wood returned to the capital immediately and
entered into negotiations looking toward colonizing the tract near
Araquara, which was about two hundred miles from the provi-
sional capital of Sao Paulo. To such colonists as might come
the imperial government promised land at twenty-two cents an
acre, payable twenty per cent annually for five years, free pro-
visions during the period of establishment, free transportation
from Rio de Janeiro to the settlement site, and citizenship by
the mere taking of an oath. In addition, it would construct
vehicle roads from the colony to the Sao Paulo railroad, thereby
giving communication to the outside world.
13
With these general arrangements completed, the inspector
boarded the steamship South
America,
landed in New York on
January 25, 1866, and proceeded to the southland. But the news
of his remarkable journey had already reached the ears of an
anxious people; almost a month before his arrival the leading
newspapers of the South had published accounts in their
columns.
14
At Araquara, in central Sao Paulo, General Wood's party met
Dr. J. McF. Gaston, who was prospecting for a number of South
Carolina families. Indeed, the general and the doctor cooper-
ated in the execution of their programs. At times they made
itineraries together, and each placed his data and observations at
the disposal of the other. But before returning home the South
Carolinian conducted an investigation of the districts about
Iguapé and Cananea (province of Paraná) also. After reaching
home he set forth his experiences and observations in a book of
almost four hundred pages which he entitled Hunting
a
Home
in
Brazil.
Published at Philadelphia early in 1867, this inter-
esting volume was placed with Dr. Hugh A. Shaw of Fort Gaines,
Georgia, for sale to any who had the price.
15 The author could
not act long as agent for his product, for in April, 1867, he left
Savannah for the chosen land with a party of one hundred fol-
lowers.
16
of Sao Paulo, so these two parties upon their return to Rio de
Janeiro struck up with Meriwether and Shaw, the agents of the
Southern Colonization Society of Edgefield Court House. In fact,
Dr. Gastón joined his fellow South Carolinians on their inspec-
tion tour of Brazil. As the portions of the empire Meriwether
and Shaw "were instructed to visit and examine, were so exten-
sive, and so difficult of access, with the means of transportation
attainable in Brazil, that more than two years would have been
required for the accomplishment," they decided to confine their
examinations to the province of Sao Paulo, which was supposed
best adapted to the wants and necessities of the southern people.
"With the purpose of exploring this Province thoroughly," says
the Meriwether-Shaw report,
we left Rio de Janeiro, in company with Dr. Gaston, who, as
above stated, had seen a considerable portion thereof, with the
guide and interpreter, whom the Minister of Agriculture had com-
missioned to attend us, and went by steamer to Santos, its sea-
port town. We examined the country around this place, for fifty
miles, but were not satisfied with its healthfulness, productions,
or soil.
Convincing ourselves that the country, lying between the
mountains and seacoast, had no large bodies of farming lands,
we directed our attention to the interior, beyond the mountains
which bound the coast. Therefore, we took the cars over the Sao
Paulo and Santos Railroad, the proprietor kindly giving us free
passage both going and returning. This railroad is not yet com-
pleted, but the cars pass over it to about twenty miles beyond
the city of Sao Paulo, the capital of the province of the same
name, and it is graded to Jundaihy, forty miles from the capi-
tal. Its whole completed length is eighty or ninety miles, con-
necting the interior of the province with the seaboard, at
Santos. . . .
At Sao Paulo we were provided with animals to prosecute the
journey over a country almost without roads; for the entire
transportation in the interior is done on pack mules, except that
now and then a bullock-cart is seen hauling at short distances,
over roads which our wagons certainly could not pass. Those
carts are of the most primitive character, the wheels and axles
are fastened together in moving. We have often seen as many
as ten oxen drawing at one cart, and sometimes many more, and
not carrying more than two thousand pounds. The oxen, too,
are as fine as we have ever seen.
By pack mules the party examined the interior of Sao Paulo
as far as Araquara, which is two hundred miles distant from the
provincial capital. But the lands which struck the inspectors'
favor, and which they recommended most strongly to their con-
tituents, lay in the districts of Botucatú, Lençoes, and the ad-
oining valley of the Tieté not quite so far away. The price of
these tracts was from one to two dollars an acre, and they seemed
idmirably adapted to most every southern need. Unfortunately,
the location was more than a hundred miles from the railway
terminus. This fact caused the recommendation of the Campinas
district which was within twenty or thirty miles of rail connec-
tion, and in which improved land could be had for two to five
dollars an acre. In the latter vicinity two planters from Ala-
bama and Louisiana had already settled. As we shall see, hun-
dreds more were to come during the next two or three years.
Upon completing the inspection, the agents returned to Rio de
Janeiro where they soon disposed of necessary official matters
before embarking for New York. Through the Southern Coloni-
zation Society a report of the itinerary reached the public with-
out delay.17
While Meriwether and Shaw were prospecting for the South-
ern Colonization Society in central Sao Paulo, Reverend Ballard
S. Dunn, rector of St. Phillip's Church in New Orleans, was
hunting for a home for himself and such Christian friends as
might follow him in other parts of the Brazilian empire. "After
much laborious travel and investigation" in the provinces of Rio
de Janeiro, Espirito Santo, and Sao Paulo, he chose for settle-
ment a tract of land on the Juquia River, a tributary of the
Eibeiro. Called "Lizzieland" in honor of a daughter of the
rector, the survey was situated a few miles from the coast, on
the border of the provinces of Sao Paulo and Parana, and about
four hundred miles south of Rio de Janeiro. The 614,000 acres
stretched along the river for about forty miles, extending to the
interior often for half this distance. The fact that Brazilians
owned many estates along the river front within the tract was
not a disadvantage, said the inspector, for they were willing to
sell at prices not in advance of those for government lands. Be-
fore returning to Rio de Janeiro to complete official arrangements
for the land, Dunn purchased for his own homestead one of the
best tracts on the Jaquiá River. Named "Ballard," this "centra]
residence" was to be the "nucleus of the proposed settlement."
The contract between Dunn and the minister of agriculture
showed the liberality of the Brazilian government. The rector
was given a provisional title to the lands, which was to be ex-
changed for a permanent one as soon as the purchase price had
been paid; the price to be paid for the government land, includ-
ing the expense for surveying, was forty-one and three-quarter
cents an acre; the quantity of land each settler might take was
to be regulated by the rector, who was responsible for payments
therefor; such manufactures, machines, utensils, and implements
of agriculture as the immigrants wished to bring for their uses
were to be exempt from import duties; the imperial government
would pay for one vessel of transportation for every two vessels
furnished by Reverend Dunn, or would advance to immigrants
upon their arrival in Brazil the cost of passage, reimbursement
to be guaranteed by mortgages on the lands purchased; and the
Rio government promised to house the immigrants pending the
construction of buildings on the homesteads.
As soon as these arrangements had been completed, Dunn re-
turned home and began to solicit settlers to accompany him to
Lizzieland. He appealed to such southerners as were willing to
force among themselves "that law of honor, and Christian recti-
titude, which obviates the necessity for enforcing any other law."
To give his appeal publicity he advertised it widely in the south-
em newspapers, and in 1866 published his Brazil,
the
Home
for
Southerners.
18
Just above Lizzieland, on the upper Juquiá and its main trib-
utary, the Sao Lourengo, Major Frank McMullen and William
Bowen selected a tract for themselves and a number of Texas
friends and relatives. The choice was made after five months of
continuous travel in the great empire, and the terms with the
Brazilian government were almost identical with those granted
Ballard S. Dunn.
19
About the same time Colonel Charles G. Gunter of Montgom-
ery secured a grant of many thousand acres in the Rio Doce
Valley. Situated three hundred miles north of Rio de Janeiro
in the province of Espirito Santo, Gunter's selection embraced
the beautiful fresh water lake of Juparanao, a body of water
twenty by four miles in extent. The land was sold to the set-
tlers surveyed at the government price of twenty-two cents an
acre. As we shall see in a later chapter, many disconsolate south-
erners, particularly from his own state, followed the kind Ala-
bama colonel to Lake Juparanao.
20
Finally, we come to the most interesting of all the agents who
prospected in the tropics for southerners. He is the most inter-
esting because, though born in Yankeeland of New England an-
cestors, he went about his task with a zest unmatched by southern
enthusiasts. Fortunately, he left in The
Emigrant's
Guide
to
Brazil
21 an enduring monument to his unflinching zeal. Born in
Knox County, Ohio, in 1819, reared, educated, and admitted to
the bar in the same state, Lansford Warren Hastings went to
Independence, Missouri, in 1842 and joined the emigrant train
to Oregon. Although a man of only twenty-three years, Hast-
ings was elected one of the important officials of this train. The
summer of the following year, 1843, found the restless young
man, not in Oregon but in California, where later he seems to
have dreamed and planned to overthrow the existing government
and establish an independent republic with himself as head.
During the year in which the united States acquired the land of
his dreams he married Charlotte C. Toler, whose father was a
Virginian and whose mother was of Spanish descent and a native
of Caracas, Venezuela. It was doubtless through this marriage
that the adventurer developed an interest in northern South
America.
lic life, though he was a member of the California Constitutional
Convention of 1849 and retained a connection with filibustering
into Mexico. The Civil War afforded him an opportunity to re-
sume a more active career. In 1863-64 he sought authority from
high officials of the Confederate government to organize an ex-
pedition for wresting the region of Arizona and New Mexico
from federal control and adding it to the Confederacy. The
proponent pointed out that his offer, though calculated to cost
only a small sum, would give the Confederacy an outlet on the
Pacific Ocean. If the prospects for its continuance had been
brighter, the southern government might have considered the
ambitious proposal feasible; with the gloomy outlook as it was,
it received scant consideration at Richmond. But regardless of how
it appeared to southern officials, the plan reveals much concern-
ing the mind and character of its proponent.
22
"Immediately after the surrender of the Confederate Army"
Hastings turned his attention to the subject of southern emigra-
tion to Brazil. On March 26, 1866, following a period of great
delay, he left Mobile, Alabama, on board the steamship Margaret
with a party of thirty-five emigrants, "including men, women,
and children." A few days out from shore smallpox made its
appearance on board, in consequence of which it was necessary
to return to Mobile, where quarantine and eleven deaths defeated
the expedition. Nothing daunted, the leader soon set out in com-
pany with Simpson, a Montgomery engineer, for Brazil in order
to select a settlement site and make other necessary arrangements
for such emigrants as would follow him upon his return.
Going by way of New York, Hastings and his companion took
passage on the steamship North
America
and arrived at Para
May 16. Their reception at the Amazon port was cordial; by
two in the morning of the following day they had secured an
interpreter, an American named Charles Collyer, and were aboard
a vessel of the Amazon Steamship Company anxious to begin an
inspection itinerary thousands of miles in length. For some un-
explained reason none of the flock of southern inspectors had
visited the great valley made known to Americans by the writ-
ings of Maury and the explorations of his kinsman, Lieutenant
Herndon of the United States navy! But the negligence made
Hasting's opportunity all the more promising!
For several days, as the little Manâos
fought the muddy current
in her ascent, the filibuster-explorer viewed the wonders of the
mightiest river of the world. He observed the hardwood forests
and calculated their potential values; on the wharves of the small
riparian towns he saw piled high the products of the fertile soil,
including coffee, sugar, rice, cotton, corn, beans, cinnamon, cocoa,
and various fruits. After spending two days at Manâos, the
capital of the province of Amazonas, the thousand-mile return
journey was begun. Two days before the close of May the Hast-
ings party was back at Para. Since the beginning of the inspec-
tion tour on the Amazon, the leading citizens of Para had formed
an emigrant-aid association for the purpose of dealing more
effectively with Hastings or any other prospectors who might
come their way. Through this organization Hastings approached
the imperial government at Rio de Janeiro and ultimately brought
to consummation his contract.
Of all the prospective sites given cursory inspection on the
Amazon journey, the one at Santarém, situated about five hun-
dred miles above Para at the junction of the Amazon and Tapa-
jós, seemed best adapted for a Dixie settlement. The advantages
afforded by Santarém in comparison with those afforded by other
sites may have been more apparent than real; the entertainment
accorded Hastings at Santarém by one of the vice-presidents of
the province of Para made possible effective advertising in its
favor. At any rate, Hastings had been favorably impressed, and
before proceeding to the Brazilian capital to present his plan to
the highest officials of state he sent his companion engineer,
Simpson, for an inspection of the table lands in its vicinity.
Armed with twenty-two letters of introduction, and all neces-
sary documentary authority," Major Hastings left Pará for Rio
de Janeiro on June 28 (1866). Upon arrival at the capital, he
received courteous attention from all the imperial officials, but
especially from the immigrant agents and the minister of agri-
culture, who offered him every facility possible. "After a delay
of forty days," he received papers authorizing him to return to
Para to conclude negotiations with the president of the province
for sixty leagues of land located at any place the inspector might
designate. Early in September Hastings was back to the Amazon
port; within a few days he had completed all remaining official
arrangements and was restlessly waiting for the iron steamer
Tapajós
to take him to Santarém. Several letters from Simpson
riving the results of his preliminary examinations confirmed the
impression that the lands near the mouth of the Tapajós River
offered the southerners their El Dorado.
Accompanied by Barr, Chaffie, and Sparks of the ill-fated
Margaret,
and by Demaret of Texas, the major left for Santarém
in the early morning of September 17. Three days later the
party arrived at its destination, where a generous hospitality
awaited it. Following several strenuous days spent in further ex-
ploration and examination, the tract of sixty square leagues au-
thorized by the Brazilian government was selected so as to em-
brace the table lands "between and bordering upon the Amazon,
Tapajós and Curua rivers." Situated two degrees south of the
equator and five hundred miles from the Atlantic Ocean, the
selection embraced exactly 960 sections, or 614,400 acres. The
six Americans attested to the fact that the tract was unsurpassed
"in soil, timber, and salubrity of climate"; and the front view
offered "the majestic Amazon, with its vast expanse of turbid
waters, its clear and limpid affluent, the Tapajós, and its con-
tinent-like islands, all mapped with nature's accuracy." Before
Hastings left for the United States to assemble hundreds of his
compatriots and to arrange transportation facilities to their future
homes he and four of his prospecting companions selected ad-
jacent sites for their farms. Indeed, before his departure three
of the four companions making selections had occupied their
lands and were busily engaged in clearing them, in building their
houses, and in sinking wells for water. In the absence of Negro
labor, all this vanguard depended upon Indian servants.
Stimulated by the feeling of success in the choice of a location
for his settlement, and exhilarated by the cordiality of the fare-
well party held on the eve of his departure, Major Hastings
essayed the task of depicting the wonders of the great Amazon
Valley as his boat floated down the river toward Pará. He said:
Who can picture, who can paint nature as here exhibited? With
wonder, admiration and reverential awe, one may contemplate the
vastness with which he finds himself here surrounded, the pro-
fusion of nature's bounties, and sublimity of scenery, but to de-
scribe them, to picture them as they are, is beyond the scope oí
human capacity. Here we behold the great Amazon, by far the
largest river in the world, located in the center of the world,
with its vast tributaries, affording more than ten thousand miles
of uninterrupted, fluvial navigation; extending from the ocean
to the Andes, and from the Orinoco to the La Plata, embrac-
ing more than 2,000,000 square miles, teeming with animal and
vegetable life; a world of eternal verdure and perennial spring,
of whose grandeur and splendor it is impossible to speak in fit-
ting terms.
An Ossa of words, piled upon a Pelion of ideas, would utterly
fail to make anything like an adequate impression upon the mind.
Nature, who ever pours her bounties forth with a full and un-
withholding hand, seems to have chosen this majestic solitude,
for the display of all that her lavish powers could do, to dignify
and adorn her reign. Graceful must be the lips, and eloquent
must be the tongue, that can transmute her wonderful efforts
into becoming language. It is not alone the magnificence of its
majestic waters, its stupendous size, its gigantic mountains, or
its world-like character, that fascinates and overpowers the mind.
Every feature around seems to harmonize, as if rejoicing to lend
additional grandeur to every charm; towering mountain cliffs
look down with meditative admiration upon a world of sylvan
beauty and clustering verdure. Flora, in her most gaudy at-
tire, approaches confidingly to the very margins of the majestic
rivers, looking fearlessly into their profound depths. Thou-
sands of sparkling rivulets gurgle and trickle through the shady
forests, gladdened by the smiling sunlight, flickering through
the overhanging foliage, adorned by a creation of rural beauty
that hourly blossoms. In changeful days, the clouds gather
round, unfolding the whole panorama of eternal beauty, from
dark, rolling storm-clouds, with hearts of thunder, to white,
etherial shadows, that flit like fairies through the air, upon
which the retiring sun, from the western hills, lends his last
rays to drape the whole scene into colorful splendor; when the
rising moon, in cloudless majesty, unveiling her peerless light,
reillumes and adorns this colossal and resplendent temple of
nature, in the midst of whose silent majesty, is a most fitting
abode of peace and purity, like that of heaven.
Little wonder that the author's Emigrant's
Guide
to
Brazil
captured the imagination of so many romantic southerners!
Maury's spirit must have descended to earth!
While waiting at Para for a steamer to take him to the United
States, Hastings had ample time for interviews with the presi-
dent of the province, who had been authorized to act for the
Brazilian government, in consummating the contract legalizing
the proposed settlement. A temporary deed to the entire tract
of 960 sections was vested in the proprietor, who in turn obli-
gated himself to bring in a minimum of one hundred immigrants,
and who assumed responsibility of payment for the land on the
basis of one-half real
the square braca
or about twenty-two cents
an acre, payment to be made in three equal annual installments
beginning at the end of the third year after the first establish-
ments. The government bound itself to construct provisional
houses for the reception and temporary accommodation of the
immigrants; to supply the money for transportation charges of
needy immigrants, the advances to be repaid within a period of
three years; to exempt from import duties all implements, ma-
chinery, and supplies brought in by the colonists; and to ex-
empt all from military duty, both before and after assumption
of citizenship, except that of self-defense in their own district
or municipality. The contract leaving the allotment of lands to
the judgment of the agent, Major Hastings made the allocations
on the basis of one section to each family and 320 acres to sin-
gle men.
On November 12 the prospector left Pará aboard the American
steamer Guiding
Star,
which was loaded with India-rubber, for
New York. On the 15th of the following month he was back at
Mobile, Alabama, after an absence of eight months. During this
period he had traveled over nineteen thousand miles, nearly ten
thousand of which had been within the limits of the Brazilian
empire. The result of his diligent labors and keen observations
he soon gave to the southern public in his hastily, though re-
markably well-written and intensely interesting, book entitled
The
Emigrant's
Guide
to
Brazil.
23
Their attitudes toward the prospecting agents show that the
Latin-American governments concerned were very favorable to
southern immigration. The accommodations made available to
the immigrants display the same generous policy. One of the
important functions of the agents sent to New Orleans, New York,
and other points in the United States was that of facilitating
arrangements of the immigrants for the journey to their new
homes. Upon arrival at the ports of debarkation, the seekers
of new homes were given every consideration that they could
have expected—which was indeed no little. They were welcomed
to emigrant hotels or other buildings specially provided for them,
where their needs were furnished for a period at government
expense; following the period of. cordial entertainment, they were
usually given free transportation to their settlement sites. The
hospitalities were usually dispensed through well-organized emi-
grant-aid associations.
After the southerners had decided upon expatriation and had
made choices of future homes, they wound up their business
affairs, assembled farm implements and other supplies which
future needs were certain to require, and repaired to the towns--
usually ports--where they met others of similar mind and from
which they were to take their final departure. During the early
period of the exodus the places of rendezvous and departure were
southern ports, particularly Mobile, New Orleans, and Galveston;
later, because of the necessity for securing safer accommodations,
New York became the point of embarkation.
24
That there was ample justification for the shift in the em-
barkation points from the South to New York the experiences of
the early leave-takers verify. The unfortunate experience of
those on board the Margaret,
which left Mobile in March, 1866,
has already been noted. The experience of part of the same
group on a second attempt in the summer of the following year
was only a little less harrowing: the vessel was able to get no
further than the island of St. Thomas, where the passengers were
compelled to transfer themselves and their impedimenta to a
regular packet bound for Pará.
25 The Frank McMullen colony
of Texas, which left Galveston for southern Brazil in the spring
of 1867, was wrecked on the Cuban coast, the passengers los-
ing all their possessions except a little clothing. It was only
dauntless courage that enabled the stalwart band to reach its
destination at the end of six hectic months. The disaster in
this case--and no doubt in others--was attributable to the un-
seaworthiness of the vessel, which was a hastily renovated block-
ade runner equipped with so many decks as to be top-heavy.
26
But disasters on the voyages, whether to Mexico, Central America,
or Brazil, were the exception rather than the rule. The emigrants
soon discovered that it was the part of economy and wisdom to
take passage on good vessels of the regular lines.
FOOTNOTES:
ern Literary Messenger, and the Washington Union. See also House Misc.
Doc. 22, 33 Cong., 1 sess. (serial 741); A. P. Pinto, Apontamentos para o
Direito Internacional, II, 420; L. F. Hill, Diplomatic Relations between
the United States and Brazil, 239ff.
the influence of Kidder's book. Eliza Kerr Shippey, who wrote "When
Americans were Emigrants," an article which appeared in a Kansas City
paper, June 16, 1912, is a conspicuous example. A copy of the article
was furnished the writer by D. R. Keyes, another emigrant now living
at Clearwater, Florida.
Recollections, 537.
since the War, 29 et seq., 339; J. P. Hollis, The Early Period of Recon-
struction in South Carolina; 23; Southern Historical Society Papers, XIII,
502; New York Nation, I, 106, 812.
Problem of South Carolina Agriculture after the Civil War," in the
North Carolina Hist. Rev., VII, No. 1, 46-77.
July 22 and 25, 1865.
26, 1865.
Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 222, 230.
Ex. Doc. 27, 39 Cong., 1 sess., 159.
see E. P. Oberholtzer, A History of the United States Since the Civil War,
I, 117 et seq., 377 set seq.; C. G. Bowers, The Tragic Era.
were secured through the marked courtesy of Mr. Peter Brannon, of the
Department of Archives and History of the state of Alabama, who pro-
cured them from the D. A. Tompkins Library at Edgefield Court House,
South Carolina, through Mrs. Agatha Abney Woodson, daughter of Joseph
Abney. Hereafter citations will be to "Materials from the D. A. Tomp-
kins Library" without further acknowledgment.
the note on Ruffin the writer is indebted to Dr. H. H. Simms, a colleague
at Ohio State University.
newspapers of the period.
September 13, 1865. Materials from the D. M. Tompkins Library.
Fred Rippey, The United States and Mexico (First Edition), 247-249.
ary 24, and August 18, 1866; Savannah Daily Herald, July 1, 1865; M. F.
Maury Papers (Library of Congress MSS.); Diana Fontaine Maury Cor-
bin, A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury, 224 et seq.; House Ex. Doc. 1,
39 Cong., 1 sess., 521-535.
Daily Herald, January 5; The Daily Picayune, January 6, 1866. A little
later accounts also appeared in the Semi-Weekly Floridian, February 8,
and the Daily True Delta, February 15, 1866.
Library of Congress copy could not 'be located at the time the writei
made a request for it.
Home for Southerners, 227-244.
culture was printed in Dunn, Brazil, the Home for Southerners, 152-179.
26, 1868.
Los Angeles, California, and a great nephew of Lansford Warren Hastings,
through whom a copy (apparently the only one extant) of the guide was
secured from Albert A. Spence, a grandson of Hastings who also resides
in California. The kindness of such men as Mr. Hunsaker and Mr.
Spence contributes much toward making the researcher's task a pleasant
one.
saker and loaned to the writer.
guide.
wrongly insists, without any basis for his position, that the shift was
from New York to the southern ports.
How to cite:
Lawrence F. Hill, "Confederate Exodus to Latin America", Volume 39, Number 2, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v039/n2/contrib_DIVL1560.html
[Accessed Mon Oct 6 20:53:52 CDT 2008]
