THE CONFEDERATE EXODUS TO LATIN AMERICA
III
As in South America, the Confederates who went into Middle
America tried home building in widely-separated areas. They
tried Honduras, British Honduras, and Mexico, if not other
countries.
Little space is required to tell all that is known about those
who ventured into Honduras. By the summer of 1867 Colonel
Watkins and Major Goldsmith of Georgia and Major Malcolm of
Kentucky had obtained grants aggregating more than 150,000
acres in the vicinity of San Pedro, situated about fifty miles in-
terior from the port on the Bay of Honduras named Omoa, and
had induced about sixty followers--apparently all Georgians--to
settle in the beautiful valley with them. Other immigrants, it
seems from both Georgia and Alabama, augmented the pioneers
until within a few months the number reached the two hundred
mark. The San Pedro settlers introduced the first mills and farm-
ing implements known to the country.
But the San Pedro colony did not thrive. Whether due to the
superior attractions offered by British Honduras, to the hostility
of native, insect, and disease, or to internal dissension, only a
few of the southerners remained longer than a year. Most of the
disillusioned returned to their old homes in the United States;
Major Malcolm, who became the chief director, seems to have
fled to Nicaragua between suns.
1
Southern interest in British Honduras extends back into the
ante-bellum period; and this concern, as we have already noted,
was only a manifestation of a general interest in the tropics.
British Honduras became a sort of Utopia to southerners as a
result of skilled advertising in certain parts of southern United
States, especially in Louisiana. In the eighteen fifties owners of
large quantities of land in the British colony kept on display in
New Orleans and other southern cities sugar cane and other
products grown on Honduran soil. After the lands had been
denuded of the mahogany forests, the woodcutting companies
became willing to dispose of them to planters. The sugar plant-
ers of the United States seemed to be the logical purchasers.
Furthermore, it was to the interest of the merchants in British
Honduras and the United States, especially to those of Belize and
New Orleans, to promote southern immigration to the British
colony.
The Civil War in the United States strengthened the position
of the bourgeois in the two countries. The war fought ostensibly
to save the Union but in reality to impose the economic system of
the more populous section upon the entire country brought a
despotism to the South that caused many of the southern people
to resort to the extremity of expatriation. A thousand or so of
the discontented fell for the bourgeois propaganda emanating
from Belize and New Orleans. It seemed to offer more for the
future than the program of terrorism then emitting from the
vindictive souls of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner. In
1867 the choice made by those who decided upon British Hon-
duras for future homes did not seem ridiculous. The highest
officials in the British possession were then saying: "We want
some of your practical and active Southern men to come to this
Country and settle it up." They were told that if they would
do so, "so soon as they are strong enough for self Government,
we will give up the Country to them, as the policy of the English
Government now is to lessen the number of her Colonies, as they
create the necessity for too large a Military force for their pro-
tection."
2
Just how much faith the southerners imposed in this gratui-
tous remark regarding the future political status of the British
colony is unknown. It is quite probable that they saw greater
assurance in the tariff act, which, as amended in 1867, made it
possible for immigrants to take personal property into the colony
free of duty. It is certain that they were attracted by the terms
of the big land companies, such as Young, Toledo, and Company,
which offered large tracts of fine sugar and coffee land at prices
ranging from twenty-five cents to five dollars an acre or one hun-
dred acre tracts situated in the northern and western parts of
the colony to any able-bodied immigrant without cost. Further-
more, the potential emigrants were encouraged by the establish-
ment of fortnightly steamship service between New Orleans and
Belize. Operated by New York corporations, the General
Sher
-
man
and the Trade
Wind
afforded ample accommodations for
passenger and freight traffic. The company which operated the
latter was fortunate enough to secure from the British Honduran
government an annual subsidy of $20,000 for the maintenance of
mail service between Belize and New Orleans.
3
Information assembled to date does not reveal the time of
arrival of the first southerners in British Honduras. But they
do say that an Episcopal minister named Dawson reached the
country as early as 1861. If he left his native land on account
of the domestic turmoil, he showed wisdom in the selection of
the time for departure, as well as in predicting the eventual out-
come of the conflict. At any rate, the summer of 1867 found
him gardening near Belize, waiting to join fellow-southerners in
the establishment of a colony in the southern part of the coun-
try.
4 Two other southerners had gone into the northern por-
tion of the country, fifty miles from Belize, and become proprie-
tors of a sugar plantation as early as the beginning of 1865. Two
years later their labors were rewarded by a yield of four to five
hundred hogsheads of fine sugar.
5
Notwithstanding these and many other early arrivals, the
period of "great migration" from the South to British Honduras
was from 1867 to 1869. During this period the vessels plying
between New Orleans and Belize, chiefly the Trade
Wind
and the
General
Sherman,
usually took out eighty to a hundred emigrants
each trip. In the summer of 1869, the United States consul at
Belize estimated that southerners had entered the British colony
at an average rate of fifty a month for the past two years.
Opposed to the exodus from the United States, his twelve hun-
dred estimate for the biennium was more likely too low than too
high.
6 In the spring of 1868, or about the middle of the period
of "great immigration," T. C. Brewer, whose business it was to make
careful observations, wrote the Mobile Daily
Register
that there
were at that time one thousand southerners in British Honduras
who had become bona
fide
settlers; and, he said, immigration con-
tinued to flow.
7 Whatever the number of southerners entering
British Honduras, or the number resident at any particular time,
there is general agreement that southern immigration had ceased
by the summer of 1869. Indeed, for a few months subsequent to
this time the population movement was from Belize to the United
States. The above-mentioned consul was convinced that of those
immigrants who retraced their steps, some returned to their old
homes wiser, and all "sadder and poorer."
8
The British Honduras colonists were from many parts of the
South. Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Tennessee,
Texas, and Virginia were frequently represented. More interest-
ing is the fact that many of the colonists had held high positions
in the Confederate army. Consul Prindle said that in Belize
"generals and colonels meet one at every turn."
9
As in Brazil, the southerners went to almost every section of
British Honduras; and, as in Brazil, most of them settled in
groups or neighborhoods. One of the most populous settlements
was at the head of navigation on the Belize River, near the
present San Pedro, in the western portion of the country. Meas-
ured by way of the river, the usual route of travel, the distance
from the capital city of Belize was a hundred miles or more,
though directly through the forests the mileage was only half so
great. One of the first southerners--probably the first--to enter
the San Pedro community was Reverend B. R. Duval of Virginia,
who purchased for himself a large tract of fertile land and who
secured for his bereaved countrymen options on adjoining tracts.
But the divine, no doubt feeling a degree of responsibility in
providing for his sheep, did more: the Confederate town which
his mind envisioned was to be New Richmond, after the blessed
city of his former state; and the entire colony would be delim
ited as Confederate County.
10
Duval was a good advertiser. Within six months after his
selection of a site, General C. J. McRae of Mississippi pur-
chased eighteen sections of land, in consideration of $3500, and
became his neighbor. In writing an old friend back home, the
general described his land as similar to the best sugar lands of
Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana. John M. McRae, former Gov-
ernor of Mississippi, and a brother of the general, left his old
home with the intention of settling in the same community, but
succumbed to tuberculosis five days after his arrival at Belize.
11
By the summer of 1868, about a year after Duval had made
his selection, three hundred persons from the southern states
were living in the vicinity of San Pedro. At this time, more-
over, twenty-one of the colonists of this community, hailing from
six of the southern states and California, directed a letter to the
"Southern Press" designed to refute statements recently appear-
ing in southern newspapers that the colonists in Honduras were
dissatisfied and starving. While admitting that mistakes had
been made, the signers stated that the colonists were contented,
that there was plenty for those who would work, and that there
was no desire to return to the United States.
12 Nevertheless, if
the American consul at Belize can be trusted, the summer of the
following year (1869) found the stream of southerners running
from British Honduras toward the United States, the reverse
from the direction it had been flowing for the past two years.
13
It is not known whether the backward trek included settlers who
had followed Duval into the wilderness of western Honduras.
There were many other southern communities in the British
colony. On the New River, some eighty miles from Belize, sev-
eral planters, chiefly from Louisiana, purchased large tracts of
land for sugar plantations. Among the purchasers were many
persons well known to the Old South--Captain Beauregard,
brother of the creole general; Benjamin, brother of the Confed-
erate secretary of war; Dagle, Doirn, Doughty, Price, and others
from the same state. On the Mullens River, eighteen miles from
Belize, were several planters; on South Stann Creek, forty or fifty
miles south of the capital, were some; on the Moho River thirty
families settled; on the Mannatee in a circuit of five miles were
twenty-two other family groups. Moreover, in the summer of
1868 most of these newcomers were doing well.
14
Eight miles from the capital, on the Belize River, a Texan
rented a place for $300 a year. In the summer of 1867 he was
living in one of the two dwellings and cultivating thirty acres
planted in almonds, cocoanuts, guavas, limes, oranges, and
tamarinds, the cocoanut trees numbering three hundred and
fifty.
15 Only a half mile from Belize R. T. Johnson, an exile
from the South, sought "that peace and repose denied to him in
his native land" on one of the sandy ridges which stud the
swamp extending along the Honduran coast. Known as "Martinez
Pen"--Pen because the ridge was about two miles long and only
from thirty to fifty feet in width--and hardly more than a foot
above the water mark, this property was devoted to cocoanut,
mango, and other fruit trees. Soon after occupancy the new
owner posted on the bulletin board at the courthouse in Belize
a notice that the enclosed part of the estate, embracing the cot-
tage, and the rear walk leading to the terminus of the ridge,
would henceforth cease to be public promenades. Moreover, the
aged occupant would sell fruit only by the wholesale, and then
not on the Sabbath. Whether the mosquitoes, sand flies, and
other venomous insects which swarm on that part of the coast
materially interfered with the desired "peace and repose" is an
unanswered query.
16
In the capital city the southerners found a rendezvous and
toothsome food at the hotel of Mrs. Foot, formerly of Saint
Mary's Parish, Louisiana. Frequently the governor of the colony
gave to the southerners a grand state dinner, during which the
dining halls resounded to the tune of "Bonnie Blue Flag," "My
Maryland," and, climactically, "God Save the King."
17
Stimulated by numerous advertisements emanating from vari-
ous agencies, hundreds of down-hearted southerners made their way
into Mexico. The promoting agencies were the emigration com-
panies dominated by the profit motive, the philanthropic associ-
ations, and strong-willed individuals such as M. F. Maury. In
nearly all cases the newspapers were the media through which
the discouraged came into possession of data concerning the
hoped-for Utopia. The emigrés
usually entered Maximilian's
empire by one of two routes: some went overland by the Isham
G. Harris route (Monterey, Saltillo, San Luis Potosí, Mexico
City); others made the water journey from Galveston or New
Orleans to Vera Cruz and thence to the interior of Aztecland.
As in the case of Brazil, the seekers of new homes stopped in
regions separated by great distances. While the two most impor-
tant centers of settlements were near Cordova and in the Tuxpan
region, many other portions of Mexico became their dwelling-
places. Some stopped at Monterrey, only a hundred and fifty
miles from the Rio Grande; some chose Saltillo, now the capital
of Coahuila, and once also the capital of Texas; some preferred
the centuries-old mining town of San Luis Potosí, still further
toward the center; a few selected Jalisco, far to the west of the
imperial capital; others halted at Jalapa, not far inland from
Vera Cruz, and during the colonial era a meeting place for Old
and New World merchants; Colonel Mitchell, a Methodist divine
from Missouri, leased for ten years a 5,000-acre hacienda
in the
beautiful valley of the Rio Verde, midway between Potosí and
Tampico. The city of the Montezumas was the rendezvous and
no doubt the earthly paradise for all.
But let us rivet attention for a longer period on the important
Confederate colonies near Cordova and in the Tuxpan. The
former had its beginning in November, 1865, when Maury's com-
mittee of distinguished Confederates, ex-Governor Sterling Price
of Missouri, Judge John Perkins of Louisiana, and ex-Governor
Isham G. Harris of Tennessee, reported in glowing terms on the
possibilities of the Cordova district.
18 The early months of the
following year brought hundreds of southerners to the new col-
ony. The prominence of the trio which chose the site, the un-
questioned integrity of Price, Perkins, and Harris, gave the
enterprise a great boost. The fact that such men proceeded with
arrangements to establish themselves and their dearest friends
in the community made a powerful appeal. The appeal captured
the imaginations of all classes: every rank known to the Confed-
erate army was represented; every sort of politician listed in a
dictionary of political science was included; every type of artisan
and planter known in the Old South was there; every social posi-
tion from big planter to lowly slave was included. The total num-
ber of persons included varied with the seasons, with the months,
with the moons, even with the suns. One settler said that at one
time five hundred emigrants found themselves in the valley about
Carlotta, the name given the town in honor of the Empress of
Mexico.
19 But due to pathetic circumstances the population was
more than peripatetic--and not in the Aristotelian connotation.
The old Mexican town of Córdova, which was the focal point
for the Confederate colonists, lies in the state of Vera Cruz about
ninety-two miles from the city of the True Cross. The settlers
who went by way of the Gulf--and most of them chose this easier
and shorter route--made sixty-four miles of the inland journey,
from Vera Cruz to Paso del Macho, by rail; the last lap of twen-
ty-eight miles was by coach. After arrival the newcomers went
to one of the three hotels that had risen for their convenience--
and no doubt for the profit of the operators--where they spent
indefinite periods of a week or a month or perhaps longer, always
at considerable expense. Some went into the rural communities
on prospecting itineraries and incidentally saw for the first time
coffee and sugar plantations in operation. The latter, of course,
were not so novel to the emigrants from Louisiana and Texas as
to those from Missouri and elsewhere. Others became discour-
aged and disgusted within a short time and began the backward
trek without venturing beyond Córdova's corporation limits. Back
in the United States, the wailings of the sojourners soon found
prominent places in the southern newspapers and journals, and
emigration to Mexico was checked.
20
But the wailings of the returned are less pertinent at this point
than the ventures of those who remained in and around Córdova.
These ventures were indeed varied. Two American physicians,
Doctors Xaupé and Russell, found a need for their knowledge
when the rainy season came and brought in its wake an epidemic
of yellow fever. General James E. Slaughter and Captain Price,
son of General Sterling Price of the Confederate army, went into
the rich timber belt between Córdova and Orizaba and put into
operation a steam sawmill. General Shelby and Major McMurtry
operated a stage between Paso del Macho, the terminus of the
Vera Cruz railroad, and Orizaba, and secured a concession to
transport iron and other railway material to Mexico City. Gen-
eral Stevens, one of General Lee's chief engineers, and Superin-
tendent Norris, formerly with the New Orleans and Jackson rail-
road, found employment on the project which sought to connect
Mexico City with the port of Vera Cruz. Most important of all,
however, were the ventures connected with plantation establish-
ment.
21
In the vanguard of the plantation builders were the three men
--Price, Harris, and Perkins—who selected the colony site and
laid out the town of Caiiotta. Close upon their heels came their
old friends and Confederate associates, including Generals Hind-
man, Hardeman, Shelby, Watson, Colonels Pox, Green, Roberts,
Whaley, and others of lesser renown. Soon fifty persons among
the select had staked out for themselves no less than 50,000 acres
of the best land in the community, most of them hoping to real-
ize enormous profits as the population increased. Some of those
who had capital, such as Harris, Price, and Shelby, constructed
shanties for temporary habitation and launched upon tasks of
clearing the land and planting crops; the less fortunate turned
temporarily to such forms of employment as promised a neces-
sary livelihood.
For those who arrived in the autumn of 1865 and the few
months immediately succeeding, the future seemed bright. The
fertile soil and the equable climate pledged cooperation in the
production of two crops of corn, cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane;
and coffee, vanilla, and other products would grow with a mini-
mum of labor. Equally as encouraging was the prospect of a
cheap labor supply provided in Mexico's system of peonage, a
form of slavery in disguise. Under the system the laborer found
it practically impossible to prevent falling into debt to the mas-
ter or patron, with whom he must remain until the obligation
was paid. As a result, the original contracts, which were to be
for a term of not less than five nor more than ten years, became
obligations for life in a majority of cases. Moreover, when a
laborer died while in debt service to a patron, the latter became
the guardian of the former's children, who, until they attained
their majority at the age of twenty-five, were to remain with the
master under the same conditions agreed to by the father. The
Negroes who followed their old masters from the United States
to Mexico would constitute the backbone of the labor supply for
a time; later the natives would serve the same purpose.
22
Early hopes among the Confederates about Carlotta were soon
turned into despair. The causes for the change were numerous
and the responsibility therefore must fall upon many heads.
The enthusiasm of Maury and his cohorts caused them to picture
conditions in Mexico that future events failed to sustain; indeed,
as events turned out, the picture appeared as a fabric of the
wildest imagination. But Maury and his satellites were hardly
responsible for the character of the colonists themselves; they
could not prevent the laggard, the libertine, and the thief com-
ing along with the industrious, the upright, and the honest; they
were not entirely responsible for the fact that success in an un-
developed country requires some capital and much arduous labor
for at least a period of two or three years.
The conduct of the leaders and early settlers furnished occasion
for much disconent among those who arrived on the scene at later
dates. Those in the vanguard staked out for themselves and their
close friends most of the best lands available for agricultural pur-
poses. Within a few months fifty of the early arrivals had pre-
empted no less than fifty thousand acres with the hope of future
pecuniary gain. To the less fortunate the policy seemed grasp-
ing and selfish and was denounced in scathing terms. Squabbles
which arose over unsurveyed boundaries and lawsuits instituted
as a means of redress added to the confusion. The dissatisfac-
tion was intensified by the departure before the close of the first
year of many men of influence and character.
23
Just as the idiosyncrasies and foibles of the inhabitants played
their roles in turning hopes to despair, so did the manifestations
of that side of nature which is more remotely, if at all, subject
to the control of man wield their discouraging influences. The
first rainy season brought diseases, especially fevers and dysentery,
over which medical science in that isolated region had little con-
trol. The natural environment, to which the newcomers were
necessarily poorly adjusted physically, and the spiritual discom-
fort resulting from the uprooting of long-established social con-
tacts conspired with disease to strike low many of the exiles. The
high and the low among the colonists succumbed alike to these
forces. The travail of soul is rather painfully exhibited in the
last paragraph of a letter which one P. H. Thompson, a lonely
emigré, wrote at Vera Cruz immediately upon the death of a
friend. It reads:
"Let us congratulate ourselves that that noble and lamented son
of Louisiana, Henry Watkins Allen, never yielded to infatuation,
but, although enthusiastic in regard to the future of the Empire,
always gave his friends true advice. He was emphatically 'an
honest man.' I was with him constantly during his last illness,
and between the paroxysm of pain his mind constantly reverted
to Louisiana, and his conversation was about the friends whom
he had left there. The only wish he expressed was that he could
once again see the waving fields of cane as they were in the olden
time. Peace to his soul. We stood around his grave, that Mon-
day evening in April, 1866, with the snowy peak of Popocatapetl
towering above us, and as we listened to the sublime ritual few
among that little band of exiles but thought of the homes which
were once so peaceful and happy, and wondered wistfully would
it be our fate to die away from our kindred, and without the
gentle touch of woman on our brow."
In fairness to the writer of this letter it should be stated that
it was his intention to remain in Mexico permanently. Although
he possessed a deep longing for his old friends back home to be
around him, he could not conscientiously advise them to take the
step he had taken.
24
But the selfishness of colonial leaders and the apparent un-
kindness of nature in unleashing her devastating tropical diseases
could be no more disheartening than the political and social tur-
moil with which the Mexico of Maxmilian's day was afflicted.
The chaos which can fatten only upon the selfish personal ambi-
tions of a decadent militarism and a wretchedly poor and igno-
rant indigent population was surely at its zenith in the eighteen
sixties. The European adventurer had been brought over to serve
as the instrument of the conservative elements in the army, in
the Church, and in society in general. At the beginning, all the:
liberal forces of the country, supported by a large percentage of
the population, were arrayed against the new ruler; and in the
attempt to pursue a moderate middle course he soon alienated
many of his early supporters and at the same time he gained few
friends from the liberal ranks. Still, because of the flattering
counsel that came from his entourage, for a long time Maximilian
did not fully realize the seriousness of the indescribable orgy that
was tearing the country into shreds. When he finally realized
the extent of the calamity, his extreme measures of vengeance
only added to the difficulties.
A novice can easily discern the bearing of such chaos upon the
plan to colonize ex-Confederates in Mexico. Early in the year
following the plan's inauguration it became necessary to abandon
the proposal to pay transportation costs to the country.
25 Much
more serious was the refusal of the opponents of the imperial
regime to recognize the validity of the confiscation measures which
had placed the southeners in possession of their lands. Whether
acting on principle or subterfuge, liberal leaders, sincere or pro-
fessed, organized bands and attacked the communities to which
the newcomers had moved. The attack on the settlement of
Omealco, situated about thirty miles from Córdova, at daybreak
on the morning of May 15, 1866, was perhaps the worst, but not
the only one, of such pillaging forays. Fortunately, a victim of
this raid has left us an account of his and his companions' grue-
some experiences during the four weeks they were prisoners fol-
lowing the Omealco attack. The narrator, one John Lane of
Texas, says that the descent was made by a nondescript band of
liberals--a loosely-used term to characterize any opponents of
Maximilian and his conservative supporters--under the leader-
ship of General Figarro, who was "slashing around, eating and
drinking at the expense of his noble friends, the American colon-
ists, whom he so loved that he made an appointment to speak to
them at some public place upon condition of affairs, upon the
good wishes and intentions of his [the liberal] government
towards them, and upon topics of mutual interest." When the
colonists had assembled and were waiting, Figarro's troops sur-
rounded and made them prisoners. After rifling their pockets
of their lean contents and seizing their available property, chiefly
agricultural implements and live stock, and disposing of it for
their own uses, they marched the prisoners over mountain and
valley, desert and stream, from ranch to ranchero,
until their
shoes were worn from their feet, their patience and strength were
exhausted, and their colonial hopes and aspirations vanquished.
On one occasion the prisoners thought they were drawn up to be
shot; but in the end they were spared--the victims thought by
some timely gunshots near by.
In the course of their ramblings somewhat beyond the middle,
the Omealco victims happened upon Joseph Soublet, a creole from
New Orleans, who entertained and furnished them food and trans-
portation from his ranch across the lakes and arms of Bianco
Bay. Finally, they were given from Figarro's to General Gar-
cia's command; the latter was generous enough to provide civil-
ized treatment and transportation to Vera Cruz, which most of
them reached hatless, shoeless, and penniless. It would be super-
erogation to say that these victims returned to their old homes in
Texas, Louisiana, and Missouri to stay, or that they could have
conceived of Mexicans as other than the repository of the world's
surplus treachery.
26
From similar sources came raids upon other settlements or
haciendas
which the southerners occupied in the region within
the thirty or forty mile radius extending from Cordova. Trouble
might have been avoided had the aggressive newcomers waited
until the Maximilian government was able to afford military pro-
tection in the occupation of the lands to which it had given legal
title. Of course, as events turned out, the Maximilian govern-
ment never became able to furnish the physical protection to its
new immigrants from the Old South; nevertheless, the delay
would have postponed the raids.
The fevers brought by the summer rains of 1866 were equally as
disheartening to the Cordova colonists as the raids of the Mexi-
can malcontents. Both caused abandonment of many rural hold-
ings and concentration at Cordova. These two forces and the
general loss of faith in the imperial regime to establish order and
security in Mexico were primarily responsible for the abandon-
ment of Córdova itself and the backward trek to old friends and
relatives and former attachments in the United States. Negro
suffrage and all its attendant horrors on the one hand seemed
preferable to hard work, disease, and unlicensed robbery on the
other. Thus, by late January, 1867, or at the end of an epoch
only a little more than a year in length, a maximum population
of five hundred homeseekers had been reduced to the member-
ship of two families. The few remaining members had caught
the contagious home-fever and were wandering about the streets
of Córdova in order to give vent to their restlessness. A few of
the stouter and more resourceful spirits took passage to various
European cities, perhaps to assuage their resentment a trifle,
though ostensibly to attend to business matters.
27
In marked contrast to several portions of Brazil, and unlike
British Honduras, the Cordova district of Mexico today shows
only slight evidence of Confederate occupation. The domestic
situation which made land titles impermanent and the short period
of occupancy in Mexico were primarily responsible for the differ-
ence. Yet, five years ago (1929) a descendant of one of the
southern families that essayed settlement at Cordova spent some
time at the Mexican capital in an attempt to secure legal valida-
tion to a land claim dating back to the Maximilian era.
Finally, we may let our imaginations traverse a hundred and
fifty miles of forest and jungle in a northward course from. Cor-
dova and arrive at the scene of the second venture of southerner
at home building in the Mexican wilderness. Situated in the
northern part of the state of Vera Cruz, about 145 miles toward
the Rio Grande from the port of the True Cross, the site ex-
tended up from the mouth of the Tuxpan River for a distance
of thirty miles by direct line. The tracts of land upon which
the several settlements were made lay on the well-drained hill-
sides above the marshes and were, the settlers believed, the health-
iest anywhere within the tropics. They were not chosen, how-
ever, solely for the health of the occupants; they were choice
lands for coffee, sugar cane, corn, and toothsome fruits. The
choosers of these tracts could not have known that a few hun-
dred feet beneath the surface lay some of the most prolific oil
pools which the next half century would unbosom to man.
The first settlement in the Tuxpan valley made by former
residents of the United States was on an estate named Tumbadero.
Situated eighteen or twenty miles from the mouth of the river
by direct line, and embracing 10,138 acres, mostly suited to the
production of the crops just mentioned, the tract was occupied
by Major John H. Brown and friends April 28, 1866. Three and
a half years later ten or twelve American (the writer is follow-
ing the usual, but erroneous, custom in the use of the term)
families were living on Tumbadero, despite the general fear that
the estate might revert to its former proprietor at any time in
consequence of the original American purchasers remaining in
the United States and failing to make the stipulated payments.
Adjoining Tumbadero several families lived on an 1817-acre tract
purchased and paid for by one Coleman.
About half way between Tumbadero and the mouth of the
Tuxpan lay the 7,000-acre tract called Zapotal. Purchased and
paid for by other parties in the same year, its several families
also enjoyed comparative good health and a fair degree of pros-
perity. On this estate the enterprising inhabitants erected in
1869 a large sugar mill, with attachments for grinding corn and
cutting lumber.
In addition to these were perhaps twenty other families living
on small holdings scattered over the region between the mouth
of the river and a point thirty miles above and purchased indi-
vidually of the natives. All told the Tuxpan settlements num-
bered about a half hundred families in 1869, or three years after
the first arrivals, though the available information nowhere even
estimates the number of individuals included.
Once more we are fortunate enough to have a brief contempo-
rary account by a prominent colonist of a few conditions which
all the colonists confronted. It is by Major John H. Brown,
one of the many Texans who cast their lots in the valley of the
Tuxpan. The major said that most of the settlers were "poor,
though a few possessed means sufficient to open and cultivate
respectable farms. They are generally steady, industrious and
law abiding; and have lived as resident American citizens in
entire peace with the natives, without a single disturbance be-
tween them, or a personal outrage to complain of."
The colonists, however, felt aggrieved at customshouse "exac-
tions and delays, and especially at being heavily taxed by duties
on tools, implements and machinery brought by them to aid in
developing a section in which neither a wagon, plough nor hoe
had ever been used by the natives."
He then mentions the example of the planters who attempted
to import a sugar mill by installments. On the arrival of the
first small installment they were compelled to pay heavy duties
on the whole machine, regardless of the fact that the last parts
would not arrive until six months later.
Other obnoxious examples followed. A poor widow who sought
to import a piano in order to practice her profession of music
teaching was forced to sell her cherished instrument to pay the
one hundred-dollar duty demanded. More: Major Brown him-
self was asked to pay a customshouse duty of $12.80 on a box of
seeds intended for gratuitous distribution and costing only $10
in the city of Galveston, Texas, though after a strong protesta-
tion that the law admitted seeds free, and a vexatious delay, the
box was delivered. These and other impositions "occurred, as
if designed to deter foreigners from locating in that fertile but
wilderness country."
28
The only direct communication between the Tuxpan and the
United States was through the port of Galveston. Since most of
the settlers had come from. Texas, this line of contact was not in
all respects inconvenient, though the small sailing vessels that
almost scorched in the Hazing sun as they crossed the Gull of
Mexico were not exactly like the floating palaces of today.
29
The postscript to Major Brown's communication from which
the above extracts have been taken is worthy of quotation in full.
It reads:
With some reluctance I venture to allude to the impression to
some extent existing in our native land, that this settlement is
composed of disaffected ex-southerners. I cannot speak for the
entire little community, because I am not intimate with all, but
if there is a single one who wishes to denationalize or un-Ameri-
canize himself I do not know it,--nor do I believe there is one
such. On the contrary, though a large majority hail from the
South, they have come here chiefly to recuperate from the rav-
ages of the war, and they earnestly pray for the happiness, pros-
perity and glory of their native country in all its length and
breadth. Moreover a fair portion are from the North, includ-
ing several married ladies, (like my own wife) who are not
mentioned.
We have as earnestly desired emigrants from the North as from
the South, regarding them as of the same blood, language, religion
and free institutions, and realizing that, though lately engaged
in dreadful and lamentable strife, they are nevertheless the only
people under the sun combining all the great elements of affilia-
tion with us as citizens of a free, representative Republic.
This postscript was probably more tactful than truthful--not-
withstanding the fact that three years of pioneering in a wilder-
ness under a foreign flag act as a palliative, if not as a perma-
nent cure, for piques of almost any number and character. At
any rate, it was timely: accompanying it was a suggestion that
an American consul was needed to shield the settlers in their
political and economic difficulties with the Mexican officials; fol-
lowing closely was a petition signed by fifty-four American resi-
dents urgently requesting the United States government to send
out such agent. Whether the petition were granted, the available
information fails to reveal; the present writer suspects it was not.
As in the case of several of the colonists which southerners
attempted to plant in the tropics, the newspapers and other
records for the period beyond the beginnings are much too silent.
All of the curious would give much to know what happened in
the valley of the Tuxpan after the first four years. While the
present writer suspects that not all the southerners were uprooted
immediately upon the hushing of the records, he must leave the
imaginations of the readers unsatiated until the appearance of the
novelists.
30
FOOTNOTES:
and Register, October 23, 1867, and June 8, 1868.
ary 3, 1865, consequent upon a conversation with the lieutenant governor
of British Honduras, in Belize Dispatches, III.
May 9, 1867, in Mexican Despatches, XXX.
Picayune, June 14, 1867.
Register, September 28, 1868.
it appeared in the Daily Richmond Enquirer, January 26, 1866.
and Register, June 15, 1866.
September 10, 1865, in Mexican Despatches, XXX.
Picayune, February 3, 1867.
1866.
annah Daily News and Herald, May 31, 1866.
veston News.
Picayune, February 3, 1867. It gives an interesting history of the Cór-
dova experiment.
can. Minister Thomas H. Nelson, September 10, 1869; see Nelson's dis-
patch of September 28, 1869, in Mexican Despatches, XXXVII.
minister to Mexico, January 5, 1870, in Mexican Despatches, XXXVIII;
The Daily Picayune, February 12, 1868.
How to cite:
Lawrence F. Hill, "Confederate Exodus to Latin America", Volume 39, Number 4, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v039/n4/contrib_DIVL4012.html
[Accessed Mon Nov 23 14:10:57 CST 2009]
