The Confederados

Of all the colonies founded by former Confederates in Latin America, the most important was established by William Norris at Americana in southeastern Brazil. For 125 years the people in Americana have held on to their language and customs, while prospering within and contributing to the larger Brazilian economy and society. The original settlers came from Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina, and some of them returned home for visits from time to time. Much has been written about these people, but there has been relatively little scholarly inquiry into the historical context and the events of the migration itself, the cultural impact that these confederados exerted on their host country, and the ways in which the original settlers and their descendants fit into the larger Brazilian society. Most immigrant nationalities arriving in Brazil were quickly absorbed by the surrounding culture. Although the Confederates numbered but a few thousand and appeared earlier than most of the groups from other nations, they maintained distinctive traits, and many of their descendants still speak English as a first language. The editors provide an excellent scholarly examination of the confederados that is unique in its approach. This volume focuses on the Norris settlement, near present-day Americana, and makes clear the ways in which the Americans influenced Brazilian culture beginning in the 1860s and continuing to the present.

The Baltimore connection -- Moving to Brazil -- The importance of agricultural, social, and economic conditions in Brazil -- Ideologies: race, religion, politicians, and scientists -- Protestantism, education, and the Campo Cemetery grounds.

The Lost Colony of the Confederacy is the story of a grim, quixotic journey of twenty thousand Confederates to Brazil at the end of the American Civil War. Although it is not known how many Confederates migrated to South America-estimates range from eight thousand to forty thousand-their departure was fueled by bitterness over a lost cause and a distaste for an oppressive victor. Encouraged by Emperor Dom Pedro, most of these exiles settled in Brazil. Although at the time of the Civil War the exodus was widely known and discussed as an indicator of the resentment against the Northern invaders and strict governmental measures, The Lost Colony of the Confederacy is the first book to focus on this mass migration. Eugene Harter vividly describes the lives of these last Confederates who founded their own city and were called Os Confederados. They retained much of their Southernness and lent an American flavor to Brazilian culture. First published in 1985, this work details the background of the exodus and describes the life of the twentiethcentury descendants, who have a strong link both to Southern history and to modern Brazil. The fires have cooled, but it is useful to understand the intense feelings that sparked the migration to Brazil. Southern ways have melded into Brazilian, and both are linked by the unbreakable bonds of history, as shown in this revealing account. The late EUGENE C. HARTER retired from the U.S. Senior Foreign Service and lived in Chestertown, Maryland, until his death in 2010. He was the grandson and greatgrandson of Confederates who left Texas and Mississippi as a part of the great Confederate migration in the late 1860s. Harter is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms. Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.

Using letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to take us inside the minds of Civil War soldiers—black and white, Northern and Southern—as they fought and marched across a divided country, this unprecedented account is “an essential contribution to our understanding of slavery and the Civil War" (The Philadelphia Inquirer). In this unprecedented account, Chandra Manning With stunning poise and narrative verve, Manning explores how the Union and Confederate soldiers came to identify slavery as the central issue of the war and what that meant for a tumultuous nation. This is a brilliant and eye-opening debut and an invaluable addition to our understanding of the Civil War as it has never been rendered before.

In early 1864, as the Confederate Army of Tennessee licked its wounds after being routed at the Battle of Chattanooga, Major-General Patrick Cleburne (the "Stonewall of the West") proposed that "the most courageous of our slaves" be trained as soldiers and that "every slave in the South who shall remain true to the Confederacy in this war" be freed. In Confederate Emancipation, Bruce Levine looks closely at such Confederate plans to arm and free slaves. He shows that within a year of Cleburne's proposal, which was initially rejected out of hand, Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, and Robert E. Lee had all reached the same conclusions. At that point, the idea was debated widely in newspapers and drawing rooms across the South, as more and more slaves fled to Union lines and fought in the ranks of the Union army. Eventually, the soldiers of Lee's army voted on the proposal, and the Confederate government actually enacted a version of it in March. The Army issued the necessary orders just two weeks before Appomattox, too late to affect the course of the war. Throughout the book, Levine captures the voices of blacks and whites, wealthy planters and poor farmers, soldiers and officers, and newspaper editors and politicians from all across the South. In the process, he sheds light on such hot-button topics as what the Confederacy was fighting for, whether black southerners were willing to fight in large numbers in defense of the South, and what this episode foretold about life and politics in the post-war South. Confederate Emancipation offers an engaging and illuminating account of a fascinating and politically charged idea, setting it firmly and vividly in the context of the Civil War and the part played in it by the issue of slavery and the actions of the slaves themselves.

This volume examines the daily lives of soldiers and families during the Civil War considering the roles and experiences of men, women, and children, black and white, with special sections on religion and popular culture.

Six authoritative views on the economic, military, diplomatic, social, and political reasons behind the confederacy's defeat.