Confederados () is the Brazilian name for Confederate immigrants, all white Southerners who fled the Southern United States during Reconstruction, and their Brazilian descendants. They were enticed to Brazil by offers of cheap land from Emperor Dom Pedro II, who had hoped to gain expertise in cotton farming. The regime in Brazil had a number of features that attracted the Confederados, namely the continued legality of slavery, but also political decentralization and a relatively high commitment to free trade.
It is estimated that up to 20,000 American Confederates immigrated to the Empire of Brazil from the Southern United States after the American Civil War. Initially, most settled in the current state of São Paulo, where they founded the city of Americana, which was once part of the neighboring city of Santa Bárbara d'Oeste. The descendants of other Confederados would later be found throughout Brazil.
The center of Confederado culture is the Campo Cemetery in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, where most of the original Confederados from the region were buried. Because of their Protestant religion, they could not be buried in a Catholic cemetery, so they created their own cemetery, the first non-Catholic, non-indigenous cemetery in Brazil. The Confederado community has also established a Museum of Immigration at Santa Bárbara d'Oeste to present the history of Brazilian immigration and highlight its benefits to the nation.
The descendants still foster a connection with their history through the Fraternity of American Descendants, an organization dedicated to preserving the unique mixed culture. The Confederados also have an annual festival, called the Festa Confederada, which is used to fund the Campo Cemetery. The festival is marked by Confederate flags, traditional dress of Confederate uniforms and hoop skirts, food of the American South with a Brazilian flair, and dances and music popular in the American South during the Antebellum period.
Although the amount of Confederado descendants living in Brazil today is difficult to estimate, in 2016 they were believed to number in the thousands.
==History==<!-- EDITORS NOTE: Please do not add photographs of Legion buildings to this section. It would quickly become too unwieldy. Thank you. -->
thumb|right|Chapel at Santa Bárbara d'Oeste built by Confederate expatriates
After the war, many Confederate planters were unwilling to live by the new rules imposed by the Union's victory and the constitutional changes that followed: an end to chattel slavery, a new labor regime, and the loss of political power that came with African-American suffrage. Accustomed to raising cotton with the labor of enslaved people, some looked elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere for a place where their old life could be continued.
"Many persons who, from long habit and fondly cherished theories, have become strongly attached to the institution of African slavery, fancy that in Brazil they will find an opportunity for the permanent use of that system of labor — Brazil and the Spanish possessions being the only two slaveholding communities remaining in the civilized world," the New Orleans Daily Picayune wrote in September 1865.
The Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II saw an opportunity in the economic disruption in the southern United States and hoped to build up its cotton production for export to the looms of England and France, which had long relied on the Deep South. The Emperor encouraged the immigration of cotton planters from the former Confederacy to enable that expansion.
===Immigration to Brazil===<!-- EDITORS NOTE: Please do not add photographs of Legion buildings to this section. It would quickly become too unwieldy. Thank you. -->
thumb|right|Confederate expatriates in Brazil
Even before the end of the war in 1865, there was already talk of immigrating to Brazil, but very little was known about this country. After the war ended, there was such a revival of the issue that several emigration companies were formed. Representatives were sent to Brazil to check the land, climate, and facilities offered by the emperor.
In November 1865, the state of South Carolina formed a colonization society and sent Major Robert Meriwether and Dr. H. A. Shaw, among others, to Brazil to investigate the possibility of establishing a colony. On the way back, they published a report mentioning that two lords had already bought land and settled here.
Many Southerners who accepted the Emperor's offer lost their farms and homes during the war, were unwilling to live under occupation by Federal troops during Reconstruction, or simply did not expect an improvement in the Southern economic situation in the foreseeable future. Furthermore, Brazil would not ban slavery until 1888. The Confederates were the first organized Protestant group to settle in Brazil.
The Norrises bought land from the Domingos da Costa Machado and established themselves on the banks of Ribeirão Quilombo, at the time belonging to the municipality of Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, today the city of Americana. Upon his arrival, Colonel Norris began to give practical courses in agriculture to farmers in the region, interested in cotton cultivation and new agricultural techniques. The plow he brought from the United States caused so much sensation and curiosity that, within a short time, they had a practical agricultural school, with many students who paid him for the privilege of learning and still cultivating their gardens. The Colonel wrote to his family that he had made US$5,000 from that alone. In mid-1867, the rest of his family arrived, accompanied by many relatives.
thumb|Villa Americana in 1906
Numerous farms were founded by immigrants from the United States, commemorated today at the Santa Bárbara d'Oeste Immigration Museum. Cultivation and processing of cotton were significant. They established an intense trade, notably from 1875 onwards, with the arrival of the railroad and the installation of the Santa Barbara Station by the Companhia Paulista de Estradas de Ferro. Due to the constant presence of these immigrants, the village that was formed in the vicinity of the Station became known as "Vila dos Americanos", or "Vila Americana", and gave rise to the current city of Americana.
Pará
The city of Santarém, in the state of Pará, received a wave of expatriate families from the American Civil War that took place in the South of the United States. The first to land was the Riker family. In the 1970s, David Afton Riker published a book called The Last Confederate in the Amazon, which chronicles the saga of this migration and life in the new homeland. The Confederates and their descendants became notable in the business and political life of the region.
It is not known how many Confederado immigrants came to Brazil, but unprecedented research in the records of the port of Rio de Janeiro, by Betty Antunes de Oliveira, shows that around 20,000 U.S. citizens entered Brazil between 1865 and 1885.
The Confederate flag in Brazil did not acquire the same political symbolism as it has in the United States. After then-Governor Jimmy Carter's visit to the region in 1972, the city of Americana even incorporated the Confederate flag into its coat of arms. (It was removed a few years later under pressure from Italian-descendent residents, as the Confederados now comprise about a tenth of the city's population.) During his visit to Brazil, Carter also visited the city of Santa Bárbara d'Oeste and the grave of a great-uncle of his wife, Rosalynn Carter, at Cemitério do Campo. At the time, Carter noted that Confederate descendants sounded and looked exactly like American southerners.
The American immigrants introduced into their new home many new foods, such as pecans, Georgia peanuts, and watermelon; new tools such as the iron plow and kerosene lamps; innovations such as modern dentistry, modern agriculture, and the first blood transfusion; and the first non-Catholic churches (Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist). Some foods of the American South also crossed over and became part of general Brazilian culture such as chess pie, vinegar pie, and southern fried chicken. The immigrants also established public schools and provided education to their female children, which was unusual in Brazil at the time.
===Statistics===<!-- EDITORS NOTE: Please do not add photographs of Legion buildings to this section. It would quickly become too unwieldy. Thank you. -->
thumb|right|Confederate immigrant couple Joseph Whitaker and Isabel Norris
;American immigration to Brazil by State up to January (1867)
{|class="wikitable"
|- style="background:#009966;" colspan="2"
!State
!Immigrants
|-
|São Paulo
|800
|-
|Espírito Santo
|400
|-
|Rio de Janeiro
|200
|-
|Paraná
|200
|-
|Pará
|200
|-
|Minas Gerais
|100
|-
|Bahia
|85
|-
|Pernambuco
|85
|-
|Total
|2,070
|-
|}
The Confederate migrants were some 20,000 Southerners, from 12 southern states (e.g. Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi) who preferred the Brazilian wilderness to life under Union rule after the Civil War.
U.S. ancestry in Brazil
thumb|David Bowman Riker
;Number of American descendants by state
{|class="wikitable"
|- style="background:#009966;" colspan="2"
!State
!Descendants
|-
|São Paulo
|100,490
|-
|Espírito Santo
|50,258
|-
|Rio de Janeiro
|25,220
|-
|Paraná
|25,000
|-
|Pará
|24,800
|-
|Minas Gerais
|12,610
|-
|Bahia
|10,686
|-
|Pernambuco
|10,000
|-
|Total
|260,000
|-
|}
In popular culture
Yale University history professor Rollin G. Osterweis wrote Santarem, a novel about Confederados.
Notable Confederados
- Pérola Byington – philanthropist and social activist
- Rita Lee – singer and songwriter, known as the "Queen of Brazilian rock"
- William Hutchinson Norris – Alabama state senator
See also
- Immigration Museum of the State of São Paulo
References
Further reading
- Ray, Montana (November 16, 2020). "Os Confederados: 'Family and history' in the Plantation Americas". The Point.
- Cyrus B. Dawsey and James M. Dawsey editors, The Confederados: Old South Immigrants in Brazil, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1998.
- William Clark Griggs, The Elusive Eden: Frank McMullan's Confederate Colony in Brazil, Austin: University of Texas, 1987, about the failed Iguape Colony.
- Riccardo Orizio (Avril Bardoni, translator), Lost White Tribes: The End of Privilege and the Last Colonials in Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Brazil, Haiti, Namibia & Guadeloupe.
Archival material
- Auburn University in Alabama maintains a special collection of material related to the Confederado emigration, including correspondence, memoirs, genealogies, and newspaper clippings, especially related to Colonel Norris.
External links
<!--
===================================================================
WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A COLLECTION OF LINKS. Only a limited number of new links
should be added to this article. PLEASE DO NOT ADD external links to sites with
information already in the article or in its sources.
See Wikipedia:External links and Wikipedia:Spam for further details
===================================================================
-->
- Confederados collection at Auburn University
<!-- EDITORS NOTE: Please follow the WP:EL guideline where possible and consider discussing on the talk page. Thank you. -->