Ex-Confederate Descendants in Brazil and their Lost Cause Ethos

Chase H. McCarter is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of New Mexico. He is currently a Russel J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellow in the Humanities. Chase’s research interests include the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction, the nineteenth-century U.S. South, nineteenth-century U.S.-Latin American relations, war and society, and the history of emotions. He is currently working on his dissertation, “The Emotional World of Ex-Confederate Expatriates in Latin America, 1865–1870,” which examines the emotional backdrop of ex-Confederate expatriation to Latin America after the U.S. Civil War by exploring the affective factors that influenced ex-Confederates to choose exile abroad rather than face the sociopolitical Reconstruction of the South.

This past June I had the pleasure of visiting the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library where I examined the Americana (Brazil) Oral History Project collection (AOHP). The collection is the product of over forty interviews Dr. Eugene Carlisle of Cypress University conducted in 1978 with descendants of ex-Confederate emigrants who expatriated to Brazil after the U.S. Civil War. These emigrants settled in the vicinity of Santa Bárbara d’Oeste, a municipality in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. They formed a community that is today known as Americana—named so after the Americans who inhabited the area. These immigrants were part of a broader expatriation movement after the U.S. Civil War, which saw ex-Confederates immigrate to Latin America to escape the sociopolitical Reconstruction of the South. Scholars estimate that several thousand ex-Confederates immigrated to Brazil. Of the ex-Confederate settlements that emerged in Brazil in the late 1860s, Americana is the most notable, given the fact that the community today is still inhabited by descendants of the original emigrants.

My dissertation, “The Emotional World of Ex-Confederate Expatriates in Latin America, 1865–1870,” investigates how the emotions of defeat and white supremacy after the U.S. Civil War influenced ex-Confederates to expatriate to Latin America and form communities there such as Americana. I was drawn to the AHOP collection because of the insights Dr. Carlisle’s interviews with descendants provide into the legacy of the expatriation movement in Brazil and how descendants understand and internalized their history and the history of the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction. Specifically, Dr. Carlisle’s interviews—most of which were with second or third generation descendants—reveal what I call a Lost Cause ethos. That is, a worldview and emotional outlook shaped by the Lost Cause negation myth of the Civil War and the emotions of defeat and white supremacy. In my final dissertation chapter, I argue that descendants were influenced by a Lost Cause ethos that is a direct legacy of the ex-Confederate expatriation movement to Latin America, which is clearly evidenced in Dr. Carlisle’s interviews.

For context, the Lost Cause emerged in the United States almost immediately after the Civil War’s conclusion. Although the myth has multiple points of origin, it was fostered largely by the publication of works such as Edward A. Pollard’s The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates (1866), Jubal A. Early’s A Memoir of the Last Year of the War of Independence (1866), and Jefferson Davis’ The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881). A central premise of the Lost Cause argues that slavery was not the main issue between Northerners and Southerners. Rather, proponents contend that the issue of states’ rights ignited the U.S. Civil War. It also characterizes the institution of slavery as a benevolent one and argues that enslaved people were happy and faithful to white slaveholders. As a result, the sociopolitical Reconstruction of the South was, according to the myth, a vitriolic persecution of ex-Confederates who were only seeking to defend their homes in fighting. The ex-Confederates who immigrated to Brazil and founded the community of Americana carried these ideas with them. They reared their children and grandchildren in this myth, teaching them that slavery had nothing to do with the war and that the destruction of the South and federal Reconstruction forced ex-Confederates to flee and settle in Brazil. In effect, they painted the movement as one of a persecuted people who fled to Brazil for safety.

In my examination of Dr. Carlisle’s interview transcripts, I found evidence of this ethos. For example, in an interview with descendant Dr. James Robert Jones, then president of the Fraternidade Descendência Americana (Fraternity of American Descendants [FDA]), Carlisle asked him if he thought the Civil War and his ancestor’s choice to immigrate to Brazil had anything to do with slavery. Jones replied that both “had nothing to do against [sic] the slaves . . . or anything. They got along fine.” Alternatively, Jones suggested that his ancestor immigrated because “the Yankees were trying to run over the South” and “he [William Norris] wouldn’t put up with the Reconstruction.” Another descendant, Dora Pyles Lozano, responded similarly when asked the same question: “after the war you know, down South everything was going to wreck . . . after the war everything was so bad and they the North, and they put the n—–s in authority no, and they belonged to the white people.” [1] Fundamental to both Jones’s and Lozano’s responses is the idea that white Southerners were victimized at the end of the Civil War by the federal government’s Reconstruction policy—a central theme of the Lost Cause.

Some interviewees even expressed a bitterness toward the United States, particularly white Northerners, even though many had never visited the United States. For instance, Jones periodically used the phrase “damn yankees” in his conversation with Carlisle. Elizabeth McAlpine MacKnight, whose father was an original descendant, likewise used the phrase in explaining why her father came to Brazil, stating that he immigrated not because he objected to Black freedom but because he hated the “damn yankees” and could not stand living in a country where they ruled. MacKnight’s and Jone’s use of the phrase indicates that the emotions of Confederate defeat still resonated to some extent generations later. [2]

Another striking element in Carlisle’s interviews with descendants was the latter’s effort to soften the image of their ancestors. When asked what type of people they thought their ancestors were, several descendants explained that they were good and honorable people who were simply trying to escape the devastated South. Charles Benjamin McFadden explained to Carlisle that his grandfather, an original immigrant, left the South because “they had no way of making a living . . . because they had no workmen. Most of the young fellows were killed, many, many of them were killed. They had no capital, they had no slaves. So they just couldn’t make a living.” [3] McFadden’s recollection of his family history denies the fact that many ex-Confederates fled the South because they could not tolerate African American freedom and the new sociopolitical order of the South, which showcases how the Lost Cause permeated his understanding of the aftermath of the Civil War and his own family history.

Today, the same Lost Cause ethos that Dr. Carlisle encountered in his interviews with ex-Confederate descendants in 1978 still resides in Americana’s living descendants. Scholar Jordan P. Brasher has argued that this is clearly identifiable in the commemorative practices of the Americana community, such as their Museu da Imigração (Museum of Immigration), which functions to “remember” and “honor” the original ex-Confederate immigrants, and the Festa Confederada (Confederate Festival), a festival held once a year in Americana where community members dress up in Old South clothing and fly Confederate battle flags. [4] In 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and amid international protests against symbols of and monuments to white supremacy, the FDA faced intense criticism from Brazilian racial justice organizations, such as the Black Union for Equality (UNEGRO), for hosting its annual festa Confederada and flying Confederate battle flags. FDA president João Leopoldo Padoveze responded to these criticisms stating that the community would not cease its annual festival nor stop its display of Confederate battle flags. In relation to the flag, Padoveze stated to a Washington Post reporter that “It wasn’t racist, and neither were the Confederados who waved it.” [5] Such a defense of an objectively white supremacist symbol cannot be conceived as anything other than the product of a Lost Cause ethos that still permeates the community today.

My time at the Rose Library and work with the Americana (Brazil) Oral History Project collection confirmed that the ex-Confederate expatriation movement to Brazil created a long lasting ideological and emotional legacy that was certainly felt and espoused in 1978 by those descendants who spoke with Carlisle. Moreover, my work with this collection has affirmed that the Lost Cause misremembering of the U.S. Civil War is more than just a domestic negation myth, but one that also possesses a transnational dimension, which continues to shape how ex-Confederate descendants in Americana, Brazil understand their history and the history of the U.S. Civil War. In closing, I am extremely grateful for the chance to access this collection. I’m thankful to the Rose Library for preserving these documents that shed so much important light on the legacy of the ex-Confederate expatriation movement to Brazil and the transnational dimensions of the Lost Cause.

 

Footnotes:

[1] James Robert Jones, interview by Eugene D. Carlisle, 20 May 1978, p. 14, interview 2, transcript, folder 12, box 1, Americana (Brazil) Oral History Project collection, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia; Dora Pyles Lozano, interview by Eugene D. Carlisle, 7 June 1978, p. 10, interview 20, transcript, folder 18, box 1, Americana (Brazil) Oral History Project collection, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

[2] Elizabeth McAlpine MacKnight, interview by Eugene D. Carlisle, 20 May 1978, p. 6, 23, interview 1, transcript, folder 22, box 1, Americana (Brazil) Oral History Project collection, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

[3] Charles Benjamin MacFadden, interview by Eugene D. Carlisle, 24 May 1978, p. 20–21, interview 4, transcript, folder 20, box 1, Americana (Brazil) Oral History Project collection, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

[4] Jordan P. Brasher, “Creating ‘Confederates Pioneers’: A Spatial Narrative Analysis of Race, Settler Colonialism, and Heritage Tourism at the Museu da Imigração, Santa Bárbara d’Oeste, São Paulo,” Journal of Heritage Tourism 16, no. 1 (2021): 36. See also Jordan P. Brasher, “Contesting the Confederacy: Mobile Memory and the Making of Black Geographies in Brazil,” Focus on Geography, accessed 18 July 2024, https://www.focusongeography.org/publications/articles/brazil_confederacy/index.html.

[5] Terrence McCoy, “They Lost the Civil War and Fled to Brazil. Their Descendants Refuse to Take Down the Confederate Flag,” Washington Post, 11 July 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazil-confederate-flag-civil-war-americana-santa-barbara/2020/07/11/1e8a7c84-bec4-11ea-b4f6-cb39cd8940fb_story.html.