isolated unit in the shenandoah valley and southwest virginia that they ust di will gsbo to the nearest commanders and surrender or theymattox t will disband and go home. some go back to get parole passes because they want that piece of paper. a lot of different things. that's the particular route they take. >> why did the majority side with the confederacy? >> the majority of the indians . look at their history, they have been removed and trailed tears and the united states government and the military is their y can traditionalga enemy.ings d hoping they can gain more independence. it's natural.

things turn around at the end ofho the war. it's because of the treatment of a the united states government andnce back the homeland and we settled in oklahoma. they had a chance to end it. thank you. >> for those who have more questions for bert he is in the lobby signing his book so you can ask your questions there. >> you have been watching american history tv. more from the seminar on the closing of the civil war in 1865. coming up the battles of sailor's creek and the battle of appomatlox. >> later today, the ceremonies marking the 150th anniversary. in april of 1865 confederate

general robert e lee met ulysses s grant andsz/ endered his army of northern virginia ending introduce

our next speaker. dr. coles: our second speaker is casey clabough. casey is a professor at lynchburg college and editor of the james dickey review and is english graduate director. a richmond native who grew up and appomattox county, he has editor of the multivolume "best creative nonfiction of the south," "texas review press" and a variety of other things. one of the editors of the encyclopedia of virginia, which is online. he's had a number of fellowships and received a number of awards. he has published over 100 works in anthologies and periodicals

such as the sewanee review, the virginia quarterly review and so on. author of " confederados: a novel of the americas." the confederates that left the u.s. at the end of the war and went to brazil. i remember from 30 or 40 years ago reading an article about that. bill maybe wrote that and i have never heard of it and i got interested. i'm looking for to hearing his top. -- his talk. his talk today is entitled " confederados. casey clabough. [applause] professor clabough: thank you dr. coles. thank you all for being here and for inviting me.

to extend the last speaker's eloquent comment about the end of the war being a time of uncertainty, i'd like to . >> in a time of uncertainty i would like to begin with that since that's essentially the reason for the strange story of these people who came to be called at least in brazil confed raddos. former family and civilians and soldiers and administrators. we somehow ended up inuoo brazil.$f> it's such a dark slate in terms of history there is only one book in existence that came out in the 90s.1ifp r(t&háhp &hc% the university of'jñg alabama.

i would encourage students and watching scholars, watching those interested in pan american history as well as civil war.qfzy there is a lot of work that needs to be done. i am a little out of my element among historians who write historical fiction. did a lot of historical research for my book and my fictional title.@wg> how does someone come to have an interest in the confed raddos? the answer is marriage.

i married a localruy buckingham county who had=m t ann set offer who fought in the civil,8éj and months rangers and who afterward for various reasons was compelled, he was a bachelor, young guy +! was compelled to leave the country. and going back to bert's comment, reconstruction4bw these various surrenders it's a time of uncertaintyãça lot of southerners are very concerned. how are we going to be treated? will it be marshall law? are we going to be hungó6k as one of the generals seemed to hopedií that his solders would be? what's going to happen? and how long is marshallt÷r law going to last? are we ever going to have any measure of freedom again? so you have to kind of put@uçg yourself in thatz mindset to understand why there were these

people who were desperate enough to leave the south, which they fought for desperately in many cases for several phdyears. so inq?9ky my wife'ssqñ an ses ters case, he got into some local trouble and through a mutual acquaintance discovered that there were virginians who were&f,, traveling to brazil and, in fact, this was not a virginia phenomenon. it was something that was happening throughout the i and the reason for it was that, at least in the case of brazil, it had been advertised inbj.=ñ newspapers ande0ç] places like new

all over by brazilian officials. and the idea was that brazil being an enormous country still an enormous country, as you know needed further development of its interiorf3ix and its government officials thought that, you know, whatj immigrants to have than these confederates who have advanced agricultural knowledge compared to a lot of other perspectivey]60 immigrants. obviouslyq?zzare not happy with how things are going at home. so they specially were given land grants to come to brazil. so that'stb the reasoning behind it. and just to bring home bert's point, i would like tot/óx 'á read something briefly called -- it's

from the virginia magazine ofx history andaw called/,q alternative to apmaticsa)pn is the title.

the trigger. because he chose not to live in the world the war w if many confederates shared that patriots grim revulsion for the consequences of military defeat, few imlated his meth of escape. most came to terms as best they could with the new political, economic gr and social order ushered in by the war. andef& and to establish a southern presence in many different parts of the world. although many of these exiles wp" remanded romantic rebels, haunted strangers in strange lands, many otherswyantalented,fh dedicated, determined made substantial contributions to their adopted countries and coincidentally deprived their homeland of one of its most precious ñr+$resources. still others dreamed dreams and devised schemesk hated yolk of yankee domination.

by the way, that line about depriving the south of resources just one otherñkym fact about peopleiqóñ leaving or not leaving general robert e. lee when asked about immigration, he was5ámuñ against&'z)pá and this was symbolized as well when he took over the or assumed the presidentship at washington college which later became washington and lee university, he thought that it was very important for particularly young ø

but in some cases necessary. now i would like to read just a basic definition of what a con fedrado is what this constitute constituted. it's a confusing term. on the one8v'9 you have former southerner confederate. you have brazilian colonist. what really is theé)jñ crux of a confederados. what's their story in-ohúçgeneral. and so this is a working definition that i use based on primary sources when i was doing research for=m6%ñ my1db book.l82 the confederados immigrantjkg1 focuses on essentially a person who left north america between .b 1865 and 1870 and settled in such areas at

narrow. the history proved only the settlements in santa barbara and americanaere[y successle. it is estimated that more than 50% of those who travelled to brazil eventually returned to the united states due to various unanticipated hardships. however, those wh][- remain tended to congregate arouf>5fbu 9 the william kornl norris. first settled in 1865 the americans in this area have retained their sense of confederate and american identity. that's even true today. and in a country of immigrant groups such as brazil those people not only remember their confederate an zesters but embrace their heritage as way of distinguishing themselves from other brazilian groups.

so, that's one thing to keep in mind as well. this is not an m0 issuehd#éñ that'st0 - limited to the conclusion of the civil war and you know,k4óq the dt ensuing two or three decades following it. it's anfq&çñ on-ist going narrative. in fact every8rx. year in santaq barbara there's a celebration in which confederados comeú« il]xç and celebrate their heritage. they played dixie but they sang it in portuguese. if you look at the 1 who are participating, a large portion of them are people of wmlor. so, in other words -- but they're wearing uniforms and the la4 attire.

and so it's a very -- and there's the confederate battle flag all over the place. so it's a very surreal kind of thing to witness in another country. these people celebrating their confederate heritage yet at the same time, having been wholly integrated into brazilian society,x]7"ñethnically, linguistically, economically but it's still important to them that they have this story in their past. and just as an aside, a former first lady president and georgia governorv confederados heritage and there was quite a bit of media glitz when they traveled to this festival, i believe in the late

1970s. her family though was among one of the families that returned. they did not stay. but it did result in some dialogue and some exchange programs betweenbo young confederados brazilian confederados coming to spend time in the south and georgia and american contemporary georgiaens journeys to santa barbara to¥1/# time among these confederados. so i think that's very interesting as well. so what was it like to be a confederados? the quote that i read mentioned the hardship and various other factors that came with the experience. it's true that slavery still existed in brazil. brazil was the last country abolish slavery in the 1880s.

howeve$tíb for any southerner hoping to acquire slaves they would find that for one thing they couldn't afford them. they were much more expensive in brazil. also slavery as an economic institution and social institution was on the way out any way in brazil. although, as opposed to the united states, it wasí?ñd abolished eventually through peaceful means. that is within brazil. there were actually military elements that contributed to its abolishment, most notably the war of the triple alliance which involved para guy, brazil and argentina. if a slave were to enlist in the brazilian army for that war, he

was automatically guaranteed his freedom once he had served his time as a soldier. so those factors were leading to the abolishment of slavery in brazil and of course disenfranchised southerners had not the means to acquire slaves to assist them with labor, to assist them with developing these land grants that they had received from the brazilian government. so what did they do? they had to work really hard, really hard. i would compare it in american history to some of the grizzly details of the jamestown settlement in its infancy. there wasn't cannibalism, as there was at jamestown, but, you know, there were people who were

literally starving at times as they tried to develop crops, as they tried to -- you know, the bull tongue plow, for example, didn't exist in brazil, so they were trying to make their own, trying to clear fields for crops and so forth and a lot of time their land grants were in very remote places. so even if you successfully grew something, it was very difficult to get it to a place where it could be taken by rail to rio de janeiro to be in a the roads were really bad. they're still really bad in brazil in rural brazil. so i'm going to read -- the next thing i'm going to do is read a brief description from a typical confederados. this is a person who visited awd]ñ confederados. he was a civil war veteran from tennessee and these were the

living circumstances of this veteran in brazil who is trying to make a go of at it a a farm mer ch the farm eers home is sichsed a fu mills distance in the large clearing at the forrest at the base of a plateau that is some hundred feet above the river. all around there were splendid masses of green trees and lime trees and great pale banana plants and bo those a bit of untouched forrest with a giant brazilian nut tree towering over it. the farmer says with all the beauty of the site it evidently has a hard time of it. i still have a hard time of it. i'm a little discouraged. the land is excellent but the stream is too small to give me good waterpower. and without that, i can't imagine a large cane plantation. the man went;t

how prices he receives for his produce are not very good. the traders take advantage of his helplessness. he can't speak portuguese only speak english. it would be like an immigrant in this country can't speak english. it's a huge disadvantage. all the americans are cultivating -- all the americans who are cultivating sugar cane the juice is distilled into rum which is sold. probably coffee or cocoa might pay better but our colonists came here without money. there's the disenfranchisement again. and they could not wait for slow-greing crops. the farmer tells me how he and his family were housed with the others and a great thatched building, how the÷iscolonists were supportive for a while on government rations until they could locate their plantations and get their first crops. how they had to struggle with utter poverty work without

tools, live as' ñ best they could until their fields were established. he hadz0 was a small clearing with a dozen trees. the family lived in a shed until they could delay thatched house ./ the farmer had to bring provisions from santarem on his back. it was a long time before he could cut a road and longer before he had horses. he had to grind cane with a wooden mill until he could procure an iron one from the u.s. he had to get things on credit and pay a premium. horses were obtained at a sacrifice. he had been his own carpenter, everythi at great sacrifice. he has been his own carpenter, mason, machinist everything. it was a long time before he indian could even hire a single indian is elf to work for him. and now after seven years of hard struggle he finds himself with what? a plantation that he could not s

sell for one fourth of its real are no value b simply because there are no buyers. a burden of debt that it will take him a long time to pay and hi himself with a broken down body and a discouraged heart. so, there you go. maybe things aren't so bad in the united states after all.they w and of course they were getting letters. it's not like they were living in a vacuum in these remote places. they were getting letters from home informing the confederados of how things were proceeding. and that reconstruction despite its rough spots and problems wasn't as bad as they had imagined. remember from the previous talk that sense of uncertainty and fear. so this was the situation and, you know for some families, you

know they could live that colonial lifestyle and it was t was preferable to returning to the south. it was just too painful for them to return, but 50% chose to return because of situations ust to like -- scenarios like the one irazil. just shared with you. it was just too difficult to make a living in brazil.bout so with that -- and i asked patrick about this -- he thought it was okay. and considering that the topic is so unexamined and that many of you may have varying questions about it i checked return with patrick about opening the floor a little earlier and then maybe returning to some more reading later. to the so, please, if you have any questions, please come up to the mic at this time. >> thanks casey, for h ques

enlightening us. i see people wandering right up to those microphones with some of those questions, but i'm going to preempt them and ask ife the first question. did you and your wife make a pilgrimage to brazil while researching your book? second question for that is there a count of the number of confederados in brazil today? >> the answer to the first question is yes. i was fortunate to get a research travel grant from the brazilian government to spend a couple of weeks down there. and so i wasn't able to go to santa barbara and see the festival firsthand. there's video footage of it mo which i've seen before but i

was more interesting in tracing de ja the ancestors footsteps. they had come into port at rio n. de janeiro. the government housed them for a while as it had this tennessee gentleman. and then in the ancestors case ve he had gone to the state that essentially is -- would be comparative to v the west virginia of brazil.s so very rugged very poor, very run down. it's called es perree toe sen toe and its major city is lunharis. that's where his land was located. yeah. i spent a lotes of time. it definitely wasn't a glamour trip to brazil. i spent a lot of time riding e writ around on back roads. i did get some really good --

fascinating pictures of anacondas. that ended up one of them ended up on the back of the book. they were just kind of sunning regar themselves and seemed rather harmless. with regard to the other question historians still disagree about how many ho confederados and their families or how many southerners and their families actually went to brazil and other countries. and it kind of goes back to ron wilson's question to the last speaker about paroles or the lack thereof. to some extent to the lusion conclusions of many modern wars, it's just that the records are being -- are-[çople huge movements of people going every which way. given that chaotic element it is hard to put a number on how many southerners actually migrated.

today it is estimated, brazil has a large population similar to that of the u.s. so it is less than 1%, perhaps .5% of the entire population, a small minority. >> is this microphone on? my name is james, i am from >> is this microphone on now? very interesting talk. my name is james omen and i'm from williamsburg. diwnd anyer of the former slavesñ=á come with theirbw) formerkx ñ owners to brazil? that's the first part. and i understand that -- becausehat br i got interested in this subject years ago. i understandm that brazil has nothing anywhere like the

problem of racial relations that the united states has. can you comment on those two questions? thank you. >> sure.t the answer to the first questions, forme is g%áíçyes, in some cases former compan slaves didy accompany southern families toyónx÷ brazil. however, that immediately became a thorny issue given that you know, they had technically in rnment terms of -- as far as the u.s. government was !t concerned been freed np north america and then arriving in brazil there was no)u real means to reenslave them that the government was willing to get involved with. so, yes in some cases african-americans did travel l with their -- the families that aves. formerly had owned them to

brazil, but they were -- they weren't slaves.ventua they essentially just worked with the family or]ñ$ eventually went their ownán ways. as opposed to the second question, brazil most definitely had -- and to this day is much more open and accommodating in do wit terms of its various ethnicities. and that hasyo to do with the development of the country itself. indig mean you had portuguese. you had a very strong indigenous presence. and then the people that to colonists that had initially developed brazil were from all yo overu europe even into north africa. so, you know you had italians

germans, even turkish immigrants and then you throw in thegw indigenous peoples of brazil and african-americans brought in for slave labor and you've got -- you pool that is more 2÷ñ diverse than the united statesfb9 and more used ere al toso working eñ%q ! 9ñd still i might add they were also bonded and still are to an extent very much by common a very religion, the catholic church had a very strong presence there as well. but a >> hi, i'm george dych. i don't have a question but a quick story which i thinkñ98 you might find interesting. friend of mine who is representative in brazil, we ing vacationed last summer together and she told us a story about sitting next to a supreme court justice justice, may have been the chief wom

justice of the supreme court in perfec brazil. a tl blonde-haired blue-eyed woman who was perfectlyq.kt portuguese in her language but reminded my prend of having a southern hospitality. turns out this woman was a confederados desen sent. the off woman who has ascended to but re the topta of the judicial food chain in brazil but yet retains very much of her southern culture. i thought that was pretty=iqñ fascinating. >> yeah. it's #0z9interesting. i would say that brazil is very different from other south american countries in a number of respects. obviously it's very -- it's a strong economic power. it's a verydr0< large7:$xñ country now. but, you know you go there and i've been in other places in e with central america, south america

where, you know, it's kind of strange to see someone with br blonde and blue eyes. it's really not that strange in brazil and i would say argentina i as well just because there's a long traditioncml northern european immigration to that -- to those areas to those countries. thank you for that story. w >> yes.at i'm williamñ=p thompson former chaplain at hampton sidney college and now resident.efore an i've heard you before on this f casey, at various local venues the and i want to make a5vnb comment about a localhaf2y confederados themer. here. i'm a retired southern presbyterian minister. in 1867 the southernqx presbyterian .x&udenomination established a -- its foreign d mission fu;c9ñ in brazil.ó"épproac

nowta u(j not as it turned out to be an evangelical approach to theslj" native the r population orom to protestants wishing to change from the romans, and catholic church there, but the reality is that -- and i can ey speak to this because presbyterian seminary was l of located at hampton sidney there were several of our initial southern presbyterian evangelical missionaries who went to brazil in the late 1860sy not to0oz3 convert but essentially to be a chaplain presence to our kind of people who had immigrated as confederados. profess there was a strong appeal by a theology professor to get some people from this area to go to brazil as confederados. he made an especially strong

appeal to mrs. thorntonf:la who lived over hereeñ2!xon beach street because her husband was killed at sharpsburg,d home here but she had four younghe boys and he said they have their chance of full development to brazi get out ofl. here and go to brazil. her local minister, thew-8 pastor of the presbyterian church told byteri hianm to leave his parishioners alone f that he would theirhcó( spiritual> thank you.ajority >> i just had a quick question. do you think the majority of the re people, do you have any

information on this, left for political reasons not wanting to live under yankee rule or was it morexg economics hoping to perhap reestablish a slave institution in brazil or elsewhere? and also, do you have any informationjxdñ perhaps about the states t2ñ likely to have left were deep south states like alabama i am mississippi or upper south states, which i would think it would be deep south states but i'm just guessing on that? >> well, let me start with your last question, yes, it was predominantly.jñs deep south states where it was -- where the brazilian government advertised and also the ports lended some themselves to transportation to brazil as well. although, there were somefxh= norf virginians.s they would havepejñ left from norfolk and[r.q)e was a man in

lynchburg whose last name was noonen who was sort of the point person for gathering people[iá interested in traveling to brazil.omics now, in terms of your other question, that's more difficult economics versus politics. i would say, again, you know the fact that the brazilian government was offering land grants, you know, you could essentially go and have free land to work, obviously that was a draw to people who had been disenfranchised by the war.you ha but, you know, at the same time, that was also]ab=5a9% by even if you had trepidation about that, it was also accompanied by that post it i surrender uncertainty. again, it's very difficult to what i get into that ]bau be? how long are there going to be union soldiers running towns and

cities? is there going to be widespread abuse? what is going to happen? that kind of fear and anxiety coupled with the economic factor , those elements worked in tandem to draw people to brazil. >> my name is dennis. can you describe higher profile can veterans that went down south or were these ordinary folks? professor clabough profile confederates that went gain, down southgo or were these just ordinary folks? up >> well,wclp again going back to -- i brought up lee and his disdain for people h leaving the south but at the same time, someone ofs he that stature had alternatives

after the war. there were things÷v(g÷ he couldr do because of his position and#rzñ his it fgaku(jz and his fame and his standing. so yeah,dáñ say junior officers and below who took this -- i [xo%6> mentioned the kernel william norris settlement. so i would say from that military rank and below were predominantly the people who left. again, going back to the doctor's question about why be motivated to go? there had to be an economic need and also possibly a political drive as well or a political concern about what the future did held. >> of course england and france never did recognize amt brazil take

sides in the war? professor clabough: it is interesting. throughout the war brazil was essentially pro-southern. largely the reason for that, you would think it might have to do with the issue of slavery. as near as i could discover, it had mostly to do with the brazilian emperor they were still an empire at that time. the emperor's name was dom pedro ii. esse brazilian 12 djemperor. the emperor's name was don pedro ii. d secondly the u.s.? brazil at the time from the u.s. government from washington d.c. had personally insulted don pedro ii at some social that

occasion. and so that was the main apparently the main reasonomá- that there wasn't a closer to do association betweenwi the brazilian government and washington. it had less t to do with politicsgtoñ and more with the whim of the differen emperor. so again that's where governmental and culture differences come into play. the ambassador was -- the u.s. ambassador was kind of a pushy person and that didn'tkwújñ go over well5m emperor. yes, sir. >> in connection with theáñ settlement of some exconfederates in other latin/

american countries was there in the case of the brazilian exconfederates, any people in the united states, anyifn] asians either working either agents ght ha fromve brazil who may have organized any of these people to migrate to brazil? >> oh, certainly. i think if i understand your question correctly were there i p guess for lack of a better term, confederate point people that were sent to brazil ahead of time and then organized migration? >> yes. even tore the i point of organizing people here in theuú?áeáu$áupáes to get on boardps ships and so forth and go down. >> oh, certainly. i mean that was the function of the aforementioned mr. noonen invernme lynchburg. he wasxl< essentially an oppertiv6

for the brazilian government to help round up people in the central virginia area who might be interested in going tou+% brazil, identify them and then get them organized to travel to them norfolk and charter a ship to di send them on their way to brazil. so there were people like that in different cities in the south who basically championed the brazilian i al ternternativealternative. and then of course there were southerners -- in some cases usually the male of the family t if he wasn't deceased who would ck out go wahead to kind of scout out the area check out where the d not land grants were going to be, make arrangements with the brazilian government and if they didn't like what they saw, then is they might come back and consider staying more often than not was they went.

>> i was thinking about that farme because of this example you gave of the farmer who had been there for some time. it sounded like the area he hadas settled in s wasn'tom as promising as probably some of these#r'hñ other areas were. il >> well, most of the areasiqñ -- again, brazil is an enormous country. most of the areas were north, west and a little south of rio de janeiro. and so that essentially is ar6$i r tropic-like environment. i mentioned the banana trees for example in the description of the tennessee gentlemen. so, you know, the ground for example, was typically very rich but as you saw the main problem was not having the proper well. equipment, not having funding

and then the language barrier as well. i mean, for the most part the confederados really had to stick -- really7< had to stick together much in the way that immigrants do when they come to the united states today. if their mastery of english isn't very strong, they tend to develop sub committees within the larger community to pool their resources and get along. that was the situation with the confederados. they were immigrants just like any other kind of immigrant in a country where you don't speak the language. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> this will be our last qu question here. >> hi, i'm theresa from do yo charlotte, north carolina.her th do you know if there were otheran countries other than brazil that some of these exconfederates or