“Maybe That’s Just the Way I Read It," with Apologies to Billy Collins, by Jill Mikolaizyk

Workshopping poetry sometimes feels like
making your way through a verbal minefield.
You don’t know how much of someone
goes into the stanzas you’re meant to critique.

What if that image that didn’t work for you,
where the evening bumps into the stars,
is the half remembered fears of a child
who fell from a tree one night
and watched as the night sky came crashing down?
Or what if the blue jeans but standoffish voice
is something cultivated from years of code-switching,
a lifetime of language you thoughtlessly dismissed?

Maybe you just want to go home;
you’re roaming the decaffeinated streets
with a mind full of meetings and due dates
and you’re picking stanzas at random,
praising an image that was inspired
by the cough drops on the writer’s desk
and critiquing a metaphor drawn from
a traumatic memory involving a gardening hose.

How can you know what the author is thinking?
You do your best; you qualify until your words spiral,
say, I don’t know if anyone else was feeling that.
You weren’t trained to diffuse bombs, after all.
The least you can do is give everyone warning,
and hope that no one critiques that line in your poem
that made your eyes sting when you wrote it.

The Confederados: The Last Remaining Unreconstructed Confederates, by James Routhier

Introduction

They were the conquered but not the defeated. Their experiment at independence had ended in failure. Yet, despite the surrender of their government, they refused to acknowledge the new postbellum reality. They were the truly diehard Confederates. For them, there would be no swearing of allegiance to the Union; there would be no Reconstruction. Between 1866 and the late 1870s, and despite pleas from both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee to remain and rebuild the South,[1] some 40,000 of these people who found themselves without a country would emigrate from the former Confederacy to various countries throughout Latin America.

Several Latin American nations sought out these disaffected Confederates and extended invitations for them to begin a new life in a new country. Among these countries, four played the largest role: Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela, and Brazil. Each of these countries extended offers intended to entice the Southerners to their shores. Out of the 40,000 who chose immigration, half chose to accept the offer from Brazil. This paper specifically reviews the Brazilian offer and subsequent acceptance of the 20,000 who chose to forever leave the shores of the United States for life in Brazil. These Confederates would go on to be known as The Confederados.

Why?

In order to understand why these former Americans felt motivated to leave, it is important to understand what conditions were like throughout much of the South by April 1865. At the conclusion of the Civil War, much of the South lay in ruins. It was not just the vision of a Confederacy that had been destroyed. Throughout the region, homes, livelihoods, and entire communities had been lost. As one Confederate contemporary recalled, “The banks were ruined. The railroads were destroyed. Their few manufactories were desolated. Their vessels had been swept from the seas and rivers. The livestock consumed. Notes, bonds, mortgages, all the money in circulation…became alike worthless. The communities were without clothes and without food.”[2]  If the deplorable physical conditions were not enough, the psychological impact was also playing a role. As one Confederado descendant described, his ancestors were “helpless under military occupation and burdened by the psychology of defeat, a sense of guilt, and the economic devastation wrought by the war, many felt they had no choice but to leave.”[3] However, there were less than admirable reasons as well. As historians C.B Dawsey and J.M Dawsey succinctly stated, “The idea of living and working alongside their freed black labor frightened many Southerners.”[4] Regardless of the reasons, if staying was not an option, the question that needed to then be answered was where were these disillusioned Confederates to go?

Brazil

The response to that question was to come from four Latin American countries: Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela, and Brazil. Each of these countries saw an opportunity in the defeat of the South. There was valuable agricultural experience among the defeated Confederates. Each country extended offers in an attempt to persuade the Confederates to emigrate and bring that knowledge with them. Under Emperor Maximillian, Mexico went as far as to appoint a commissioner of colonization, naming former Confederate General John B. Magruder as chief of the land office.[5] The offers that came from Mexico, Honduras, and Venezuela were essentially the same. They included free passage from the Confederacy, 640 acres of land to heads of families, 320 acres to single men, freedom to worship as they saw fit, no taxation for one year, and a five year exemption from military service.[6] Families without a male head of household were not included in the offers extended by the would-be host countries.

Yet, it was Brazil that would make the most favorable offer – and the nation to which many of the Southerners felt the strongest bond. While the Brazilian offer included all that the other countries offered, Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II took several additional steps, such as offering to extend the existing railroad and road networks to the new communities. Brazil also had a favorable history with the Confederacy, not only harboring and resupplying their ships, but granting the Confederacy belligerent status during the war.[7] In addition to the economic benefits that Brazil offered, the climate of the country was alluring to many of the Southern planters. Unlike the depleted soils of the South, Brazil’s lush climate and fertile soils permitted high-quality cotton to be grown and harvested twice each growing year. This cotton could then potentially be sold to England, which was paying more for Brazilian cotton than it had for Southern cotton.[8]  Other crops, such as sugar cane, corn, rice and tobacco, also flourished in the Brazilian climate.

What most differentiated Brazil’s offer from the others was Emperor Dom Pedro II’s consideration of the entire community, and not just the planters. Brazil took the unusual step of reaching out to not only the planters, but the professional classes among the Southerners, as well. Through colonization of societies that soon began to appear in some Southern communities, the Brazilian Emperor reached out to doctors, dentists, teachers, merchants and artisans, as well as planters.[9] Several of these communities soon organized themselves into colonies and began to make arrangements to travel to Brazil. 

Security and economic concerns prompted these colonists to travel in large groups. As plans progressed, several groups merged plans, resulting in three large colonies and a scattering of smaller, independent groups. One colony was planned along the Iguape River region of Sao Paulo. A second colony was planned for the Espirto Santo region of Brazil, with the last colony, Santa Barbara, being located near Campina on the western end of the Sao Paulo region. All three colonies were eventually established. Of the three colonies, the Iguape River and Espirto Santo colonies soon failed because of a combination of poor climate, poor soil and the unfulfilled promise of road and rail extensions. The last surviving colony, Santa Barbara, would evolve into the current-day town of Americana. By then, Santa Barbara was known as the Norris colony, in honor of Alabama Colonel William Norris.[10] This town would become synonymous with the Confederados.

Initially, the groups of Confederate colonists arriving in Rio de Janeiro were greeted with much fanfare. Arriving ships were often met with speeches, and on several occasions, ships were greeted personally by Emperor Dom Pedro II as a band played “Dixie.”[11] In the beginning, Brazil lived up to its offer and provided accommodations and support to the arriving immigrants. As one former Confederate general wrote after arriving, “Balls and parties and serenades were our nightly accompaniment and whether in town or in the country it was one grand unvarying scene of life, love
and seductive friendship.”[12] For most of the arriving Southerners, conditions in their new home would never be as elegant again.  

Life in Brazil

As the boatloads of Southern immigrants arrived in Rio, circumstances for them began to change. While their initial welcome was both warm and sincere, Brazil and her emperor were soon distracted by other events of the day. By chance, 1865, which saw the end of the U.S. Civil War, also saw the beginning of the War of the Triple Alliance, pitting Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina against Paraguay. Further complicating matters, following the generous offers made by Brazil, was the collapse of the booming Brazilian economy, which plunged the country into depression.[13] This change in economic fortune meant that many of the promises of the Brazilian government went unfulfilled as Brazil struggled with a depressed economy, a bitter war, and eventually the failing health of its emperor.[14] These changing conditions would lead to the end of new arrivals by the mid-1870s.

For those who did make the journey, establishing the new colonies proved to be more difficult than expected. Once in Brazil, many members of the professional class chose to remain in the urban areas, such as Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, rather than travel on to the often primitive, newly established colonies.[15] Additionally, many of the newly arrived immigrants, upon arriving to the land they intended to farm, found that the vast size of Brazil meant that they were located far from those who had come before. Even for those who stayed, many found life as a pioneer difficult. As the other colonies failed, many of their inhabitants either returned to the United States or migrated to the Norris colony, which soon became the prominent Confederado colony in Brazil.

Former Confederate Colonel Anthony T. Oliver was one of the first to immigrate to Brazil and the Norris colony.[16] Accompanying him on the journey was his wife, Beatrice, and two teenage daughters. After settling in the Norris colony, Oliver purchased slaves and attempted to reconstruct his life as it had been in the antebellum South. By the end of the Oliver family’s first year in Brazil, Beatrice was dead from “consumption” <tuberculosis>, followed shortly by both teenage daughters. Upon being informed by locals that his Protestant wife could not be buried in the Catholic cemetery, Oliver donated a plot of land to be used as a Protestant cemetery. This cemetery soon came to be used exclusively by the Confederados. Soon, a chapel was built nearby, which became a center of worship – and community gathering space – for the colonists.[17]

As if the loss of his wife and daughters was not tragic enough, Oliver’s life would come to a sudden end four years following the loss of his wife. According to local legend, Oliver – who was one of the few colonists to actually own slaves – caught one of his slaves stealing and whipped him as punishment. The next day, this same slave broke into Oliver’s home and clubbed him to death with a hoe.[18] Whether factual or not, the tale illustrates the difficulties that would-be slave owners faced.

Those who purchased slaves and sought to recreate their antebellum way of life soon found disappointment. Not one of the Confederado attempts to recreate the plantation system in Brazil succeeded.[19] The failure of the Southern plantation system to transplant successfully was due to several factors, but mainly the fact that slavery was already being abolished in Brazil through such laws as 1871’s Law of the Free Womb.[20] This law made children born to slaves free citizens of Brazil. This gradual move towards the abolition of slavery meant that the slaves of Brazil would not be as subservient as had been their northern American counterparts. By 1888, Dom Pedro II had signed the Lei Aurea (Golden Law) and abolished slavery forever.

Aftermath

When The Confederados arrived in Brazil, they brought not only agricultural knowledge but introduced several farming implements previously unknown to Brazilian farmers. Among these newly introduced tools were the spade, the rake, and the mold-board plow.[21] Many of the transplanted farmers soon saw their crops flourishing and, in addition to native Brazilian crops, soon introduced pecans and watermelons to the region.[22] One particular type of watermelon, known as the “Georgia Rattlesnake,” proved to be so popular that by the late 19^th century, Confederado growers were shipping more than 100 carloads of melons daily from Americana to various parts of Brazil.[23] These new crops, including the highly successful watermelon, contributed to the economic success and growth of the area.

Today, descendants of the original settlers continue to keep many of their traditions and customs alive. A startling example is that up until after World War II, descendants of the original settlers continued to speak English as their first language.[24] Even now, with English being a second language, linguists have determined that “The Confederados perhaps have retained a notably pure form of late nineteenth-century Southern accent, which has changed and disappeared in the United States.”[25] This gives historians the opportunity to study just how Southern Americans once spoke. The so-called Southern drawl that we associate with the American South is, in fact, a latter-day development.[26] In 1972, Jimmy Carter, then Georgia governor, journeyed to the region, where Rosalynn Carter’s great-uncle is buried. Carter was moved enough by the way the locals spoke that he remarked, “The most remarkable thing was, when they spoke, they sounded just like people in South Georgia.”[27] What is spoken is essentially a Southern accent minus any trace of what modern Americans would call a “Southern drawl.”

Conclusion

While Brazil was not the only destination for disaffected Confederates at the end of the Civil War, it is the only place where a colony was not only successfully established, but flourished. The Confederados who stayed built a community that continues to thrive to the present day. There are now descendants of the original Confederados living throughout Brazil. As historian C.B. Dawsey indicates, “They are proud to have Brazil as their mother country, and the United States as their grandmother country.”[28] They are a people of two lands.

Any white supremacist beliefs that may have accompanied the Confederados on their journey have long ago lost their potency in the multi-racial make-up of Brazil. The current heirs of The Confederado heritage view their ancestors as trailblazers and freedom seekers, not racists. As one descendent indicated, “We’re the most Southern and the only truly unreconstructed Confederates that there are on Earth.”[29] They see themselves as continuing to carry on –and honor—the Confederate heritage bequeathed to them by their ancestors.

Throughout Brazil, families with names like Macknight, Miller, Oliver, Norris and Carlton continue to speak of a group of people who, rather than rejoin the Union, successfully sought to live their lives on their own terms. Leaving the United States, they blazed a trail forward and, despite often difficult conditions, built a life for themselves in Brazil. History will forever remember them as The Confederados.

End Notes

1.       Bennett-Pennell, “The Confederacy’s Lost. Now What?,” 121.

2.      Soodalter, “The Confederados,” 62.

3.       Ibid.

4.      Dawsey, Dawsey, and Azevedo, “The Confederados : Old South Immigrants in Brazil,” 1223.

5.      Soodalter, “The Confederados,” 62.

6.       Ibid.

7.      Ibid., 63.

8.      Ibid.

9.      Dawsey, Dawsey, and Azevedo, “The Confederados : Old South Immigrants in Brazil”, 1223.

10.  Ibid.

11.  Ibid.

12.  Ibid.

13.  Ibid., 64.

14.  Ibid.

15.   Ibid.

16.   Ibid.

17.   Ibid.

18.   Ibid.

19.   Ibid.

20.   Bennett-Pennell, “The Confederacy’s Lost. Now What?,” 122.

21.   Soodalter, “The Confederados,” 65.

22.   Ibid.

23.   Ibid.

24.   Lowe, “Reconstruction Revisited: Plantation School Writers, Postcolonial Theory, and Confederates in Brazil”, 20.

25.   Ibid.

26.   Ibid.

27.  Soodalter, “The Confederados,” 65.

28.  Ibid.

29.  Ibid.

Bibliography

Bennett-Pennell, Linda. “The Confederacy’s Lost. Now What?” History Imagined, 2015. https://historyimagined.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/the-wars-lost-now-what/.

Dawsey, Cyrus B, James M Dawsey, and Celia M Azevedo. “The Confederados : Old South Immigrants in Brazil.” The Journal Of American History 82, no. 3 (1995): 12–23. http://www.h-net.org/review/hrev-a0a4x2-aa.

Lowe, John. “Reconstruction Revisited: Plantation School Writers, Postcolonial Theory, and Confederates in Brazil.” The Mississippi Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2003): 5–26.

Soodalter, Ron. “The Confederados.” America’s Civil War, 2013. http://content.ebscohost.com.madonnaezp.liblime.com/ContentServer.asp?T=P&P=AN&K=88149708&S=R&D=khh&EbscoContent=dGJyMNLe80SeprY4zdnyOLCmr02eqLBSr6e4SK6WxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGut1Gzq7JLuePfgeyxw2DNydIA.

Double Seventh Festival, by Jingjing Zhang

Double Seventh Festival is a traditional Chinese festival celebrated in the evening on the 7th of the seventh lunar month. It is just like Valentine’s Day in America, so it is called Chinese Valentine’s Day. It is said that on that day, the cowherd and the girl weaver are going to meet on the Magpie Bridge. The festival comes from a myth. The cowherd is an ordinary person, but girl weaver is a fairy. They fall in love when they meet first time. Nevertheless, it is not allowed by God. They constantly strive to create opportunities, and then God is moved. They get a chance to meet once a year. Although they only meet once a year, they are happy. Every time you want to give up a relationship, the myth will give you courage to go on. In China, couples are going to celebrate Double Seventh Festival every year. They create a lot of surprise for their lover: Some gifts are flowers and rings that they bought, or some handicrafts they made. In a word, the myth of cowherd and girl weaver gives a good interpretation about love. The Double Seventh Festival always reminds us how important love is.

Faith Is... by Parish Moore

What is Faith?
Faith is something you can’t reach.
Faith is something you can’t teach.
Faith is something we are given to be.
Faith is something we can’t see.

But as I look up into the clouds,
Faith is me.
Is that me?
Can’t you see?
Faith is me!

Study Abroad Trips

Along with other students and faculty, Jackie Castellese and Marian Gonsior traveled to France in spring of 2015 as part of Madonna University's Study Abroad Programs. Also in 2015, Marian participated in the Study Abroad Program by going to Spain.

Both Jackie and Marian brought back far more than the following photos of their trip(s). They and their fellow travelers returned with a broader understanding of another culture, a new way of seeing the world, and unexpected friendships.

If you're interested in credit-bearing long-term or short-term Study Abroad Programs, contact Jim Novak at (734) 432-5669 or jnovak@madonna.edu, or stop in at Rm. 1501 in the main Academic Building.

Fabulous France

"Montresor is a small French village that looks like it's straight out of Beauty and the Beast. 'Little town in a quiet village...' Of the many pictures I took while we visited, this is one of my favorites. I think I'm going to consider becoming a landscape photographer." -- Jackie Castellese

 

"During a stop for a fancy French lunch at the Clair Cottage Restaurant, I wandered outside with Professor Gonsior and found these beautiful yellow flowers. Instantly, I felt like a professional photographer when I discovered that the camera on my phone could focus like this." -- Jackie Castellese

Eiffel Tower, by Jackie Castellese

Above: The Chateau de Chaumont in France’s Loire Valley, by Marian Gonsior

Above: The spires of the medieval cathedral of Chartres, France, seen from the banks of the Eure River, by Marian Gonsior

Spectacular Spain, by Marian Gonsior

Above: Interior of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia Church, designed by Antonio Gaudi

Left: View of the Cathedral of Seville, Spain 

Right: Bridge in the Plaza de Espana, located in Maria Luisa Park, Seville, Spain. Built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition
in 1929.

 

House of the Morning Star, by Maricela Huerta

I shielded my eyes as the brightest burst of color I'd ever seen invaded my eyes. Even with my arm and eyelids in the way, however, my eyes still hurt from the sheer intensity of color.

It was then that it hit me. “Wait. Color? Isn’t Heaven supposed to be white?”

My arm dropped as the pain in my eyes receded and my jaw dropped. This was nothing like I'd imagined Heaven to be, and it had to be Heaven. There was no smell of sulfur, no heat, no screaming or pleading souls.

But these people didn’t quite seem like souls of those who would spend the rest of their lives worshipping God.

Off in the distance, there was a low musical sound and the bright-colored light that had blinded me on the way in.

One of the souls stopped and stared at me. He sighed and rolled his eyes before looking up and yelling, “Hey Gabriel, you messed up again! You dropped him too soon!”

There was a flutter of wings before the man I assumed to be Gabriel dropped loudly in front of me. “Hey there, I'm Gabriel. Sorry about that. Carry too many souls at once and you start getting butter fingers.” He grinned, and there was an air of mischief around him. “Oh well, buckaroo, at least you’re not too late for orientation.” A hand landed on my shoulder and suddenly we were in a mass of people, all of then confused-looking and milling about in a much different manner than those I saw earlier.

The soul turned to me, and it was in the split second that I saw his golden wings fold behind him that I realized he was the angel Gabriel.

“Oh my goodness, you're Gabriel the angel,” I gasped, my eyes feeling like they were going to bug out.

“The one and only.” He bowed mockingly and turned, motioning for me to follow him as he walked away.

“Since technically I was the one to make you late by dropping you, I’ve got to give you the opening spiel. This usually takes a long time, but I’ll see how short I can make it. Let’s see. God decided he was sick of humans, but he knew that someone needed to carry the weight of his position. So when good ol’ Lucifer comes barging in with Chaos, who is the only all-powerful being in the universe besides God, God decides ‘Eh, why not. He can’t exactly make it worse than humans have.' So he gives Lucifer His old coat of jewels that shines when God is praised, and alters it so that it shines when Lucifer is praised. That's that light over there. He also upped his powers a little bit, but not too much since most humans ask for such petty things, even Lucifer wouldn't have to raise a finger. So God did all that, then dragged Chaos off to some far quadrant of some galaxy and they're having a fun, old-fashioned boxing match. I can’t exactly blame Him. For being completely all-powerful, it must have been a bore to watch over humans, so it must be nice to be able to blow off some of that excess energy that’s built up over the millenia He’s ruled.”

I gaped at him. “You mean Lucifer is in charge? But he’s evil!”

Gabriel tsk’ed at me and rolled his eyes, leading me to a line of souls. “Chaos is evil. God is purely good. Everyone and everything else is some sort of a mixture of the two. It causes eternal balance. Also, God didn’t kick Lucifer out; Luci ran away from home like the angsty teenager he was. He came back as an adult with the mind of an angsty teenager, but once Dad sat him down and talked to him, Luci came to his senses and now he's not such a brat anymore. So, really, things are fine. Yeah, Hell still exists, but Lillith runs that circus now, and Lucifer has his work cut out for him here.”

He smiled at me once again and patted my cheek the way one would a child. “It’s okay, kid; you'll get there. Anyways, here you’re going to wait until you get to the front of the line, where they’ll figure out the best way you can praise Lucifer. He’s not bad, and you’ll figure that out soon enough. And try to stop seeing everything through those super-jaded eyes humans have got. It’ll be a lot easier in a few thousand years. 

 “Besides,” he said, shrugging as his wings unfurled once more and he lifted off of the air in a glowing golden light, “in a few more million years, Lucifer will get tired of humans too, and he’ll be begging for God to come back.”