In April 1865, the American Civil War was over and the former states of the Confederacy were in ruins. Astounding damage to infrastructure and the economy greeted Southern soldiers after the conflict. As Confederate President Jefferson Davis languished in prison, his former cabinet members dispersed to their homes in defeat.
For die-hard Confederate loyalists like Col. William Hutchinson Norris and Maj. Lansford Hastings, this burden was too great. They couldn’t bear to live under what they regarded as a foreign occupation and decided instead to leave for the slaveholding Empire of Brazil and establish colonies of Confederados, Brazil’s odd Southern holdouts.
About 10,000 to 20,000 former Confederates followed them.
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