After the Civil War, about 10,000 former confederates left the US and re-settled in Brazil; one of the "colonies" has survived to the present. The locations are about 2 hours NW of Sao Paulo at Santa Barbara d'Oeste and Americana. The emperor at the time-Dom Pedro II-made offers of cheap land as an enticement. Their descendents today are known as "confederados" and they have kept alive the memory of the pre-Civil War south. It seems the original founder of the community was Col. William Norris. Interestingly the area of Brazil where the group settled was involved in its own secession in 1932 and "many of the confederados went off to fight" (There is no other info on this topic in this article). Two books on the subject are; The Lost Colony of the Confederacy by Eugene C. Harter and The Confederates: Old South Immigrants edited by Cyrus and James Dawsey. An emigration to Brazil society was based in the Broad River town of Edgefield, SC.
(Source: "The Deepest South" by Alan M. Tigay who writes about Brazil for Hadassah Magazine. American Heritage Magazine April 1998).
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