Posted on 10/02/2007 1:10:01 PM PDT by BGHater
AMERICANA, Brazil
Now well past 90, Judith MacKnight Jones is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the illness that robbed her of all of her memory, her most precious asset.
She has been lying here for the past 11 years, covered by a patchwork blanket, made from pieces her great-grandmother brought from the United States between 1865 and 1885, after the Confederacy lost the Civil War.
Unable to speak or remember now, her book "Soldado Descanso" ("Rest Soldier") is written in Portuguese, but soon will be translated into English, as the publisher thinks Americans should know about the proud history of Confederate immigrants settling in Brazil, finding a new home here but maintaining many of the traditions they brought from Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, the Carolinas and Georgia.
Her daughter-in-law, Heloisa Jones, said patchwork is only one of the values the Americans have brought.
This blanket is not just any patchwork, she said, "these pieces are very old and reflect a valuable tradition," she said.
"Over a century old and symbolizing our heritage, the flight from our homelands, it is extremely important to keep it that way. I teach my children and grandchildren the American values our ancestors have brought with them. And I expect them to teach their children and grandchildren the same," she said.
Every spring, hundreds of the descendants of the soldiers who lost the war against the North go to the cemetery they call O Campo. They party and meet dressed in traditional costumes, staging shows, singing Southern songs like "When the Saints Come Marching In" or "Oh Susannah," playing banjos and blowing trumpets, the men eventually getting drunk on home-brewed beer.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Then so it is .....
Many pardons....
Wow, those rebs must be really old by now! How long do people live in Brazil, anyway?
Points taken.
I was just curious if you knew WHAT the Brazilian Condederates specific policy was toward slaves while IN Brazil.Did they use any to build their colony?
I know this is research I should do but I’m swamped with other stuff right now.
Portugal had it as late as 1890. And they started it in 1440!
Ah, but you forget . . . only the slavery that existed in the USA was actually bad. Everywhere else it was AOK!
Seriously, do you ever hear slavery condemned without it being American slavery? Do you think these other countries are still beating themselves up over it?
I suppose that's another "inconvenient truth" ...
Actually, most southerners who emigrated to Brazil came back within a year or two, so they didn’t have much chance to do anything one way or the other about slavery. And most of the emigres were too poor to afford to buy a slave.
They didn’t fit in with an alien culture, language, and alien (i.e., Catholic) religion. Americana was the one “colony” that survived past the first 20 years.
More southerners emigrated to Mexico, Honduras or Venezuela, none of which had slavery at that time, than came to Brazil.
I think most of the Southerners who moved to Brazil were too poor when they got there to become slaveholders there. There was a TV program about these people some time ago that showed them keeping up antebellum dances and that sort of thing, but in most other respects they were thoroughly Brazilian, with many of them being of mixed racial ancestry. Ironic, nao?
“She said Northerners are welcome but still frowned upon. If, for example, the U.S. ambassador or consul-general from Sao Paulo visits and is a Northerner, he probably will be received differently than if he were from the South.”
I had one of my co-workers from Brazil tell me about this last year. I had no clue! He also told me the Brazilians sent and expeditionary force to Italy during WWII after the Nazi’s sunk some of their shipping.
Some of those people were ancestors of the wife of Jimmy Carter.
Thanks for clarifying,Warguy.
I believe that would perhaps be like that oft-used Star Trek plot twist involving a tradition so changed by time that it morphed into something else. Vger = Voyager, and the mispronounced Declaration of Independence having become a liturgical chant. This probably would be enlightening to both parties.
If by treason you mean they fought for the right to secede the Union as freely as they joined it (as Thomas Jefferson intended) and against the designs of Northern aggressors then yes they fought very bravely and loyaly for their state of Tennessee.
Well, it seems as our accuser has chosen to describe himself as a diseased cur, and to bite while drooling slime, I find it magnanimous of you to have given such a well considered reply. In my case, it was Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, and South Carolina to count the kissin' cousins. Not a northerner in the bunch. My great grandfather never wore blue, and the balcony at the picture show cleared out when he hollered as he watched Birth of a Nation.
On the other side of the family, one of the slaves went to war with my older great grandfather out of devotion. They both mustered out together at the end of the war.
No one, so what is the secondary argument?
But is incorrect to deny that this issue was the root cause of the conflict. And more incorrect to conclude that the outcome was merely to make illegal the consideration of persons as chattel. The Federal form of the government and the striking change away from the constitutional reservation of rights by the states was the result. This was Adams and Hamilton versus Jefferson played out by their grandchildren, and probably those Jacksonian as well. Sam Houston strongly opposed secession.
This country was taken over (effectively) by an armed coup by the Lincoln Republicans and abolitionists and northeastern industrialists, and the southern states decided to leave, and the north invaded.
We hold these issues very strongly and very deeply. Most northern folks do not understand. We were a conquered and oppressed and humiliated people during reconstruction. A carpetbagger is worse than any racial epithet. It is the worst form of scoundrel. The first republican gubernatorial administration of Texas to be unseated in the election years after the war had to be forced out at gunpoint. They had control, illegal possession, and they did not want to leave.
Now do not think that anyone can call my ancestors treasonous and come away without my vehement response. The Supreme Court advised against the prosecution of Jefferson Davis for treason, because they knew the case would be lost, and the proof would have upset the entire legality of the war. This is history.
The north had the draft riots, and I do not believe the south had the draft. By the way, I will argue for my ancestors until the day my own great great grandchildren die.
The Constitution grants specified powers to the Federal Government, denies the states certain powers (such as coining money) and states that all other rights are reserved by the states or the people.
Furthermore, several states, north and south, specifically stated in their ratification of the Constitution that if things did not work out, they reserved the right to secede.
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