“American Amazon”? - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 121

A Confederate tropical Manifest Destiny would be beneficial in many ways. Maury,
like many other Southerners, feared a Malthusian crisis in a South overrun with black
slaves, leading to problems of race war and miscegenation. Since slave systems could
not expand on the North American continent, they needed a dumping ground for “ex-
cess” population. 24 The Amazon would be the salvation of American slavery:
The Amazon valley is to be the safety valve for our Southern States. When they become over popu-
latedwithslaves,theAfricaslavetradewillceaseandthey[Southerners]willsendtheseslavestothe
Amazon, just as the Miss. valley has been the escape valve for the slaves of the Northern now free
states, so will the Amazon valley be to that of the Miss. . . . It would be relieving our own country of
the slaves, it would be hastening the time of our deliverance and it would be putting off indefinitely
the horrors of that war of the races which, without an escape is surely to come upon us. . . . It is be-
coming a matter of faith among leading southern men that the time is rapidly approaching when in
ordertopreventthiswaroftheracesanditshorrors,theywillinselfdefensebecompelledtoconquer
parts of Mexico and Central America and make slave territory of that—and that is now free. 25
If Amazonia was colonized, the tensions between the Northern and Southern states
would be significantly reduced, and “the Union would be saved!” 26 Maury walked a
subtle line vis-à-vis the larger international slavery question as well: “Shall Amazonia
be supplied with this class from the U. States or from Africa? In the former it will be
the transfer of the place of servitude but the making of no new slaves. In the latter it will
be the making of slaves of freemen and adding greatly to the number of slaves in the
world.” 27
Beyond the ideological and territorial ambitions lurked economic concerns. Southern
cotton soils were becoming depleted, and Maury came to believe that “the only remain-
ing cotton country . . . is to be found on the southern tributaries of the Amazon.” 28
Maurymoreorlessenvisionedinoneofhismorerapturouspassagestheentirebasinde-
voted to cotton production. 29 With the British demand for the crop accelerating, Maury
felt that British self-interest, given their immense dependence onthe cotton industry and
in spite of their aggressive abolitionist politics, would permit them to cast a blind eye to
the way the commodity was being produced.
InastressedSoutherneconomybesetwithdepletedsoils,thelossofthelucrativeriver
trade to the new railroads, and a dim future for the institutions of Southern life in the
face of an emergent industrializing North American economy, the rejuvenating energies
of Amazonian colonization would provide rescue. 30 This move to the tropics, coupled
with the commercial and entrepreneurial spirit of the United States, would transform the
Amazon valley in the same way Confederates (and their slaves) had remade the Missis-
sippi from a wild place into Dixie, a prosperous “Land of Cotton.” The Amazon with its
regular climate and rains, would, in the view of Maury, become the breadbasket of the
world, a cornucopia of the most varied products. 31