“American Amazon”? - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 127

Soon after the travels of Herndon and Gibbon, and the agitated promotion of coloniza-
tion by Maury, both the United States and Brazil would be involved in their respective
convulsive and hideously lethal wars (the Civil War for the United States, the Paraguay
War for Brazil). Maury's career in the navy ended with the Civil War, and he fled to
the Confederacy and later to England to avoid arrest. He maintained his commitment
to Southern slavocractic immigration and ended up promoting and helping (not espe-
cially well) to manage colonization programs for Confederates to Mexico. Maury had
met Austrian emperor Maximilian, who had decorated him in 1858 for his scientific
work. That monarch became the ruler—“protector”—of Mexico. In 1866, Maury be-
came Maximilian's imperial commissioner of immigration and dreamed of installing a
“New Virginia” in the settlement of Carlota along the road between Veracruz and Mex-
ico City. 55 Maximilian's reign depended on the French troops of Napoleon III to con-
trol native rebellion against him. When that army left, Maximilian was eventually over-
thrown by Mexican revolutionary leader Benito Juárez. After Maximilian's death by fir-
ingsquad,MaurywouldreturntotheUnitedStatesundertheUnionamnestyagreements
to teach physics at the Virginia Military Institute.
Amazonian colonization faded for a time as geopolitical project, but Maury's ideas
did stimulate a migration ofSoutherners whopreferred immigration to Brazil, where the
“peculiar institution” still thrived,totheproblemsofreconstruction intheUnitedStates.
While they were inspired and influenced by Maury, their move was not part of a broader
nationalstrategybutratherapersonalresponsetoabolitionandthedefeatoftheConfed-
eracy. 56 If there was a geopolitical project, it pertained to Southern Protestant evangel-
ization in the papist Brazilian empire. Some authors credit the arrival of Southern Prot-
estants ascentral totheestablishment ofProtestant religious sects within Brazil. 57 Other
sites of interest for Confederate colonies were in the Orinoco (a possible toehold for an-
nexation of parts of Venezuela). 58 Relatively large Confederate colonies were founded
in Belize, Honduras, and Mexico as well as Brazil, and it is estimated that more than ten
thousand Confederates migrated out of the United States. 59
Southern migrants were also encouraged by the 1850s writings of Maury's contem-
porary Colonel Lansford Hastings. 60 Hastings had had an active life as a colonizer and
dreamed of emulating Sam Houston by wrenching land from Mexico, proclaiming it an
independent republic, and later having it annexed by the United States. To encourage
westwardmigration,hehadabrisksidelinechurningoutbooksonroutesforimmigrants
into California. 61 His prestige in this arena declined drastically due to the unfortunate
“Hastings cutoff” through the Sierra Nevada that was used by the Donner party, who,
strandedbysnowsintheSierraNevada,endedupincannibalism. 62 Thisunderstandably
underminedconfidenceinhissetofNorthAmericanschemes,buthewasundauntedand
redirected his frontier ambitions to the Amazon.