Our Man in Charleston

[L Verge]

"The Brazilian Rebel refugees are called Confederadoes, I believe. They are still a unique, isolated part of Brazilian culture, do reenactments, intermarry, and speak English, y'all."

With perfect timing, the current issue of Civil War Monitor has a very good article on "Confederates in the Jungle," I did not realize that South American countries actually enticed defeated Rebels to leave the U.S. in 1865 on because those countries wanted the expertise of agriculture that the Southerners would bring. Mexico, Honduras, and Venezuela competed, but Brazil won out with an impressive infrastructure plan for improvements put together by their emperor (and the fact that they had been a strong ally to the CSA during the war).

The entire article is very interesting - especially the information about how the English language has survived for 150 years surrounded by a Spanish-speaking society. Linguists have actually studied the language of the Confederados to determine what the pre-Civil War English of the Deep South would have sounded like. When Jimmy Carter visited in 1972, he was amazed, "The most remarkable thing was, when they spoke, they sounded just like people in South Georgia."

P.S. There is another excellent article in the same issue of Civil War Monitor related to Edwin Stanton. Its title is "Minister of Deceit," if that gives you any clues as to the content.