After the shooting stopped most Confederates went home and, encouraged by the words of Robert E. Lee, tried to be as good citizens as they had been soldiers. Most, but not all; some ex-Confederates gathered up their families and emigrated.
The most successful emigrants were the Confederates who settled in Brazil. Until the fairly recent past, the story of these Confederados was not widely known. The subject is getting more attention these days. Anyone interested can learn from many sources the tale of these transplants who made new lives in Brazil, and took their Southern culture with them. Do a search on Amazon; you will find a few items: a historical novel and two histories, one published in 2000 and the other in 1995, which is as far as I know the first serious study of the Confederados. Google will lead you to newspaper articles and other items of interest. A search on youtube will reveal some interesting videos and interviews of Brazilians with names like McFadden and Pyles.
For many years, their settlement Americana in Brazil, was an isolated island of English speakers. Its people were largely isolated from their Portuguese-speaking neighbors as well as separated from their former homeland. Newer generations of Confederados are assimilated into wider Brazilian society and speak Portuguese as a first language. However, earlier generations spoke only English, and their brand of English opens a door to our linguistic past. The 1995 book, The Confederados: Old South Immigrants in Brazil, has a very interesting chapter by Michael Montgomery and Cecil Melo who studied the speech patterns of the denizens of Americana. What these linguists learned was a surprise.
Southern American speech has certain well known markers. Anyone listening to a Congressional debate can tell who is the gentleman from Georgia and who is from Ohio.
What are these markers? (I promise to avoid technical terms as much as possible.)
Imagine the gentleman from Georgia saying “mile high pie,” then listen to the Ohioan. The Georgian pronounces the i in each word as a monophthong; the Ohioan uses a diphthong. (I broke my promise already, but you know what I mean.)
Okay, now say pen and pin. If they sound the same you have another Southern American speech marker.
Here is my favorite, the post-vocalic r (Another broken promise). Say Sumter or Monitor. If you can’t hear the r in each word, you have found another marker in Sumtuh. Monituh. This marker isn’t exclusive to the South, of course (just listen to a Bostonian), and many southerners don’t have it, but it is still one of the key markers.
How about dropping the g at the end of words that end in -ing? Hillary Clinton did this when she wanted to sound like regular people. I’m countin’ on all you good folks to vote for me and I’m expectin’ to win this election. Again, the marker is not exclusive to the South, but a useful marker nonetheless.
Finally, Southerners often prolong certain vowels, or drawl. Bid and pill, for example, are stretched out and sound almost like bee-ud and pee-ul.
Got this? OK. But what does this have to do with the Civil War and the Confederados? Linguists Montgomery and Melo listened to the old timers in Americana and got a bit of a surprise. When they analyzed the old Confederados’ speech patterns they found that these markers were largely missing. In some ways they didn’t sound like their cousins whose grandparents stayed home. The men and women said mile high pie like the gentleman from Ohio. Pin and pen didn’t rhyme. As for dropping the g, they sounded more like Mrs. Clinton when she was speaking to Wall Street bankers instead of hoi polloi. If a Confederado doctor gave you a pill the word had only one syllable.
The linguists put it this way: “Specifically, the lack of homophony of pen and pin, the lack of drawling, and the relative lack of the glideless pronunciation of [ai] in Americana all indicate that Southern English was closer to other varieties of American English in the nineteenth century than present-day Southern speech is. Changes in pronunciation have apparently taken place that represent a divergence of Southern English from American English in the twentieth century. In short, Southern speech is in some ways more distinctive today than ever before.”
The linguists posit two possible reasons for this. One possibility is that the post-war South was more isolated from the rest of the country than the pre-war South. In this later period of relative isolation, the languages diverged. Another possibility is the movement of population within the South, which caused “…the spread of Upper South pronunciation into the Lower South, as many Southerners have migrated out of the hills and into the towns and cities of the Piedmont and beyond, beginning a generation after the war and continuing to recent times.”
Robert E. Lee probably asked for a pen when he needed to write a note, and when he mounted Traveller he was going riding, not goin’ ridin’. On July 3, 1863, he probably said, “It is my fault; it is all my fault,” the way an Ohioan would say it, not the way his Georgia colleague would. “It is mah fault; it is all mah fault,” said Martin Sheen’s Lee in the movie. His dialogue coach was pleased with the sound, which was what the audience expected, but Lee probably sounded more as Meade would have sounded had their roles been reversed.
There is (fortunately in my view) one marker that the good people of Americana did have: no post-vocalic r. In this regard there was no change between the language of the nineteenthcentury Lower South and the language of the Confederados. When Sheen’s Lee blessed out Joseph Fuqua’s Jeb Stuart on the night of July 1-2 for the cavalryman’s failure to keep him informed, Sheen got it right, “It must nevuh, nevuh happen again!”
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MEMPHIS, TENN.—The 50th Annual Mid-South Military History & Civil War Show held on March 4-5, was a great success! The Show was larger than ever, both in registered dealers and exhibitors, and in persons attending.
Dealers with rare collections of bullets, swords, guns, and buttons did a brisk business.
The Arena was full of every conceivable artifact from the Revolutionary War through the Korean War with over 50% of the tables dedicated to the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War).
Couples, individuals, and reinactors filled the aisles looking for a bargain and just the right item to take home to add to or begin their own personal collections.
H Cyclorama
and The Battle of Atlanta are still standing.
The Atlanta Cyclorama was a team effort. The American Panorama Company, formed by Chicago investors, hired William Wehner as manager of a Milwaukee studio. Wehner then recruited German artists to come to America and paint The Battle of Missionary Ridge in 1885-85. Success led Wehner to turn his painters to the big battle at Atlanta. They came here in 1885 and built a tall tower in the midst of the battlefield, whose traces could still be seen twenty years after the war. Confederate veterans and old-time Atlantans shared helpful recollections. Also assisting the artists was Theodore Davis, wartime illustrator for Harper’s Weekly, who had followed Sherman’s armies.
After sketching layouts, they returned to their Milwaukee studios and completed the painting. The dozen artists worked hard at their craft; some, like Bernhard Schneider, were specialists in landscapes, others were painters of men and horses. Writing in St. Nicholas Magazine, December 1886, Theodore Davis emphasized their attention to detail. “Every officer represented is pictured in the uniform which he wore on the day of the fight,” he observed proudly; “while even the horses and their accouterments are as faithfully depicted.”
The project was finished in 1886. The huge canvas, hung on
Five guest rooms offer a glimpse of early American life, and a comfortable base for exploring Antietam, South Mountain, Harpers Ferry and the C&O Canal historic areas. A country –style breakfast is included each day. Bicycle rental and battlefield tours are available.
wooden frames, opened in Minneapolis that June. A dramatic focal point was the scene in the mural showing Union Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, commanding the XV Corps, leading a counterattack against the Rebels who had just broken his lines. Logan’s centrality was due to Theo Davis’ suggestion that highlighting a famous individual would draw audiences. Sherman, interestingly, was but a speck on the horizon; he had watched the battle from a house a mile away.
After its debut, the painting was disassembled and moved for showing in Indianapolis. In 1890 Paul Atkinson of Madison, Ga., became owner. Atkinson brought the painting to Atlanta, where it opened in Feb. 1892. Resale to Atlanta businessman George V. Gress led to Gress’ donating the Cyclorama to the City of Atlanta in 1898. At that time it was housed in a wooden building at Grant Park in the southeast suburbs because former Confederate officer Lemuel Grant donated land for the park which still bears his name. In 1921 a new fireproof building was constructed specifically for the painting, with enough added space to show off the Civil War locomotive Texas (famous from the Andrews Raid of 1862) and an upstairs museum.
It was there that I first saw it as a kid in the 1950s. I’ve been a Civil Warrior since the 4th grade; maybe it was the Cyclorama that turned me on. And what an experience! I still remember entering the darkened, massive circular hall, where kindly old ladies with flashlights illuminated scene after scene as we walked around.
July 2015: the Atlanta Cyclorama building closes to the public as move preparations begin. The 1921 building will be refurbished by Zoo Atlanta as an event space to open in 2019.
The Cyclorama’s time is about 4:45 in the afternoon of July 22. The battle has been underway since around noon. Already, two divisions of Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee’s Corps have been repulsed in their attack on McPherson’s line. McPherson is dead; off in the distance by Sherman’s headquarters is an ambulance that carried his body. The fighting continues elsewhere, as Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne’s Confederates try to take a key hill manned by the division of Brig. Gen. Mortimer Leggett.
These details are not shown in the painting. I can’t point to this in the literature, but one may speculate that the Manigault-Mersy firefight was chosen as the mural’s centerpiece for its demonstration of both sides’ heroism. The Southerners have broken through the Yankee line; the Northerners are charging to drive them back. In the 1880s, ex-Rebs and ex-Yanks were in the throes
During Atlanta’s premiere hoopla for Gone With the Wind, Clark Gable got a private tour of the Cyclorama. He was intrigued by the plaster soldiers in the foreground, but said there should be one of him. The mayor instructed artists to cast a likeness of the actor. Here he is, a mortally wounded Federal. (Jack Melton) (Peggy Melton) of a national celebration of Americans’ valor in the Civil War. This part of the battle gave both sides something to celebrate about.
The Cyclorama’s starting point is the segment of the mural depicting the Confederate breakthrough of Logan’s line. Brig.
