JUNE , IStJ
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The Commoner.
KCCURReNT
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AN interesting, but generally forgotten fact
is recalled by an editorial in the Richmond
(Va.) Journal, from which the following is
taken: How many people ever knew, or how
many remember, that a number of confederates
who never surrendered, never took the oath of
allegiance, fled to Brazil, established a colony
there and that somo of them and their descen
dants still form a North American colony on
South American soil? The Daughters of the
Confederacy of Chattanooga have opened up
this forgotten romance by inviting "the ex-confederates
of Brazil" to attend a reception of
their organization to he held in Chattanooga
during the confederate reunion in that city.
Many southerners, filled with bitterness of the
war's hates and reverses, determined to seek
asylum in another land. Brazil appealed to
them, and they went from nearly every southern
state and planted a colony in that country.
They have a neat, prosperous village, known as
"Villa Americana, situated something more than
100 miles "west of the city of Sao Paulo. Somo
members of the colony grew tired of the Bra
zilian life and Toturned home; but there aTe
some 600 members of the colony now, all within
a radius of a few miles.
y? fcs tiT
NEVIN C. WINTER, in one of his books on
Brazil, says that these southerners are still
Americans at heart, but they have become citi
zens of Brazil by birth or proclamation. They
are thrifty and well-to-do people. The follow
ing excerpts from Mr. Winter's book will be of
interest just now: "Someone had told me that
the war was a tabooed subject; that the few
older members left were fighting the battles
over: When, I met the oldest member of the
colony, .whoad left the United States in 1865,
the impulse came to test this Bubject. I men
tioned the fact that my own father had served
in the union army and fought for his country
on that side. This old man, who was past tho
allotted three-score-and-ten, and had fought
with that intrepid warrior, Stonewall Jackson,
then told me the whole history of- the colony
and the causes that led to its establishment.
'It waB a mistake,' he said, 'but we did not
realize it then, and afterward it was too late
to sacrifice what we had achieved and move
back. We still love the old flag.' When Sena
tor Root, to take up another point, then Secre
tary of state, visited Brazil four years ago, a
new station was named Elihu Root in his honor
on the Paulista railway, and his name stands
out conspicuously on every time table of that
line. He was asked whether it would be "better
for the colony to remain in Brazil or return
to the United States. Stay where you are, he
said, and be good Brazilians. You will find the
states so changed that they would no longer
seem like home. The secretary was right. A
few months before my visit one of the prosper
ous members of the colony went, with his family,
to his old home in Texas, with the intention of
remaining there. He left his property in the
hands of an agent for sale. A few weeks after
his arrival In Texas he cabled to his agent not
to sell his property, as he was coming back.
In a few months he and his family returned to
the villa, giving as his reason that the old
neighborhood had changed so' much that it did
not seem so much like home as Brazil."
V v w
THE Richmond Journal adds: "There were
many members of Lee's army that did not'
remain to view the formalities of surrender.
They were mostly cavalrymen, who, encouraged
by the advantage of having a horse under them
slipped away and fled a situation which many,
though finding hatefully distasteful, accepted
later on. Lynchburg, something over a score
of miles from the field at Appamottox, received
for the two days following a considerable num
ber of the deserters of the surrender. Most of
these men had determined to join Johnston's
army further south, but boon saw the futility
of a further struggle. These were the spirits,
which, unh ending ia their determination not to
acknowledge their defeat, exiled themselves ia
a foreign land. It was a thoughtful act on the
Part of the Chattaaooga Daughters t iavite
them to the reunion, and it should add much to
the sentiment and pleasure of the' occasion to
have these exiles return."
v O tjT
SPEAKING of President Franklin Pierce, a
writer in the Washington (D. C.) Star says:
Franklin Pierce is at last to have a statuo. Now
Hampshire will so honor the only one of her
sons to reach the White House. He has been
dead forty-four years. Goneral Pierco served
in both house and senate, and resigned from the
latter body to resume the practice of law. Ho
thought, too, he was taking leave of politics
forever, but ten years later he was nominatod
as a compromise candidate and elected presi
dent. The campaign was enlivened by tho in
quiry, put by many democrats as well as whigs,
"Who the hades is Goneral Pierce?" He had
been out of office so long the rank and file had
forgotten him. But he made a strong candi
date. His title had been won in the war with
Mexico, and ho was a handsome and attractive
man. While he did not make a great president,
he proved a very competent politician in office.
None other could have steered the democratic
party through the high seas that ran between
1853 and 1856, and handed over the wheel to
another pilot of that faith. Mr. Buchanan owed
much to his predecessor. But General Pierce's
greatest public service was neither political nor
military. He it was who rescued Nathaniel
Hawthorne from a sort of penury, and hy giving
him a good office insured his independence for
the remainder of his life. The two men had
been fellow students at Bowdoin college. One
after graduation turned to tho law and acquired
money. The other turned to literature, and
although with an exquisite genius did not pros
per either financially or otherwise, it was a
grim boast of his after fortune at last smiled
that for years he had been "tho obscurest man
of letters in America." But fortune at last
smiled. When General Pierce was nominated
for the presidency his old college chum wrote
the campaign biography of the candidate
Raphael for tho moment turned sign painter
and, after election, General Pierce appointed
Hawthorne consul at Liverpool, then the best
paying office in the consular service. Thus was
the most gifted of American imaginative writ
ers not only eased of all care about money
matters, but afforded an opportunity to see
Europe. From England, after his official term
expired, Hawthorne visited the continent and
spent some years in tho great capitals there. In
Rome he found the inspiration for the "Marble
Faun," and met the pick of tho artistic worId
laboring there. Both Pierce and Hawthorne
were cold during the civil war, and on that
account were charged with a lack of patriotism.
Hawthorne made one visit to Washington and
met Mr. Lincoln, but failed to note and appre
ciate a genius as exquisite as his own.
& &
THE shoe machinery trust is to he thoroughly
investigated by the federal government.
Referring to this fact and to this trust, -the St.
Louis Republic says: "Tho arrogance and
greed of tho trust have heen unrestricted, if
any series of human acts deserves the term.
The biography of this trust is rather ordinary,
in part. There are eleven defendant companies,
nine operated as incidental to the shoe-machinery
business of the trust Through these elevea
companies the twenty-three individual defen
dants acquired the business of fifty-five individ
ual partnerships and corporations. So far this
is just the conventional procedure of the lords
of high finance. It is ia the iafamous "tying
clause" in the leases oa shoe machinery that
the peculiar genius of the combination mani
fests itself. These leases, copious extracts from
which appeared in these columas about a year
ago, are worded with sack diabolical ingenuity
that machinery absolutely accessary to every
shoe factory, which caa be obtaiaed mowaere
bat of the trust, may be secured only by sign
ing agreements which bias" the Manufacturer to
ase the entire 110 ef atachiaery made hy the
trust impose en hiai heavy aad unreasonable
burdens ia the matter ef repair cost and the
purchase of supplies, and then causo tho renewal
of a lease on any one machlno to renow, auto
matically, tho loasos on all the other machines
leased from tho trust throughout tho factory.
The United Shoo Machinery company sells ma
chines In England which it only lonflcs In tho
United States. And it ubch the whip in its
hand to extort "testimonials" from the cowod
and bullied manufacturer to tho excellence of
its service and tho general philanthropy of lt
policy. This is possibly tho meanest of all mean
trusts. ' And that, when you stop to contemplato
tho divagations of Standard Oil from the ways
of fairness and justice, is a tribute."
J? &
ran
a FINE story of courage and public service on
t. the part of negroes Is told by the Now
Orleans correspondent for the Associated Press:
Quick work by determined farmers and a small
bunch of willing negroes who were thrown into
an incipient crevasse in the absonce of nand bags
saved another disaster along tho turbulent Mis
sissippi river. Tho dozen negroes who lay In
the gap of the Poydras levee, holding back the
water until sand bags could be filled to take
their places, risked their lives, but saved tho
day when it appeared hopeless to oven try to
hold the fast crumbling embankment. The
Poydras levee, which Is only thirteen miles
south of New Orleans, began to cave rapidly
shortly after 5 o'clock In the morning. When
the caving was discovered the entire batturo in
front of tho Poydras store, one hundred foot
wide and extending from tho levee to the river
bank, two hundred feet out, had caved in and
a small gap In the levee had gone. Tho alarm
was. given and within twenty minutes a score of
negroes were brought up by a planter who
lives a few hundred yards south of tho scene.
Tho levee was caving rapidly and when this
small force arrived water about two inches
deep was pouring ovor tho embankment. It
seemed too late to preyent the crash, which
would spread flood waters over a large aroa of
Plaquemlno and St. Barnard parishes, entailing
damage to plantations totalling several hundred
thousand dollars. Two thousand empty sand
bags were being brought up, from the farm
house just below, but tho flow of water across
the top of the levee had to be stopped immed
iately or sand bags and all the labor within tea
miles would be useless. A desperate chance was
taken when two twelve-inch boards wore put
along the top of the broken leveo and a dozen
negroes accepted the task of holding It in place.
These human sandbags might be taken with the
very next slice of tho levee, but they held oa
until a row of bags, filled with dirt, were put
in place behind tho boards. Other bags were
hurriedly dropped in the gap and soon a hun
dred more negroes and white men were working
like ants filling sacks and carrying the filled
bags to the gap. Then, without warning, the
stretch of the levee crown, where the humaa
sandbags lay a few moments before, fell away
to a depth of twenty-eight feet. A second row
of bags held the water back and within an hour
two thousand of the dirt-filled sacks were in
place and the caving was temporarily checked
and for the time, the levee was saved. Labor
ers and supplies were rushed to the scene oa
special trains by steamer and barge and on auto
mobile trucks. At aoon tho construction of a
horse shoe levee behind the endangered em
bankment, out in the public road, was started.
At night a thousand men were working by the
light of torches and boafires and Engineer Joha
Klorer, in charge of the work, expressed the
belief that there would be no crevasse. There
are still several dangerous places in the levees
along Polnte Coupee parish, above Baton Rogue,
aad at Kempe's bead and just south of Vidalla,
La., forces are working might and day to pro
vent creaks.
Dome bo rr
William Lerimer aaaounces that he will be
x candidate far United States senator frost
Illiaok to aacceed Mr. Shermaa.
Doa't do it, William. Ton have had trouble
eaeuga aad the proud state of Illinois has al
ready borne too xnaay hardens oa your account.
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