They were enticed to Brazil by offers of cheap land from Emperor Dom Pedro II, who had hoped to gain expertise in cotton farming.

The regime in Brazil had a number of features that attracted the Confederados, namely the continued legality of slavery, but also political decentralization and a relatively high commitment to free trade.

[3] After the war, many Confederate planters were unwilling to live by the new rules imposed by the Union's victory and the constitutional changes that followed: an end to chattel slavery, a new labor regime, and the loss of political power that came with African-American suffrage.

Accustomed to raising cotton with the labor of enslaved people, some looked elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere for a place where their old life could be continued.

"Many persons who, from long habit and fondly cherished theories, have become strongly attached to the institution of African slavery, fancy that in Brazil they will find an opportunity for the permanent use of that system of labor — Brazil and the Spanish possessions being the only two slaveholding communities remaining in the civilized world," the New Orleans Daily Picayune wrote in September 1865.

[4] The Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II saw an opportunity in the economic disruption in the southern United States and hoped to build up its cotton production for export to the looms of England and France, which had long relied on the Deep South.

[6] In November 1865, the state of South Carolina formed a colonization society and sent Major Robert Meriwether and Dr. H. A. Shaw, among others, to Brazil to investigate the possibility of establishing a colony.

[6] On December 27, 1865, Colonel and Senator William Hutchinson Norris of Alabama landed in the port of Rio de Janeiro.

They took 15 days to reach the city, and there they stayed for a while looking for land, until they cast their sights on the plain that stretched from Campinas to Vila Nova da Constituição, current Piracicaba.

[8] The Norrises bought land from the Domingos da Costa Machado sesmaria and established themselves on the banks of Ribeirão Quilombo, at the time belonging to the municipality of Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, today the city of Americana.

The plow he brought from the United States caused so much sensation and curiosity that, within a short time, they had a practical agricultural school, with many students who paid him for the privilege of learning and still cultivating their gardens.

[8] The installation of the Carioba factory by the North American engineer Clement Willmot and Brazilian associates, located one mile from the train station, also dates from this period.

The education of children was one of the priorities for American families, who set up schools on the properties and hired teachers from the United States.

The teaching methods developed by American teachers[clarification needed] proved to be so efficient that they were later adopted by Brazilian official education.

[8] Jason Williams Stone, a man from Dana, Massachusetts who moved to Brazil before the American Civil War, made a fortune as a tobacco and rubber farmer.

In the 1970s, David Afton Riker published a book called The Last Confederate in the Amazon, which chronicles the saga of this migration and life in the new homeland.

As the region around the municipalities of Santa Bárbara d'Oeste and Americana became a hub for sugarcane production and society became more mobile, the confederates moved to larger cities in search of jobs in urban areas.

The descendants of the confederates also hold an annual festival in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste called "Festa Confederada", which is dedicated to funding the Campo Cemetery.