The Confederate 8th cavalry Texas Rangers in the Civil War 1865.

Surrender if General Joe Johnson’s confederate troops on April 7th at Durham, North Carolina. Generals Johnson and General Sherman met at James Bennett’s farmhouse to arrange for surrender terms with amnesty for all troops. Unfortunately, on April 15 President Lincoln was assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth. The north blamed the assassination on the south and President Jefferson Davis and they wanted the south to pay for the war and losses. When Secretary of War Stanton saw the terms of sure

surrender he rejected them and told General, who was in Washington, D. C. at the time, to tell General Sherman that the surrender terms were to generous to the confederates and to reject the agreement. Grant felt bad for his friend General Sherman who did not understand the politics in Washington. He took a private boot and a train to get to Raleigh, North Carolina to talk to General Sherman. He explained to Sherman that after Lincoln’s assassination the politicians wanted blood from the south. He told Sherman to tell General Johnson that terms of surrender were rejected. General Grant wanted this to be General Sherman’s show so he returned to Washington, D.C.

Afterward General Johnson and General Sherman met again at Bennett’s farm in Durham, North Carolina. General Sherman told Johnson that the surrender plan was rejected. They worked out new terms that General Grant could support.  Sherman reworded the agreement taking out the word amnesty and he told Johnson that he could not guarantee anything except that the confederates would have to surrender their weapons and be allowed to return to home peacefully.

When Johnson returned to his troops he felt he could not speak for the Texas Rangers who fought over 300 battles for the south. He told them that he had surrendered and that the Texas rangers had to make up their own mind. At the beginning of the war there were 1100 Texas Rangers, now there were 248 left. That night 150 Texas rangers fled without surrendering to return to their homes in Texas. This is the beginning of my new script of how many southerners fled to Mexico and Brazil after the war to make a new beginning. The Emperor of Brazil encouraged the southerners to come to Brazil to introduce cotton and modern methods of farming. Over 20,000 confederate citizens and soldiers left their homes for Brazil to start farming and search for Gold. No one ever found gold by the way, but to this day in Americana in southern Brazil the 4th and 5th generation southerners still live. Now they speak Portuguese and understand the culture of Brazil. They are naturalized citizens of Brazil now growing cotton for export. Near Americana is an old grave site with the graves of the original settlers dating back to 1865.

It is a story worth telling and that is why I am writing a script to tell about the Amercadoes in Brazil after the Civil War ended.  Several leaders took hundreds of Texans, and other southerners to Brazil like Rev. Dunn, Frank McMullen, the Harris family, and Colonel Gunter and many others.