Run Rebels Run by Dr. Pelham Mead.  

This story goes from the Texas Rangers not surrendering in North Carolina at the end of the Civil War and their epic journey back to Mississippi and Texas. Fifteen men from Company F of the Texas Rangers cross the Smokey Mountains with Federal troops on their heels.

When the Texas Rangers finally get back to Texas they are treated as outlaws. With their land taken and their towns destroyed they contact a fellow Texan who is arranging for settlers from Texas to go to Brazil and grow cotton and crops there away from the federal authorities.

On a schooner called the Derby 100 refugee Rebels head to Brazil only to become shipwrecked on the shores of Cuba. The leader has to go to Havana to seek help from the Brazilian embassy. They help him to return to New York to lease another steam ship to take the Texan Rebels to Brazil. Finally, after months on a beach in Cuba a steamship arrives in Havana and the 100 Rebel families board the ship bound for Brazil.

When the families arrive in Brazil they must adapt to jungle life, hot temperatures and humidity that is unbearable. Some seek gold but never find it. Others plant cotton and are successful introducing the steel plow to Brazil to cultivate the ground. Some settlers end inland on the Amazon only to be attack by native Indians. Others go south of Rio de Junero and settle large estates near rivers. Some returned to the United States after three or four difficult years. Some remained and inter-married with the local Brazilians. The Brazilians called them Confederodos. They kept their southern traditions and still survive to this day.

This is the true story about the Confederodos from Texas.