Confederates in Mexico: A Brief Bibliography

An exotic but enduring subject of interest among U.S. Civil War history aficionados is the role played by Confederates, such as Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury (pictured right), and later, a passel of ex-generals (Shelby, McGruder, and more), in lending, or perhaps I should say, attempting to lend prestige to Maximilian's monarchy in Mexico. After the surrender at Appomattox in 1865, an important number of ex-Confederates immigrated to Mexico, many (though not all) with the aim of establishing colonies. To war-weary ex-Confederates, Maximilian's Mexico might have appeared a delectable glass of water, but as quickly as if left out in the Mexican sun, it evaporated. In general, the ex-Confederates' stay south of the border was short, their attempts at establishing colonies intensely frustrating, and, ultimately, catastrophic, for by early 1866, Maximilian's government, bankrupt and demoralized, and having lost its French ally, was crumbling before the Juarista onslaught. Maximilian himself was captured, tried, and then executed by firing squad in June of 1867.

[Pictured right: General Joseph Shelby]

My own sense is that there is much still to be written about the ex-Confederates in Mexico, for so many of the historians of Mexico's Second Empire have lacked funding, or simply the wherewithal, to delve into the relevant Confederate archives, and vice versa--- it's nothing new that even otherwise beautifully educated Americans are more often than not woefully ignorant about Mexico and Mexican history, and, alas, the Spanish language. Serious research into the ex-Confederates in Mexico requires, at a minimum, three or more languages (Spanish and English, of course, plus French and German-- and the more German the better); deep knowledge of both Mexican politics, and Confederate politics, as well as culture, geography, terrain, mid-19th century farming practices, economics, and more. And not only all this: Mexico's Second Empire / French Intervention is an essentially transnational period, which is incomprehensible without an understanding of European and American geopolitics. Among the European actors in Mexico's French Intervention: France, of course, Austria and its dominions, Belgium, England, Spain, and-- vitally--the Vatican.

(Ay, not something to research just over a weekend! It took me more than seven years to research and write my novel about the true story of the half-American prince, Agustin de Iturbide y Green, in Maximilian's court, and I am still awed by the amount of research I could yet undertake... and I am so often tempted... )



To return to the point of this blog, which is to share my research, and so make it easier for other researchers to cover new ground:

Herewith, the major titles on the specific subject of Confederates and ex-Confederates in Mexico during the reign of Maximilian (and please leave a comment if you know of any title(s) I may have overlooked-- though, please note, with the exception of Stevenson, I am not including works that cover Maximilian and the Second Empire generally, or adventures not specifically about the Confederates, e.g., Blasio, Corti, Haslip, Niles, Pani, Ratz, Ridley, the Salm-Salms, et al. ):

Harmon, George D., "Confederate Migration to Mexico," The Hispanic American Historical Review (Nov., 1937)

Arthur, Anthony, General Shelby's March (Random House, 2010)
Note: This may be the most important recent addition to the literature on Confederates in Mexico. Alas, Arthur passed away in 2009. As soon as possible, I will make a note about this work on this blog.

Davis, Edwin Adams, Fallen Guidon: The Saga of Confederate General Jo Shelby's Expedition to Mexico (TAMU Press, 1995)

Edwards, John N., Shelby's Expedition to Mexico (Kansas City, 1872)
Note: the link is to a new edition, edited by Conger Beasely, Jr. (University of Arkansas, 2007)

Hanna, Alfred Jackson, "Role of Matthew Fontaine Maury in the Mexican Empire," An address before the annual meeting of the Virginia Historical society, January 17, 1947

Harter, Eugene C., The Lost Colony of the Confederacy (University of Mississippi Press, 1985)

McGruder, Henry R., Sketches of the Last Year of the Empire (London, 1868)
Note: The author was the son of General Magruder. The link is to my blog post about his book.

O'Flaherty, Daniel, General Jo Shelby (1954; reprint 2000)

Padgett, James A., ed., "Life of Alfred Mordecai in Mexico 1865-1866, as Told in His Letters to His Family (North Carolina Historical Review, April 1946 and January 1946)

Rister, Carl Cooke, "Carlotta, a Confederate Colony in Mexico" Journal of Southern History 11, February 1945

Mahoney, Harry Thayer and Majorie Locke Mahoney, Mexico and the Confederacy, 1860-1867 (San Francisco: Austin & Winfield, 1998),

Rolle, Andrew F., The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico (University of Oklahoma Press, 1965)

Ruiz Ramón Eduardo, ed., An American in Maximilian's Mexico, 1865-1866: The Diaries of William Marshall Anderson (San Marino, 1959)

Terrell, Alexander Watkins, From Texas to Mexico and the Court of Maximilian in 1865 (Dallas, 1933).

Settles, Thomas M., John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal (LSU Press, 2009)

Stevenson, Sara Yorke, Maximilian in Mexico: A Woman's Reminiscences of French Intervention 1862-1867 (The Century Co., 1897)
(The link goes to my blog post about this wonderful and very richly detailed eyewitness memoir.)

Williams, Frances Leigh, Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the Sea (Rutgers University Press, 1963)

+++++++++++++

>>Finally, different as they are, the novel by Elizabeth Boatright Coker, The Grasshopper King (1981), and the movie The Undefeated (1969), starring John Wayne and Rock Hudson, both have to do with the saga of the Confederates in Mexico.

>>Confederate characters appear in Fernando del Paso's novel Noticias del Imperio and, fleetingly, in my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire.

>>For a general selected bibliography of the Second Empire, please visit my "Maximilian" page.

Next post next Tuesday.

Maximilian in Mexico: A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862 - 1867 by Sara Yorke Stevenson

Of all the English language memoirs of the Second Empire / French Intervention, Sara Yorke Stevenson's Maximilian in Mexico: A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862 - 1867 is the most lucid, informed, and balanced. That said, she introduces her book with this caveat:

[M]y aim is not to write a historical sketch of the reign of Maximilian of Austria, nor is it to give a description of the political crisis through which Mexico passed during that period. My only desire is to furnish the reader with a point of view the value of which lies in the fact that it is that of an eyewitness who was somewhat more than an ordinary spectator of a series of occurrences which developed into one of the most dramatic episodes of modern times.

Academic histories can be a bit dry and, as Yorke puts it, too often the personalities of a period, puppet-like, seem to appear "before the footlights of a fulfilled destiny."

During the brief reign of Maximilian, the author was a young girl living with her family in Mexico City. Every country's capital is a small town, in a sense, but in the 1860s, Mexico City was so small, both literally and figuratively, that this young girl, whose parents were well-connected in both and French and Confederate circles, became acquainted with many of the leading political and military personalities.

She writes, "to those who lived with them when they were MAKING history, these actors are all aglow with life. They are animated by its passions, its impulses," and indeed, she renders them beautifully, compellingly into life.

Before rejoining her family in Mexico City, in Paris, through her guardian, M. Achille Jubinal, a literary figure, antiquarian, and deputy in the Corps Legislatif, she happened to meet none other than the Duke of Morny, Louis Napoleon's half-brother and a key player in the tragedy that was Mexico's Second Empire.

One day in March 1862... M. Jubinal invited me to accompany him to the Hotel des Ventes, Rue Drouot, where an important collection of tapestries and other objects of art was on view to be sold.... My companion was pointing out to me the beauties of a piece which he particularly coveted when some one came behind us and called him by name. We both turned around and faced a middle-aged man whose dress, manner, and general bearing showed him to be a personage of some importance. M. Jubinal, who evidently knew him well, addressed him as "M. le Duc," and his strong likeness to the Emperor [Louis Napoleon], as well as a few stray words, soon led me to guess, even before my guardian had gone through the form of an introduction, that he was no less a personage than the Duc de Morny.

When he learned that her brother had killed by bandits on the highway in Mexico, and she would therefore be leaving France to rejoin her family there, the Duke said: "Lorencz is there now; our army will then be in the city of Mexico; the roads will be quite safe, have no fear." Aficionados of Mexican history will know that this was, in fact, two months before Cinco de Mayo, the massive, humiliating defeat of the French at the city of Puebla.

Her journey from France to Mexico, on an "old patched-up ship," was a sobering one. She writes:

There were only forty passengers on board, and, comparatively speaking, little of the animation that usually precedes the outgoing of an ocean steamer. I found without difficulty the French banker and his Mexican wife who had kindly consented to chaperon me during my lonely journey; and I soon discovered that she and I were the only women passengers on board.

Our fellow travelers were uninteresting-- mostly commercial agents or small tradesmen representing the old-established petty commerce with Mexico. The new order of things was suggested, somewhat ominously, only by the presence of two young surgeons on their way to increase the effective force of the military hospital in Vera Cruz.

Evidently the predicted exodus to El Dorado had not yet begun. Where was the advance-guard of the great army of emigrant capitalists now about to start, and of which I had heard so much?

This was the first serious disillusion of my life, and it left a deep and permanent impression upon my mind.

Later, of her new life in the Mexico City of Maximilian's Second Empire, she writes:

We then lived at Tacubaya, a suburb of Mexico [City] reached by the Paseo, where the marshal [General Bazaine]rode everyday for exercise. Our house was built at the foot of a long hill, at he top of which stood a large old mansion, the yellow coloring of which had won for it the name of the Casa Amarilla. It had been rented by Colonel Talcott of Virginia, who lived there with his family. Dr. Gwin was their guest; and it was arranged that the marshal , when taking his usual afternoon ride with his aide-de-camp, should call upon us one day, and leaving their horses in our partio with his orderlies, should join us in a walkup the hill, casually dropping in en passant at the Casa Amarilla.

The plan had the double advantage of being a simple one and of providing the marshal, who did not speak English, with suitable interpreters. The interview was a long one. The marshal listened to what the American had to say. Indeed, there was little to be said on his own side, as the Mexican ministry was absolutely opposed to the project, and any change of policy must depend upon a change in the imperial cabinet.

His Excellency, however, seemed in high good humor. As we came out, he merrily challenged us to run downhill, much to the astonishment of the few leperos whom we happened to meet. The Mexican Indian is a sober, rather somber creature, not given to levity; his amusements are of a dignified, almost sad nature. He may be sentimental, bigoted, vicious, cruel, but he is never vulgar, and is seldom foolish. Indeed, well might they stare at us then, for it was no common sight in the lanes of Tacubaya to see a commander-in-chief tearing downhill, amid peals of laughter, with a party of young people, in utter disregard of age, corpulence, and cumbersome military accoutrements!

In The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, my novel based on the true story, Sara and her mother, Mrs. Yorke, appear as minor characters in scenes set in the house of Doña Juliana de Gómez Pedraza, widow of the ex-president of Mexico, aunt of Pepita de la Peña (wife of General Bazaine) and landlady to Don Angel and Doña Alicia de Iturbide (parents of Agustín de Iturbide y Green). (Did I mention, Mexico City was a small town?) Alas, much as I nudged it, my narrative didn't find its wendy-way to Sara's pell-mell trot with General Bazaine. But the fact that Bazaine would do such a such thing informed my portrait of him. For this, as well as so many other portraits, vignettes, and more, I am much obliged to Sara Yorke Stevenson's treasure of a memoir.

Sara Yorke Stevenson went on to make what was then a very unusual career as an archeologist, a leading Egyptologist, and newspaper columnist, which you can read about here.

There is also a page about her on Wikipedia (caveat: it's a wiki).

More next Tuesday.