The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War

As the American Civil War turned against the Confederacy, many in the Confederate leadership and other Southerners faced the question of how to respond to the defeat. One group proposed forgoing the indignity and possible oppression of reunion by migrating south across the border, to various points in Latin America and the Caribbean. In The Southern Exodus to Mexico, Todd W. Wahlstrom reconstructs the ideology and objectives of those who chose to immigrate to Mexico. Wahlstrom situates their actions within the literature in Mexican, borderlands, and American West history. By applying their actions to these frames, he expands the meaning of their actions beyond the confines of the crisis facing the American South at the end of the war. Wahlstrom can then suggest that the planners, promoters, and immigrants in the resettlement movement were forward-looking in their quest to make new opportunities for themselves, rather than backward facing in...