The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great Western Migration or the Southron Migration, was the movement of 6 million White Southerners out of the rural Southern United States to the American Interior, Mexico, central America, and South America that occurred between 1865 and 1940. During Reconstruction former Confederates and later generations of Southron Americans fled to Mexico, Central and South America, and the American Interior. The reasons most frequently cited were fear of persecution by freed slaves and the Union Army, or outright disdain for the new social order imposed by Reconstruction.
In every U.S. Census prior to 1890, the American South was majority white, and only 1/3 of African Americans lived in urban areas. By 1900 a majority of those living in the former-Confederate States were of African descent and a majority lived in urban areas. By the end of the Great Migration, just over 50% of the White population of the South remained there, while a majority of those descended from White Southerners lived in the American Interior and West. By 1940 less than 1/5 of Southron Americans living in the Interior lived in cities, compared to a majority of those who still resided in the American South.
The Great Migration marked a cultural shift between the white residents of the South and the Southron Americans who left for the Interior. The 1940 Census indicated that only 30% of White Southerners self-identified as Southron Americans, compared to 50% of whites polled in Arizona, Colorado, and Dakota. Of those polled, only 10% of White residents of the South indicated they had a strong connection to the Confederacy, while in the Interior 39% answered in the affirmative. The 1940 census saw the peak of Southron identity in the US; with the death of the last Confederate veterans every successive census showed fewer and fewer Americans identified with Southrons. By the turn of the Millenium, less than 5% of all Americans identified as Southron-Americans, with the highest number being in Wyoming at 15% - the entire South, especially the Deep South, was now majority black.
Confederados
Of the 6 million White Southerners who fled the South, the majority of the South's aristocrats who lost their land fled to Latin America, with Brazil being the largest single destination. Over 300,000 former Confederates settled in Brazil, the overwhelming majority in Sao Paulo, and established new slaveholding plantations and in many cases entire communities known to local Brazilians as Confederados. Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II actively encouraged former Confederate rebels to immigrate to Brazil, providing land and financial assistance in the hope that the Confederados would help grow the Brazilian economy. By the 1880s the then unrecognized "New Texas" colony was making a serious push for recognition, partly to oppose the growing push to abolish slavery outright. When Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil, promulgated the Lei Áurea ("Golden Act") in 1888, a group of Confederados led by the 88 year old former colonel of the Confederate Army, William Hutchinson Norris, declared the independence of New Texas and raised an army of 12,000 men with the intent of taking the city of Sao Paulo and securing the creation of a neo-Confederate slaveholding nation. The Army of New Texas lived only to fight a single battle at Campinas before being driven back by the Brazilian army who proceeded to burn their capital of Americana to the ground, killing around 70,000 people.