In this valuable and compact book, Wolnisty brings attention to the emigration of U.S. southerners leaving the United States for Nicaragua and Brazil, and the commercial and political expansion, interests, and campaigns in Latin America during the mid-nineteenth century, before and after the U.S. Civil War. Based on research in U.S. and Brazilian archives, Wolnisty outlines the multiple U.S. Southern expansionistic ideologies at the time and how the idea of Manifest Destiny emerged as a southward moving, as much as a westward moving, political concept.
The chapters that outline Wolnisty’s claims are divided into three sections—“Nicaragua,” “Commercial Expansion in Brazil,” and “Southern Emigration to Brazil.” Her methodological strategy is to outline three different accounts and weave them into a single narrative. For example, she describes how Matthew F. Maury’s idea of Manifest Destiny equated the Louisiana Purchase with his exploration of the Amazon region of Brazil and justified his economic...