The World полностью

Moving between Rio and a summer palace at his new resort, Petropolis, Pedro directed but did not dictate government, diligently promoting American monarchy and new technology, steamships and railways, and becoming the first royal photographer, buying daguerreotype equipment. ‘If I wasn’t emperor, I’d love to be a teacher,’ he said, sometimes adding, ‘La science, c’est moi.’ Breezy, studious, multilingual, studying Greek, medicine, astronomy and engineering, dutifully married to a Bourbon princess, discreetly devoted to his mistress, he embraced Afro-Brazilian culture, backing the Rio carnival and paying homage to its elected black leaders, the Three Kings and the Emperor of the Divine Holy Spirit.

Yet this was a society still based on coffee plantations, worked by slaves. Between 1841 and 1850, at least 83 per cent of African slaves went to Brazil, with the rest going to the USA and Cuba. But the British Royal Navy was seizing ever more ships. Brazilian planters still feared a Haitian-style revolt – in 1849 in Rio there were 110,000 slaves to 266,000 whites. The area around Rio’s palace was so filled with slaves that it was known as Little Africa and, for all the mixing of races, the Brazilian elites were all white. Countesses attended royal balls and shopped in the Parisian emporia of the Rua do Ouvidor, as recounted in the stories of the novelist Machado de Assis, whose character Cândido Neves is a slave hunter proud of his work. In 1850 Brazil banned the trade but not slavery. Yet it was not a slave revolt that challenged the monarchy but a war.

In 1864, Marshal Francisco López, president of Paraguay since his father’s death^* and partner of Eliza Lynch, mother of his five sons, attacked Brazil. In the seven years since she had arrived from Paris, La Lynch had taught the locals how to enjoy French food, cooking and fashion, while amassing twelve million acres of state land transferred to make her the world’s greatest landowner.

On his deathbed, the marshal’s father had warned him to avoid war with Brazil. Yet with 55,000 troops armed with the latest technology, López, known as El Mariscal, using the independence of Uruguay as pretext, attacked both Argentina and Brazil. His folly was astounding: Paraguay’s total population was smaller than the Brazilian National Guard. As Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina counter-attacked and Maximilian struggled to survive in Mexico, General Grant was strangling the Confederacy from north and south.

LINCOLN AND GRANT: WE’RE ALL AMERICANS

In Washington, DC, on 4 March 1865, as black soldiers marched in his inaugural parade, Lincoln was sworn in for the second time, promising ‘malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right’, but warning, with exquisite eloquence, that the war would continue if necessary ‘until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword’. Vice-President Andrew Johnson got drunk. ‘Don’t let him speak,’ ordered Lincoln – but he did anyway. Among the guests was a fanatical Confederate actor, John Wilkes Booth, invited by his girlfriend, a senator’s daughter. He had recently acted in a production of Julius Caesar and considered killing Lincoln at the inauguration. Instead he started to put together a conspiracy to kidnap or kill the president.

On 9 April, at Appomattox in Virginia, Grant outmanoeuvred Lee, who finally agreed to negotiate terms. At the local courthouse, Lee, dapper in immaculate grey uniform, with buckskin gauntlets, silk sash and polished boots with red silk toppings, offered his sword to Grant, who was chewing on a cigar wearing a ‘common soldier’s blouse, unbuttoned, on which, however, the four stars; high boots, mud-splashed’. Grant made chitchat. ‘I met you once, General Lee, while we were serving in Mexico.’

‘Yes, I know, but I’ve never been able to recollect a single feature,’ retorted Lee grandly. ‘I asked to see you to ascertain upon what terms you’d receive the surrender of my army.’ Grant scribbled his terms, which were written out by his adjutant, General Ely Parker, the full-blood Tonawanda Seneca converted to Christianity, who handed them to Lee. The Confederate blushed and hesitated, believing Parker was black. Then he offered his hand.

‘I’m glad to see one real American here,’ said Lee.

‘We’re all Americans,’ replied Parker. Lee signed. Three million Americans had fought, including about 180,000 black soldiers and 20,000 black sailors; 750,000 had died. The Union had won, 3.5 million slaves had been freed and would soon be granted the vote. Lincoln welcomed the south back: ‘Let ’em up easy.’ Not everyone was convinced he would defend the freed slaves: Lincoln, said Douglass, was still a ‘white man’s president’.