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WORK TITLE: The Southern Exodus to Mexico
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Pasadena
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-wahlstrom-37611391/ * http://www.cwbr.com/civilwarbookreview/index.php?q=6033&field=ID&browse=yes&record=full&searching=yes&Submit=Search
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2014069514
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2014069514
HEADING: Wahlstrom, Todd W.
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100 1_ |a Wahlstrom, Todd W.
670 __ |a The southern exodus to Mexico, 2015: |b ECIP t.p. (Todd W Wahlstrom) data view (an adjunct assistant professor of history at Pepperdine University and a lecturer of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara)
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Michigan State University, M.A., 2003; University of California, Santa Barbara, Ph.D., 2009.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. University of California, Santa Barbara, instructor; Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, visiting assistant professor.
AWARDS:Award for Exceptional Academic Leadership, Pepperdine University, 2015. Grants and fellowships from organizations, including the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States and the Huntington Library.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to publications, including the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography and Southern Historian. Contributor of chapters to books.
SIDELIGHTS
Todd W. Wahlstrom is a writer and educator. He holds a master’s degree from Michigan State University and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Wahlstrom served as a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara before joining Pepperdine University as a visiting assistant professor. In 2015, Pepperdine presented him with the Award for Exceptional Academic Leadership. Wahlstrom has also received grants and fellowships from organizations, including the Huntington Library and the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States. He has written chapters of books and articles that have appeared in publications, including the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography and Southern Historian.
In 2015, Wahlstrom released his first book, The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War. In this volume, he discusses the large numbers of former Confederates who chose to move to Mexico during the Reconstruction era. They formed colonies near the border with the United States, hoping to establish businesses and farms that would do business with Americans. Wahlstrom notes that not all of the communities created by Confederates in Mexico were interested in maintaining slavery as a practice. Their main concern was creating a growing economy. Wahlstrom profiles specific colonies and their leaders. He explains that the colonies were ultimately not successful, but they did influence leaders, including Porfirio Diaz.
John McKiernan-Gonzalez, contributor to the Journal of Southern History, suggested: “Wahlstrom has done Mexicanists a great service. The book mines a variety of personal papers in special collections across the United States that give both day-to-day reports and textured portraits of the way Confederate southerners learned to work with politically conservative Mexican elites.” McKiernan-Gonzalez also added: “Wahlstrom has done historians of the West and Native America a large favor.” “Wahlstrom provides a well-researched study of the people, events, and ideas surrounding Confederate migration and colonization efforts in Mexico,” asserted C.L. Sinclair in Choice. Writing on the Civil War Book Review website, Matthew M. Stith described the volume as “a nuanced, cogently argued, and well-researched story about the nearly five thousand former Confederates who migrated to Mexico following the Civil War.” Stith also remarked: “This is an important book, and it deserves a place on reading lists for graduate seminars and Civil War enthusiasts alike. Indeed, not only does Wahlstrom add a great deal to the historiographical discussion in Civil War history, but his work also serves as a significant contribution to Southern, emancipation, and borderlands history.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, September, 2015, C.L. Sinclair, review of The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War, p. 135.
Journal of Southern History, November, 2016, John McKiernan-Gonzalez, review of The Southern Exodus to Mexico, p. 946.
ONLINE
American Historical Review Online, https://academic.oup.com/ (February 8, 2016), Robert E. May, review of The Southern Exodus to Mexico.
Civil War Book Review, http://www.cwbr.com/ (July 25, 2017), Matthew M. Stith, review of The Southern Exodus to Mexico.
Pepperdine University, Seaver College Website, http://seaver.pepperdine.edu/ (July 25, 2017), author faculty profile.*
Meet the Faculty
Photo of Todd W. Wahlstrom, Ph.D.
Todd W. Wahlstrom, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professpr of History
Division: Humanities/Teacher Education Division
Office: Cultural Arts Center (CAC) 100
Phone: 3105064095
E-mail: todd.wahlstrom@pepperdine.edu
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2009
M.A., Michigan State University, 2003
Todd W. Wahlstrom is a visiting assistant professor of history at Pepperdine University and the author of The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also taught in the history department. His research focuses on nineteenth-century U.S. history, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the American West and South, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and Mexican and Latin American history.
Courses:
History 204: History of the American People
History 433: History of Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
Key Awards/Affiliations:
Award for Exceptional Academic Leadership, Seaver College, Pepperdine University, 2015
UCSB History Department Dissertation Fellowship, 2009
UC MEXUS (University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States) Research Grant, 2008
Mellon Match Fellowship, Huntington Library, 2008
Selected Works:
The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration Across the Borderlands after the American Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015)., 2015
"Geography as Power: The Political Economy of Matthew Fontaine Maury," co-written with John Majewski, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 120, No. 4 (Winter 2012), 340-371., 2012
"William Marshall Anderson and the Southern Exodus to Mexico," in Dimensions of International Migration (Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011)., 2011
"A Vision for Colonization: The Southern Migration Movement to Mexico after the U.S. Civil War," Southern Historian, 30 (Spring 2009), 50-66., 2009
Selected Links:
LinkedIn
QUOTED: "Wahlstrom has done Mexicanists a great service. The book mines a variety of personal papers in special collections across the United States that give both day-to-day reports and textured portraits of the way Confederate southerners learned to work with politically conservative Mexican elites."
"Wahlstrom has done historians of the West and Native America a large favor."
The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the
Borderlands after the American Civil War
John McKiernan-Gonzalez
Journal of Southern History.
82.4 (Nov. 2016): p946.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Full Text:
The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War. By Todd W. Wahlstrom. Borderlands and
Transcultural Studies. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Pp. xxx, 189. $55.00, ISBN 978-0-8032-4634-8.)
How does southern history shift when Native Americans, Mexicans, and African Americans share pages and a central narrative with
Confederates after the Civil War? Todd W. Wahlstrom's The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American
Civil War provides a clue. The book seeks to anchor Confederate ambitions after the Civil War in a more global and multiethnic cultural frame.
To me, this is the abiding tension in the project: Wahlstrom brings southern history to the northern Mexican borderlands, treating individual
Confederate merchants and soldiers alongside Comanche and Kickapoo migrants within a sharp-edged Mexican political context. The tension lies
in keeping the southern dimensions of this North American migration prominent but not overwhelming.
By bringing the tenuous dimension of the commercial allegiances between erstwhile Confederate elites and conservative landowners and
politicians in Tamaulipas and Coahuila into view, Wahlstrom has done Mexicanists a great service. The book mines a variety of personal papers
in special collections across the United States that give both day-to-day reports and textured portraits of the way Confederate southerners learned
to work with politically conservative Mexican elites. These documented interactions provide a window into the direct military challenges
Confederate soldiers faced from local Mexican, Apache, and Kickapoo militias when they sought to take possession of land south of the Nueces
River. Many U.S.-based historians portray an easy projection of American power southward; Wahlstrom makes the weak jury-rigging of these
projects very clear. In this fashion, he challenges the seamless way classes and popular books proclaim "America in the World."
Wahlstrom has done historians of the West and Native America a large favor. The same papers and documents that illuminate the transnational
alliances between conservative elites also make a political project of various Comanche, Kickapoo, and Apache bands clear. They worked to
7/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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remove white southern and conservative political influence from the Coahuila and Nuevo Leon borderlands. Wahlstrom's analysis of the attacks
makes it clear that these bands fought French and southern influence and often allied themselves with Mexican popular militias for this purpose.
His discussion of African American movement south hints at individuals' ability to seize the moment when Confederate authority and anti-black
conservative political power receded in the regions, using the violence and chaos to escape owners and employers and to make new and perhaps
more peaceful lives away from their earlier bonds. Wahlstrom's account points to the territories opened to peasants and workers by the collapse of
the French empire in Mexico, an opening rendered tragic by the rural enclosures that came with mines, railroads, and resurgent haciendas under
the Porfiriato. The Southern Exodus to Mexico adds to the growing argument that Mexico is a key part of the American West.
This brings us back to the earlier question: how southern is The Southern Exodus to Mexico? If southern history predates nineteenth-century U.S.
territorial expansion, includes Mexican Americans and Comanche leaders by name, and treats the movement of families as a key theme, the
chastening of Confederate exiles in northern Mexico by multiple ethnic communities--as Wahlstrom amply demonstrates--should be central to the
South. I am not convinced that northern investors eluded similar obstacles in imposing their vision on Mexico, in particular if the time frame for
their investments included the Mexican Revolution. The Southern Exodus to Mexico should be included in any conversation about the global
dimensions of southern history.
JOHN MCKIERNAN-GONZALEZ
Texas State University
McKiernan-Gonzalez, John
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
McKiernan-Gonzalez, John. "The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War." Journal of
Southern History, vol. 82, no. 4, 2016, p. 946+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470867700&it=r&asid=90a90dd1875ccdc1b71b0fad32dd2774. Accessed 9 July
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A470867700
---
QUOTED: "Wahlstrom provides a well-researched study of the people, events, and ideas surrounding Confederate migration and colonization efforts in Mexico."
7/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Wahlstrom, Todd W.: The southern exodus to Mexico:
migration across the borderlands after the American Civil
War
C.L. Sinclair
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
53.1 (Sept. 2015): p135.
COPYRIGHT 2015 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Wahlstrom, Todd W. The southern exodus to Mexico: migration across the borderlands after the American Civil War. Nebraska, 2015. 189p bibl
index afp ISBN 9780803246348 cloth, $55.00; ISBN 9780803274228 ebook, contact publisher for price
53-0413
F1266
20140-36545 CIP
Wahlstrom (Pepperdine Univ.) explores the substantial migration of former Confederates into Mexico following the American Civil War. He
argues that rather than a deluded effort to resurrect the "Old South," this movement represented a complex, viable effort to find economic
prosperity outside the Republican-dominated Reconstruction South. Migrating Confederates focused on a plan to build an economy based on
agriculture, infrastructure, and transborder connections to the US South. Unlike some of the other colonization efforts in Latin America, the
Mexico colonies had only a limited interest in preserving slavery and focused more on economic growth. Wahlstrom examines many of the
people and ideas involved in the efforts to promote and develop the economic visions of these colonies. Ultimately, due to numerous factors,
these colonies did not succeed, but the long-term effects of their efforts influenced parts of the late-19th-century economic growth in the US and
Mexico, connecting to "New South" ideas about social and economic progress and the "conservative liberalism" of Porfirio Diaz. Altogether,
Wahlstrom provides a well-researched study of the people, events, and ideas surrounding Confederate migration and colonization efforts in
Mexico. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Most academic levels/libraries.--C. L. Sinclair, Brookhaven College
Sinclair, C.L.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
7/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1499654162877 4/4
Sinclair, C.L. "Wahlstrom, Todd W.: The southern exodus to Mexico: migration across the borderlands after the American Civil War." CHOICE:
Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Sept. 2015, p. 135. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA428875014&it=r&asid=00688d69c10d2f243f4ea26aa4155065. Accessed 9 July
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A428875014
QUOTED: "a nuanced, cogently argued, and well-researched story about the nearly five thousand former Confederates who migrated to Mexico following the Civil War."
"This is an important book, and it deserves a place on reading lists for graduate seminars and Civil War enthusiasts alike. Indeed, not only does Wahlstrom add a great deal to the historiographical discussion in Civil War history, but his work also serves as a significant contribution to Southern, emancipation, and borderlands history."
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The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War
by Wahlstrom, Todd W.
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Retail Price: $55.00
Issue: Summer 2015
ISBN: 9780803246348
Remaking Economic Fates in the Mexican Borderlands
In The Southern Exodus to Mexico, Todd W. Wahlstrom provides a nuanced, cogently argued, and well-researched story about the nearly five thousand former Confederates who migrated to Mexico following the Civil War. Most scholars acknowledge this flight, if only cursorily, as one taken by frustrated Confederates who refused to be reconstructed under Yankee rule. Most have focused on the better known leaders—former Confederate officers and politicians like Sterling Price, Joseph Shelby, Simon Bolivar Buckner, and Matthew Fontaine Maury. They helped lead the migration into Mexico in a self-proclaimed effort to avoid living under United States control but, as Wahlstrom shows, there was a lot more to it. The vast majority of fleeing Confederates had been small to middling-scale slave owners who hoped to regain a semblance of their former economic livelihoods in Mexico and elsewhere. Wahlstrom also admirably considers the post-war black migrations, and illuminates their movement into the Mexico borderlands. Wahlstrom’s focuses especially on southern migration into the northern Mexico borderlands, yet he draws broad and persuasive conclusions on the migration’s hemispheric impact. Wahlstrom ultimately contends that although Confederate migration to Mexico and elsewhere proved to be relatively small-scaled and short-lived, it profoundly shaped the postwar South and its place in the world. Indeed, Wahlstrom convincingly argues, “Southern migration and colonization in Mexico . . . played a pivotal role in remolding and reshaping the South, the United States, and the Western Hemisphere in the post-Civil War era” (p. xxvii).
Aside from the better-known ex-Confederates who moved to Mexico primarily to avoid Yankee rule, most emigrants sought to take advantage of the economic opportunities offered by the Mexican borderlands. Former Confederate slave owners tried to make a new start in the troubled country. It was in such a way, claims Wahlstrom, that the southern emigrants “attempted to break the boundaries of an increasingly hemmed-in southern economy and society” in the postwar period (p. 131). Further, Wahlstrom shows, coming to terms with the migration impulse and its underlying economic causes serves to reshape our understanding of Reconstruction, especially in terms of the heretofore standard narrative regarding southern regional dependence. Although the postwar period is certainly marked by an economically dependent New South, Wahlstrom’s work expands the narrative to show a portion of postwar southerners who fled such dependence.
Former white Confederates were not the only southerners to evacuate the postwar South. Indeed, Wahlstrom makes clear that black movement into the Mexican borderlands reflected yet another, and too often overlooked, contour of African American agency following emancipation. Former slaves moved into Mexico in a concerted effort to reshape their own social, economic, and geographic livelihood, mirroring future domestic and international movements that continued throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries. Much like their white counterparts, Wahlstrom shows, black migration into Mexico recast postwar emigration “along the lines of economic pursuit and upward mobility” (p. 46).
Although postwar southern emigration to Mexico was critically important to how the South and America dealt with the economic, social, and ideological aftermath of the Civil War, any significant southern permanence in Mexico (or Latin America generally) ultimately faltered. This happened for a variety of reasons, not the least of which had been the very “borderland” where many former Confederates hoped to settle. Neither local Mexicans nor Comanche Indians in the Texas-Coahuila borderlands—where a large portion of southern emigrants hoped to restart—favored an influx of southern white and black migrants. Locals and their Comanche counterparts hardly enforced national Mexican laws, and they together served to block any significant government influence that might have favored the newcomers. It is with this discussion that Wahlstrom clearly articulates the complex multi-cultural and multi-national milieu that ultimately “cracked,” as he says, the best hope for permanent southern emigration (p. 82).
This is an important book, and it deserves a place on reading lists for graduate seminars and Civil War enthusiasts alike. Indeed, not only does Wahlstrom add a great deal to the historiographical discussion in Civil War history, but his work also serves as a significant contribution to Southern, emancipation, and borderlands history.
Matthew M. Stith is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Tyler and author of the forthcoming book, Extreme Civil War: Guerrilla Warfare, Environment, and Race on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier.
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Volume 121 Issue 1
February 2016
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Todd W. Wahlstrom. The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War.
Todd W. Wahlstrom . The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War . (Borderlands and Transcultural Studies.) Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Pp. xxvii, 189. $55.00.
Robert E. May
Am Hist Rev (2016) 121 (1): 209-210. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/121.1.209
Published: 08 February 2016
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Positing that prior historians have miscast the post–Civil War southern migration to Mexico, Todd W. Wahlstrom argues in this revisionist work for an entrepreneurial take on southern colonists in Mexico and for positioning them within borderlands and transnational contexts. Rather than serving up die-hard rebels escaping Yankee rule and possible punishment for disloyalty who fantasize about recreating a labor system approximating slavery in a substitute Dixie, Wahlstrom presents exiles who are mostly “small to middling” (xxii) former slaveholders, professionals, and skilled laborers driven by self-improvement impulses and visions of modernizing Mexico’s economy. Further, he argues the emigrants held significant sway beyond their numbers—only about five thousand arrived between 1865 and the early 1870s according to lists published in the emigrant newspaper Mexican Times and Wahlstrom’s parsing of other evidence. They “pushed transnational social and economic relations in new directions” (xxi) by...