The son of Dom Pedro I (1798-1834) of Brazil and his Austrian wife, Empress Leopoldina (1797-1826), was named Pedro de Alcântara João Carlos Salvador Bebiano Xavier de Paula Leocádio Miguel Gabriel Gonzaga. Born in 1825 (d. 1891), he was acclaimed Emperor Dom Pedro II on April 7, 1831, the day of his father's abdication, but did not assume his powers until he came of age on July 23, 1840. In the meantime, José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva (1763-1838) served as his legal guardian. Dom Pedro II was crowned on July 18, 1841, and reigned for almost fifty years until he was overthrown on November 15, 1889, with the advent of the republic.
Dom Pedro II received an excellent classical education that served him well. During his long reign, Brazil experienced domestic peace, prosperity, and progress. For example, it was in these years that Brazil built its first stone-paved road, "União e Indústria" (Union and Industry), linking Rio de Janeiro, Petrópolis, and Juiz de Fora. In the same era, Brazil's first steam-engine locomotive started running from Santos to São Paulo in 1868, the Brazil-Europe submarine cable was installed, telephone service began in 1877, and Brazilians instituted their first postal stamp.
Dom Pedro II welcomed the republic as a natural evolution in the history of Brazil. When he departed into exile, he expressed his "ardent wishes for the greatness and prosperity of Brazil." He died in exile in Paris in 1891 and France gave him a royal funeral. In 1925, Dom Pedro's remains were transferred to Brazil, where they now rest in Petrópolis in the cathedral that he helped found.
An admirer of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), Dom Pedro II visited the United States in1876 to join President Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) in opening the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, the largest world's fair up to that time. While at the exposition, the emperor met Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), who was demonstrating his new invention--the telephone. Dom Pedro II was the first person to buy stock in Bell's company, the Bell Telephone Company. One of the first telephones in a private residence was installed in his palace in Petrópolis, his summer retreat forty miles from Rio de Janeiro.
Dom Pedro II had a deep appreciation for the potential contributions of science and technology to society. He was interested in expanding his country's primary agricultural commodities and in making Brazil a major cotton producer. After the defeat of the Confederate States in the U.S. Civil War, the emperor invited successful Confederate cotton planters to settle in Brazil. Between 1867 and 1871, when slavery was still legal in Brazil, at least three thousand Confederate families passed through the port of Rio de Janeiro. About 80 percent of the families returned to the United States, but one successful American settlement in Brazil--Americana, founded by Colonel William Hutchinson Norris (1800-1893) of Mobile, Alabama--still exists.
Located seventy-five miles from the city of São Paulo, Americana in 2003 has a population of approximately 250,000 persons. Conversations among the descendants of the confederados (about 10 percent of the population) are often in Southern-accented English. Families with names such as Jones, MacKnight, and Whitaker come together for the Fourth of July and other holidays to have a Southern-style barbecue. Rosalyn Carter (b. 1927-), wife of President Jimmy Carter (b. 1924-), has relatives buried in the Confederate cemetery in Americana. In 1992 President-elect Bill Clinton (b. 1946-) wrote a letter to the confederados of Americana in which he recalled that Arkansas was one of the thirteen states that had sent settlers to Brazil.
