The business of exile: the money and memory of a "Confederate" family in Cuba

James and Eliza McHatton, a wealthy sugar planting family with multiple business and political partnerships before the Civil War, abandoned their plantation near Baton Rouge and escaped Union-occupied Louisiana in 1862. The family moved from Baton Rouge to Texas, Mexico, and eventually Cuba, where they purchased and resided on a plantation until after Reconstruction. While striving to recreate the brutal economic system that had sustained and enriched them at the cost of others, the McHattons attempted to recreate the culture, status, and lifestyle they had left behind. While James focused on business, the culturally-conscious Eliza found that Cuba, its people, and its laborers reminded her of her own skewed vision of life before the Civil War. James death left the family legacy in Elizas hands, allowing her to shape how the McHattons, Confederate expatriates, and the antebellum South came to be erroneously remembered by succeeding generations of McHattons and Americans.