Many Southern newspapers, which had once mocked the Union army as filled with immigrants, came out in favor of encouraging immigration to the South after African Americans had been released from slavery. Prior to the Civil War, only one in twenty immigrants to the United States settled in the states that joined the Confederacy. That ratio would become even more pronounced in the decades after the war, in spite of the efforts by Southern states to entice immigrants.
As this article indicates, white immigrants were seen as a replacement for African Americans. The article predicts the eventual extinction of the black race, necessitating the importation of a white immigrant agricultural proleteriat.
Mobile Register
Friday, Jan 29, 1869
Mobile, AL
Vol: 1
Issue: 310
Page: 1
Other immigrants to fill the “void” were imported from China. To wit – the numerous studies on the Chinese population in the Mississippi Delta and elsewhere in the South
There were attempts to settle Chinese in the South, but as the Census indicates these efforts were failures:
https://thereconstructionera.com/how-successful-were-southern-states-at-encouraging-chinese-immigrants-to-move-to-the-region/