📅 12 April 1861
As the U.S. Civil War began, Marx and Engels followed the conflict as a struggle whose outcome would shape slavery, labor, and democracy. Marx’s later journalism supported emancipation and...
📅 25 October 1861
Marx argued that the conflict could not be understood apart from slavery and the political power of the slaveholding class. His reporting connected emancipation in the United States to workers’...
📅 1 July 1863
The Dutch emancipation law took effect in Suriname and the Caribbean colonies. Many formerly enslaved people in Suriname were compelled to work under state supervision for another ten years, a measure...
📅 13 May 1888
Brazil’s Lei Áurea formally abolished slavery, making it the last country in the Americas to do so. The law followed sustained resistance by enslaved people, mass escapes, abolitionist mobilization,...
📅 7 September 1822
Independence from Portugal created a new state that maintained slavery and the Atlantic trade. Enslaved Africans and their descendants shaped Brazilian society and resisted bondage, while political...
📅 12 April 1861
Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter after slaveholding states seceded to protect slavery. Enslaved people escaped to Union lines and pressed the conflict toward emancipation. Their actions...
📅 5 July 1587
On 5 July 1587, Philip II confirmed a license allowing named agents to conduct “rescue” transactions involving enslaved people in Brazil. Colonial records used rescue language for transactions that...
📅 10 June 1835
On 10 June 1835, Imperial Law 4 prescribed death for enslaved people convicted of killing, poisoning, or seriously injuring an owner, overseer, or members of their households, and created expedited...
📅 10 July 1867
A letter dated 10 July 1867, associated with insurgents in Viana, Maranhão, states that they were “in the field” to address the freedom of enslaved people. The document gives a rare glimpse of...
📅 30 June 1871
On 30 June 1871, a Senate commission issued a report on the government’s proposal concerning the “servile element.” Committee work translated abolitionist pressure and imperial political calculation...
📅 1 December 1871
Decree no. 4,835 of 1 December 1871 regulated a special register of enslaved people and children legally classified as freeborn under the September law. Registration could help administer a gradual...
📅 5 March 1879
On 5 March 1879, Bahian deputy Jerônimo Sodré Pereira spoke in the Chamber of Deputies against the continuation of slavery and placed abolition back on the national parliamentary agenda after years of...
📅 8 December 1880
On 8 December 1880, the Sociedade Cearense Libertadora was inaugurated in Fortaleza. Emerging from the earlier association Perseverança e Porvir, it helped organize campaigns across Ceará, including...
📅 10 March 1888
On 10 March 1888, João Alfredo Correia de Oliveira formed a new imperial cabinet more willing to pursue the end of slavery. The cabinet change followed years of mass abolitionist mobilization,...
📅 3 May 1888
On 3 May 1888, Princess Regent Isabel opened the parliamentary session with a speech urging lawmakers to remove slavery from Brazilian law. The address framed abolition as a national aspiration and...
📅 8 May 1888
On 8 May 1888, Minister of Agriculture Rodrigo Augusto da Silva presented the government’s proposal for the complete abolition of slavery to the Chamber of Deputies. The bill moved rapidly in response...
📅 11 May 1888
On 11 May 1888, the proposal approved by the Chamber reached the Senate, where a special committee was formed to report on it. The expedited review brought the question to its final legislative stage....
📅 26 August 1789
France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaimed liberty and equality as universal principles, but colonial slavery and racial hierarchy remained in place. Enslaved people, free...
📅 23 May 1836
A law approved on 23 May 1836 expanded owners’ authority to punish enslaved people and raised the permitted maximum from 29 to 100 lashes. Fundación Empresas Polar describes it as a regression...
📅 2 September 1846
On 2 September 1846 Francisco Rangel began an armed uprising near Magdaleno. The movement drew in hacendados, renters, peons, muleteers, enslaved people, and others facing economic and political...
📅 28 April 1848
Congress passed a new manumission law on 21 April 1848; it was ordered into effect on 28 April. It reorganized local boards and reporting, and continued a system that freed people through limited...
📅 29 November 1851
On 29 November 1851 the provincial deputation of Barquisimeto set aside 10,000 pesos for enslaved people’s freedom. The initiative made emancipation a public budget question but still routed payment...
📅 24 September 1852
On 24 September 1852 the Interior ministry requested registers of enslaved people from named governors. The census order made the remaining enslaved population legible to the state as the government...
📅 10 December 1852
On 10 December 1852 the Caracas provincial deputation issued an agreement asking Congress to pass a law abolishing slavery. The appeal came after decades of gradual manumission that freed relatively...
📅 30 April 1853
A circular dated 30 April 1853 reminded governors that the law barred bringing enslaved people into Venezuela, including as personal servants. Its publication in the Gaceta de Venezuela on 29 May...
📅 10 March 1854
On 10 March 1854 President José Gregorio Monagas addressed Congress during debate over abolition. He urged passage of a just law while insisting that abolition not violate slaveholders’ property...
