An enslaved witness is questioned after the Viana uprising

On 1 June 1857, enslaved and freed African ganhadores—workers who carried goods and people through Salvador—stopped work in protest against a municipal ordinance that imposed restrictive...

Imperial Decree 3310 emancipated surviving Africans classified as emancipados, regardless of how long they had served. This formal change ended the assigned-service condition for those covered, though...

Decree no. 3,371 of 7 January 1865 organized volunteer battalions for the war against Paraguay. The call to arms unfolded within a slaveholding empire: military service offered some enslaved men a...

Decree no. 3,725-A of 6 November 1866 ordered that enslaved people owned by the state (the “Nation”) and designated as fit for army service be freed for that service; it extended the same benefit to...

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...

The Council of State considered a draft prepared by a commission drawing on Pimenta Bueno’s proposals and Nabuco de Araújo’s legal work. The question was how the imperial state would manage the end of...

Council of State deliberations continued over a proposal that would break the inherited rule that a child followed the enslaved status of the mother. That principle made enslaved women’s...

In a further session on the emancipation project, councillors confronted whether children born to enslaved women could be treated as free without compensating owners. The dispute exposed slavery’s...

Council members continued examining the draft that later informed the Free Womb proposal. The reform’s design tried to reconcile a claimed future of freedom with the protection of property and labor...

Decree no. 1,695 of 15 September 1869 prohibited selling enslaved people at public auction with a public cry and exhibition. The rule curtailed one degrading public practice but did not ban private...