The Empire bars public auctions and display of enslaved people

A surviving deposition dated 18 July 1867 records the questioning of Vicente, an enslaved man, in the aftermath of the Viana uprising in Maranhão. The testimony is mediated by officials: the...

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...

Deputy Jerônimo José Teixeira Júnior questioned the government’s position on slavery after the imperial address failed to set out an emancipation plan. His intervention represented a political...

On 12 May 1871, the government’s proposal on the “servile element” entered the Senate’s legislative process. The bill proposed that children born to enslaved women after enactment be declared free,...

The parliamentary record identifies sessions on 23 and 24 May as part of the Chamber’s renewed discussion of emancipation. The proposed change questioned the legal inheritance of enslaved status,...

Debate continued over a measure that would declare future-born children free while allowing owners to retain their services through adolescence. The issue was not an abstract legal puzzle: it...

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...