A new registration decree governs enslaved people and freeborn children

A deputy argued that the bill could take many decades to end slavery, since children born before the law could continue having children whose service would last to age 21. The calculation made visible...

The Senate’s recorded session belongs to the final legislative debate over the free-birth bill. As the proposal moved through the upper chamber, enslaved mothers’ family bonds were discussed in a...

The Senate annals record debate on the measure. Parliamentary discussion recognized questions of maternal and family rights while seeking to protect the slaveholding order from sudden change. The...

A further Senate session considered the emancipation bill before its passage later that month. The law’s supporters framed gradualism as humane and orderly; its limits left enslaved women’s...

Law no. 2,040, enacted on 28 September 1871, declared children born to enslaved women after that date legally free. Yet the law left children under the authority of their mother’s enslaver, who...

The first national census used 1 August 1872 as its reference date and classified residents by categories including enslaved or free status, sex, marital condition, and occupation. Census figures...

São Paulo Resolution no. 93 prohibited municipal licenses for enslaved people to work as coachmen for hire, cart conductors, or water sellers, while allowing a limited exception for private carriage...

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...

Ferreira de Meneses launched Gazeta da Tarde in Rio de Janeiro. The newspaper became a major forum against slavery and racial hierarchy; José do Patrocínio later directed it and used its pages to...

On 7 September 1880, abolitionists including Joaquim Nabuco, André Rebouças, and José do Patrocínio established the Sociedade Brasileira contra a Escravidão. The society connected parliamentary...