Brazil begins its first national census

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...

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...

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...

The first issue of O Abolicionista appeared in Rio de Janeiro on 1 November 1880 as a newspaper of the Sociedade Brasileira contra a Escravidão. Print helped circulate abolitionist arguments beyond...