The Council weighs freedom at birth against slaveholder property claims

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...

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...

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...

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,...