EVENT INFORMATION

31
October
1856

A decree organizes claims and public-credit payments from abolition

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📅 31 October 1856 📍 Venezuela

A presidential decree supplemented the May law recognizing abolition claims as public debt. It created procedures to classify and register former owners’ claims, exchange abolition certificates, divide the debt into active and deferred portions, and route taxes and other revenues toward interest and repayment. The decree shows emancipation’s fiscal afterlife: freedom was legally declared, while the state continued to manage a debt generated by compensation to former enslavers. The surviving legal text records administrative design, not how equitably or promptly claims were paid.

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People in this event

José Tadeo Monagas

claimants formerly holding enslaved people

public-credit officials

Organizations in this Event

Government of Venezuela

Ministry of the Interior

Public Credit Commission

abolition treasuries