Abolition

By Emilia Viotti da Costa

This book masterfully presents a powerful synthesis of the process of abolishing slavery. Written by one of the greatest Brazilian historians, it provides accurate information and careful analysis that honor and respect the commitment of the historian of writing an accessible and high-level history.


Este livro, escrito por uma das maiores historiadoras brasileiras, além de apresentar com maestria uma poderosa síntese do processo da abolição da escravidão, fornece informações precisas e análises cuidadosas que honram o compromisso do historiador de redigir uma história acessível e de alto nível.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Editora Unesp
• Release date: Jun 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9788568334034

Book preview

Carolina

[7] CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION [9]

Chapter 1 – FROM THE DEFENSE OF SLAVERYTO ITS CONDEMNATION [13]

Liberalism and Slavery [14]

The Enlightenment Discourse [16]

Pro-Slavery Discourse [19]

Radical Discourse [19]

Chapter 2 – ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE [23]

England’s Position [24]

Economic Dependence [24]

Contraband [26]

The Law of Eusébio de Queiroz (1850) [28]

Chapter 3 – THE QUEST FOR ALTERNATIVES [31]

Brazilian Workers [31]

Immigrants [32]

Conflicts between Immigrants and Planters [33]

The Internal Slave Trade [34]

Concentration of Slaves on the Great Plantations [35]

Chapter 4 – ABOLITIONISM: THE PRIMARY PHASE, 1850-1871 [37]

The Slave in Literature [38]

Reform and Abolition [39]

International Pressure [40]

Proposed Laws Favoring Emancipation [44]

The Slave in the Paraguayan War [45]

Chapter 5 – ABOLITIONISM, THE SECOND PHASE: THE Free Birth Law [49]

Proponents and Opponents of Emancipation [49]

The Project of Rio Branco [51]

Political Parties and the Free Birth Law [54]

Frauds [55]

Chapter 6 – FROM THE OX-CART TO THE RAILROAD [59]

Decline of the Slave Population [60]

Mechanization [62]

Railroads [63]

The Advantages of Free Labor [66]

Chinese Immigration [67]

European Immigration [69]

Divergent Opinions [70]

Urban Groups [71]

Chapter 7 – ABOLITIONISM, THE THIRD PHASE: THE LAW OF THE SEXAGENARIANS [75]

The Slaveowners Protest [77]

The Dantas Ministry [81]

The Cotegipe Ministry [85]

[8] Chapter 8 – ABOLITIONISM AND ABOLITIONISTS [93]

Luiz Gama [93]

André Rebouças [96]

Joaquim Nabuco [99]

Chapter 9 – ANONYMOUS HEROES,THE PROTESTS OF THE ENSLAVED,AND ABOLITION [109]

The Caifazes [109]

Masters and Slaves [110]

The Slave and Abolitionism [112]

Subaltern Classes [114]

Disrespect and Demoralization [115]

Manumissions [118]

The Victory of the Abolitionists [119]

Chapter 10 – AFTER THE FACT [125]

Chapter 11 – THE IMPACT OF ABOLITION [131]

CHRONOLOGY [137]

BIBLIOGRAPHY [139]

[9] INTRODUCTION

On May 8, 1888, the Brazilian minister of agriculture, Rodrigo Augusto da Silva, came before the lower house of the nation’s legislature, the Chamber of Deputies, to propose a project of the executive branch, a law to abolish the institution of slavery. A committee created by the Chamber to study the proposal immediately gave its support, calling for an urgent vote on the measure. In the report presented by Deputy Duarte de Azevedo, he said that the committee was convinced that it was impossible to delay for even a moment the long aspiration of the Brazilian people... a social and political necessity. He characterized abolition as an act of homage to the century’s civilization, and to the generosity of heart of all those who love humanity’s common good. His words were met with applause and shouts of jubilation from the full gallery and from every corner of the Chamber itself. Outside, a crowd of more than five thousand people had gathered to witness the proceedings.

After the proposal of a few amendments and a brief discussion, the deputies dispensed with customary formalities and moved in record time to a vote. Eighty-three deputies voted in favor, and only nine voted against. They all belonged to the Conservative Party, and eight of them represented a single province, Rio de Janeiro — the last refuge of slavery. The great coffee planters of the decadent areas of the Paraíba valley, through the [10] votes of their representatives, were giving voice to their determined opposition to a measure that would deal a final death blow to their already shaky fortunes. For them, abolition without any compensation for slaveowners was a blow from which they could scarcely recover. There was nothing they could do, however, to prevent the approval of the law. It was impossible to contain the vibrant enthusiasm of those more fortunate whites for whom abolition would not be a mortal wound.

After it was approved by the Chamber of Deputies, the measure was sent to the Senate, where it provoked a similar exhilaration. Charged with the same sense of urgency, the senators approved it on May 13, sending it on to the Regent, Princess Isabel, the current head of state. That afternoon, she signed the law that became known in Brazilian history as the Lei Áurea [The Golden Law]. In celebration of the moment of abolition, May 13 became a national holiday, and the Chamber of Deputies commemorated the occasion with a five-day recess.

More than 700,000 slaves — most of them in the provinces of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro — were thus transformed overnight into free persons. In plantation slave quarters and in the communities of fugitive slaves known as quilombos, ex-slaves celebrated their liberty. Newspapers praised the law of abolition with page after page of commemoration. In the streets of towns and cities, the people loudly voiced their enthusiasm for the end of slavery.

Thus, by a simple legislative act endorsed by the Crown and acclaimed by most of the population, a major institution that had been in place for more than three hundred years was simply eliminated. However long and difficult had been the paths to this moment, in the end it proved unnecessary to plunge the nation into a civil war, as had happened in the United States. There, slaves gained their freedom after a long and cruel war in which the slaveowners fought to preserve their slave property from massive armed attack by the armies of the Union. And, despite the fears of some slaveholders, there was no surge of inter-racial violence such as had occurred a century before in Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti), between slaves and their French masters. In Brazil, the catastrophes forecast by those who expected the country’s economy to collapse also did not [11] occur. After a very brief period of uncertainty, life returned to normal. Both in the cities and on the plantations, production quickly resumed its customary pace.

For a few of large plantations owners, abolition did mean ruin and a precipitous loss of status — a horrible blow, said one of them. Or, in the words of one descendent of a slave owner, it was the worst assault that until now has been perpetrated against private property. Those who had hoped to be compensated for the loss of their slaves saw their dream vanish. Embittered, they turned against the government they thought had brought ruin upon them. But their resentments and protests were lost among the jubilant shouts of the ex-slaves, and the cheers of all the other people who had identified themselves with the cause of abolition.

In June 1888, the Chamber of Deputies, in its answer to the Crown’s formal Speech from the Throne, responded to Princess Isabel in very strong terms:

We freed ourselves, Madam, from the ominous legacy that we had maintained until today solely to avoid distressing our agricultural industry; we restored to human beings those forums essential to their dignity in light of the principle of political equality; we consecrated the principle of the uniformity of civil status and thus eliminated from our legislation the only exception repugnant to the moral basis of national law and to the liberal spirit of modern institutions.

This fact, which bears witness to our social and political advancement, and which should add to the consideration that Brazil deserves from civilized nations, was loudly applauded inside and outside the Empire.¹

With this declaration, the Chamber of Deputies considered its obligations to the former slaves to be completed. It had accomplished its mission: to liberate white men from the weight of slavery and from the contradictions that existed between slavery and the liberal principles embraced by the Brazilian [12] Constitution of 1824. They had removed the stain of backwardness that they believed had shamed the nation before the world. Brazil was the last independent nation in the western world to eliminate slavery! For a majority of the members of parliament, who had worked for abolition, the question was now settled. The ex-slaves were to be left to their own devices. It would be up to them, from now on, to convert their emancipation into reality. The law might guarantee them formally the judicial status of free persons, but it did not provide them with the means to make their freedom effective. Legal equality was not sufficient to eliminate the enormous social distances and prejudices that three centuries of bondage had created. The Lei Áurea abolished slavery, but not its legacies. Three hundred years of oppression are not annulled by the stroke of a pen. Abolition was only the first step in the direction of true emancipation. Still, abolition was a conquest, if only of incomplete effect. And it is the story of this conquest that we will tell here.

When we examine the events that led up to abolition, a number of questions arise: why, for instance, was an institution that had been accepted without serious objection suddenly repudiated in 1888? Why was the project of abolition set in motion with such sudden urgency? How can we explain why so many members of the legislature, including those who had been elected with the support of slaveowners, approved the law almost without debate? Why did the slaves’ masters not try to prevent, with arms in their hands, this attack on their property, which was actually guaranteed by the Constitution? What role did the slaves and free blacks play in this process? Why did abolition take so long in Brazil? These are some of the questions that will be addressed in the chapters that follow.

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1 Falas do Trono, desde o ano 1823 até o ano de 1889 [Speeches from the Throne, from the Year 1823 to the Year 1889]. São Paulo, 1977.

[13] CHAPTER 1

FROM THE DEFENSE OF SLAVERY

TO ITS CONDEMNATION

For three hundred years, from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century, slavery was routinely practiced and accepted by Brazil’s dominant classes without any serious questioning of the legitimacy of bondage. Many even justified slavery with the argument that it rescued Africans from their lives of ignorance and converted them to Christianity. This conversion liberated them from sin and opened the door to eternal salvation. In this fashion, enslavement might even be considered a grand blessing for the blacks! For us today, such argument may seem to be merely cynical, but at the time it had persuasive power. The social order was considered an outcome of the workings of Divine Providence, and thus not open to question. The common belief was that it was God’s will that some were born nobles and others plebeians, some rich and others poor, some free and others slaves. According to this notion, it was not man’s place to meddle with the social order. And so, justified by religion and sanctioned by church and by state, slavery was simply not questioned. The Church limited itself to counseling patience to the slaves and benevolence to their masters.

It is not difficult to imagine the effects of such ideas. They permitted the dominant classes to enslave blacks without any pangs of conscience. During the colonial period, the very few individuals who broke the norm and criticized the slave trade [14] and even cast doubt on the legitimacy of slavery itself, were expelled from the colony, and the slave trade continued without impediment. Only the slaves themselves found fault with their bondage, manifesting their ideas through escape and rebellion. But they not only found little sympathy among free people, but instead encountered fierce repression.

Liberalism and Slavery

But in the course of the eighteenth century, doctrinal and supernatural justifications of slavery were contested. In its struggle to dismantle the ancien régime, the European bourgeoisie created new concepts that little by little began to undermine the world view that had justified the traditional social order. With the goal of combating the ancient privileges that had