Politics, Parliament, and the Penalty of the Lash: The Significance of the End of Flogging in 1886¹

Política parlamentar e a punição do chicote: o significado do fim dos açoites em 1866

Abstract

The Brazilian penalty of the lash was reformed (1886) by a cabinet and parliament opposed to abolition. While the penalty's abuse had been exploited by Abolitionists attempting the cabinet's fall, the cabinet unexpectedly supported its reform. This apparent contradiction has not been satisfactorily addressed; this article attempts to do so. It will demonstrate that the cabinet's support was a cabinet tactic designed to vindicate the cabinet's policies and strength. Nonetheless, the revocation of the state's role in flogging delegitimizing flogging on plantations, too, despite the cabinet's expectations. Indeed, the reform impacted plantation destabilization, which helped lead to the cabinet's fall and the 1888 law abolishing slavery. This complex series of events illustrates the Abolitionist struggle's interweave between parliament, the movement, and slave agency.

Keywords:
Abolitionism; slavery; pena de açoites; Parliament

Resumo

A punição pelo açoite prevista na lei brasileira foi reformada, em 1886, por um gabinete e um parlamento contrários à abolição. Se o abuso da norma foi explorado pelos abolicionistas para tentar derrubar o gabinete, este, inesperadamente, deu apoio à reforma. Essa aparente contradição ainda não foi satisfatoriamente explicada; é o que este artigo pretende fazer. Ele demonstrará que o apoio do gabinete ao projeto foi uma tática desenhada para dar suporte às suas próprias políticas, fortalecendo-as. Mas, contrariando as expectativas do gabinete, a revogação do papel do Estado na aplicação dos açoites acabou por deslegitimar, também, o açoitamento nas fazendas. De fato, a reforma contribuiu para a desestabilização da disciplina nas fazendas, o que, por sua vez, deu impulso à queda do gabinete e à lei de 1888, que aboliu a escravidão. Esta série complexa de eventos ilustra o entrelaçamento da luta abolicionista com o parlamento e o protagonismo escravo.

Palavras-chave:
Abolicionismo; escravidão; lei dos açoites; Parlamento

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• 1
  This article draws upon archival research funded over the years by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and the Fulbright-Hays Commission, support that the author acknowledges with gratitude. An earlier version of this article was given as a paper at the Conference Honoring Boris Fausto, "Rethinking Brazilian History," Center for Latin American Studies, Stanford University, May 2010.
• 2
  See Manuel Dantas, Jornal do Commercio {hereafter, JC}, 31 July 1886, 1; Ibidem, 18 August 1886, 1; Ribeiro da Luz, JC., 23 August 1886, 1. I should note that one of the five captives was sentenced to life prison with hard labor (galés perpétuas - the galés is a reference to the antique Portuguese punishment of being sent to the galleys); it was the remaining four who were flogged. The JC was the Monarchy's journal of record for the parliamentary debates. Dantas raised the issue for reasons to be discussed below; Ribeiro da Luz was minister of justice at the time, and presented a report on the incident as demanded by Dantas.
• 3
  For the larger context of the law, see BARMAN, Roderick J. Brazil: The Forging of a Nation: 17981852. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1988. ch.6; and NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. The Party of Order: The Conservatives, the State, and Slavery in the Brazilian Monarchy, 1831-1871. Stanford: Stanford Univ.Press, 2006. ch.2. On the Malês and the law, see, e.g., FLORY, Thomas. Race and Social Control in Independent Brazil. Journal of Latin American Studies, {hereafter, JLAS}, v.9, n.2, p.216, May 1977; or the now classic treatment, REIS, João José. Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993 {1986}. p.230. Reis cites two sources on the law's origin, but neither establishes a direct relationship between the law and the revolt; see PINAUD, João Luiz Duboc, et al. Insurreição negra e justiça: Paty do Alferes, 1838. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Expressão e Cultura/Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil, 1987. p.69, n.132 and Apêndice, passim; and COSTA, Emilia Viotti da. Da senzala à colônia. 2ª ed. São Paulo: Ed. Ciências Humanas, 1982 {1966}. p.276-77, p.287, p.298. Instead, see PIROLA, Ricardo Figueiredo. O governo e o desgoverno dos escravos: a pena de morte escrava e a lei de 10 de junho de 1835. 4o. Encontro Escravidão e Liberdade no Brasil Meridional, Curitiba, 13 a 15 de maio de 2009, who studies the history of the legislation in parliament. He does not raise the issue of the Malês at all, and traces the law to one of the five 1833 legislative proposals described in the text here. It is Pirola, also, who cites an earlier work: RIBEIRO, João Luiz. No meio das galinhas as baratas não têm razão: a lei de 10 de junho de 1835: os escravos e a pena de morte no Império de Brasil: 1822-1889. Rio de Janeiro: Renovar, 2005. cap.2. This chapter, again, demonstrates that the law was one of five proposals derived from 1833 restorationist fears, and pinpoints the so-called Carrancas slave revolt in Minas (1833), with its restorationist association (see RIBEIRO, João Luiz. Op. Cit., p.44-48, p.52-53). Ribeiro does suggest (RIBEIRO, João Luiz. Op.Cit., p.65), that the Malês revolt may well have clinched matters among Chamber deputies, but this is speculation. Certainly, the Chamber annals associated with the law have no discussion of the Malês at all; see Annaes do parlamento brazileiro: Camara dos srs. Deputados. Brasília: Câmara dos Deputados, 1982 {1874}, p.73-74, 1835, t.1, 15 May. For more on the law of 10 June 1835 and slave repression, see BROWN, Alexandra K. "A Black Mark on Our Legislation": Slavery, Punishment, and the Politics of Death in Nineteenth-Century Brazil. Luso-Brazilian Review, v.37, n.2, p.95-121, Winter/2000. Finally, the legislative reform of the penalty of the lash has not been the only abolitionist measure enjoying recent attention; see, e.g., CHALHOUB, Sidney. The Politics of Disease Control: Yellow Fever and Race in Nineteenth Century Rio de Janeiro. JLAS, p.441-63, v.25, n.3, May 1993; Idem. Visões da liberdade: uma história das últimas décadas da escravidão na corte. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990. cap.2,3; Idem. Machado de Assis, historiador. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003. cap.4; GRADEN, Dale T. An Act "Even of Public Security": Slave Resistance, Social Tensions, and the End of the International Slave Trade to Brazil, 1835-56. Hispanic American Historical Review {hereafter, HAHR}, v.76, n.2, p.249-82, May 1996; MENDONÇA, Joseli Maria Nunes. Entre a mão e os anéis: a Lei dos Sexagenários e os caminhos da abolição no Brasil. Campinas: Unicamp, 1999; PENA, Eduardo Spiller. Pagens da casa imperial: jurisconsultos, escravidão e a lei de 1871. Campinas: Unicamp, 2001; NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in 1850: Historiography, Slave Agency and Statesmanship. JLAS, v.33, n.4, p.681-712, November 2001; Idem. The Party of Order, Op. Cit., p.233-240 and cap.7; GRINBERG, Keila. Reescravização, direitos e justiças no Brasil do século XIX. In: LARA, Sílvia Hunold e MENDONÇA, Joseli Maria Nunes (orgs.). Direitos e justiças no Brasil: ensaios de história social. Campinas: Unicamp, 2006. p.101-128; MAMIGONIAN, Beatriz Gallotti. O direito de ser africano livre: os escravos e as interpretações da lei de 1831. In: ibidem, 129-60; e PENA, Eduardo Spiller. Burlas à lei e revolta escrava no tráfico interno do Brasil meridional, século XIX. In: LARA, Sílvia Hunold e MENDONÇA, Joseli Maria Nunes (orgs.). Op. Cit., p.161-197.
• 4
  See BROWN, Alexandra K. Op. Cit., p.101-110; the Dantas and Ribeiro da Luz accounts, in n.1, above and OTONI, Cristiano Benedito. Autobiografia. Brasília, 1983 {c.1908}. p.273-274.
• 5
  See the accounts in n.1, above. Note that this and most other aspects of the captives' punishment and subsequent treatment were disputed by the Senate opposition explicitly or implicitly, for political reasons clarified in this text, below.
• 6
  Renewed interest in Nabuco, associated with the centenary of his death (1910), will make citations of the most recent studies almost immediately passé. However, see the work and citations in the two anthologies of recent conferences in the United States now in print and, on Nabuco as an abolitionist, the filial biography, the classic biography, and the most recent popular biography, all of which are based on extensive research: ALBUQUERQUE, Severino (ed). Joaquim Nabuco: ensaios do seminario na Universidade de Wisconsin, 2009. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Bem-te-vi, 2010; JACKSON, K. David (ed). Joaquim Nabuco: ensaios do seminário na Universidade de Yale, 2009. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Bem-te-vi, 2010; NABUCO, Carolina Nabuco. A vida de Joaquim Nabuco. São Paulo: Nacional, 1928, pt.II, cap.2-10; VIANA FILHO, Luiz. A vida de Joaquim Nabuco. São Paulo: Ed. Nacional, 1952, 1a. pt., cap. 6-10.; ALONSO, Angela. Joaquim Nabuco: os salões e as ruas. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007. cap.4. A recent study of the Abolitionist historiography and of the movement, which contextualizes the latter in the formal, parliamentary history, is NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. Brazilian Abolitionism, Its Historiography, and the Uses of Political History. JLAS, v.50, n.2, May 2010.
• 7
  Nabuco's credentials were disputed in the Chamber for months by his moderate opposition - eventually, he was denied. He entered the Chamber shortly afterwards only because he could run in another pernambucano district by-election where his followers could assure an uncontested majority. See CONRAD, Robert. The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery: 18501888. Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1972. p.219.
• 8
  See NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. Brazilian Abolitionism, Op. Cit., II
• 9
  See ibidem, I; cf. WEINSTEIN, Barbara. The Decline of the Progressive Planter and the Rise of Subaltern Agency: Shifting Narratives of Slave Emancipation in Brazil. In: JOSEPH, Gilbert M. (ed.). Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History: Essays from the North. Durham: Duke University, 2001. p.81-101; and CARDOSO, Ciro Flamarion S. A abolição como problema histórico e historiográfico. In: CARDOSO, Ciro Flamarion S. (org.). Escravidão e abolição no Brasil: novas perspectivas. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1988. p.73-110. The memoirs and contemporaries' histories of Abolitionism, with the exception of Duque-Estrada, are understandably much more engaged with the role of the monarch and the parliament in the conflict. The generalization here, however, refers to the spectacular pioneering work on the Abolitionist movement which emerged after 1960. For the contemporaries, see OTONI, Cristiano Benedito, Op.Cit.; DUQUEESTRADA, Osorio. A abolição (esboço historico): 1831-1888. Rio de Janeiro: Leite Ribeiro e Maurillo, 1918; CELSO, Afonso. Oito anos de parlamento. 2ª ed. Brasília: Senado Federal, 1981 {1901}; MONTEIRO, Tobias. Pesquisas e depoimentos para a historia. Rio de Janeiro: Alves, 1913; MORAES, Evaristo de. A campanha abolicionista (1879-1888). Rio de Janeiro: Leite Ribeiro, Freitas Bastos, Spicer, 1924; NABUCO, Joaquim. Minha formação. Rio de Janeiro: Garnier, 1900 {1893-1899}; SILVA, J.M. Pereira da. Memorias do meu tempo. 2 Vols. Rio de Janeiro: Garnier, 1895, 1896. For the more recent scholarly surveys, see CARDOSO, Fernando Henrique. Capitalismo e escravidão no Brasil meridional: o negro na sociedade escravocrata do Rio Grande do Sul. São Paulo: DIFEL, 1962; IANNI, Otávio Ianni. As metamorfoses do escravo: apogeu e crise da escravatura no Brasil meridional. São Paulo: DIFEL, 1962; COSTA, Emilia Viotti da. Op. Cit. and, Idem. The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1985, cap.6 and p.215-216; CONRAD, Robert. Op. Cit.; TOPLIN, Robert Brent. The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil. New York: Atheneum, 1975; and BERGSTRESSER, Rebecca Baird.The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1880-1889. 1973. 208f. Dissertação (Doutorado em História). Stanford University. Stanford, 1973; GRAHAM, Richard. Britain and the Onset of Modernisation in Brazil: 1850-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1972, cap.6, contributes an analysis of the English influence on Brazilian Abolitionism and of the emergence and role of the urban middle class. COLSON, Roger Frank. The Destruction of a Revolution: Polity, Economy and Society in Brazil, 1750-1895. 1979. 937f. Dissertação (Doutorado em História). Princeton University, Princeton, 1979 - does not focus upon the Abolitionist movement, but does provide the larger economic shifts and conflicting interests of the time; cf. SCHULZ, John. The Financial Crisis of Abolition. New Haven: Yale University, 2008. As is discussed in NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. Brazilian Abolitionism, Op. Cit., I, and WEINSTEIN, Barbara. Op. Cit., since the 1970s, with the exception of Costa's 1985 synthesis, historians have left analyses of the national movement for local movements, particular issues, and, especially, aspects or explorations of slaves' agency.
• 10
  NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. The Party of Order, Op. Cit., cap.6, 7. This analysis explicitly engages and revises the previous literature on these points.
• 11
  For the law's impact, see MORAES, Evaristo de. A campanha abolicionista. Op. Cit., ch.1; CONRAD, Robert. Op. Cit., cap.7. The Rio News, over 1880 and 1881, regularly reported on the suspicious demography of slavery and explicitly charged that illegal reduction to slavery was going on. The latter certainly figured in slaving in Brazil after the 1850 end to the African trade; see, e.g., FREITAS, Judy Bieber. Slavery and Social Life: Attempts to Reduce Free People to Slavery in the Sertão Mineiro, 1850-1870. JLAS, v.26, n.3, p.597-619, 1994; and GRINBERG, Keila. Op. Cit. On Nabuco's reception by the party leadership and his failed re-election, see, e.g., JC, 31 Aug. 1880, 1; The Rio News, 15 Sept. 1880, 2; SILVA, J.M. Pereira da. Op. Cit., Vol.2, p.219-220; MORAES, Evaristo de. A campanha abolicionista. Op. Cit., p.14-19; CONRAD, Robert. Op. Cit., p.168-69, ALONSO, Angela. Op. Cit.., p.128-135, passim.
• 12
  On the emperor's post 1871 abolitionism, see OTONI, Cristiano Benedito. Op. Cit., p.205-207 and SILVA, J.M. Pereira da. Op. Cit., Vol.2, p.185, p.186, p.274-275, p.282. The latter, passim, provides an account of the fragility of the Liberal cabinets 1878-1884. Otoni, republican by conviction, was a militant liberal since the Regency; Pereira da Silva had been a member of the Conservatives since their origins as Regency reactionaries.
• 13
  On shifts in urban slave holding among people of various strata and among people of colour, see, e.g., KARASCH, Mary C. Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808-1850. Princeton: 1987, p.342-43, p.366 and FRANK, Zephyr L. Dutra's World: Wealth and Family in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2004, cap.1,2,4,5, passim. NB that Frank emphasizes the linkage between the ebb of middle-class slave holding and the potential for abolitionism. Despite the lacunae noted earlier, it is in the study of the movement's mobilization that the established literature has been richest. For the events and propaganda, see DUQUE-ESTRADA, Osorio. Op. Cit., p.92-109; MORAES, Evaristo de. A campanha abolicionista. Op. Cit., p.22-25; COSTA, Emilia Viotti da. Da senzala à colônia. Op. Cit., pt.3; CONRAD, Robert. Op. Cit., cap.10-14; TOPLIN, Robert Brent. Op. Cit., cap.3,4. On the middle-class nature of Rio's abolitionism, see GRAHAM, Richard. Britain and the Onset of Modernisation, cap.6; CONRAD, Robert. Op. Cit., cap.9, and, particularly, BERGSTRESSER, Rebecca Baird. Op. Cit., cap.1-3. The Vintém riots took place in early 1880; many Republicans and later Abolitionists were involved. The riots had to do with the cabinet's deeply unpopular decision to raise revenue through taxing use of urban street cars by an added vintém (a vintém was a small unit of the currency). See A Revista Illustrada, nºs 189, 205 (1880); The Rio News, 5 Jan., 1880, 2; BERGSTRESSER, Rebecca Baird. Op. Cit., p.18-22; cf. LAUDERDALE GRAHAM, Sandra. The Vintem {sic} Riot and Political Culture: Rio de Janeiro 1880. HAHR, v.60, n.3, p.431-449, aug. 1980.
• 14
  See SILVA, J.M. Pereira da. Op. Cit., Vol.2, p.272-275, p.282; OTONI, Cristiano Benedito. Op. Cit., p.200, p.211-212; NABUCO, Joaquim. Minha formação, Op. Cit., p.233-34; MONTEIRO, Tobias. Op. Cit., p.9, p.64-68; DUQUE-ESTRADA, Osorio. Op. Cit., p.92-117; MORAES, Evaristo de. A campanha abolicionista. Op. Cit., p.52-55; COSTA, Emilia Viotti da. Da senzala à colônia. Op. Cit., p.401-05; CONRAD, Robert. Op. Cit., cap.12-14, especially p.194-98, p.212-213; TOPLIN, Robert Brent. Op. Cit.,p.99-101. On the decision for a "new phase" of Abolitionist propaganda in May 1883, see André Rebouças, entry 4 May, diário 1883, Coleção André Rebouças, lata 464, Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro {hereafter, CAR}.
• 15
  MONTEIRO, Tobias, Op. Cit., p.180-83. OTONI, Cristiano Benedito, Op. Cit., p.215-218; SILVA, J.M. Pereira da. Op. Cit., Vol.2, p.282-292; MORAES, Evaristo de. A campanha abolicionista. Op. Cit., p.74-78.
• 16
  Dantas' successor,Saraiva, a Liberal, was noted for his political acuity and success. He it was who crafted a revision of Dantas' reform legislation so that it explicitly "tranquilized" the slave holders. It actually favored slaveholders' interests (see OTONI, Cristiano Benedito. Op Cit., p.221-223 and CONRAD, Robert. Op. Cit., p.222-224). After passing it in the Chamber, Saraiva resigned, knowing full well he had passed it only through Conservative support and unwilling to continue in power hostage to that support - which would doubtless be denied him in the Senate, whose Conservative majority would be hostile to the Liberals' continued success. The Senate Conservatives (and the party elite as a whole) were led by Cotegipe, who longed to return himself and his party to power. On Cotegipe, a key Conservative since the 1840s, a member of Bahia's sugar-planting elite, and a man of singular ambition and abrasive temperament, see the text and references in NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. The Party of Order: Op. Cit., p.173-75, 245-46, 252-63, passim. The Conservatives' two wings had emerged during the controversial administration of the visconde do Rio Branco, whose success at passing the 1871 Law of the Free Womb had divided the party; see, ibidem, cap.6,7. On the party's reconciliation after Rio Branco's resignation, see SOUZA NETO, Paulino José Soares de. Conselheiro Paulino de Souza. Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, v.169, p.503, 1934. Cotegipe, who had long opposed abolitionism, had finally apparently accepted its inevitability under the monarch's pressure and supported Rio Branco; nonetheless, his long-time alliance with the reactionary hard-core of the party remained strong. That, and his seniority in the Senate, apparently provided the foundations of his party preeminence with both wings; his 1884 public statements supporting gradual abolitionism had made him less unpalatable to the monarch. On the origins and nature of Cotegipe's administration, particularly vis-à-vis Abolitionism, see MONTEIRO, Tobias, Op. Cit., p.82-85; MORAES, Evaristo de. A campanha abolicionista. Op. Cit., p.94-95,105, 122-23, 128, 147-48; DUQUEESTRADA, Osorio. Op. Cit., p.187-92; OTONI, Cristiano Benedito. Op. Cit., p.220-224; SILVA, J.M. Pereira da. Op. Cit., Vol.2, p.298-307; Nabuco to barão de Penedo, Rio, 31 May 1884; Rio, 23 July 1884; Rio, 31 July 1884; to Rodolfo Dantas, Recife, 27 Oct. 1884; {Recife,} 2 Nov. 1884; to barão de Penedo, Recife, 28 Oct. 1884; 10 Dec. 1884; Pernambuco {Recife}, 7 Jan. 1885; to João Clapp, Petrópolis, n.d. {very early May} 1885; to barão de Penedo, Rio, 17 May {1885}; Recife, 24 June 1885, all in NABUCO, Joaquim. Cartas a amigos. 2 Vols. São Paulo: 1949, Vol.1, p.122-138.
• 17
  After succeeding Saraiva, Cotegipe faced the Liberal majority in the Chamber, elected under Dantas's auspices. It was clearly hostile to him for partisan reasons, and the emperor could not expect him to govern with its support; he thus granted the dissolution alluded to in the text, and Cotegipe then undertook elections which returned a strong and disciplined Conservative majority. On these matters, see the citations on the Cotegipe administration made in n15, above. On the other matters in this paragraph, see SILVA, J.M. Pereira da. Op. Cit., Vol.2, p.315; DUQUE-ESTRADA, Osorio. Op. Cit., p.183, p.186-198 MORAES, Evaristo de. A campanha abolicionista. Op. Cit., p.134-38, 147-59, cap.8; CONRAD, Robert. Op. Cit., p.197-98, 231-37, 242-45; TOPLIN, Robert Brent. Op. Cit., p.190-202; NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. Nabuco e a batalha parlamentar pela abolição. In: ALBUQUERQUE, Severino (ed). Op. Cit., p.293-313. For Nabuco's perspective and relationship with respect to the critical alliance with the urban radicals, see his correspondence: U. do Amaral to Joaquim Nabuco, Rio de Janeiro, 5 July 1883, CPp318 doc6490; Nabuco to Meu distincto Correligionario, Rio 18 October 1887, Cap5 doc 91; Luiz de Andrade to Nabuco, Rio de Janeiro 24 July 1887, CPp333doc6786; V. de S. Salvador dos Mattosinhos to Joaquim Nabuco, Rio, 13 December 1887 CPp337 doc 6853, all in the Instituto Joaquim Nabuco, Arquivo Joaquim Nabuco, Recife; see, also, Nabuco to barão de Penedo, Recife, 28 Oct. 1884; 10 Dec. 1884; Pernambuco {Recife}, 7 Jan. 1885; to João Clapp, Petrópolis, n.d. {very early May} 1885; to barão de Penedo, Rio, 17 May {1885}; Recife, 24 June 1885, all in NABUCO, Joaquim. Cartas, Op. Cit., Vol.1, p.122-138. See, also, NABUCO, Joaquim. Minha formação, Op. Cit., p.252-58 and, for an idea of Nabuco's popular style, Idem. Campanha abolicionista no Recife: eleições 1884: discursos de Joaquim Nabuco. 2ª ed. Recife: Massangana, 1988 {1885}. In the aftermath of Dantas' fall, Nabuco wrote three unprecedentedly radical pamphlets of opposition - O erro do imperador (1886), O eclipse do abolicionismo (1886), Eleições liberaes e eleições conservadoras (1886) - and caustic, regular columns in the pages of O Paiz, one of the two most energetic periodicals opposed to Cotegipe. O Paiz, it should be noted, was edited by Quintino Bocaiuva and was strongly associated with the Republican movement; its owner, the Visconde de São Salvador dos Mattosinhos, was a sympathizer with both the Republican and the Abolitionist movements.
• 18
  See the sources in n15 for examples of the tactics. There is some disagreement in the literature regarding whether the Abolitionists in the parliamentary, public activities are to be associated with any part in the movement's success or with its more radical actions or demands, and this debate goes back to its veterans (e.g., DUQUE-ESTRADA, Osorio. Op. Cit. - who sought to distinguish between reformists like Nabuco and the urban, radical, republican militants whom he had supported). The analysis here is based on the observation of what occurred, how it makes sense in the political world as perceived by the Abolitionist leadership, and both the private correspondence (see, e.g., Nabuco's, as cited in n16) and André Rebouças' 1880s diaries (CAR, cited above). These make clear that people like Nabuco (the parliamentary chieftain, public spokesman, and noted propagandist) and Rebouças (the critical organizer, financier, and publicist of the movement) worked closely with people like Patrocínio (the foremost urban radical, journalist, Republican) and João Clapp (a key urban militant, involved in organization and the underground railroad). Rebouças's diary, in particular, indicates the regular meetings between them at the seat of the Gazeta da Tarde, and demonstrates that their actions were designed, in concert, both to undermine the cabinet and challenge the stability of slave labor. To give useful examples, people like Patrocínio supported the Abolitionists of Campos, accused of inciting the canefield burnings in the area, and O Paiz and Gazeta da Tarde (and Patrocínio's later journal, Cidade do Rio) gave a great deal of supportive attention to the paulista movement led by Antônio Bento {de Sousa e Castro}, which incited and organized mass flights from the plantations. An Abolitionist did not have to do all things to appreciate the things other Abolitionists did, and how the actions of each enhanced and enabled different elements of the movement. More, the various provincial Abolitionist organizations were in contact, and all were related through the organizational umbrella of the Confederação Abolicionista, founded in 1883.
• 19
  On the condemnation of flogging, see OTONI, Cristiano Benedito. Op. Cit., p.273-276; DUQUEESTRADA, Osorio. Op. Cit., p.199; MORAES, Evaristo de. A campanha abolicionista. Op. Cit., p.215-16; CONRAD, Robert. Op. Cit., p.237; and TOPLIN, Robert Brent. Op. Cit., p.198-200. While Moraes' and Conrad's appreciation of the actual law is closest to what it actually involved, only BROWN, Alexandra K. Op. Cit., p.110, n.112, has noted the difference between what the reform entailed and what the historiography has claimed. Even Evaristo de MORAES, loc.cit., who did understand the distinction, elided it, by arguing that the magistracy could and did interpret the reform to impact private corporal punishment.
• 20
  Moraes and Brown actually address Cotegipe's support, but both do so inadequately. Evaristo de MORAES (Op. Cit., p.215) simply observes that Cotegipe supported the reform, without explanation except the implication that he was moved by the particular horrors of the case in question. This honors Cotegipe's sensitivities more than they merit. Brown does not see the issue at all; she merely notes that Cotegipe publicly declared he would not have supported the reform if it had any impact on private flogging, suggesting through her language that Cotegipe's support had something to do with a lack of attention: "Cotegipe...who had remained silent throughout the discussion of the bill, rose from his slumber to announce that if he had believed the project extended into the private domain, he would never have voted for it!" (BROWN, Alexandra K. Op. Cit., p.110). However, the record (as the text here argues) indicates that Cotegipe may have been obstinate, but he was hardly inattentive.
• 21
  Aside from Brown, in the note cited in n19, see the record, for the bill from the Senate, clarification on domestic flogging from the cabinet, and, finally, the text of the law in, respectively, JC, 6 Oct. 1886, 2; ibidem, 14 Oct. 1886, 2; and ibidem, 17 Oct. 1886, 1.
• 22
  See Dantas, JC, 31 July 1886,1; Antonio Prado, ibidem, 10 August 1886, 2. The citations are dated by their appearance in the periodical; the actual events occurred 30 July and 2 August 1886, respectively.
• 23
  See Antonio Prado, JC, 10 August 1886, 2 and SILVA, J.M. Pereira da. Op. Cit., Vol.2 p.318-320. Both detail the immediate issues relevant to the 1885 law and the political implications. Evaristo de Moraes recalls the situation in Op. Cit., p.154-155.
• 24
  On the crisis and the cabinet's response, see ibidem. As Pereira da Silva notes, while the Senate's vote could not be considered critical to the cabinet's survival by constitutional practice or parliamentary tradition, it did challenge its public moral authority, which was critical to any cabinet's capacity to function politically (cf. NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. The Party of Order, Op. Cit., p.72, p.76 e p.243 and note that both Cotegipe and Pereira da Silva, as traditional Conservatives, would have been sensitive to both the political realities and their party's ideological position on such matters). This is made explicitly clear by Pereira da Silva, master and veteran of such matters. One should note, however, that he does not mention the pena de açoites reform at all, nor does Antonio Prado. This suggests that it was subsumed in the larger debate over the cabinet's policy towards abolition, at least by the cabinet's supporters. As Nabuco indicated in an 1887 letter, the implications of the reform were seen as far more important by the Abolitionists (see the letter to Allen cited in n29, below). The dating of the reform supports the analysis here. The Senate debate on the reform was over by 1 October; it passed to the Chamber on 5 October, the date Cotegipe asked for and won his vote of confidence there, before going on to the vindication of the fused general assembly (9 October); see Ignacio Martins, JC, 5 Oct. 1886, 1; and ibidem, 6 Oct. 1886, 2.
• 25
  Both Prado and Pereira da Silva are explicit on the Abolitionist basis for the alliance between the Liberals and a small number of Conservatives in the Senate in the citations made in n22, above.
• 26
  See Dantas, et al., JC, 31 July 1886, 1; Ignacio Martins, ibidem, 3 Aug. 1886, 1; Ribeiro da Luz, et al., 21 August 1886, 1; Ignacio Martins, Cotegipe, et al., ibidem, 30 Sept. 1886, 1; Ribeiro da Luz, et al., ibidem, 2; Silveira da Motta, et al., ibidem, 1 Oct. 1886, 1; Ignacio Martins, et al., ibidem, 5 Oct. 1886, 1. The struggle over the meaning of the reform is clear in all of these, but the struggle for the moral "high ground" is particularly clear, and cynical, in the debate recorded 1 Oct.
• 27
  Cotegipe, et al., JC, 30 September 1886, 1 {29 September 1886}. See n.25, above, for other examples.
• 28
  In the debates of 1871, as in the opposition to the 1886 reform in question, the issue of the moral prestige of the slaveholder was an explicit concern. It had to do with the perception of power on the plantation, a perception which was understood by all to be a component of plantation discipline. As such, it fits in nicely with E.P. Thompson's concept of "moral economy," that is, the traditional assumptions about what was acceptable and what was not in the established economic and social relationships between the oppressor and the oppressed. While most of us, following Thompson's concern with shifts in eighteenth-century market relations, focus upon what happens when the oppressor upsets this economy by innovation, there is no reason not to use the concept when the state intervenes to upset it by legal reform. See THOMPSON, E.P. The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century. Past and Present, n.50, p.76-136, especially p.78-79, Feb. 1971.
• 29
  See the debates in JC, 30 Sept.1886, 1, 2; ibidem 1 Oct. 1886, 1; ibidem, 5 Oct. 1886, 1; and the final debate, ibidem, 14 Oct. 1886, 2.
• 30
  SILVA, J.M. Pereira da. Op. Cit., Vol.2, p.311; OTONI, Cristiano Benedito. Op. Cit., p.276; Pereira da Silva writes of the general milieu of the agricultural sector due to Abolitionist propaganda by mid 1886; Otoni writes explicitly of the 1887 impact of the reform. Nabuco himself believed that the reform actually abolished flogging altogether, and that, if enforced, it would have effectively ended slavery itself - or, at least, this is what he conveyed in one letter: See Nabuco to Mr. Allen, {London, April 1887}, in: BETHELL, Leslie e CARVALHO, José Murilo de (eds.). Joaquim Nabuco, British Abolitionists and the End of Slavery in Brazil: Correspondence 1880-1905. London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2009. p.116.
• 31
  OTONI, Cristiano Benedito. Op Cit., p.276.
• 32
  See NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. Brazilian Abolitionism, Op. Cit., III.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Dec 2012

History

• Received
  Apr 2012
• Accepted
  Sept 2012