The Call to Arms: Nabuco's Radicalized Abolitionism of 1885-1886Abstract
Nabuco's role in the Abolitionist movement has been characterized in different ways, both in regard to his own political views and in regard to his significance in the process that led to slavery's end in 1888. Research suggests that both Nabuco's views and his significance changed within the contingent context of the historical path of the movement. One of the most critical conjunctures demonstrating this is the transformational year of 1885, upon which this article focuses. As will be shown, the Abolitionist campaign of public pressure, initiated by Nabuco and his allies that year, mobilized a movement in the streets and in the fields which, in turn, would reach back through press and parliament to reverse crown policy and compel a legal end to slavery.
Abolitionist movement; Joaquim Nabuco; parliamentary politics
Resumo
O papel de Nabuco no movimento abolicionista tem sido caracterizado de diferentes maneiras, em relação tanto às suas próprias visões políticas quanto ao seu significado no processo que levou ao fim da escravidão em 1888. Pesquisas sugerem que tanto as visões de Nabuco quanto o seu significado mudaram no contexto contingente da trajetória histórica do movimento. Uma das conjunturas mais críticas que demonstraram isso foi o ano transformador de 1885, em que o artigo se concentra. Conforme se demonstrará, a campanha abolicionista de pressão pública, iniciada por Nabuco e seus aliados naquele ano, mobilizaram um movimento nas ruas e nos campos que, por sua vez, remontariam à imprensa e ao parlamento para reverter a política da Coroa e forçar um fim legal à escravidão.
movimento abolicionista; Joaquim Nabuco; política parlamentar
ARTICLES
The Call to Arms: Nabuco's Radicalized Abolitionism of 1885-18861
Jeffrey D. Needell
Affiliate Professor of Latin American Studies. Department of History, University of Florida. P.O. Box 117320 Gainesville, FL 32611-7320 USA. jneedell@history.ufl.edu
ABSTRACT
Nabuco's role in the Abolitionist movement has been characterized in different ways, both in regard to his own political views and in regard to his significance in the process that led to slavery's end in 1888. Research suggests that both Nabuco's views and his significance changed within the contingent context of the historical path of the movement. One of the most critical conjunctures demonstrating this is the transformational year of 1885, upon which this article focuses. As will be shown, the Abolitionist campaign of public pressure, initiated by Nabuco and his allies that year, mobilized a movement in the streets and in the fields which, in turn, would reach back through press and parliament to reverse crown policy and compel a legal end to slavery.
Keywords: Abolitionist movement; Joaquim Nabuco; parliamentary politics.
The Context of 1885
Nabuco's role in the Abolitionist movement has been characterized in different ways, both in regard to his own political views and in regard to his significance in the process that ended slavery in Brazil. As common sense would suggest, preliminary research in the primary-source evidence suggests that both Nabuco's views and his significance changed within the contingent context of the historical path of the movement. One of the most critical conjunctures demonstrating this is the transformational year of 1885, upon which this presentation focuses.2
Something of the movement's political nature, context, and history up to that point must necessarily be recalled. Particularly given the recent trends towards vindication of the role of the captives themselves, it cannot be emphasized enough that this was a political movement, involving all classes, and one which was initiated and ended within a parliamentary context of cabinet administration, chamber debate, and legislation. The popular movement, in which the critical role of the slaves must be understood, was explicitly addressed towards a law ending slavery, passed within the formal institutions of a constitutional monarchy, and it was a movement that began in support of parliamentary speeches which raised the need for abolitionist reform in 1879, the more critical of which were those of Nabuco.3
Relationships between parliamentary figures, the press, and the street were not new in imperial history, but, by 1880, they had taken on new qualities. While in the past, parliamentary movements had used popular mobilization to press cabinets, the cities now, particularly Rio, had a distinct potential. As early as 1860, the Liberal successes in urban areas had made clear the relative independence of a growing urban middle class. By 1880, there was a range of wage-earning urban public which was alienated and willing to act, driven by the difficulties of a problematic economy and an apparently unresponsive political elite. This is indicated by the ephemeral but telling movement of the vintém riots in 1880. It is useful to remember that these riots, involving a new tax on street-car users, brought out orators from the Republican party, support from deputies and senators of the reformist fraction of the Liberal party, politicized military officers, and that these mobilized elements in the middle class. It was, in essence, an indication of the potential for a new political urban coalition which would be critical to Abolitionism, although, as far as one can tell, it still lacked notable representation from the urban working poor. More, in the orators, press, and parliamentary figures, the leadership in these riots and Abolitionism was often the same, most notably Nabuco and José do Patrocínio. Patrocínio was critical in covering and mobilizing the movement in the street, and this, of course, was his distinct role from the beginning to the end of the Abolitionist movement. The Abolitionist movement began, however, with Nabuco. As in the vintém riots, his role was that of inspiring orator. It was his speeches, which caught and stimulated wider attention, that began the process of mobilization with press notice in 1879. This, in turn, led to the 1880 formation of Abolitionist organizations among civilians (March, July, September) and army officers (June), as well as the foundation of the Gazeta da Tarde (July), the movement's key voice, soon dominated by Patrocínio.4
Between 1881 and 1884, one can characterize the movement's path as one of initial radicalization. The complete isolation and defeat of the chamber reformists by 1881 and Nabuco's decision to seek self-exile in London led to the movement's domination by Patrocínio and other urban militants, who deepened their commitment to ending slavery and organizing support by forming more Abolitionist organizations, mobilizing the urban working poor, and allying with, and inspiring, the independent movements in Ceará and São Paulo. As early as May 1883, the movement's organizers (André Rebouças, Patrocínio, João Clapp, and others), responding to a telling shift in cabinet attitudes towards abolitionism, decided to found the Abolitionist Confederation (1883), some also began illegal activity designed to support and shelter fugitive slaves. Nabuco's publication of Abolicionismo (Nov. 1883), the best-known indictment of slavery, provided the movement with a cogent analysis of the necessity of abolition and a host of related reforms. By early 1884, Ceará and then Amazonas had carried out provincial abolition. Within four years, the movement's strength had become undeniable. In constant correspondence with Rebouças, Nabuco announced his return in February and arrived in Rio in May.5
In June 1884, the emperor, seeking to promote gradualist abolitionism and to contain the popular movement which had pushed more radical solutions forward, brought the Liberal reformist, Manuel Dantas, to power. This may have been the emperor's second attempt to move abolitionism forward. In 1878, some in the political elite thought that the monarch may well have brought the Liberals back into power (after ten years of political ostracism) in the hope of some progress on abolitionism, to which he was devoted. However, if that was the emperor's motive, he would be disappointed. After all, the majority of the Liberal party represented landholding, slaveholding elements which were aggressively opposed to even the gradualist abolitionism of the "Free Womb Law" of 1871. Thus, after the Liberals' return to power, they had consistently backed prime ministers who ignored the reformist minority on this issue. Now, in 1884, the emperor and the Liberal reformists, provided with the political context of a frightening and successful popular movement, could take up abolitionism, albeit in tamer fashion. They did so in the legislative project Dantas's cabinet put forward, one associated with the idea of the "liberation of the sexagenarians," which proposed freeing captives 60 or older.
The historical significance of the project was its failure. Although the cabinet had the support of the Abolitionist movement in the street and the emperor in council, its project, however toothless it seems to us, was defeated by two successive legislatures. It is critical to point out that each of these legislatures had a Liberal majority. Dantas lost because the Liberal majority was divided, with critical numbers allying with the Conservative minority to vote no confidence. While the reform itself seems outrageously limited nowadays, Abolitionist support was enthusiastic. Abolitionists supported it because it represented two very significant steps forward, both of which were radical within the political context of the time: first, it was associated with a cabinet supporting abolitionism after years of Liberal cabinets' refusal to move forward on the issue; second, the project, by freeing sixty-year-old captives, undercut the fundamental idea that people could be private property, like any other, and, thus, protected from State intervention. In a political regime traditionally dominated by, and representing, slaveholding interests, both were fundamental advances. By the same token, they produced a profound reaction, which bred the votes of no confidence, a reaction partly (and significantly) spurred by false charges that the cabinet could not or would not control movement violence in the streets. While the emperor had publicly and privately indicated his support for the cabinet and the reform, to the point where he had dissolved one legislature and allowed Dantas to oversee the election of a second, the decision of the second made it clear to the emperor that the political support for the reform simply was not there. This led to the emperor's cautious decision to withdraw his support, and the consequent resignation of Dantas in May 1885.6
Nabuco's Role under Dantas and Saraiva
Nabuco had returned with the tide in 1884, and he had played a very significant role in the public campaign supporting Dantas. Nothing in this was more important than his own electoral campaign to return to the chamber in the elections, alluded to above. These were called in late 1884, after Dantas was first defeated by a chamber vote and quickly won the emperor's support for dissolution and new elections. The analysis of Nabuco's Recife campaign is best told by Celso Castilho's new work on Abolitionism in Recife. However, one must emphasize here that the campaign had a national significance because of Nabuco's recognized national leadership in the movement. Despite his self-imposed exile in Europe, there is no question that Nabuco's allies in Rio recognized and supported this role and the consequent importance of his hotly contested Pernambuco campaign. He had demonstrated, again, his great gifts as a propagandist by his press support for Dantas. More, his provincial campaign provided propaganda successes of its own. His first election's results were hotly contested in Recife, and, eventually, after his seat was officially denied him by his enemies in the chamber (May 1885), he had to wage a second local campaign in an 1885 by-election. Both campaigns furnished useful resonance within the movement, given the controversy surrounding his first campaign, the fraud involved in his denial, and the final 1885 triumph - they all served to mobilize movement and public opinion across the empire. However, the initial contestation of Nabuco's first election results prevented him from supporting Dantas in the chamber in the first half of 1885. It was only after Dantas's fall, in May 1885, that Nabuco, having finally won in his second campaign (June 1885), was allowed to take his seat. The significance of this was augmented by repression of the Abolitionists, on the rise as Dantas's star declined in 1885. Thus, Nabuco's 1885 victory led to the gathering of unprecedented crowds in the streets of Salvador and Rio, attesting to his popular support throughout the region and the nation, and militants such as Patrocínio worked hard to take advantage of it to mobilize in the street. Once in the chamber itself, Nabuco was a key player in the debates against Dantas's successor, José Antônio Saraiva. Nabuco, then, may have come late, but he was particularly welcome by his allies. For, after Dantas, the Liberal party's majority and the new prime minister had turned on the movement, and Nabuco's gifts as Abolitionism's parliamentary paladin in the opposition were most appreciated.7
With Dantas's fall, Saraiva, the most noted political operator among the Liberal chiefs, perverted the Dantas reform into a piece of legislation so favorable to the slaveholding interests that he could both state that he supported reform and that he did so in a way that tranquilized the slaveholders. The tranquility was produced by the super valuation of the slaves' prices, with a small legislated decline year by year. The exaggerated valuation hindered slaves' purchase by Abolitionists; the graduated decline in price (and the little money set aside for purchase by the State) effectively delayed legal emancipation for years. The stipulation that sixty-year-old captives must work an additional three years to compensate their owners for their emancipation reaffirmed the sacred quality of slaveholders' private property. Despite rhetorical protest, even the Conservatives, by and large, voted to support this project. The Abolitionists, with Nabuco at their fore in the chamber and Dantas as their champion in the senate, hotly contested the project. Nonetheless, again, the majority was against the movement, and the majority won; with Conservative support, the perverted reform passed in the chamber (13 August 1885).8
Saraiva resigned after this triumph. He understood that it had been possible only because of the support of the Conservative minority; he also understood he could not govern with such unreliable allies and that he could not expect the Senate, under Conservative majority control, to pass the reform while he was prime minister. He, and the rest of the Liberal chieftains, understood that their capacity either to govern or to contain Abolitionism was nil; they were too divided as a party for either. Indeed, after the emperor accepted the resignation, he tried hard to find a Liberal chief willing to govern. Not one thought he could succeed where Saraiva feared defeat. In the end, the monarch was compelled to turn to the Conservatives.9
João Alfredo, the heir to the viscount do Rio Branco among the reformists in the Conservative party, had refused to support Dantas on abolition when pressed by the emperor to do so. He had offered Conservative support for an abolitionist reform, instead. He had strengthened his party's claims in this regard by persuading the party's recognized chief, the baron de Cotegipe, to publicly announce his support for a Conservative abolitionist reform in late 1884. When the Liberals refused to govern, it was thus to Cotegipe that the emperor was forced to turn (20 August 1885). The baron pledged to pass the Saraiva reform in the senate, and he did so (28 September 1885). He then turned his face against any further abolitionist legislation in parliament, asked for and received the dissolution of the Liberal-dominated chamber, set about the election of a Conservative-dominated chamber, and turned his police and secret agents upon the movement, repressing it in town and country.10
It was in this context, the 1885 fall of Dantas, the reactionary opportunism of Saraiva, and the ferociously reactionary repression of Cotegipe, that the Abolitionist movement radicalized again. This time, Nabuco remained in Brazil, and became a key actor in that radicalization. It was a process, at times frankly revolutionary, that stretched from mid-1885 through to the beginnings of 1888 and the collapse of Cotegipe's administration and slavery's abolition. Here, we shall focus on Nabuco's role and his perception of that role, taking in 1885 and 1886, when that role effectively took on its definitive shape, leading to the triumphs of 1887 and 1888.11
The Call to Arms, 1885-1886
In August 1885, with Cotegipe's ascent, Nabuco went into opposition to the cabinet along with most of his party, moderate and reformist alike. The prime minister presented his cabinet and his policies, including the abolitionist project, on 24 August. Nabuco responded immediately, and did so in a way qualitatively different than in previous parliamentary speeches: he condemned not only the Conservatives' ascent, but the monarchy itself. In an era of Abolitionist frustration and rage, an era in which Patrocínio reported the beginning of slave resistance in Campos, in an era in which the street militants talked of revolution, Nabuco's actions may seem tame. However, in a constitutional monarchy in which the decorum of the chamber was carefully observed and in which a direct comment upon the monarch was out of bounds, to condemn the monarchy and the emperor directly was a dramatic break. More was to follow, as the Liberals lost their majority control of the chamber in the dissolution of 29 September 1885 and the clearly fraudulent elections of January 1886 - which returned an overwhelming Conservative bloc. Nabuco then proceeded to publish radical analyses of the monarch's position, the rout of the Abolitionists, and the electoral machinations of the regime.12
These pamphlets marked the emergence of Nabuco's radical transformation, in which he joined his movement in challenging the foundations of the political regime publicly. While others would carry out clandestine, illegal activity aimed at destabilizing slavery in the rural sector, Nabuco sought to destabilize the Conservative cabinet and to compel a radical reversal of crown policy. While he stayed within the limits of the law, he was fully aware of what others were doing and supported it privately. His own value to the movement was as its public champion and he had to stand just short of criminal behavior. Nonetheless, for a person of his background and tradition, it is difficult to overestimate the transformation his actions represented.13
Why would Nabuco take such a step? We have traced out the political context just above, and this would be explanation enough. However, there is more to understand; even political men are men. It is noteworthy that there is a clear personal aspect to this new radicalization, and it has to do with more than dashed political hopes. In the 1885 struggles in and out of parliament, Nabuco was also seeking and losing the great love of his youth. It is well known that he had fallen in love with Eufrásia Teixeira Leite while traveling to Europe for the first time in the 1870s. His early proposal of marriage fell afoul of Eufrásia's unwillingness to make a life in Brazil. While Nabuco's engagement with European life and letters was a marked, critical aspect of his life, by family tradition and personal ambition, he was committed to living and making a career in Brazil. Eufrásia, as the sole heiress of one of the noted Teixeira Leite brothers who dominated Vassouras coffee planting, had made a very cultivated life for herself in Paris, where she became adept at investment and the multiplication of her fortune. She had good reasons to refuse a permanent return to Brazil. Still, after the marriage failed to come off, in 1874, they remained in contact. In 1884, at the end of his European exile, they met again, and the relationship took fire. Eufrásia returned to Brazil after Nabuco did, and there, by April 1885, marriage became an issue again.14
Matters were terribly complicated by the fact that Eufrásia's fortune was based upon slave labor and that her family was traditionally linked to the Conservatives. Indeed, one of her cousins was married to Cotegipe's minister of finance, Francisco Belisário Soares de Sousa, a grandee in the Conservative party by kin and capacity and the most successful finance minister of the era. While Nabuco's father had also married into the planter aristocracy, and was a noted champion of the abolitionist reform of 1871, that marriage had been made when he was part and parcel of the Conservative party, and his later abolitionism was far less threatening than his son's, being gradualist and pursued entirely in the highest circles of the imperial state, with the monarch's explicit support. Nabuco's position was thus quite different, and, in 1885, in the midst of a highly public Abolitionist campaign, he was clearly uncomfortable with the apparent contradiction between his private affections and his public position. Nonetheless, over the course of Eufrásia's 1885 Brazilian stay, he pursued the lady with increasing determination. Indeed, in late 1885, towards the end of her visit, he delayed his return to campaign in Recife in the early 1886 election on account of a desire to stay on longer with her. Their relationship became fraught with considerable tension, as they sought to be together, as others intervened, and as politics undercut the idea of their union. Indeed, passionately in love by early December, they were then forced to part. There may have been hope of returning to Europe together after his election; instead, while Nabuco left in mid-December for Recife and fought the electoral campaign, Eufrásia was forced, unexpectedly, to return to Europe in late December, earlier than planned, heartbroken, guilty, and desperate.15
In the early months of 1886, after Nabuco's electoral defeat in January and his subsequent, dramatic shift into radical opposition, his ardor for Eufrásia strengthened, doubtless heated by their painful separation and his embittered solitude. He came to accuse her of abandoning him, and he made it clear that he would not join her in Europe again unless she agreed to marry. Eufrásia, however, now refused him. She accepted that Nabuco had to make his career in Brazil; apparently, though, she remained unwilling to join him there. One imagines that, married, she might have felt she had to do so. Instead, she was determined to remain in Europe and dreamt of keeping their relationship as it was; enduring, passionate, but only periodic. Nabuco, having seen the loss of parliamentary reform under the monarch's protection, the cynical reform of 1885, the triumph of the Conservatives, the loss of his seat in the chamber, and then having thrown himself into the unknown turbulence of radical opposition, needed more. He wanted to have her with him. After months of political conflict, personal anguish and accusations, solitude, and depression, Nabuco could bear it no longer. He broke off the amorous bond with Eufrásia with a strained, formal letter in April 1886, asking to return her letters and asking for his own.16
In a phrase, by April 1886, Nabuco had seen his prospects and hopes transformed on all fronts. When he had returned to Brazil in 1884, with the early successes of Abolitionism and, then, the ascent of Dantas, he was the celebrated chieftain of a victorious movement of parliamentary, popular reform that looked likely to triumph under the monarch's protection. He was also passionately involved with a woman he had pursued for years - a lady handsome, cultivated, and wealthy. Between 1885 and 1886, all of that went up in ashes, consumed in the heat and fire of the political struggle to which he had committed.
Nabuco was then between thirty-six and thirty-seven. His father, at that point in his own career, had been married nine years, was a key member of a provincial establishment, a protégé of the Conservatives' chief political strategist, and a figure in that party in his own right. While both father and son had been elected to the chamber at about the age of thirty, by the time the elder Nabuco was forty, he had risen to be a provincial president and, then, a cabinet minister. At forty-four, the elder Nabuco, like his father before him, had ascended to the Senate, the penultimate political honor. Only the Council of State, which he reached at fifty-three, remained. Nabuco's prospects in his late 30s were entirely different. In a world of patronage dominated by the emperor's personal decisions, he had publicly attacked and offended the emperor. In a partisan world dominated by party connections, he had repeatedly spurned and criticized most of the Liberal chieftains. In a political world dominated by slaveholding statesmen committed to protecting the private property of the planters, he had attacked slaveholding, such statesmen, and such an idea of private property. In a social world in which a private income was both necessary and common, and family was central, he had failed to marry the woman he loved, an heiress of great wealth.
The three pamphlets of opposition published in the first months of 1886 were acclaimed by his militant allies, but, after this calculated series of attacks and his failure with Eufrásia, Nabuco's own path remained obscure to him. In the letter in which he broke off their amorous relations, he confessed to her that he did not know whether to return to Europe, to Recife, or to stay in Rio. By July 1886, having heard that a position in London was apparently impossible, and knowing that all other doors were closed to him, he took the advice of his Abolitionist allies and accepted a critical appointment to the staff of O Paíz, a radical daily associated with both the Republican and Abolitionist movements. There would be no retreat. He would sustain the movement as its chief, critical observer of the political world, hammering away at those in the political elite who had failed reform or fought it, and serving to mobilize public opinion in a period of sustained political repression and radical resistance.17
The Radicalized Strategy of 1886 and Its Impact
The strategy of the Abolitionist movement under the Dantas regime was to fight its repression, increase public support, and thus compel the crown and cabinet to reverse policy. The election of early January 1886 had routed Liberals out of the chamber nearly completely and thrown its Abolitionist fraction out entirely. In parliament, then, only the Senate housed Abolitionists or any other appreciable basis for resistance or attack within the traditional circle of the political elite. Dantas became its chief, and used his considerable political skill to mobilize it successfully, as will be seen. In terms of the traditional public political world, only the press remained open to the Abolitionists, and this was galvanized by the Gazeta da Tarde, O Paiz, and Cidade do Rio, with significant support from The Rio News and A Revista Illustrada. Over time, even the administration subsidized journal of record, the Jornal do Commercio, would carry information from the other papers to cover Abolitionist stories. As they had since 1880, the Abolitionists used the press to mobilize public opinion, orchestrate meetings and demonstrations, and carry out other forms of pressure upon the cabinet. Most of the Abolitionist chieftains, founders and members of the Abolitionist Confederation, also increased the clandestine, illegal aspects of the movement. The underground railroad and the creation of urban fugitive communities increased dramatically. Most important, Abolitionist began to attack the socio-economic basis of slaveholding in the countryside. The paulista branch of the movement, under the charismatic leadership of Antonio Bento, extended urban clandestine activities of promoting flight and fugitive committees out to the rural sector itself, beginning a process of mobilizing plantation slaves to flee, offering them shelter and routing to the growing fugitive communities in the city of Sao Paulo and, especially, the port city of Santos. In the Province of Rio de Janeiro, the Abolitionist Carlos Lacerda was heavily involved in rural mobilization and violence in the Campos area, the traditional sugar zone. While in Lacerda's case, his activities led to a cane burning, urban violence and ferocious local and state repression, in Antonio Bento's case the success of his clandestine agents, the caifas, began a process of labor destabilization in the economically critical sector of coffee exports.18
In effect, Abolitionist tactics in the public political arena of the cities sought to embarrass and weaken the cabinet, to force its resignation. In the clandestine work done in the cities and the countryside, the Abolitionists sought to destabilize the slaveholding regime itself. For the most part, the strategy overall was undertaken to compel reform within the political structure by pressure upon crown and cabinet. The urban work was designed to obstruct the administration through attack, delegitimization, and disorder; the rural work was done to force policy change by making slavery impossible through resistance and flight. There were, of course, republicans (some Positivist, some not) who were interested in Abolition as part of a broad program to modernize Brazil, and they intended to bring down the monarchy itself as part of this. Even prominent leaders among the Abolitionists, Patrocínio and Rebouças, thought a republic would be the inevitable solution. However, as time would show, most of the men who began as Abolitionists placed that cause before all others; the fate of the political regime was secondary - the point was the end of slavery, and the strategy was designed to carry out parliamentary reform, not regime change.19
Nabuco, while well aware of the clandestine work, focused upon a radical journalism designed to delegitimize slavery and embarrass the regime. In his diary, he noted his efforts leading to the reform of the pena de açoites (the punishment of the lash) as the high point of this work. A summary of what this was and what it was intended to be will serve both to illustrate this phase of Nabuco's career and to conclude this essay concerning his radicalization.
Nabuco and other radical journalists began to use cases of extraordinary cruelty to dramatize the inherent barbarity of slavery. Such pieces mobilized public opinion by arguing that slavery had no place in a moral or civilized nation; they also served to delegitimize slavery's defenders in the cabinet and parliament by associating them with such barbarism. In Nabuco's critical case, in mid-1886, several captives were accused of killing their overseer. In lieu of the death penalty, three of them were condemned to the pena de açoites, as was the common practice. In this punishment, an official had the condemned person stripped to the buttocks and whipped there in sets of 50 strokes, usually up to a total of 200 over a period of days, under medical supervision. In this case, the three men were given 300 strokes and, after they were returned to their owner's agent, they died. Nabuco publicized their fate in O Paíz and his friend and ally, Dantas, promptly used the article in the Senate to condemn slavery again, to accuse the cabinet of participation in barbarism, and to suggest that the deaths were the government's responsibility. Dantas made it clear that he was not interested in a reform of the penalty of the lash; rather, he wanted the abolition of Brazilian slavery, of which this was an integral part. The minister of justice, however, adroitly shifted the debate to the penalty itself and urged its reform, effectively compelling the Abolitionists to support such a project, while leaving slavery legislatively untouched. In two and a half months, the reform passed.20
The meaning of the case only makes sense in the politics of 1886. Nabuco published the account to condemn slavery and the cabinet which defended it. Dantas publicized Nabuco's article for the same reasons. He used it, in fact, as one of many weapons at a time when he was mobilizing parliamentary opinion against the cabinet's cynical position on abolitionist reform, in which it claimed to be reformist (because it carried forward the perverted reform of 1885) while repressing the Abolitionist movement and any further reform. This was the larger campaign the Abolitionists were fighting in the press and on the street. The parliamentary campaign waged by Dantas was so successful that he had actually recruited enough of the Senate to block the cabinet's agriculture budget, an unprecedented victory deeply embarrassing to the administration. Cotegipe had to break up the Senate coalition Dantas had put together, and he had to vindicate his cabinet's position in parliament as a whole. To do so, he exerted all of the disciplinary finesse for which his party (and he) were famous. He also sought to take away a bit of the high moral ground of his Abolitionist opposition by supporting the reform of the penalty of the lash, thus taking that weapon away from his enemies. To those who pointed out the contradiction of his protecting slaveholding but supporting such a reform, he made it clear that the reform did not touch a slaveholder's right to do what he liked to his captives on his plantation; it simply reformed what the imperial state could do. The cabinet's manoeuvres worked. In October 1886, the reform was passed, with the cabinet's support. That same month, the cabinet enjoyed a vote of confidence by the parliament as a whole. The Abolitionists got what Cotegipe judged a meaningless reform; Cotegipe got the vindication of his government.21
Or so Cotegipe thought. The reform was dismissed by Cotegipe as a reform inconsequential to the slaveholder. This was not, however, how many others understood it. As was the case on so many critical points, the prime minister was apparently out of touch with the incendiary quality of the larger political and social milieu. Even during the debates on the reform, many of his parliamentary constituents questioned Cotegipe's support for the reform. For them and for the Abolitionists, the end of the official penalty of the lash was a mortal blow to slaveholding itself. Indeed, they stated as much explicitly, and more than one observer argued afterward that the reform was widely understood to affect not only public, state punishment, but plantation flogging, as well. Certainly, Nabuco thought so. In a private letter to his British abolitionist allies in 1887, he wrote
Last year I was not in Parliament, but in the daily press writing in the columns of O Paiz have done probably more for our cause than I could have done as a deputy. In fact it was through the press that we forced the Conservative Cabinet to pass the law abolishing flogging, which if we had judges and the laws with regard to slaves were reality, would amount practically to the end of slavery.22
It is curious that Nabuco himself seems to have misunderstood the actual meaning of the reform, which did not abolish flogging, only the state's administration of flogging as a punishment. In a larger sense, however, he understood the key issue very well, indeed. The real victory has more to do with a phrase in the same letter, where he stated "Since it is not lawful to flog the slaves, I do not know how the masters could enforce their rights on them."23 The real victory had to do with the legitimacy of slavery. In effect, the press campaign, like the reform, were part and parcel of a successful Abolitionist movement which, over the course of 1886 and 1887, effectively delegitimized slavery in the cities and parliament and destabilized it in the rural sector. The reform itself was not as significant as the political and social perception of it across the monarchy, where observers saw it as part of a fatal, rapid decline in the moral and effective control of the captives by their masters. In the end, the Abolitionist campaign of public pressure, initiated by Nabuco and his allies in 1885 and 1886, helped mobilize a movement in the streets and in the fields which, in turn, would finally reach back into press and parliament to force Cotegipe's resignation and the ascent of João Alfredo, who put a legal end to slavery.24
NOTES
Article received on 4 November 2011.
Approved on 15 August 2012.
References
- 2 Para alguns dos trabalhos mais recentes acerca de Nabuco, ver as duas antologias de conferências recentes nos Estados Unidos: ALBUUERQUE, Severino (Ed.). Joaquim Nabuco e Wisconsin: centenário da conferência na universidade: ensaios comemorativos. Rio de Janeiro: Bem-te-vi, 2010;
- JACKSON, K. David (Ed.). Joaquim Nabuco em Yale: centenário das conferências na universidade: ensaios comemorativos. Rio de Janeiro: Bem-te-vi, 2010.
- Sobre Nabuco abolicionista, ver a biografia filial, a clássica e a mais recente, todas baseadas em pesquisas extensivas: NABUCO, Carolina; A vida de Joaquim Nabuco São Paulo: Cia. Ed. Nacional, 1928. parte II, cap. 2-10;
- VIANA FILHO, Luiz. A vida de Joaquim Nabuco São Paulo: Cia. Ed. Nacional, 1952. 1Ş parte, cap. 6-10;
- ALONSO, Angela. Joaquim Nabuco: os salões e as ruas. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007. cap. 4.
- Para o debate sobre as mudanças de posição política de Nabuco, ver, por exemplo, GRAHAM, Richard. Joaquim Nabuco, Conservative Historian. Luso-Brazilian Review, v.17, n.1, p.1-16, Summer 1980;
- NOGUEIRA, Marco Aurélio. As desventuras do liberalismo: Joaquim Nabuco, a Monarquia e a República. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1984,
- recentemente republicada; NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. A Liberal Embraces Monarchy: Joaquim Nabuco and Conservative Historiography. The Americas, v.48, n.2, p.159-179, Oct. 1991;
- e SALLES, Ricardo. Joaquim Nabuco: um pensador do Império. Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 2002.
- Toda essa bibliografia centra-se no papel de Nabuco no movimento nacional; para o contexto crítico do abolicionismo em Pernambuco, ver CASTILHO, Celso Thomas. Abolitionism Matters: The Politics of Antislavery in Pernambuco, Brazil, 1869-1888. Tese (Doutorado) University of California. Berkeley, 2008.
- 3 Ver uma discussão sobre as tendências da historiografia e uma análise das relações entre abolicionismo e o contexto político formal em NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. Brazilian Abolitionism, its Historiography, and the uses of Political History. Journal of Latin American Studies, v.42, n.2, p.231-261, May 2010.
- 4 Sobre a mobilização política das massas urbanas no passado, ver NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. The Party of Order: The Conservatives, the State, and Slavery in the Brazilian Monarchy, 1831-1871. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2006. chs. 2, 3 passim
- Sobre as mudanças do terreno político urbano assinaladas pela eleição de 1860, ver ibidem, p.209-214 e NABUCO, Joaquim. Um estadista do Império: Nabuco de Araujo: sua vida suas opiniões, sua época. 3v. Rio de Janeiro: Garnier, s.d. [1897-1899]). v.2, p.71-76.
- Sobre a Revolta do Vintém, ver A Revista Illustrada, n.189, 205 (1880);
- The Rio News, 5 Jan. 1880, n.2;
- BERGSTRESSER, Rebecca. The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1880-1889. Tese (Doutorado) Stanford University. Stanford, 1973. p.18-22;
- cf. GRAHAM, Sandra Lauderdale. The Vintem [sic] Riot and Political Culture: Rio de Janeiro 1880.
- Hispanic American Historical Review [doravante HAHR], v.60, n.3, p.431-449, Aug. 1980.
- Um vintém era uma pequena unidade monetária. Os motins referiam-se à decisão profundamente impopular do gabinete de aumentar a receita pública pela taxação do uso de bondes de um vintém As ilustrações nos periódicos mencionados anotavam, pelo que sabemos sobre os graus de pobreza, que os amotinados eram em sua maioria pessoas assalariadas de classe média. Os cálculos de Bergstresser (1973, p.19) indicam que a tarifa de ida e volta nos assentos baratos do bonde equivaliam a um terço do custo de manter um trabalhador alimentado por um dia. Mais provavelmente, os trabalhadores moravam a uma distância que podia ser percorrida a pé do trabalho, em cortiços ou em casas de cômodos. Para mais informações acerca da história urbana dos pobres entre 1872 e 1904, ver NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. The Revolta Contra Vacina of 1904: The Revolt Against 'Modernization' in Belle-Époque Rio de Janeiro," HAHR, v.67, n.2, p.249-262, May 1987.
- Sobre Patrocínio, ver NABUCO, Joaquim. Minha formação Rio de Janeiro: Garnier, 1900. p.243-44;
- MORAES, Evaristo de. A campanha Abolicionista (1879-1888) Rio de Janeiro: Leite Ribeiro Freitas Bastos; Spicer, 1924. cap. 3, passim, cap. 13;
- ORICO, Osvaldo. O tigre da Abolição Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira; MEC, 1977.
- 5 Sobre a organização do movimento, ver MORAES, 1924, cap. 3; DUQUE-ESTRADA, Osorio. A Abolição (esboço historico): 1831-1888 Rio de Janeiro: Leite Ribeiro & Maurillo, 1918. p.83-128;
- e o clássico relato erudito CONRAD, Robert. The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery: 1850-1888. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1972. chs. 9-13.
- 6 Sobre o abolicionismo do imperador e as percepções de seu papel sobre 1871, ver NEEDELL, 2006, chs. 6, 7; e sobre 1878 e 1884, ver SILVA, Pereira da. Memorias do meu tempo 2v. Rio de Janeiro: Garnier, 1895, 1896. v.2, p.272-276, p.282;
- OTONI, Cristiano Benedito. Autobiografia Brasília: Senado Federal, 1983 [c.1908]. p.200;
- MONTEIRO, Tobias. Pesquisas e depoimentos para a historia Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1913. p.64-68;
- 7 A ausência de Nabuco na Europa foi atacada por alguns militantes e publicamente defendida por outros; ver, por exemplo, o relato em: [Manuel Ernesto de Campos Porto] para Joaquim Nabuco, Rio, 25 abr. 1883, CPp318doc.6483, AJN; e sua resposta confidencial, Joaq. Nabuco para Meu caro Dr. Ubaldino do Amaral, Londres, 31 maio 1883 (Particular), Cap84doc.1651, ibidem. Sobre a campanha de 1884, ver CASTILHO, 2008, ch. 4; observe que os discursos eleitorais foram reproduzidos e impressos como propaganda posteriormente em NABUCO, Joaquim. Campanha Abolicionista no Recife: 1884: discursos de Joaquim Nabuco. 2.ed. Recife: Fundaj/Massangana, 1988 [1885]
- Sobre o apoio abolicionista para Dantas e vice-versa, bem como o significado das eleições de 1884 e 1885, ver, também, a correspondência: Joaquim Nabuco para Meu querido Barão [Penedo], Rio, 23 jul. 1884, em NABUCO, Joaquim. Cartas a amigos, 2v. São Paulo: Instit. Progresso, 1949. v.1, 116f;
- 8 Sobre o projeto de reforma de Saraiva, aprovado posteriormente por Cotegipe (ver texto a seguir), ver NABUCO, Camara dos Deputados, 24 jul. 1885, JC, 25 jul. 1885, p.2; idem para Prezado Sr. Allen, Rio de Janeiro, 6 ago. 1885, em BETHELL, Leslie; CARVALHO, José Murilo de (Ed.). Joaquim Nabuco British Abolitionists and the End of Slavery in Brazil: Correspondence 1880-1905. London: Instit. for the Study of the Americas, 2009. p.97-100;
- 10 Sobre as manobras de João Alfredo, ver MONTEIRO, 1913, p.180-183; sobre a guinada do imperador para Cotegipe, ver as citações na nota 9 e MORAES, 1924, p.123, 128. Sobre a mudança de Cotegipe para a repressão, ver o resumo em MORAES, Evaristo de. A escravidão. Da supressão do trafico à Lei Aurea. Revista do Instituto Historico e Geographico Brasileiro, tomo especial, Congresso Internacional de Historia da America, v.3, 1922. p.295.
- 12 BARÃO DE COTEGIPE, Senado, 24 ago. 1885, JC, 25 ago. 1885, p.1; e idem, Camara dos Deputados, 24 ago. 1885, ibidem, NABUCO, Joaquim, ibidem. Note que a resposta longa e incendiária de Nabuco para Cotegipe foi resumida ao ponto de supressão no JC, em lugar de citação ipsis litteris Cf. NABUCO, Joaquim. Discurso na apresentação do Ministério Cotegipe 24 de Agosto [de 1885]. In: NABUCO, Joaquim. Discursos parlamentares [1879-1888] São Paulo: Instit. Progresso, 1949. p.236-255.
- Sobre os incidentes em Campos, ver PATROCÍNIO, José do. Gazeta da Tarde, artigo de 19 set. 1885. In: PATROCÍNIO, José do. Campanha abolicionista: coletânea de artigos. Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca Nacional, 1996. p.108-109.
- 13 Os esforços ilegais mais significativos no setor rural foram aqueles associados com Antonio Bento; ver SILVA, 1895, 1896, v.2, p.311 para contexto e NABUCO, Minha formação, 1900, p.227;
- CELSO, Afonso. Oito anos de parlamento, 2.ed. Brasília: Senado, 1981 [1901]. p.91;
- DUQUE-ESTRADA, 1918, p.216; MORAES, 1924, p.261-276, 304-309; COSTA, Emilia Viotti da. Da senzala à colônia 2.ed. São Paulo: Ciências Humanas, 1982 [1966], p.425, 430;
- CONRAD, 1972, p.242-247; e MACHADO, Maria Helena. O plano e o pânico: os movimentos sociais na década da Abolição. São Paulo: Edusp, 1994. cap. 4,
- passim A fonte básica é o livro de memórias de um dos seguidores de Antonio Bento; ver ANDRADA, António Manuel Bueno de. A Abolição em São Paulo. Reportagem de O Estado de S. Paulo, 13 maio 1918,
- em Publicações: páginas esquecidas. Revista do Arquivo Municipal, v.78, p.261-272, jun.-jul. 1941.
- 14 A biografia de Alonso é a fonte mais atualizada e amplamente pesquisada desse romance celebrado, contando com evidências arquivísticas e os estudos populares e acadêmicos sobre o tema; ver p.51-85, 121, 127, 152, 167-177, 197-208, passim Minha primeira discussão desse romance encontra-se em NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. A Tropical Belle Epoque: Elite Culture and Society in Turn-of-the-Century Rio de Janeiro. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987. p.118-123.
- As particularidades de minha própria interpretação aqui baseiam-se apenas na correspondência arquivada e em fontes primárias publicadas; para este parágrafo, ver Euphrasia para Meu bom amigo [Nabuco], Paris 4 jul. 1876, CPp3doc.45, AJN; mesmo para mesmo, [Paris,] [abr. 1884], CPp11doc.218, ibid.; NABUCO, 2 abr. 1885, em Diários, v.1, p.272. A família de Eufrásia, Teixeira Leite, foi mineira de origem, e incluía empresários cujas plantações de café pioneiras prosperaram no Vale do Paraíba, perto de Vassouras, em meados do século XIX, permitindo-lhes ramificar-se nas finanças. Enquanto concentravam-se nas plantações e nas finanças, eles estavam estreitamente integrados com a ala da direita do Partido Conservador (os saquaremas). Sobre seus negócios, ver STEIN, Stanley J. Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900: The Roles of Planter and Slave in a Plantation Society. 2.ed. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985. cap. 1, 5,
- 18 Sobre os resultados das eleições de Câmara, ver SILVA, 1895, 1896, v.2, p.315 e MORAES, 1924, p.143, 296. Sobre a radicalização de Dantas e o aumento do significado do movimento, ver DUQUE-ESTRADA, 1918, p.189; MORAES, 1924, p.135. Sobre a repressão e radicalização do abolicionismo, ver DUQUE-ESTRADA, 1918, p.187, 193-201, passim; MORAES, 1924, p.148, 155-160. Sobre a desestabilização do setor rural e quilombos paulistas, ver as citações na nota 13. Sobre a campanha de Carlos Lacerda em Campos, nas planícies açucareiras da província do Rio de Janeiro, ver ibidem, p.235-250 (note que as origens dessa organização abolicionista datam de 1884 e as primeiras ações radicais, de março de 1885). Para o quilombo citado do Rio, no Leblon, ver SILVA, Eduardo. As camellias do Leblon e a abolição da escravatura: uma investigação de história cultural. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003.
- 20 Sobre a ciência de Nabuco acerca de trabalho clandestino, ver nota 19. O papel de Nabuco em O Paíz foi em grande parte como o sugerido pelos amigos que o aconselharam a assumir o cargo lá; ver a carta de Antonio Carlos Ferreira da Silva citada na nota 17. Conforme a correspondência periódica e o diário anexo citados a seguir indicam, Nabuco fracassou em angariar dinheiro para O Século, periódico que ele viria a controlar; a posição d'O Paíz foi a melhor que ele pôde alcançar. Sobre o sentido de Nabuco acerca da importância da reforma da pena de açoites, ver NABUCO, "Anos da minha vida, 1886," em "Anexo B," Diários, v.2, p.511.
- Seu sentido do significado desse caso era claro à época, também; ver Nabuco para Dear Mr. Allen, [Londres, abr. 1887], em BETHELL; CARVALHO, 2009, p.116. Para o caso em si, ver OTONI, 1983, p.273-276; DUQUE-ESTRADA, 1918, p.199; MORAES, 1924, p.215-216; e CONRAD, 1972, p.237. Enquanto a apreciação de Moraes e Conrad da própria lei é mais próxima ao que ela de fato envolvia, apenas 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, p.2, 110n112, Winter 2000) observou a diferenç
- a entre o que a reforma implicava e o que a historiografia alegou (esta geralmente afirma, incorretamente, que a reforma fez com que o açoite de escravos se tornasse ilegal, ao passo que, na realidade, a reforma apenas tornou ilegal ao governo imperial açoitar os escravos). Até mesmo Moraes, que de fato compreendeu a distinção, omitiu isso, ao argumentar que a magistratura poderia interpretar a reforma para impactar punição corporal privada, e de fato o fez. Minha discussão desse caso, aqui e a seguir, deriva de NEEDELL, Jeffrey D. Politics, Parliament, and the Penalty of the Lash. Paper apresentado na conferência de homenagem a Boris Fausto, Rethinking Brazilian History, Center for Latin American Studies, Stanford University, maio 2010.
- Esse paper foi publicado recentemente; ver Politics, Parliament, and the Penalty of the Lash: The Significance of the End of Flogging in 1886. Almanack Guarulhos, n.4, p.91-100, 2ş sem. 2012.
