Based on an analysis of Black political associations in the nineteenth century, this chapter invite a more attentive observation about the possibilities for action available to free and freed Black people at that time, as well as a re-examination of conceptual categorizations that can be used to legitimize problematic discourses involving the Brazilian racial experience. Along those lines, this article is a counterpoint to established generalizations with regard to the participation of Black and poor populations in the political scene during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Such interpretations have exercised much influence over the ways in which multiple generations of historians have interpreted the trajectories of free Afro-descendants. On the basis of information uncovered about a group of Black organizations that were active in the immediate post-abolition period in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, this article aims to analyze the articulations among various efforts organized by the Afro-descendants in defense of their citizenship and status as free people.

Chapter 17 retraces the Groupe de Coppet’s work toward abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, from Staël’s parents in the 1780s to Staël’s children in the 1840s. What links these fighters is Staël. Staël’s gender, her religion, her life of revolution and exile all fed the flame that drove her struggle forward. Staël’s thought, trained in the Enlightenment, strives constantly toward universal and timeless truths, which brings a special excitement and power to her discussion of freedom and its antithesis, slavery, in the age of the Déclaration des droits de l’homme. In the history of abolitionism, many aspects of Staël’s thought are curious: her broad refusal of the slave-despot metaphor; her geographical and historical sweep; and her refusal of topoi designed to short-circuit discussion, like the Christian slaves in Algiers. Thirty-odd years of thought about freedom will produce some words on slavery, but Staël and her circle joined deeds to words.

This chapter traces the parallel life stories spun by a single woman – “Benedicta” to some and “Ovídia” to others – in pursuit of freedom in 1880s Brazil. Building upon a vast historiography, it uses a single microhistory to recuperate the social practices, ways of life, and world visions that resided below the surface of judicial testimony. In so doing, it opens an important window through which we can apprehend the ways in which women on the borders of slavery and freedom constructed their identity during Brazil’s age of abolition.

The introduction problematizes the interpretation of postemancipation Brazil from the perspective of slavery’s abolition in May 1888 as a temporal watershed to explore the making of race, nation, and citizenship for people of African descent and their intersection with policing, crime, and punishment. It reframes the history of nineteenth-century Brazil through the lens of policing freedom, which reckons with the systematic implementation of criminal justice reforms that defined the terrain of freedom and citizenship for racialized Brazilians of African descent while slavery thrived in Brazil. It brings attention to the significance of the penitentiary in incubating changes in labor relations in nineteenth-century Brazil and its deployment as a site for the racialization of the poor, while anchoring these local developments within a broader global transformation of the labor regime of the Atlantic World by historians of the “second slavery.”

It is a commonplace in discussions of Anne Lister to identify her as a self-proclaimed Tory, and eventually a Tory landowner. But the Lister of the diaries also fancied herself a Rousseauvian individualist and something of a Byronic hero, a champion of Romantic individualism that sits somewhat oddly with her sense of social entitlement. I have argued elsewhere that Lister’s conservatism may have been compensatory, a form of normalisation and possibly of protection. In this chapter I complicate those arguments by looking more closely and more broadly at Lister’s politics - and politics with both a capital and a small ’p’. Lister lived during an age of revolution and reaction, of Napoleonic wars, of abolitionist agitation, of the first major Reform Act, of colonial expansion, of early industrialisation and rail travel. What were her attitudes to these major phenomena that do not necessarily line up neatly with a single party? What issues did she care about, and what did being a (non-voting, because female) Tory mean to her? Were there chinks in her conservative political philosophy? Did her views change over time? And is it possible that Lister’s conservatism was not compensatory at all, but rather part and parcel of her self-fashioning as a lesbian?

The epilogue recounts how abolition failed in southern courtrooms, often in areas of private law that did not always – or even often – involve a freedperson. It looks ahead and argues for reparative abolition, which requires that reparations be paid for the harms produced by the aftereffects of slavery and racism and that we scour the American legal system for vestiges of slavery – those that are obvious and those that masquerade as race neutral.

The introduction begins an exploration of abolitionist jurisprudence and the judges who practiced it. It explains the difference between emancipation and abolition and the way the book uses and builds on existing abolitionist theory. It maps the books argument: that legacies of slavery survive in private law, which modern abolitionists have missed.

This chapter challenges received wisdom that focuses solely on politics to understand the revolutionary nature of independence in Latin America. It revisits Latin America’s independence processes by investigating the multiple forms of coerced labor regimes and forced migrations that emerged throughout the continent after the breakdown of colonialism. The region is a crucial site for exploring how in the nineteenth century liberal legal discourses aimed at erasing categories of social difference continued to reproduce inequality based on multiple iterations of unfree labor. In addition to placing Brazil, Cuba, and the Spanish American mainland in the same frame, the chapter connects African, Chinese, and indigenous peoples’ histories. Seeking to shed new light on how independence impacted labor regimes, we engage with scholarship that argues for the employment of a transregional lens in the study of global labor regimes during the nineteenth century. A transregional approach to labor regimes reveals new dimensions to mechanisms of inequality and oppression that have long gripped the continent, while also connecting it to trends reshaping labor regimes on a global scale.

The Civil War in the lower Mississippi valley demonstrates the complexities of abolishing slavery. Focusing mostly on the Emancipation Proclamation, historians fail to explain how military emancipation was translated into abolition, viewing the Thirteenth Amendment as a stand-alone measure that gave constitutional sanction to the proclamation and that followed inevitably from it. However, abolition must be understood in conjunction with restoring the seceded states to the Union, since Americans generally believed that only states could abolish slavery. After the proclamation, Unionists in Louisiana and Tennessee split into free-state and proslavery – or “conservative” – factions, with both attempting to organize loyal governments. Taking proslavery Unionism seriously, Republicans insisted that the rebellious states abolish slavery in their state constitutions as a condition for readmission. The Thirteenth Amendment was thus originally envisioned to complement state action. Federal military success in the lower Mississippi valley first elucidated the problem of conjoining abolition and state restoration, and the region served as the crucible for transforming military emancipation into constitutional abolition.

The Federal Red River campaign of spring 1864 is a military and political disaster, casting a pall over Louisiana’s constitutional convention and the inauguration of Arkansas’s Unionist government. Federal forces ostensibly control most of Arkansas, but such control tenuous in places, and the Arkansas government encounters much resistance to its authority. The Louisiana constitutional convention crafts a free-state constitution, but conservative Unionists contest it relentlessly, and the large majority of free-state delegates oppose black political and legal equality. The organization of a free-state government and constitution in Tennessee remains on hold, although Andrew Johnson nominated as Lincoln’s running-mate in the 1864 election. Confederate atrocities against black Union troops at Poison Spring and Marks’ Mill, Arkansas, and at Fort Pillow in Tennessee underscore the determination to preserve slavery.

The Union capture of Atlanta in early September 1864 reframes the presidential election and the war. Louisiana’s free-state constitution wins voter approval and becomes operative, formally abolishing slavery in Louisiana, although military–civilian conflict continues to hamper the Unionist government. Free-state radicals and black leaders call for political and legal equality, but the Louisiana government takes no action in defining black freedom. The Arkansas Unionist government faces difficulties in asserting its authority, and it receives limited assistance from Federal military officials. In Tennessee, free-state and conservative Unionists offer competing plans for the state to conduct a presidential election, and black Tennesseans in Nashville hold their own election, but Tennessee’s electoral votes ultimately not counted. Andrew Johnson delivers “Moses of the Colored Man” speech during the campaign, affirming commitment to abolition. Republican support for the Thirteenth Amendment muted during the campaign, but Lincoln wins reelection.

During winter and spring of 1865, Tennessee amendments gain voter approval, abolishing slavery in the state, and loyalist government elected and inaugurated. Legislatures of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee approve Thirteenth Amendment. Lincoln and congressional Republicans fail to reach accord on Reconstruction legislation before Congress adjourns in early March, and Congress refuses to seat Louisiana and Arkansas claimants but creates Freedmen’s Bureau. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address promises reconciliation for former Confederates and justice for freedpeople. Following Lee’s surrender, Lincoln’s “last” address defends his Reconstruction policy and the Louisiana government, although Lincoln also for the first time publicly endorses black suffrage and acknowledges black role in Reconstruction. Confederate surrender in western theater takes several more weeks. Andrew Johnson announces Reconstruction policy in late May 1865, recognizing governments of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana but rejecting calls for black role in Reconstruction.

The organization of a loyal government on a free-state basis in Louisiana in early 1864 under Lincoln’s ten-percent plan. Contrary to the free-state Unionists’ plan, General Nathaniel Banks orders an election for state executive officers before holding a constitutional convention to abolish slavery. In the campaign that follows, free-state Unionists split into “radical” and “moderate” factions, primarily over black political and legal rights but also over Banks’s interference. Conservative Unionists in Louisiana continue their campaign to restore Louisiana as a slave state, but Congress refuses to seat claimants elected in November 1863. Free-state moderate Michael Hahn is elected Unionist governor in March and takes office. In the planning for a state constitutional convention to abolish slavery, New Orleans free people of color advocate for voting rights, and Lincoln, after meeting with two black leaders, “privately” suggests to Hahn that Louisiana adopt limited black suffrage.

With reelection secure, Lincoln calls for US House approval of Thirteenth Amendment, and campaign launched in early 1865 to win passage. Lincoln also suggests Reconstruction policy may change when war is over, and efforts to enact Reconstruction legislation is revived. Black political convention in New Orleans in January 1865 calls for political and legal equality, but also reveals tensions within free black community. Tennessee convention, although contentious, drafts amendments to state constitution abolishing slavery and creating loyalist government, but refuses to implement racial equality, despite petition from black Tennesseans. US House passes Thirteenth Amendment in late January.