In 1883, abolitionists, led by José do Patrocínio, followed the North-American example, and launched a campaign for creating free soils. The strategy consisted of buying up freedom certificates or persuading slave owners to give them for free at intervals. The tactic did not work well in the capital of the Empire. Then Patrocínio joined the campaign in Ceará, selected for having small slave stocks, strong local abolitionist associations, and a provincial president willing to support the movement. Abolitionists went house to house, city by city, and started a countdown to province-wide abolition. Patrocínio traveled to Paris, where, as Nabuco in London, organized events to showcase the movement’s international support and embarrass the national government, thus preventing repression. In March 1884, abolitionists declared Ceará to be "free soil." On the eve of mobilization, Patrocínio and Rebouças created the Abolitionist Confederation, embracing all abolitionist associations all over the country, and launched a manifesto for the immediate and non-indemnified abolition of slavery. The Abolitionist Confederation continued the free soil campaign around the country and organized propaganda events in the public space, making abolitionist presence impossible to be ignored. This strategy caused a crisis in the political institutions and a growing pro-slavery reaction.

In the 1870s the growth of urbanization, the expanded access to tertiary education, and the reduced printing costs broadened the range of participants in the public debate in Brazil. Abolitionists addressed this public with the rhetoric of change. The Brazilian moral repertoire emulated former abolitionist movements rationale, presenting abolition as an act of compassion, a right, and a sign of progress. However, differently from the Anglo-American case, Brazilians scarcely relied on religious arguments, instead employing scientific and artistic language for increasing the awareness of its urban audience. This rhetoric was used by all abolitionists, with distinctive emphasis. The black abolitionist Luís Gama was responsible for the diffusion of a style of activism heavily based on the rhetoric of rights. Gama started freedom lawsuits, later emulated all over the country. In contrast with Abílio Borges and Andre Rebouças, Gama was an elite outsider and attracted non-elite members to abolitionist activism. At this point, Rebouças recognized a similarity to him: traveling to the US, he was not regarded as an aristocrat, unlike in Europe, but as a black man. He then took Frederick Douglass as a model to fight slavery.

The nationalization of abolitionism came about when slavery returned to the institutional agenda in 1878, thanks to the full implementation of the free-womb law and the change of government. After a decade of demanding reforms in the public space, the Liberals were in power. The abolitionists seized the opportunity to step up their protest. A new generation, in part benefiting from the educational reforms of the 1870s, joined the mobilization. Among them was the black journalist José do Patrocínio, who joined Rebouças in founding an abolitionist association and started the “concert-conferences”, an expansion of Abílio Borges´s civic conferences. Held in theaters, with poetry rrecitations and operas, these events ended with the presentation of manumission certificates and a shower of flowers over the freed slaves.This was the preferred abolitionist strategy in the following years, a pacific style of mobilization, which conferred public legitimacy upon the campaign in the large cities and allowed women to enter the campaign. Numeric growth, geographic expansion, tactical variety, and the social diversity of the activists allowed the movement to become national.

The crisis led, in June 1884, to the appointment of a new Prime Minister, the Liberal Manuel de Souza Dantas, committed to a moderate abolitionist reform. The Abolitionist Confederation coordinated abolitionists nationwide to endorse the government and helped draft a proposal for gradual emancipation and conceiving rights to freed people, presented to Parliament in July 1884.The alliance government movement triggered a pro-slavery political backlash, with the creation of civil associations (Plantation Clubs) against the Dantas reform, while the caucus worked to obstruct it in parliament. Dantas then dissolved the House and called new elections. Joaquim Nabuco returned to Brazil to be the star of the coalition abolitionist movement/government, that stood candidates for parliament, in a nationwide abolitionist electoral campaign. The freedom soil campaign continued at the same time. The pro-slavery political faction managed to control the results of the election.The Dantas government fell and the gradual emancipation project was thwarted.

This book, based on a dataset with 2,214 abolitionist events, makes the case that the campaign for the abolition of slavery in Brazil was a structured and lasting network of activists, associations, and public demonstrations, a national social movement. In this sense, this study shows civil society mobilization was not a particular feature of Anglo-American abolitionism.The Brazilian abolitionist movement's actions are explained here from a relational perspective, focusing on its contentious relations – in the public space and inside political institutions – with governments as well as with a pro-slavery countermovement. Besides, the book places Brazil in a global history of abolitionist movements, showing how local activists hooked onto the global abolitionist network and appropriated the repertoire of contention – rhetoric, strategies, and political performances – put together by previous anti-slavery movements. Brazilians adapted this repertoire to local political tradition. Given the formal link between church and State in Brazil, abolitionists preferred secular rhetoric and theater to propaganda. In this sense, it was more modern than the somewhat religiously embedded Anglo-Saxon abolitionism.

This book argued that the Brazilian antislavery mobilization proved to be a national social movement. The movement chose strategies according to a shifting balance of power, giving to the government´s tolerance or repression, the availability of allies, and the pro-slavery countermovement´s strength. This relational dynamic movement/state/countermovement forced abolitionists to favor successful demonstrations in the public space, field candidates for political institutions, and civil disobedience.Three mechanisms explain the geographical expansion and continuity of Brazilian abolitionism through two decades: the building up of national activism networks, portable activism styles (easily reproducible political performances) and political brokers (the key broker was André Rebouças). Brazilian abolitionists relied on a repertoire of former antislavery movements and adapted it to local political traditions. Givem the formal link between church and State in Brazil, abolitionists used secular rhetoric and theater as propaganda. In this sense, it was more modern than the somewhat religiously embedded Anglo-Saxon abolitionism. This study shows civil society mobilization was not a particular feature of Anglo-American abolitionism. Besides, it demonstrated the placement of national actors in a global network of activism, making a case for including Brazil in the transnational history of abolitionism.

In 1885, the Conservative Party/pro-slavery countermovement took power and closed the institutional agenda to abolition. Besides, the government started to repress abolitionist acts in the public space. The new Prime Minister, the Baron of Cotegipe, rolled out a repressive program, using legal measures, and allowed the pro-slavery countermovement to relying on extra-legal methods. The harassing, persecuting, and arresting of abolitionists increased. The movement then shifted from public demonstrations to civil disobedience, and clandestine activities. Based on the North-American underground railway strategy, abolitionists set up assisted collective runaway routes to get slaves to “free soil”. Abolitionists also declared in their newspapers their willingness to take up arms to defend their activists and liberate slaves. This radicalization made it impracticable to maintain slavery without the use of force. This was a phase of confrontation since the government counted on military repression and the pro-slavery countermovement´s militias to face the abolitionists' strategy.

This chapter focuses on the day after abolition. The Monarchy did not embrace the further reforms abolitionists demanded. Rather than rights for former slaves and land reform, political institutions worked for measures to calm down the pro-slavery reaction. The abolitionist movement then split into two factions. A small group insisted on demanding new reform of the monarchy, while the majority of skeptics did not believe the Empire was capable of doing it and engaged in the republican movement.

By the end of 1887, the political process of abolition entered its final phase. Afraid of a civil war, sectors of the political and social elite moved to support abolition. The army’s decision to support abolition in October 1887 was decisive, stripping the state of its capacity to keep quashing the movement by force. In February 1888, the Crown and a dissident faction of the Conservative Party followed suit. The new balance of power dismantled the confrontation between the proslavery countermovement and the abolitionists and produced a compromise. Abolition came in May 1888, without indemnification to slave owners, just as the abolitionists had wanted. However, the pro-slavery countermovement managed to block all their other demands, such as social protection and land for former slaves.

This chapter focus on the institutional debates around a free-womb law project. The Conservative Party´s modernizing faction, led by Prime Minister, the Viscount of Rio Branco, proposed a free-womb law bill - inspired by Spanish legislation – on the House floor, in 1871. This action provoked a pro-slavery backlash. From the diffuse proslavery social groups (entire social strata had economic activities and a way of life-based on slave labor) emerged a politically organized pro-slavery reaction. This countermovement diffused proslavery rhetoric (a "circumstantial" defense of slavery), organized civil associations (Plantation Clubs), and formed a parliamentary bloc (the “hardliners”). On the other side, the first cycle of antislavery mobilization in the public space appeared, with public conferences, pamphlets, and the foundation of civil associations between 1868 and 1871. Resistance did not prevent the free-womb Law from being approved in 1871, liberating children born to slave mothers. It mitigated, however, the government’s original bill and postponed its full enforcement until the newborns had reached the age of eight, in 1879.