Slavery & Abolition

ISSN: 0144-039X (Print) 1743-9523 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fsla20

Freedom Suits and Civil Law in Brazil and the

United States
K. Grinberg
To cite this article: K. Grinberg (2001) Freedom Suits and Civil Law in Brazil and the United
States, Slavery & Abolition, 22:3, 66-82, DOI: 10.1080/714005211
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/714005211

Published online: 08 Sep 2010.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 173

View related articles

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fsla20
Download by: [University of Cambridge]

Date: 14 July 2016, At: 15:47

223sa04.qxd

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 66

Freedom Suits and Civil Law in Brazil and

the United States1

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

K E IL A G R INBERG

Ever since the publication of Frank Tannenbaums classic Slave and Citizen
in the mid-1940s, the fundamental differences between slavery in the
United States and Latin America, particularly Brazil, have been a subject of
debate.2 Based on his reading of Gilberto Freyres interpretation of Brazilian
history and an understanding of racial relations in his own country,
Tannenbaum argued that different concepts of slaves human personalities
influenced the nature of slaverys abolition in different parts of the
hemisphere. In Latin America, where the slave was generally recognized as
a person, slavery ended peacefully, while in the United States, where the
slave was regarded as no more than a thing, the end of slavery came about
only through violent struggle.3 If Tannenbaums exaggerations of the
supposedly benevolent character of Iberian slavery are overlooked, Slave
and Citizen provides an extremely useful framework for understanding the
way in which the processes of slavery and emancipation of millions of
Africans and their descendants unfolded in the United States and in the
countries of Latin America.
Today, nobody denies that modern slavery, wherever it has occurred, has
been an essentially violent regime; no one is concerned with affirming the
supposedly better treatment received by the slaves in the Southern
hemisphere.4 At the same time, in the historiographical debate, this issue has
long been discussed and the conclusion reached that both viewpoints
arrived at excessively general conclusions when there was little information
available to authorize them.5 However, nothing indicates that, despite the
criticism, possibilities of comparison between the slave regimes in the
Americas have been exhausted; there are a number of subjects that remain
relatively unstudied, such as slaves practices of purchasing manumission
and bringing legal suits to win their freedom, which occurred when
negotiations to get manumission resulted in conflicts between slaveholders
and slaves.
This essay discusses the possibilities of achieving manumission, which
were surprisingly similar in different places throughout the Americas,
especially in the United States and Brazil. Between the early 1790s and the
Slavery and Abolition, Vol. 22, No. 3, December 2001, pp.6682
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

223sa04.qxd

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 67

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

FREEDOM SUI TS I N BRAZI L AND THE U N I T E D S TAT E S

67

early 1820s, many slaves from cities such as Baltimore and Rio de Janeiro
acquired their freedom or initiated lawsuits against their masters, in which,
for various reasons, they argued that they should be freed. Proceeding from
an analysis of these similarities, this study examines two inter-related
themes: first, that common concepts of justice, freedom and rights were
shared by the urban slaves who sued their masters in the two countries; and,
secondly, that Brazilian and North-American lawyers used Roman laws
concerning slavery to defend slaves, thereby creating new interpretations
for ancient legislation. Despite differences between the Anglo-Saxon and
the Roman legal systems, freedom suits from regions such as the Upper
South in the United States and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil contained similar
juridical discussions. Since the Roman laws used throughout the Americas
contained dispositions about the cases in which slaves should be freed,
some judges throughout the region considered that slaves who had proven
their right to be freed should acquire legal rights. The occurrence of these
freedom suits also demonstrates that slaves from different places used the
courts as a way to fight for their rights. Based on the results of the analysis
that follows, it appears that the time has come to revisit the ideas developed
by Tannenbaum and followers about the possibilities of comparing urban
slavery and forms of conducting manumission in the Atlantic world. At the
turn of the nineteenth century, there were many similarities among the large
cities in the Americas, such as Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Baltimore or
New Orleans, to name just a few. They were important economic centres,
ports for exporting regional production, and cities where wealthy families
established themselves. These cities also attracted runaway slaves, freed
slaves and free African-Americans, since they offered work opportunities
and the chance to mix in with a population of undefined social and legal
status.6 In Brazil, the main colony of the Portuguese Empire until 1822, the
urban development that the cities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro underwent
led to a similar situation to that existing in the United States and in other
urban settlements of the Spanish Empire.
No city in the Americas rivaled Rio de Janeiro in the population growth
of freedmen and free blacks in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
capital of the Brazilian colony since 1763 and soon to become the capital
of the whole Portuguese Empire by the 1820s, Rio de Janeiro had a
population of 86,323 inhabitants, of which 40,376 or 46.7 per cent were
slaves, mostly from Africa.7 These figures, along with those for the free
black population, tended to increase throughout the nineteenth century, thus
distinguishing Rio de Janeiro as the city that hosted the largest number of
Africans and African-Americans in all the Americas.
Rio de Janeiro developed especially rapidly after 1808, when D. Joo VI
moved to the city fleeing the Napoleonic wars, and brought along with him

223sa04.qxd

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

68

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 68

S L AV E RY A N D A B O L I T I O N

all of the administrative institutions of the Portuguese Empire. This, in turn,

attracted a great number of self-employed professionals who themselves
increased the demand for workers in the lower social brackets, thus
increasing the possibilities for slaves to obtain their freedom.8 As in other
large cities in the Americas, the slaves had diverse occupations, being
employed in various professions and accumulating the necessary amount of
money to purchase their own freedom or that of their relatives.
What is important to emphasize is that, by paying attention to the
features of these cities, one can create a framework of urban slavery in the
Americas at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth
centuries that, despite the local specificities, indicates several common
traits. The majority of slaves who became involved in freedom suits had
been born in the countries where they lived and maintained some sort of
relationship with their masters as well as maintaining some sort of stable
family ties; this leads to the conclusion that lasting relationships with the
master and with ones own family were a key factor in the success of
attempts to win ones freedom. But proximity to the urban centres facilitated
access to the information and individuals necessary to undertaking the legal
process of obtaining freedom. This seems to be the most important of these
factors: the establishment of an urban milieu that provided slaves with
remunerated jobs, enabling them to save their income and acquire their
freedom, either by purchasing it or through agreements with slaveholders.
Thus, it is possible to say that for slaves of any urban milieu in the
Americas, from the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the
nineteenth century, the most important element of their lives was the fact
that they were living in cities, with access to all the opportunities that urban
life could provide them.9 In fact, to a greater or lesser extent, in all urban
areas of the Americas, there were possibilities for obtaining freedom,
especially through manumission - even if, in some North-American states,
the government restricted masters ability to grant their slaves permission to
work for independent wages that could be used to buy their freedom, fearing
that the growth of the free population could lead to an inevitable disorder
and loss of control over the region.10
Returning to Tannenbaums line of analysis, this possibility of obtaining
manumission would be explained by the characteristics of the Iberian
legislation in force in Brazil and in the Spanish colonies. One of the
problems with this argument is that, while it is true that studies of Brazil,
Louisiana under French and Spanish domination, Cuba, Peru and Colombia
have effectively demonstrated that legal systems in fact had a major role in
the development of slavery and its abolition, case analysis of the British and
French colonies in the Caribbean, the United States, and even in England
and France demonstrate that slaves recourse to the law was far from being
the exclusive prerogative of the colonized regions of the Iberian Peninsula.11

223sa04.qxd

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 69

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

FREEDOM SUI TS I N BRAZI L AND THE U N I T E D S TAT E S

69

In England, this practice had occurred at least since 1569, when a slave
imported from Russia asked for his freedom in the courts and received it.
This case, known as Cartwright, was the first in which slavery was
considered inconsistent with the British legal tradition. Although no details
about this case are known, not even the motives that led to the slaves
manumission, we know it created a precedent in British law, because the
sentence Englands was too pure an air for slaves to breath in12 was
used as an argument in cases involving slaves brought from the British
colonies in the Caribbean to England in the eighteenth century.
An episode that took place in 1706 was one of these, in which one Mr.
Smith, in London, brought a case to court in order to recover an African
whom he considered his property. The reply of the defendants lawyer
entered the annals of British jurisprudence when he insisted that the
supposed slave should not be placed in the power of the slaveholder because
the owner had not an absolute property in him; he could not kill him as he
could an ox. ... Men may be the owners and therefore cannot be subject of
property.13 The court verdict confirmed this position, but contributed to the
creation of major legal uncertainties, when it established that:
This action does not lie for a Negro, no more than for any other man;
for the common law takes no notice of Negroes being different from
other men. By the common law no man can have a property in
another, but in special cases, as in a villain, but even in him not to kill
him: so in captives took in war, but the taker cannot kill them, but may
sell them to ransom them: there is no such thing as a slave by the law
of England. And if a mans servant is took from him, the master
cannot maintain an action for taking him, unless it is laid per quod
servitium amisit.14
If the court maintained that slaves had the same standing as other men and
that they could not be anyones private property, it also upheld the position
that, in special cases, they could be sold. All the same, it insisted that there
is no such thing as a slave by the law of England, strengthening the idea
that, under common law tradition, all English people were considered free,
although the usual meaning of the term freedom could certainly not be
applied to a great part of the population that lived in those islands.15 This
sentence has created innumerable contradictory precedents, of such an order
that the slaveholders themselves called the Attorney General, Sir Phillip
Yorke, and the Solicitor General, Mr. Talbot to a special dinner in 1729,
with the exclusive objective of clearing up doubts related to the presence of
slaves brought in from the Caribbean to England. The two authorities
reinforced the right of slavery in the Caribbean; however, this statement had
no legal value, since it was not filed in any court or in the Parliament. The

223sa04.qxd

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

70

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 70

S L AV E RY A N D A B O L I T I O N

legal controversy, however, went on until the end of the century, when the
discussion about the status of James Somerset, a slave who had run away
from Jamaica, definitively resolved the issue in England, establishing that,
in the absence of positive laws on slavery, all persons who would step on
British soil should be considered free.16
Similar problems and attitudes were found in France where, despite the
fact that slaves had claimed their freedom in the courts since the fifteenth
century, only in the eighteenth century did the State confront the issues
involved in defining the status of slaves brought to France by Caribbean
colonists. There was no legal provision that could authorize an incontestable
decision.17 In France, the so called principle of freedom, which stated the
maxim that every slave stepping onto French soil would be freed, was taken
seriously by many people, so much so that slave-owners from the colonies
pressed for statements that would officially permit the temporary presence
of captives. The situation was quite similar to that in England. Because of
the presence of slavery in the American colonies, slaves were occasionally
brought to Europe; when they got there, they claimed manumission based
on the principles of liberty, principally because there was no other law.18
French authorities tried to make life easier for the slave-owners; in 1716,
they established conditions under which they could bring their slaves to
France temporarily, and soon after, in 1738, these regulations were
confirmed, limiting to three years the period of time that slaves could
remain in France. It was also established that if they did not return within
this period of time, they could be confiscated by the Crown and sent back
to the Caribbean without receiving their freedom.19
But the captives arriving in France from the Caribbean in the eighteenth
century did not accept this situation. Since the 1750s, many of them had
filed freedom suits, obtaining manumission in all cases. The fact that these
slaves obtained their freedom in court shows that, even if there were people
who did not take the principle of liberty seriously, lawyers and judges did,
for a simple reason: the declarations of 1716 and 1738 had not been
registered in the Parliament of Paris where they would be enforced and
so there was no legislation to orient the arbitration of conflicts between
owners and slaves. Thus, according to French law, custom was valid, and
from that point began to gain the force of jurisprudence; and the relevant
custom in this case was the principle of liberty. Based on this logic, the
Parisian courts legally legitimized what had been a vague notion of
freedom, and transformed it into a right. But it is equally interesting that, in
the period immediately before the French Revolution, we can observe
among the many efforts of the French State to regulate civil life, many
attempts to create specific legislation concerning slaves. These attempts
were all the more delicate because any decision regarding slaves status in

223sa04.qxd

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 71

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

FREEDOM SUI TS I N BRAZI L AND THE U N I T E D S TAT E S

71

France could affect the balance of power between the mother country and
Caribbean colonies.
The problem of defining slaves status in European countries was
therefore highlighted by the existence of slavery in the American colonies.
Although we do not know about specific studies regarding this issue in
Iberian countries, it is quite probable that the same situation also occurred
in Portugal. After all, even after Pombal abolished slave traffic to Portugal
in 1761, the regime of slave labour was still permitted throughout the
Portuguese colonial empire, and one might expect that, like their British and
French peers, the Portuguese and their slaves continued to arrive from their
African, Asian and Brazilian colonies, causing the same social and legal
problems that had already occurred in other European countries.20
The fact that these episodes were public events, involving State
mediation both judicially and extrajudicially, is extremely important. Unlike
cases of manumission, where slaves and owners settled their disputes
privately, if not always peacefully, the public disputes of slaves freedom
emphasized the need to define the legal and political status of slaves,
especially at a time the end of the eighteenth century when the meaning
of the word liberty was expanding as never before.
And, in fact, it was at the end of the eighteenth century and the
beginning of the nineteenth century when the practice of resorting to
freedom suits spread out throughout the Atlantic world, a phenomenon
similar and parallel to that of manumission. But the difference between the
processes instituted in Europe and the suits initiated by slaves in the
Americas was enormous. Unlike in France and England, the much greater
number of slaves that tried to gain freedom through judicial proceedings in
the Americas effectively threatened public order and paved the way for
freeing other slaves.
The strongest jurisprudence regarding the issue of slavery was generated
in the recently independent United States. As the country did not yet have a
body of autonomous laws, it continued to apply British legislation to deal
with conflicts between slaves and slaveowners. The same Somerset case
that had been so important in England raised many issues among judges and
jurists in the United States because it established that any slave that entered
England would be freed. Besides motivating slaves on both sides of the
Atlantic to claim their freedom on the basis of previous visits to England,
the question stimulated an extremely important debate unique to American
slavery. Since several states in the North took measures soon after
independence to free the slaves, the United States became the country that
Lincoln would later call half free, half slave.21 Thus, when slaves entered
states where slavery had already been abolished, the conflict arose: should
a slave be freed according to the laws of the state the slave was in at that

223sa04.qxd

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

72

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 72

S L AV E RY A N D A B O L I T I O N

moment, or should the slave be considered as such, based on the laws of his
or her state of origin? The decision was in the hands of the judges who,
besides making use of federal laws, state laws and the constitution, had to
base their decisions on their own judgment.
Although cases of legal conflict, originating from British legislation,
occurred throughout the United States from the end of the eighteenth
century until the decades preceding the American Civil War, it was in the
border states between the Northern and Southern regions in the Upper
South that we have evidence about slaves making use of the right to
demand their own freedom in American courts of law. After 1790,
especially in the states of Virginia and Maryland, slaves began to load the
courts with freedom suits, basing their arguments either on conflicts related
to the purchase of manumission or on their alleged descent from Indians or
even Caucasians, which would have implied illegal enslavement. In these
types of lawsuits the slaves were often successful. On account of this
apparent legal goodwill during the post-independence period, even other
previously inadmissible types of evidence such as witness testimony, was
accepted as proof of slaves rights to freedom.22 With each sentence
favourable to freedom, new suits were initiated, fostering a virtuous circle
that was only interrupted by the fear that erupted amongst slaveholders and
governmental authorities in the United States due to events in the aftermath
of the Haitian Revolution.
One of these lawsuits is a good example of the significance of freedom
suits in the Upper South. In 1771, Mary and William Butler, descendants of
an African slave and a woman of Irish descent known as Irish Nell, filed a
freedom suit claiming that they were descendants of a free woman. When
they got their freedom sixteen years later, the Butler precedent initiated a
run to the courts, in which more than three hundred slaves claimed to be
descendants of Irish Nell, and in many cases gained their freedom. Those
who were not successful in their lawsuits often decided to run away and
even adopted the family name Butler.23
This state of affairs did not last for long; by the end of the 1790s, as soon
as the fear of the growth of the freed population started to take shape in
public opinion, measures were taken to restrain the number of freedom
suits. In the state of Maryland, new laws instituted procedures by which
each case would be pre-judged, and could only be effectively transformed
into lawsuits if the judges admitted that they were viable. Only lawyers
chosen by the courts were allowed to work with these lawsuits, and those
who did not abide by these rules or who tried to help in lawsuits considered
not feasible had to pay a $100 fine. In Virginia, as of 1798, members of
abolitionist organizations were barred from the juries of freedom cases. As
a similar restriction was not imposed on slaveholders, it thus became almost

223sa04.qxd

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 73

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

FREEDOM SUI TS I N BRAZI L AND THE U N I T E D S TAT E S

73

impossible for a slave to win a freedom lawsuit. Furthermore, due to the

hostility of public opinion, several lawyers refused to take part in this type
of case, as did one from Maryland who stated I am not yet Abolition-mad
enough to run the hazard of the expense.24 These measures were aimed
explicitly at attacking abolitionist activity in these states of the Upper South,
and were in fact responsible for restraining the possibilities of freedom in
the Deep South, when states like South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi
began following their examples.25
As of that period, strengthened by the increase in cotton production,
slavery blossomed in the South, as was indicated by the reopening of traffic
of the Atlantic slave-trade, by the decline of local abolitionist societies, and
by the severe reduction of freedom suits, practically non-existent by 1840.
Taking a very peculiar route, the history of slavery in the US, but
particularly in the Upper South, at this moment differed from that of all
other slave societies in the Americas. But up to the end of the eighteenth
century, freedom through state intervention was a remedy available to
slaves everywhere.
In Brazil, studies of specific regions such as the cities of Salvador and
Campos show that the number of freedom suits was large from the end of
the eighteenth century onward.26 But it is in Rio de Janeiro that this process
of appealing to State justice was felt most intensely. After all, the
inhabitants of this city had, since the transfer of the Portuguese kingdom, an
incomparable advantage: proximity to the monarch and the royal family.
Living close to the king meant access to royal ceremonies, where every
subject decently dressed [was] admitted, and allowed to present, personally,
his or her petition, as described by Luccock; it even implied the chance to
become protected by a kings relative, simply by meeting him on the street.27
Slaves in service at the Quinta da Boa Vista (the royal residence) believed
that they were protected by the king, and that they were allowed to cause
riots, since They are all persuaded that your Royal Highness is going to
free them.28
In fact, recent studies stress the expectation of many slaves that the
coming of the king - and, as a consequence, the transformation of Rio de
Janeiro into a Tropical Versailles would bring them emancipation, since
the civilization to which Rio de Janeiro aspired precluded the existence of
slavery. This belief, which caught the attention of the Police Steward,29
would also be responsible for the proliferation of freedom lawsuits and
manumission requests forwarded directly to the king. In the Kings
Appellate Court alone, thirty-two lawsuits were initiated between the arrival
of D. Joo VI and his family and the consolidation of Brazilian
independence in 1831, all referring to contracts of self-purchase or the
freely given manumissions where the terms had been disrespected by one of

223sa04.qxd

74

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 74

S L AV E RY A N D A B O L I T I O N

the parties.30 Another six cases were found in the ndice de Registro de
Consultas in the Arquivo do Desembargo do Pao between 1809 and
1824.31
All petitions forwarded to the king were analyzed by royal advisers. In
the case of appeals by slaves and freed people, they were then forwarded to
the Police General Steward Viana (Intendente Geral da Polcia). Much care
was taken to avoid transforming these manumission appeals into what was
considered anarchy and social chaos, since:

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

By natural instinct all resort to the Clemency of His Highness; every

day El Rei Nosso Senhor receives a great number of applicants, and
the idea they will form (...) that his Majesty protects their cause will
make them flee from the service of their Masters to attain their liberty,
and, disappointed when they do not receive it, they became fugitives,
highway bandits and the most dangerous enemies of the Masters.
The Police Steward Viana encouraged the transfer of claims to the courts,
since heading directly to the king, in many cases, is not to trust the Law, is
to tire the Throne with unnecessary measures, since everything is
established in the Law.32 This observation strongly suggests a lack of
confidence on the part of a great many slaves that their claims could comply
with the formalities required by the legal process, even if their claims were
considered seriously by the courts. For some complainants only the
Reigning Prince, due to his privileged position, could intervene in their
favour. But Vianas response emphasized the importance of direct recourse
to the courts, which could act impartially, but also with the rapidity due to
such extraordinary cases. For this reason, he even proposed the nomination
of a Judge of Freedom, to hear orally in this country the claims of slaves
against their holders ... without appeals or reversals ... which is necessary to
quickly resolve these cases without the delays of the ordinary procedures.33
The direct appeals to the king were not new. Since colonial times, people
of African descent used this extrajudicial recourse of taking their cases to
the monarch when they did not believe their cases would be taken seriously
by the judicial system. This attitude was a recognition that the king was a
safeguard of their rights, and that he was in the position of being the final
arbiter in the legal issues between their vassals.34
But the trials granting freedom through State intervention, as well as the
expectations of a general emancipation, increased with the beginning of the
political conflicts that resulted in the independence of Brazil. In April of
1822, rumors that the Portuguese Assembly had decreed the Freedom of all
Slaves, and that, moreover, the king was hiding this news in order to
maintain in slavery citizens who were now free, provoked countless slave
disturbances and escapes, to the point that on August 5 1822, members of

223sa04.qxd

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 75

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

FREEDOM SUI TS I N BRAZI L AND THE U N I T E D S TAT E S

75

the government asked that vigorous measures be taken against the

disturbance of the public peace by those who seduced slaves with promises
of liberty. Rio de Janeiro was a special stage for a number of slave escapes
and rebellions, and even D Pedro I himself contributed to this situation: in
December 1822, after Brazils political separation from Portugal was
proclaimed, the ruling Emperor promised to free all slaves who would join
the Brazilian army, and later ordered the slave-owners to send one of every
five slaves to the army. This situation made many slaves run away in order
to enlist as volunteers. They understood that this was a good path to follow
for the future acquisition of their freedom, just as it had been for American
slaves during the War of Independence, when some slaves ran away to join
the US and British armies in response to promises of freedom.35 Similarly,
after the period of political emancipation, numerous slaves from both
countries were disappointed, due to an increase in the slave traffic (or, in the
US, the reopening of the traffic) which was caused by the growth of the
export sector. There is no doubt that material and political circumstances
help to explain both the creation of expectations on the slaves side and the
effective recourse to freedom suits.
It is clear, then, that comparisons between Europe, the United States and
Brazil are useful for several reasons. First, they show that recourse to justice
as a form of conflict resolution, although it occurred simultaneously in
different places, was a historically constructed phenomenon, always related
to social conditions. This is unsurprising. But what is surprising, reviewing
Tannenbaums argument, is that these freedom suits occurred in the context
of juridical traditions as distinct as the Iberian and the Anglo-Saxon ones.
For Tannenbaum, the differences between Iberian and Anglo-Saxon law
the former based on the Roman legal tradition set up by Catholic
theoreticians from the Corpus Iuris Civilis, written by Justinianus, and the
latter based on the compilation of local customs set up by the royal judges
were so extreme that they caused distinct forms of treatment and
possibilities for manumission in the slave regimes of Brazil and the United
States.36 In reference to slavery, the adaptation of the provisions established
in the Justinianan code related to manumission would have permitted,
according to Tannenbaums argument, the incorporation of various
measures beneficial to slaves, and even to the recognition of their humanity,
something that could not have happened under British consuetudinary law,
due to the lack of influence of the Roman tradition.37 The question that
remains, though, relates less to slavery itself than to law more broadly
conceived: how was it possible, given different juridical traditions, that
lawsuits for the freedom of slaves occurred in places such as Baltimore and
Rio de Janeiro?
England was juridically distant from the other European countries in the

223sa04.qxd

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

76

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 76

S L AV E RY A N D A B O L I T I O N

twelfth century, when it established a set of common laws for the whole
kingdom based on local habits and managed by a central court. Other
countries on the Continent, especially Italy, Germany, Portugal and Spain,
simultaneously began the process of replacing custom with law. The first
country in Europe to form a modern unified state, England was also the first
to feel the need to have a set of laws common throughout its whole territory.
This process, however, happened before the recovery of the Roman canonic
legal tradition by the rest of the European countries. When Roman law and
the institution of legal codes began to serve as a basis for the legal
unification of the continental European states, England already had a
unified State with a common legal base; it did not therefore need to interpret
Roman law in order to unify the process of legal decision-making.38 Thus,
when the Roman canonic tradition started to gain force in the European
ecclesiastic courts, diminishing the importance of their common law, it was
already too late to substantially influence England. This country and its
colonies went on to base their legal structures on common law.
It would be a mistake, however, to argue that this difference was
absolute, or that it produced radically distinct laws and juridical practices
related to slavery in the Americas. After all, in England itself, we find
freedom suits very similar to those that occurred later on the other side of
the Atlantic. And, furthermore, juridical similarities were much greater than
one might think. First, just to give one example, contrary to what
Tannenbaum and his followers postulated, despite the total absence of
references to Roman canon law in legislation related to slavery in the United
States, slaves were also considered object and person, property and human
beings according, respectively, to commercial and criminal law.39 This view
was supported by Thomas R. R. Cobb, one of the most prominent of
nineteenth century Southern jurists, when he stated that The right of
personal liberty in the slave is utterly inconsistent with the idea of slavery
... on account of the perfectly unprotected and helpless position of the slave
... the courts should, and do, feel themselves to be his guardian and
protector.40 Even without the basis of Roman law, principles common to
both legal traditions, like that of partus sequitur ventrem (the idea that a
childs status was determined by the womb in which it was generated), were
utilised as legal arguments in issues of property both in Brazil and in the
United States, there mainly to ensure that the descendants of whites and
slaves remained captive.41
The most important similarities among freedom suits in the United
States and Brazil were, with few exceptions, that the conflicts that ended up
in the courts of both countries dealt with property, and not with freedom. In
legal terms, when the courts discussed the right of a slave to receive a letter
of manumission either promised or granted by an owner, they were

223sa04.qxd

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 77

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

FREEDOM SUI TS I N BRAZI L AND THE U N I T E D S TAT E S

77

discussing the transfer of property; when a slave claimed manumission

based on the purchase of his or her freedom, he or she was trying to legalize
a commercial transaction, even if it was not written in law.
Discussions about the nature of slave property happened in the New
World wherever African slavery occurred, and the differences, in this case,
are in the legal and political solutions found by each society, not in the legal
and philosophical issues underlying them.42 As there were no legal
provisions for all the problems that slaves and holders had to face, the
solution was the creation of new laws, or the development of new
interpretations for existing ones. In the case of the Portuguese law, many of
the provisions used to support arguments about the slavery and freedom of
Africans had been originally written to contemplate the relationship
between the Portuguese and the Moors at the time of the Reconquest. In the
American case, because of the absence of laws related to slavery, the
solution was to make use of rules on slavery used in medieval England, of
Roman sources of civil law, or, in most cases, of entirely new laws, which
together formed the so-called black codes in several states, like Virginia and
Kentucky.43 Throughout the Americas, owners and judges took part in the
preparation of new rules based on daily practices and experiences. The
latitude they had to formulate and interpret legal rules at the turn of the
nineteenth century was significant, and in many cases the slaves knew how
to make good use of this situation.
It is time to revise Tannenbaums hypothesis about the differences
between the slave regimes in the Americas. The simple existence of
freedom suits in urban areas in Brazil and the United States is sufficient to
demonstrate that the similarities between the two countries were much
greater than those contemplated by Tannebaum. It would be unfair,
however, to ignore Tannenbaum, just because one disagrees with his
conclusions regarding the social impact of differences between AngloSaxon and Iberian legal systems in the Americas. In fact, the occurrence of
freedom lawsuits at the end of the eighteenth century and a great part of the
nineteenth century demonstrates that there was space within the diversity of
laws and jurisprudence even among those following distinct legal
traditions to discuss the possibility of changing an individuals legal status
and even the bases of the slave regime. This was all the more notable in that
it occurred at a moment in which the political idea of the individual started
to gain more scope and content. Tannenbaum and his followers have
emphasized this point.
What they did not point out and probably could not point out, at the
stage they were writing is that, exactly because of this indefinition and
openness of the law, and also because of the social and political turbulence
that characterized the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many

223sa04.qxd

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

78

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 78

S L AV E RY A N D A B O L I T I O N

urban slaves in the Americas perceived that it was high time to claim their
personal freedom. By calling into question established custom and adding
another dimension to the relationship between slaves and masters, the
freedom suits became an effective mean for slaves to promote their
emancipation. Thus, as in the urban areas of the United States Upper South,
in Rio de Janeiro the experience of slavery impelled slaves to develop
strategies to oppose it.
Equally importantly, by making use of freedom suits to try to change
their legal status, these slaves were making use of an old strategy, but
attributing new meaning to it. It is important to note that the meaning was
not always the same: in Brazil, up to that moment, freedom suits could be
understood, as a whole, as characteristic of the Old Regime, when State
authority was called upon to resolve conflicts in which kings appeared as
necessary mediators, considered necessary and natural. Freedom suits
began to have a new meaning in the late eighteenth century, one that implied
the recognition of individual rights. So, the slaves living in cities such as
Rio de Janeiro, probably had more possibilities of claiming freedom:
besides the new language of rights and the context of political
emancipation, shared by slaves from other cities in the Americas, the
presence of the king and the Portuguese court made their appeal to the royal
authority easier and more effective. But, in every situation, in the United
States or in Brazil, urban slaves tried to work any ambiguities and spaces
existing in the law to obtain freedom.
One of the most important elements of Tannenbaums analysis is the fact
that he recognized the law as an important factor in analyzing slave societies.
Legislation, the State and its agents in fact had an enormous weight in
determining how American countries experienced the last century of slavery;
it was through these institutions that individuals who either had no formal
rights slaves or those whose access to rights was barred freedmen and
free blacks could at last claim and formalize new civil status.
It is thus important to emphasize that at the turn of the nineteenth
century, the situation being unveiled was one in which social norms and
standards were extremely fluid and legal rules were extraordinarily illdefined. Consequently, despite different legal traditions, the destinies of
discrete groups of Africans and their descendants in cities throughout the
Atlantic world were remarkably similar. By developing similar ideas and
attitudes, these slaves succeeded in creating spaces that allowed them to
change their own social and legal conditions, paving the way for the
subsequent abolition of slavery in all of the Americas.

223sa04.qxd

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 79

FREEDOM SUI TS I N BRAZI L AND THE U N I T E D S TAT E S

79

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

NOTES
1. This article was first presented as a paper in the International Seminar on the History of the
Atlantic World, August 2000. An earlier version was published in Portuguese in Estudos
Histricos 27 (2001). I would like to thank Bernard Bailyn, David Brion Davis, Ira Berlin,
Alita Kraiser, Rebecca Lord and Brodwyn M. Fischer for their useful comments.
2. F. Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982). For comparative analysis
of slavery in Brazil and the United States see, for example, C. Degler, Neither Black nor
White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and in the United States (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press. 1971); and C. Azevedo, Abolitionism in the United States and Brazil: A
Comparative Perspective (New York: Garland, 1995).
3. Tannenbaum makes use of G. Freyre, Brazil: An Interpretation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1945).
4. Among Brazilian authors who have emphasized the violence of Brazilian slavery, see F. H.
Cardoso, Capitalismo e Escravido no Brasil Meridional: o negro na sociedade
escravocrata do Rio Grande do Sul (So Paulo: Difel, 1962); E. V. da Costa, Da Senzala
Colnia (So Paulo: Brasiliense, 1989); J. Gorender, O Escravismo Colonial (So Paulo:
tica, 1988).
5. This point of view is advanced by, among others, N. A. Meiklejohn, The Implementation of
Slave Legislation in Eighteenth-Century New Granada, in R. Toplin (ed.), Slavery and Race
Relations in Latin America (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1974).
6. For Baltimore, see C. Philips, Freedoms Port: The African American Community of
Baltimore, 17901860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); S. Whitman, The Price
of Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in Baltimore and Early National Maryland
(Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1997). For New Orleans, see especially K.
Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans,
17691803 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997). For Lima, see C. Hnefeldt, Paying the
Price of Freedom: Family and Labor among Limas Slaves, 18001854 (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1994).
7. After Brazils independence in 1822, Rio de Janeiro became the capital of the Brazilian
Empire, and continued as Brazils capital even after the proclamation of the Republic in
1889. The transference of the seat of government to Braslia only happened in 1960. On the
population of Rio de Janeiro in the beginning of the nineteenth century, see M. Karasch,
Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro: 18081850 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); S.
Chalhoub, Vises da Liberdade: uma histria das ltimas dcadas da escravido na Corte
(So Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990) pp.1867.
8. On the arrival of the Portuguese Court and its effects on Rio de Janeiro society between 1808
and 1821, see, especially, K. Schultz, Tropical Versailles: The Transfer of the Portuguese
Court to Rio de Janeiro, Monarchy and Empire (18081821) (PhD thesis, New York
University, 1998).
9. See the analysis of the life of New Orleans resident Jacqueline Lemelle in L. V. Gould,
Urban Slavery - Urban Freedom: The Manumission of Jacqueline Lemelle, in D. B. Gaspar
and D. C. Hine (eds.), More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), pp.298314.
10. Studies on the purchase of manumission by slaves in the Americas have proliferated in recent
years, in the form of articles, thesis and books that, if not explicitly comparative, provide
enough data that their specific topics can be analyzed in comparative perspective. For cases
in Spanish and English America, see especially, aside from the works cited in note 6, R.
Brana-Shute, Approaching Freedom: The Manumission of Slaves in Suriname, 17601828,
Slavery and Abolition 10 (1990) pp.4163; W. F. Sharp, Manumission, Libres, and Black
Resistance: The Colombian Choc 16801810, in R. B. Toplin, Slavery and Race Relations
in Latin America; E. L. Cox, Free Coloreds in the Slave Societies of St. Kitts and Grenada,
17631833 (Knoxsville: Tennessee University Press, 1984); J. C. Busaniche, La
Manumisin de Los Esclavos en la Provincia de Santa Fe, Revista del Instituto de Historia
del Derecho Ricardo Levene [Argentina] 19 (1968), pp.2014; L. L. Johnson, Manumission
in Colonial Buenos Aires, 17761810, Hispanic American Historical Review 59 (1979),

223sa04.qxd

80

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

11.

12.
13.
14.
15.
16.

17.
18.

19.

20.

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 80

S L AV E RY A N D A B O L I T I O N
pp.25879; S. White. Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City,
17701810 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1991).
Compared to studies on this topic in the US, studies related to freedom suits are scarce in
Spanish and Portuguese America. All the same, on Louisiana (which is included in this group
because it was under Iberian legislation even after this territory was bought by the US), see
especially G. M. Hall, Raza y Libertad: la manumisin de los esclavos rurales de la Luisiana
bajo la jurisdiccin del capitn general de Cuba, Anurio de Estudios Americanos 43
(1986), pp.36576; and J. K. Schafer, Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of
Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994). On Cuba, see R. J. Scott,
Slave Emancipation in Cuba (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). On Peru, see C.
Hnefeldt, Paying the Price of Freedom; P. Blanchard, Slavery and Abolition in Early
Republican Peru. (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1992). On Colombia, see N. A.
Meiklejohn, The Implementation of Slave Legislation in Eighteenth-Century New
Granada, in R. Toplin (ed.), Slavery and Race Relations in Latin America; W. F. Sharp,
Manumission, Libres, and Black Resistance: The Colombian Choc 16801810, in R. B.
Toplin, Slavery and Race Relations in Latin America. The majority of studies on Brazil, with
the exception of S. H. Laras, treat the second half of the nineteenth century. See S. H. Lara,
Campos da Violncia: escravos e senhores na Capitania do Rio de Janeiro, 17501808 (So
Paulo: Paz & Terra, 1988); S. Chalhoub, Vises da Liberdade; H. Mattos, Das Cores do
Silncio (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1998). On France and its colonies, see S. Peabody,
There Are no Slaves in France:: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien
Rgime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); and P. Pluchon, Ngres et Juifs au XVIIIe
sicle. Le racisme au sicle des Lumires (Paris: Tallandier, 1984).
L. Higginbotham, Jr. In the Matter of Color: Race and The American Legal Process: The
Colonial Period. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p.321.
Cited in A. L. Higginbotham, Jr., In the Matter of Color, p.326.
A. L. Higginbotham, Jr., In the Matter of Color, p.326/7.
P. Finkelman, The Law of Freedom and Bondage: a Casebook (New York: Oceana, 1986), p.29.
This case had enormous influence on North-American jurisprudence, especially because, at
the time in which it was published, this verdict still had absolute jurisdiction in NorthAmerican territory. On the case and its impact, see P. Finkelman, An Imperfect Union:
Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press,
1981); D. E. Fehrenbacher, Slavery, Law and Politics: the Dred Scott Case in Historical
Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981) p.289; J. Oakes, Slavery and
Freedom: an interpretation of the Old South. (New York: Vintage, 1990) p.170171.
S. Peabody, There Are no Slaves in France: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in
the Ancien Rgime.
We still do not understand the workings of this network of information, which allowed even
newly arrived slaves to bring together sufficient elements to initiate a freedom suit. See S.
Peabody There Are no Slaves in France: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the
Ancien Rgime, chapter 4.
The 1716 declaration established that slaves could be temporarily brought to France by
masters and military officials or could receive a catholic education without being freed, with
the condition that they had to receive permission from the colonial government before they
left and register their slaves with the priest of the Admiralty when they arrived in France. If
these formalities were not fulfilled, the slaves would be freed. The 1738 declaration
confirmed these criteria, limiting to three years the period in which slaves could remain in
France, but, instead of being freed after this period, the slaves would be confiscated by the
crown and sent back to the Caribbean. S. Peabody, There Are no Slaves in France: The
Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Rgime, p.6.
See Alvar of 2 April 1761 that prohibited the entrance of black and mulato slaves into
Portugal. M. R. Pimentel, Viagem ao Fundo das Conscincias: a escravatura na poca
moderna (Lisboa: Colibri, 1995) p.5778. See also J. P. Marques, Os Sons do Silncio: o
Portugal do Oitocentos e a Abolio do Trfico de Escravos (Lisboa: Imprensa de Cincias
Sociais, 1999). Given the lack of published material on this theme, it seems to deserve a
further study.

223sa04.qxd

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 81

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

FREEDOM SUI TS I N BRAZI L AND THE U N I T E D S TAT E S

81

21. P. Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity, p.3.

22. The attorney general of Maryland spoke out in 1797 against this new prerogative, which he
considered an abuse: Hundreds of negroes have been let loose upon the community by the
hearsay testimony of an obscure illiterate individual. Cited in I. Berlin. Slaves Without
Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South. (New York: Random House, 1974), p.34.
In Brazil, the equivalent of this type of proof would be what was known as por ouvir dizer,
in which the witness him or herself was not present to see the situations he or she described.
23. On the Butler case, see I. Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum
South. p.334, 39, and Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North
America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p.282.
24. I. Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South., p.102. M. L.
Nicholls, The squint of freedom: African-American Freedom Suits in Post-Revolutionary
Virginia, Slavery and Abolition 20, 2 (1999), pp.4762.
25. These states proclaimed new legislation concerning manumission in 1800, 1802 and 1805,
respectively. Idem, p.345.
26. S. H. Lara, Campos da Violncia: escravos e senhores na Capitania do Rio de Janeiro,
17501808, p.254268.
27. J. Luccock, Notas sobre o Rio de Janeiro e partes meridionais do Brasil. (Belo Horizonte:
Itatiaia, 1975), p.163 and K. Schultz, Tropical Versailles, pp.3678, pp.3557.
28. Dona Aguida Francisca de Queirs Malheiros, [Petition, ca. 1809] Arquivo Nacional, MNB
Caixa 6J 78 f1v; cited in K. Schultz, Tropical Versailles, p.401.
29. Everyone knows, the Intendant reported, that the thousands of slaves who exist in Brazil
are hopeful that with the arrival of His Royal Highness here they will be liberated from their
captivity. Viana, Registro do Ofcio expedido ao Ministro e Secretrio de Repartio da
Guerra, Cdice 318, Arquivo Nacional, May 23 1808, fl 6v cited in K. Schulz, Tropical
Versailles, p.385.
30. During this period, all of the cases originating in the South and Southeast of the country
whose sentences were appealed were sent to the Tribunal da Relao do Rio de Janeiro. See
K. Grinberg, Liberata - a lei da ambiguidade: as aes de liberdade da Corte de Apelao
do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumar, 1994), p.23.
31. M. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro: 18081850, chapter 11.
32. Letter from Viana to Vila Nova Portugal, 11 February 1819, Arquivo Nacional, MNB caixa
6J 81 cited in K. Schultz, Tropical Versailles, p.374.
33. Letter from Viana to Aguiar, 4 June 1812, Arquivo Nacional, MNB Caixa 6J 79 cited in K.
Schulz, Tropical Versailles, p.406.
34. A.J.R. Russell-Wood, Acts of Grace: Portuguese Monarchs and their Subjects of African
Descent in Eighteenth-Century Brazil, Journal of Latin American Studies 32 (2000),
pp.30732.
35. G. S. Ribeiro, A liberdade em construo: identidade nacional e conflitos antilusitanos no
Primeiro Reinado (PhD Thesis, Unicamp, 1997), pp.285, 299. See also J. Rodrigues,
Liberdade, Humanidade e Propriedade: os Escravos e a Assemblia Constituinte de 1823,
Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 39 (1995) pp.15967.
36. For a history of European law, see A. M. Hespanha, Panorama Histrico da Cultura Jurdica
Europia (Lisboa: Publicaes Europa-Amrica, 1997). Specifically on the roman-canonical
tradition, see J. H. Merryman, The Civil Law Tradition - An Introduction to the Legal Systems
of Western Europe and Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969).
37. On roman law adopted in the Iberian countries, see Institutas of Justiniano, book I, titles III
(On the law of persons), IV (On ingnuos), V (On freedmen), VI (Those who cannot
be manumitted and why?), VII (On the abrogation of the Fufia Caninia law), VIII (Of
those who are sui juris or alieni juris). S. Vampr, Institutas do Imperador Justiniano,
traduzidas e comparadas com o Direito Civil Brasileiro. (So Paulo: Livraria Magalhes,
1915) pp.920. For a critique of the idea that in Justinian law, slavery is morally condemned
because it is contrary to natural law, see A. Watson, Slave Law in the Americas (Athens,
University of Georgia Press, 1989), pp.115117.
38. This argument was developed by R.C. V. Caenegem, in The Birth of the English Common
Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). In this text, the author develops the

223sa04.qxd

82

Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 15:47 14 July 2016

39.

40.
41.

42.

43.

18/03/2002

16:46

Page 82

S L AV E RY A N D A B O L I T I O N
argument that the constitution of common law was fundamentally important for the
formation of the category of the Englishman, since local law had many Normandic
characteristics and was only called English after Normandy was lost to France. In this
period, the great landlords, most of who were from Normandy, were in search of a common
identity, found, among other places, in a unified system of law. It was for this reason,
according to van Caenegem, that common law is always referred to as an important element
of English differentiation from other European countries.
There were some cases in which American judges, lacking jurisprudence on a particular
topic, based their decisions on Roman law. This is the conclusion of W. H. Bryson, in The
Use of Roman Law in Virginia Courts, American Journal of Legal History, 28, 2 (1984),
pp.13546, and of T. D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 16191860 (Chapel Hill,
University of North Carolina Press, 1996), p.4952. All of these examples are from the end
of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Kolchin demonstrates how
the humanization of slavery one of the ways found by North-Americans to strengthen the
institution; negating the notion that masters had absolute rights over their slaves, the
landholders of the Southern United States believed that slaves were particularly vulnerable
beings who needed special attention and for that reason should remain dependants. P.
Kolchin, American Slavery 16191877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), pp.12732.
Howington also demonstrates how Tennessees Supreme Court considered slaves as a very
particular form of property, whose human attributes, rather than being an impediment to their
commercialization, gave them more commercial value. A. F. Howington, What Sayeth the
Law: the treatment of slaves and Free Blacks in the State and Local Courts of Tennessee.
(New York: Garland, 1986). Watson, although he insists that Roman law had extremely
beneficial effects on the slave regime of Iberian America, concludes that, throughout the
Americas, differences in the letter of the law did not produce great differences in the daily
life of slaves or in the attainment of manumission. A.Watson, Slave Law in the Americas. For
a critical analisys of this book, see C. N. Degler, Law as Comparative History, The Georgia
Historical Quarterly, 74, 3 (1990), pp.451462. On the ambiguity of slave status in US, see
K. L. Hall, The Magic Mirror: Law in American History (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1989), pp.1324. For a critique of the vision that only slaves in Iberian America were
considered people, see D. B. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1966), p.234.
T. R.R. Cobb, An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America
(1858), cited in P. Kolchin, American Slavery 16191877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993),
p.131.
For a discussion on the use of the principle partus sequitur ventrem in the United States,
specially in relation to its origins in British common law, see T. Morris, Southern Slavery and
the Law, 16191860, pp.439; in Brazil, this rule was also used to legitimize slavery until the
middle of the nineteenth century, when the so-called liberation of slaves wombs, which
resulted in the Free Womb Law of 1871, began to be discussed. See E. S. Pena, Pajens da
Casa Imperial: Jurisconsultos e escravido no Brasil do sculo XIX (Campinas: Editora da
Unicamp, 2001).
T. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 16191860, p.2; J. Schafer, Slavery, the Civil Law
and the Supreme Court of Louisiana; on the legal foundations of freedom suits in Brazil,
taking as a reference those that were decided in Rio de Janeiro during the nineteenth century,
see K. Grinberg, Liberata, p.25.
T. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 16191860, p.47.