Brazil abolishes slavery with the Golden Law
On this day · 13 May 1888
Two short sentences signed by a regent princess made Brazil the last country in the Americas to end slavery.
On May 13, 1888, Princess Imperial Isabel, ruling as regent while her father Emperor Pedro II traveled in Europe, signed the Lei Áurea—the “Golden Law.” Its text ran to just two sentences: slavery was “declared abolished in Brazil,” and all contrary provisions revoked.
The brevity was the point. Earlier measures had freed only newborns (1871) or the elderly (1885); this one freed everyone at once, with no compensation to owners and no transition. Roughly 600,000 people still held in bondage became free that day.
Brazil was the last country in the Americas to outlaw slavery—nearly four centuries after the trade reached its shores.
Abolition came without land, schooling, or support for the formerly enslaved, and historians have long noted how that gap shaped Brazil afterward. Politically it was a thunderclap: angry planters withdrew their support from the throne, and within eighteen months the monarchy fell and a republic was proclaimed.
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