Manumission, law and rights in Brazil and the United States

• Autor(a) principal: Grinberg, keila
• Data de Publicação: 2001
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Estudos Históricos (Rio de Janeiro)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/reh/article/view/2130
• topic: Historiografia

Between the early 1790s and the early 1820s, many slaves from cities such as New York, Baltimore, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador initiated lawsuits against their masters in which, for various reasons, they argued that they should be freed. Proceeding from an analysis of those freedom suits, this paper aims to discuss two interrelated 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, second, that Brazilian and North American lawyers both used Roman law concerning slavery to defend slaves, thereby creating new interpretations for ancient legislation. The paper suggests that it's possible to use this evidence to analyse Frank Tannenbaum's ideas about the relationship between slavery, abolition and the law in the Americas.