Brazil Abolishes Slavery With the Golden Law
The last country in the Americas to end slavery signs it away in 1888
Quick facts
- Date signed
- May 13, 1888
- Signed by
- Princess Isabel, Regent of Brazil
- Preceding laws
- 1871 Law of Free Birth; 1885 Sexagenarian Law
- Status
- Last country in the Americas to abolish slavery
What happened
Brazil ended slavery in stages. The 1871 Law of Free Birth freed children born to enslaved mothers going forward, and the 1885 Sexagenarian Law freed the enslaved once they reached age sixty, but neither freed anyone already enslaved and of working age. On May 13, 1888, Princess Isabel, serving as regent while Emperor Pedro II was in Europe, signed the Lei Aurea, the Golden Law, abolishing slavery outright. The Library of Congress country study frames it bluntly: the Golden Law was not an act of great bravery but a recognition that slavery was no longer viable. Brazil, which had received nearly five million enslaved Africans, was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, and the law came with no land, no compensation, and no support for the roughly 700,000 people it freed.
Why it matters
Abolition closed the longest and largest slave system in the Americas, and its total absence of support for the freed population, no land, no wages owed, no path to schooling or citizenship, is why historians describe Brazilian abolition as a legal ending without an economic or social one, a pattern that shaped Brazilian inequality for generations. The empire that had leaned on slavery collapsed within eighteen months of ending it.
How we know
The Golden Law and its framing are documented verbatim in the Library of Congress country study and Brown University's Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, with Brazil's status as the largest slave destination corroborated by Yale University Press.
Sources
- Library of Congress, Country Studies (Federal Research Division). Brazil: The Second Empire, 1840-89 (Country Studies) · General sourcecountrystudies.us · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Yale University Press. The Slave Trade in the U.S. and Brazil: Comparisons and Connections · Reputable sourceyalebooks.yale.edu · The domain "yalebooks.yale.edu" is on our Reputable source registry.
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Related timelines
- The Atlantic Slave Trade → · See the Atlantic Slave Trade timeline for the full account of the Lei Aurea, Princess Isabel's cabinet reshuffle, and Brazil closing the arc of legal slavery in the Americas.