The Golden Law: Abolition of Slavery in Brazil

The Lei Áurea was two sentences long and freed some 700,000 people. Princess Isabel signed it on 13 May 1888, after decades of pressure from abolitionists, jurists and above all from enslaved people who fled the plantations in such numbers that the system was collapsing.

No compensation, land or schooling was offered to those freed. Eighteen months later the monarchy that had signed the law was overthrown. The date is still marked in Brazil, and still argued over.