The Constitutional Proposals: The Divergent Impacts of Franklin and Jefferson
The Minas plot had been disrupted prior to denunciation by Silvério dos Reis. The revolt had been timed to follow the imposition of the derrama. This was expected in late February or early March of 1789. The viscount Barbacena, however, had decided not to proceed as instructed by Melo e Castro. The chronology is clear. Silvério dos Reis made his denunciation of the Minas conspiracy in person to Barbacena on March 15, 1789.
This was a day after Barbacena had told the municipal council of Vila Rica not to proceed with the derrama. Barbacena’s letter to the municipal council of Vila Rica was dated March 14, 1789. Barbacena was no traditional Portuguese official. He had also benefited from the educational reforms of the Marquês de Pombal. He was a student at the College of Nobles and of Professor Vandelli at Coimbra.
(On the activity of Eleuterio Jose Delfim in Monpellier and Goa and Mocambique, and Lorena’s relationship with the Portugese entrepreneur Jacinto Fernandes Bandeira, 272-274, 274-280; On Bernardo Lorena’s relationship with the Tavora family and with D. Jose 1, Gonçalves, O reino, a colônia e o poder, 189-194; Kenneth Maxwell, Pombal, Paradox of the Enlightenment (Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1995) 79-82; Adelto Goncalves, O Inconfidente que virou santo: estudo biografico sobre Salvador do Amaral Gurgel, Estudos Avancados, vol. 24, no. 69, (Sao Paulo, 2010).
After his arrival in Minas in 1788 Barbacena had drawn his own conclusion about the capacity of the Minas population to meet the draconian fiscal demands he had been instructed to impose by Melo e Castro. He concluded that the imposition of the derrama would be inadvisable given the economic circumstances of the captaincy.
In his letter Barbacena knew that he could count on the support of Queen Maria of Portugal in making this decision. She had been so concerned about the scale of the demands being proposed by Melo e Castro that she had instructed Melo e Castro to tell Barbacena that he was to impose the derrama “only if the people of Minas Gerais were in a condition to support the tax.” When the derrama was not imposed as had been expected, Gonzaga told Luís Vieira that “the occasion had been lost.”
By the time Tiradentes arrived in Rio de Janeiro in early May 1789, he had little faith in his associates in Minas. He dismissed the commander of the Minas Dragoons, Freire de Andrade, as being what he called a “banana.”
But although Barbacena did not impose the derrama, he did not lift the order that the tax farms be voided, nor did he indicate that he would cease to demand repayment of the arrears owed to the royal treasury by the contractors, nor did he cancel the suppression of the various auxiliary regiments.
And on March 3, 1789, Silvério dos Reis was called to account by the Junta da Fazenda of Minas, which called him “crooked, dishonest and a falsifier.” Silvério dos Reis was among the greatest tax farmers in Minas Gerais at the time. He was also one of the most indebted. He had evidently decided, in light of Barbacena’s decision not to impose the derrama, that he would find another way to escape his debt obligations by denouncing the Minas Conspiracy of which he had been a leading participant.
(Registro da carta do Ex. Senhor General sobre a suspensão da derrama, Vila Rica, 14 de março de 1789, in “Revista do Publico Mineiro”, VII (1903), 979-980; also in AHU, Minas Gerais, caixa 57. The observation from Gonzaga is from Luiz Viera “continuação de perguntas”, 23 January 1790, Autos da Devassa, 4 (1981), 300. For a discussion of the chronology see Maxwell, A Devassa da Devassa, 231-232; For a discussion of the chronology and documentation, see Kenneth Maxwell, Conflicts and Conspiracies, 141-149; Martinho de Melo e Castro ao Visconde de Barbacena, Ajuda, 7 de fevereiro de 1788, Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon, Códice 610; José Joaquim de Rocha, Geografia histórica da capitania de Minas Gerais, (edição crítica de Maria Ifigênia Lage de Rezende, Belo Horizonte, Fundação João Pinheiro, 1995); Notícias da Capitania de Minas Gerais por Claudio Manuel da Costa, Arquivo, Instituto Histórico Geográfico Brasileiro, DL 828.14; I am grateful to Bruno Carvalho for this reference; Junia Ferreira Furtado, O livro da Capa Verde: o regimento diamantino de 1771 e a vida no distrito diamantino no período da Real Extração (São Paulo, Annablume, 1996); Autos da Devassa, 10 (1983), 330; Registro da carta do Senhor General sobre a suspensão da derrama, Vila Rica, 14 Março de 1789, Visconde de Barbacena aos Senhores Juiz e Officiais da Camara de Vila Rica, Revista do Arquivo Público Mineiro VII (1902 pp. 979-980; also in AHU, Minas Gerais caixa 57; Visconde de Barbacena a Luis de Vasconcelos e Sousa, 25 de Marco de 1789, AHU, Minas Gerais, caixa 94; Julio Jose Chiavenato, “A conjuração e o mineira e a devassa”, Inconfidência Mineira as Varias Faces, (Sao Paulo, Editora Contexto, 2000); “século XVIII: Opressão Fiscal e Resistencia dos Colonos” Serie Historia dos Tributos no Brasil Colonial 1500-1822, Parte,IV, !700/1808, (Rio de Janeiro, 2007). 94-121; Robson Jorge de Araujo e Carlos A.L Filgueiras, “O Visconde de Barbacena e o Químico Jose Alvares Maciel: Encontro na ciência e desencontro na politica,” Quim. Nova, Vol 40, No. 5, 2007, 602-612.)
The discussion of the new constitutional arrangements for Minas among the Minas conspirators had taken place in late 1788 and early 1789, during the period they were anticipating the imposition of the derrama. The substance of their discussions we only know from the interrogations and witness statements and subsequent reexamination and new interrogations from the three devassas.
All those being interrogated were seeking to diminish or deny their involvement. Many of them, though not all, were able and distinguished magistrates, lawyers, merchants, and clerics. But what is revealed is their inspiration from the example of successful struggle of the North American English colonies for independence from Great Britain, the influence of the constitutions of the North American states, especially the 1776 constitution of Pennsylvania, as well as the role of the works of writers such as Abbé Raynal, including his “revolution in America,” and Abbé Mably’s commentary on the North American constitutions published in the Recueil.
With the information that exists from the interrogations and the private and official correspondence that survives, it is possible to discern an outline of the proposals of the Minas conspirators. The most dramatic testimony in the devassa ordered by the viscount Barbacena came from Francisco Xavier Machado. He was thirty-four years old, Portuguese-born (Anadia, Coimbra), and a porta-estandarte (standard-bearer) from the cavalry regiment of the Vila Rica garrison.
He had met frequently with Tiradentes while he was Rio on the days leading up to Tiradentes’s arrest on May 10, 1789. It was known in Vila Rica on May 17, 1789, that the Alferes had been arrested in Rio. Cláudio Manuel da Costa was warned that evening and told to burn any incriminating papers.
Gonzaga had not been at home, but a warning for him been left the next morning at the house of Dr. Diogo P. R. Vasconcellos, where José Pereira Ribeiro was staying. Pereira Ribeiro owned the second copy of the Recueil, which he had loaned to Gonzaga, Manuel da Costa, and Vieira da Silva, canon of the cathedral of Mariana and professor of philosophy at the Mariana seminary.
(Ricardo R. Salazar, “Contagious Revolution? The role of the United States in the Minas Conspiracy” (unpublished graduate paper based in the first editon of the Autos da Devassa) History Department, Harvard University) (This was based on an analysis of the first publication of the Autos da Devassa (Rio de Janeiro, 1936-1938), as was my book Conflicts and Conspiracies (1973); Also the analysis by Rafael de Freitas e Souza, Combate nas Luzes, A recepção e leitura do ‘Recueil’ pelos inconfidentes, (Dissertação de Mestrado, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2004); Junia Ferreira Furtado, “Cartography in dispute: the frontiers of Brazil in Abbe Raynal’s Histoire des Deux Indes, Culture&History, Digital journal, 10 (2), December 2021, (cultureandhistroy.revistas.ccic.es.); Guilerme-Thomas Francois Raynal, A revolução da America, prefacio de Luciano Figueiredo e Oswaldo Munteau Filho, trad. Regina Clara Simoes, (Rio de Janeiro, Arquivo Nacional, 1993); Laura de Mello e Sousa, Desclassificados do ouro: e pobreza mineira no século XVIII, (Rio de Janeiro, Editora Graal, 1990); Carla Maria Junho Anastasia, Vassallos rebeldes: violência coletiva nas Minas na primeira metade do século XVIII, (Belo Horizonte; C/Arte, 1889).)
Álvares Maciel testified that he had purchased a history of English America at the same time he had purchased the Recueil in Birmingham. There are also several references in the devassas to a “historia da America Inglesa,” which seems likely to have been William Robertson’s History of America, which was also published in French as L’historie de l’Amérique. Francisco Xavier Machado had given Tiradentes two pistols and had left Rio de Janeiro to return to Vila Rica the day before Tiradentes was arrested. Machado was responsible for bringing the Recueil that Tiradentes had in his possession back to Vila Rica. Tiradentes evidently trusted him, and Machado knew about Tiradentes’s plans to evade the viceroy’s soldiers and escape back toward Minas Gerais. Machado told the desembargador Pedro José Araújo de Saldanha and José Caetano César Manitti, in the Minas devassa on June 27, 1789, in Vila Rica, that while both were in Rio he had had several discussions with Tiradentes about the reasons Minas “with its large population could become independent like North America.”
Several days later, Machado testified, Tiradentes had “come to his house and showed him a book written in French, asking him if he could translate a chapter of it, which was the French collection of the collection of the constitutional laws of the United States of America, and the chapter he pointed to was the eighth section.” Section 8 of the Recueil is the constitution of the republic of Pennsylvania. Tiradentes was interested in “the election to privy council,” and he “leafed though the book to find another place.” He also testified that Tiradentes had sought out another colleague in Rio to translate from English books about the American Revolution (probably Robertson’s History of America) and had sought to borrow an English dictionary.
(Professor João Pinto Furtado contests my interpretation in Devassa da Devassa in his O manto de Penelope: história, mito e memória da Inconfidência Mineira de 1788-9 (São Paulo, Companhia da Letras, 2002), and his “”A Inconfidência Mineira: um novo tempo ou reedição do Antigo Regime,” Maria Fernanda Lage de Bicalho, Luiz Carlos Villalta (org) Historia de Minas Gerais; as Minas setecentistas, (Belo Horizonte, Autentica-Companhia do Tempo, 2007), v. 2, 629-648; For a discussion of these contrasting interpretations, see Andre Figueiredo Rodrigues, A Fortuna dos Inconfidentes (Sao Paulo, Editora Globo, 2010), 45-47; Kathleen J. Higgins, Licentious Liberty in a Brazilian GoldMining Region: Slavery, Gender and Social Control in Eighteenth-Century Sabará, Minas Gerais (University Park, Penn State University Press, 1999); Formação de Culpa (1) Rio de Janeiro, Inquirições de Testemunhas, (1) Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza da Ilha das Cobras, 3,I Assentada, May 18, 1789, Testemunha 1a, Joaquim Silvério dos Reis, Autos da Devassa, 4 (1981), 43-52, especially 45, 50.)
Like the North Americans, the Minas conspirators intended to elect officials. Each city would have a council or parliament and would send representatives to the capital in São João del Rei. A university “like Coimbra” would be established in Vila Rica.
The conspirators decided that a mint was to be established after their revolt. The diamond mining district of Minas Gerais was to be freed from the restrictions of the draconian diamond regulations which were to be abolished. Manufactories were to be established and the exploitation of the iron ore deposits encouraged. A gunpowder factory would be set up. Freedom was to be granted to native-born enslaved people and persons of mixed ancestry. Parish priests were to collect the dízimos, the 10 percent levy raised on the condition that the state would use this to sustain teachers, hospitals, and establishments of charity. All women who produced a certain number of children were to receive a prize at the expense of the state. There was to be no standing army.
All citizens were instead to bear arms and when necessary to serve in a national militia. No distinctions or restrictions of dress would be tolerated, and the local leaders would be obliged to wear locally manufactured products. All debtors to the royal treasury would be pardoned. The new capital was to be São João del Rei.
(For the context of the Minas conspiracy, Kenneth R. Maxwell, Conflicts and Conspiracies: Brazil & Portugal 1750-1808, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and and New York, 1973; A new editon was published in paperback by Routledge (London and New York, 2004). In Brazil Conflicts and Conspiracies this was translated and published by Paz e Terra in 1977, “A Devassa da Devassa. A Inconfidência Mineira: Brasil e PoInconxidenciartugal 1750-1808, (Sao Paulo, Paz e Terra, 1977); A new and illustrated editon was published in 2010, Kenneth Maxwell, A Devassa Da Devassa: A Inconfidência Mineira (1750-1808) (Edição ampliada e ilustrada, Paz e Terra, Sao Paulo, 2010).
Padre Oliveira Rolim commented that “the Abbé Raynald had been a writer of great vision, because he predicted the uprising of North America, and the captaincy of Minas Gerais with the imposition of the derrama and was now in the same circumstances.” Several points of disagreement over policy arose among the conspirators. They were divided over the best method of dealing with the viscount Barbacena.
Some favored his expulsion from the captaincy. Others argued for his execution, including Gonzaga, who said the governor’s execution was a sure way of making a commitment to the uprising irreversible. It was essential that the governor die first because it was necessary to place “the common good over the private” and that “some would remain neutral but would follow the party of independence when the general was dead.” The question of slavery became a point at issue.
Álvares Maciel regarded the presence of so large a percentage of Black people in the population as a possible threat to the new republic should the promise of their liberation induce them to oppose Brazilian-born White people. This is precisely what the British had done in the course of the American War of Independence, and it was a point made in the texts contained in Recueil. Alvarenga Peixoto, one of the greatest slave owners among the conspirators, recommended that the enslaved people be freed so that they could become defenders of the new republic and committed to its survival.
Álvares Maciel pointed out that such a solution might be self-defeating as the proprietors would be left with no one to work the mines. A compromise solution was eventually proposed that only native-born Black persons and persons of mixed ancestry should be freed in the interests of the defense of the state. No mention was made of compensation. The issue of debt was significant. Many were debtors on the royal tax farms in the captaincy.
Under the terms of the Peace of Paris of 1783, by which Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States, the North Americans did not have to pay debts for royal property forfeited or pay taxes owed. Freire de Andrade told the conspirators that “it was possible to refuse this payment by turning America into a Republic.” The fate of the Portuguese in the captaincy was debated. Father Carlos Correia wished them to be eliminated, a solution opposed by Alvarenga Peixoto. He said that “sons could not be expected to rise against their fathers” and that all the support possible would be needed during the early years of the republic.
(See analysis and citations in Maxwell, A Devassa da Devassa, 207; Domingos Vidal de Barbosa, Testemunha 27.a. 13 July, 1789, Vila Rica, Casa do Desembargador Pedro Araujo de Saldanha, José Caetano Cesar Manitti, Autos da Devassa, 1 (1976), 212-217, Autos da Devassa, 1 (1976), 212- 217; Perguntas feitas a José Alvares Maciel, Rio de Janeiro, 26 de novembro de 1789, Autos das Devassa, 4 (1981), 398; Jose de Rezende Costa, Testamunha 52.a., 28 de Julho, 1789: Casa de Desembargador Pedro de Araujo Saldanha, Jose Caetano Cezar Manitti, Autos da Devassa, 1 (1976), 254-259.)
There was also disagreement over the nature of the flag or arms of the new republic. Tiradentes suggested the adoption of a triangular symbol representing the Holy Trinity in imitation of the allusion to Christ’s five wounds on the cross in the Portuguese arms.
Alvarenga Peixoto attributed to Manuel da Costa the design of the flag for the new republic inspired by the English American republic with the inscription in Latin: Libertas aquo spiritus. The idea did not find favor. The Latin phrase was probably transcribed incorrectly during the interrogations and should have read: Abe o libertas a quo spiritis (meaning “the one who gives life to liberty”).
The phrase, quoted from Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government, was adopted as a motto by Jefferson, who used it as a coat of arms and seal in several of his papers. Bruno Carvalho suggests that Maia e Barbalho may have been the source for Manuel da Costa’s suggestion. Alvarenga Peixoto proposed an Indian breaking the chains of oppression, with an inscription from Virgil: Libertas quae sera tamen, and this suggestion seems to have been that received with most favor.
(Bruno Carvalho, “An Arcadian Poet in a Baroque City: Claudio Manuel da Costa’s Urban Pastorals, Family Life, and the Appearance of Race,” Journal of Lusophone Studies, April 2016, No 12; Also his “Writing Race in Two Americas: Blackness, Science, and Circulation of Knowledge in the Eighteenth-Century Luso-Brazilian World and the United States,” The Eighteenth Century, Vol 57, No 3, Fall 2916, 303-324.)
The views of the Minas conspirators verged at times on economic nationalism. The sentiment was most explicit in the statements of Tiradentes, though he was clearly not alone in his opinions. He praised the beauty and natural resources of Minas Gerais as being the best in the world. Free and a republic like English America, he claimed, Brazil could be even greater because it was better endowed by nature.
With the establishment of manufactories, he said, there would be no need to import commodities from abroad. Colonel José Aires Gomes, shortly after talking with Tiradentes, claimed that the merchants of Rio de Janeiro were behind the uprising because they desired “freedom of commerce” and were fomenting the revolution in their “own self-interest.” The merchants of Rio de Janeiro would seek the support of Minas Gerais, “so that together they might make an English America.”
The conspirators believed that “the nation that first provided assistance during the war would be the nation that gained the most advantages in its harbors.” Vicente Vieira da Mota, bookkeeper for João Rodrigues de Macedo, said that Tiradentes “went on to speak without any reservation that this captaincy could live independent of the government of Portugal; that it could be a Republic and achieve Freedom.”
At Macedo’s house, Tiradentes had spoken of the “fertility and richness of this Province, that it had diamonds, and gold, and could produce with very little effort many goods, so that there was no need for anything from Europe; that if it had another form of government that was a Republic like English America it would be the happiest country in the world.” The Brazilian would-be insurgents, however, had very much misjudged the priorities of the United States, and of Thomas Jefferson in particular.
(Testemunha Inácio Correia Pamplona, Vila Rica, 30 junho de 1789, Autos da Devassa, 1 (1976), 147.)
The United States was still anxious for a commercial treaty with Portugal. Luis Pinto de Sousa Coutinho’s appointment as foreign minister on December 15, 1788, was seen as a hopeful sign by Jefferson. Writing from Paris during March 1789, Jefferson recommended that “the negotiations may be renewed successfully if it be the desire of our government.
I think myself it is in their interests to take away all temptation to our cooperation in the emancipation of their colonies.” Jefferson had concluded that the interests of the United States were better served by a deal with Portugal than by encouraging a risky adventure in South America. Portugal’s demand for rice and other grains was a market for North American production, and most especially for the exports of Virginia.
On April 30, 1789, George Washington was installed as the first president of the United States in New York. Jefferson was his first secretary of state. Washington requested a synopsis of Jefferson’s report to Jay, which Jefferson sent to him on July 22, 1790, together with his notes on Brazil and Mexico, but it produced no change in policy.
(Gordon S. Barker, “Unravelling the Strange History of Jefferson’s Obervations sur le Virginie,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 112, no, 2 (2004) 13-177; John Chester Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (New York, 1977); Claudio Manuel da Costa spoke of the social role of Black Churches in Minas Gerais in his unpublished “Noticias da capitania de Minas Gerais” Ms in the Instituto Historico e Geografico Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, DL 828. 14; Perguntas feitas a José Alvares Maciel, Rio de Janeiro, 26 de Novembro de 1789, Autos da Devassa, 4 (1981), 398.)
Jefferson, as secretary of state, was more interested in the fate of American shipping in the Strait of Gibraltar and the threat of the Barbary pirates and the Algerians than in the fate of would-be revolutionaries in Brazil, despite the fact that, as Maia e Barbalho had told him at Nîmes in 1787, the Brazilians had taken their inspiration from his words in the American Declaration of Independence.
Benjamin Franklin, however, remained faithful to his antislavery and anti–slave trade opinion, and in his later years he was a vocal abolitionist. On his return from Paris in 1787, Franklin became the president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of the Abolition of Slavery. The society not only advocated the abolition of slavery but made efforts to integrate freed, formerly enslaved, people into American society.
In his last public act, Franklin sent to the vice president, John Adams, then presiding over the first Congress of the United States at Federal Hall in New York City, a “Memorial of the Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the relief of free Negroes unlawfully held in bondage & the Improvement of the condition of the African Race.” He signed the petition on February 3, 1790, asking “that from a regard for the happiness of Mankind a society was formed several years since in this State by a number of citizens of various religious denominations for promoting the abolition of slavery and for the relief of those unlawfully held in bondage.”
Franklin urged the Congress “to use all justifiable endeavours to loosen the bonds of Slavery and promote a general enjoyment of Freedom. Restoration of liberty to those unfortunate men, who alone in this land of Freedom, are degraded into perpetual Bondage, and who, amidst the general joy of surrounding freeman, are groaning in Servile subjection, that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the Character of the American people.”
Franklin’s petition was introduced to the House of Representatives on February 12, 1790, and to the Senate on February 15, 1790. It was immediately denounced by proslavery congressmen, and there was heated debate in both houses of Congress. The Senate took no action on the petition.
(Benjamin Franklin’s antislavery petition to Congress was introduced to the House of Representatives on February 12, 1780, and to the Senate on February 15, 1790. The Senate took no action on the petition, and the House referred the petition to a select committee for further consideration; National Archives, “Benjamin Franklin’s Anti-Slavery Petitions to Congress,” https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/franklin. See also Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, 226–29; David Brian Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975); Don E. Fehrenbacher and Ward M. McAfee, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Gary B. Nash, Race and Revolution (Madison, WI: Madison House, 1990). On March 5, 1790, Mr. Abiel Foster of New Hampshire, for the select committee, reported on the petitions of “the people called Quakers, and the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.” He observed “that the General Government is expressly restrained from prohibiting the importation of such persons ‘as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, until the year 1808.’ 2d. That Congress, by a fair construction of the constitution, are equally restrained from interfering in the emancipation of slaves who already are, or who may, within the period mentioned, be imported into or born within any of the said States. 3d. That Congress have no authority to interfere in the internal regulations of particular States.” Congressman James Jackson of Georgia was especially vociferous in defending slavery. The Bible and nature justified slavery, said Jackson. If slaves were freed, who would tend the fields of the South? Library of Congress, “A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875,” American State Papers, 1st Congress, 2nd Session, No. 13, “Abolition of Slavery,” March 5, 1790, https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=037/ llsp037.db&recNum=19.)
The House of Representatives referred Franklin’s “memorial” to a select committee.
(Benjamin Franklin’s antislavery petition to Congress was introduced to the House of Representatives on February 12, 1780, and to the Senate on February 15, 1790. The Senate took no action on the petition, and the House referred the petition to a select committee for further consideration; National Archives, “Benjamin Franklin’s Anti-Slavery Petitions to Congress,” https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/franklin. See also Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, 226–29; David Brian Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975); Don E. Fehrenbacher and Ward M. McAfee, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Gary B. Nash, Race and Revolution (Madison, WI: Madison House, 1990). On March 5, 1790, Mr. Abiel Foster of New Hampshire, for the select committee, reported on the petitions of “the people called Quakers, and the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.” He observed “that the General Government is expressly restrained from prohibiting the importation of such persons ‘as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, until the year 1808.’ 2d. That Congress, by a fair construction of the constitution, are equally restrained from interfering in the emancipation of slaves who already are, or who may, within the period mentioned, be imported into or born within any of the said States. 3d. That Congress have no authority to interfere in the internal regulations of particular States.” Congressman James Jackson of Georgia was especially vociferous in defending slavery. The Bible and nature justified slavery, said Jackson. If slaves were freed, who would tend the fields of the South? Library of Congress, “A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875,” American State Papers, 1st Congress, 2nd Session, No. 13, “Abolition of Slavery,” March 5, 1790, https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=037/ llsp037.db&recNum=19.)
Franklin’s petition to the first Congress of the United States was tabled. On April 17, 1790, just two months later, Franklin died in Philadelphia at the age of 84. But he had delivered on his assertion in his footnote to the constitution of the republic of Pennsylvania in the Recueil where he wrote that the first act of Congress would be to legislate on the question of slavery and the slave trade. He gave the first Congress of the United States the opportunity to act; the first Congress declined the opportunity.
(Rio de Janeiro, April 10, 1791, Oficio de Sebastiao Xavier de Vasconcellos Coutinho a José Caetano César Manitti, Escrivão da Devassa-MG (nomeado Intendente do Ouro em Vila Rica), incumbindo-lhe providencias e viagem ao Rio, Autos da Devassa 8 (1977): 343–45; Vila Rica, February 12, 1790, “RESUMO da Devassa-MG (1 Parte) por José Caetano César Manitti, Escrivao da mesma,” Autos da Devassa 8 (1977): 258–67. The Constitution of Pennsylvania, September 28, 1776, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, “Plan or Frame of Government for the Commonwealth or State of Pennsylvania, Section 19, For the Supreme, executive council of this state shall consist of twelve persons chosen in the following manner: the freemen of the city of Philadelphia, and of the counties of Philadephia, Chester, and Bucks. Respectively, shall be chosen by ballot of one person for the city and one each county aforesaid to serve for three years and no longer (…) by this mode of election and continual rotation more men will be trained to public business (…) and moreover the danger of establishing an inconvenient aristocracy will be effectively prevented (…) Any person having served for as a councellor for three successive years, shall be incapable of holdng that office for four years there afterwards…”)
Featured Photo: Professor Maxwell during his most recent visit to Brazil where he was interviewed by Folha de S. Paulo on September 4, 2022.
For the earlier pieces in this series, see the following:
Imagined Republics: The United States of America, France, and Brazil (1776–1792)
The United States and Portugal in the Time of the 18th Century Revolutions