In 1857, Joaquim Nabuco's father wrote a letter denouncing the slave trade.
Letter from José Thomaz Nabuco de Araújo to the provincial authorities.
A sheet with two pages.
In Portuguese.
21 cm x 27.5 cm.
Rio de Janeiro, September 19, 1853.
Good condition.
Unique piece.
The letter, dated September 19, 1857, was signed by José Thomaz Nabuco de Araújo, then Minister of Justice of the Empire of Brazil. In it, the minister informs provincial authorities about ships suspected of participating in the illegal trafficking of Africans, even after the promulgation of the Eusébio de Queirós Law (1850), which had officially prohibited the importation of enslaved people. The tone of the letter is administrative and legal, requesting greater vigilance and strict enforcement of the law against those involved in this clandestine trade.
The author of the letter was the father of Joaquim Nabuco (1849–1910), one of the most prominent figures in the Brazilian abolitionist movement. While the father was a respected politician, jurist, and also a slave owner, the son would dedicate his life to fighting against this institution, becoming the most influential voice of abolitionism in Brazil. This contrast reveals a striking paradox: within the same family coexisted the common practices of the slave-owning elite and, in the following generation, the moral and political awareness that would lead to the campaign for the abolition of slavery.
This document is important because it symbolizes a moment of historical transition. It shows how, in the 1850s, the imperial government attempted to suppress the illegal slave trade without yet questioning the slave system itself. At the same time, the connection to Joaquim Nabuco gives the letter a symbolic and almost premonitory value: written by the slave-owning father who enforced the law against the slave trade, it anticipates, in a way, the transformative role of his son, who, decades later, would be one of the main architects of the abolition of slavery in Brazil.
