In the middle of the 16th century, the first group of Africans were brought to Brazil against their will to work on the sugar plantations of Pernambuco. For over four hundred years, enslaved Africans would be imported all throughout Brazil to perform every kind of labor the slaveowners saw fit, from unloading cargo in ports, domestic work, transportation and carpentry, to mining and agriculture, most importantly in the raising of crop exports such as sugar, tobacco, cotton, and coffee. High mortality among enslaved people in Brazil made it the largest importer of slaves in the world. In 1619, enslaved people first arrived at Point Comfort, known today as Hampton, Virginia. Throughout the over two centuries of enslavement in the United States, enslaved populations were concentrated in rural areas of the Southern United States, where they cultivated cash crops such as tobacco, sugar, and cotton, as well as performed domestic work. Anxious with the awareness that their position in society depended on the subjugation of masses of people that far outnumbered themselves, slaveholders in both countries relied on the government to defend their right to property. Unlike the majority of their neighbors in the former Spanish American colonies, neither of the independence movements in Brazil or the United States made substantial moves toward the abolition of slavery.

Resistance to enslavement existed about as long as the condition of slavery itself. Through escape, enslaved people defied oppression by seeking life outside of the control of the slave regime. In the United States, the efforts of people such as Harriet Tubman helped enslaved people reach freedom beyond the grasp of Southern slaveholders. In Brazil, escaped communities known as quilombos established themselves in Brazil's vast, uncultivated hinterland. For centuries, enslaved peoples also organized uprisings against their captors in both Brazil and the United States, striking fear in the minds of slaveholders that one day, such events might take on the size of the Haitian Revolution. More broadly, enslaved peoples and their communities resisted erasure by maintaining cultural traditions which are still alive and well in to this day through music, art, and religious practices, such as Brazil's candomblé, umbanda, and capoeira. For those not directly involved in the regime of forced labor but morally opposed to it, abolitionist societies in the United States and Brazil collaborated with groups such as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. 

The 19th century witnessed a decisive end to the legal basis of the peculiar institution in both countries. In the United States, as courts and legislatures proved incapable of meeting the increasingly urgent demands of abolitionists and enslaved peoples, slavery's legality was abolished in the American Civil War (1861-1865). For some Americans, loyalty to the system of slavery outpaced patriotism. Almost immediately after their defeat in 1865, as many as four thousand ex-Confederates, or Confederados, moved to Brazil, where the institution of slavery was still legal. For others, the end of slavery’s legal basis in the United States provided an opportunity to endorse anti-slavery opinions without fear of reprisal. From 1877 to 1881, Henry Washington Hilliard, an Alabama lawyer, Methodist minister and former Confederate official, acted as the United States' diplomatic representative in Brazil, and worked closely with the Brazilian Anti Slavery Society (Sociedade Brasileira contra a Escravidão in Portuguese) as well as lent aid to destitute Confederados desperate to return to the United States. Brazil maintained neutrality during the American Civil War and avoided a nationwide armed struggle within its borders to resolve the slavery question. Instead, abolitionists like André Rebouças, Luiz Gama, and Joaquim Nabuco achieved their goals though a succession of legislation: in 1850, Brazil outlawed the slave trade; the 1871 Law of the Free Womb (Lei do Ventre Livre in Portuguese) granted freedom to all children born of enslaved mothers; finally, on May 13, 1888, slavery itself was outlawed under the Golden Law (Lei Áurea in Portuguese). While slavery as a legal institution ended in both countries in the nineteenth century, debate still remains around its legacy and effects today.

Key figures 

• Gama, Luís, 1830-1882
• Hilliard, Henry W. (Henry Washington), 1808-1892.
• Nabuco, Joaquim, 1849-1910
• Rebouças, André Pinto, 1838-1898

Key groups 

• Sociedade Brasileira contra a Escravidão

Key places

• Americana (Brazil)

Key subjects 

• American Confederate voluntary exiles--Brazil. 
• Antislavery movements--Brazil
• Slave trade--Brazil
• United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Refugees