A status quo and "milk coffee" candidate in the 1922 presidential election, Bernardes was the target of fake letters to harm his image and an attempted coup d'état to prevent his inauguration, the Copacabana Fort revolt.

[10] This experience allowed Bernardes to "value disciplinary power as a shaper of minds and bodies for the nation",[12] in addition to establishing his Catholic religiosity for the rest of his life, while many of his contemporaries flirted with positivism and evolutionism.

[3] At the other extreme, the anti-Bernardes book Terra Desumana (1926), by Assis Chateaubriand, argued that the school instilled in the young Bernardes an authoritarian personality, making him more interested in laws than in human feelings.

Despite his previous statements about reforming the Constitution, in October Bernardes claimed in Cidade de Viçosa that he did not want elected positions and only appeared on the PRM ticket at the last minute, "yielding to the orders of friends in the District".

[45][47] This rapid rise was not accepted by all veterans; José Teotônio Pacheco, Viçosa's political leader and former ally of Vaz de Melo, broke his ties with Bernardes and led the municipal opposition.

According to Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, the PRM confirmed Bernardes because he was "a young and energetic leader", an "experienced commander of officialdom in one of the toughest municipal struggles in Zona da Mata".

Several reasons are speculated for his refusal, such as fears of a lack of support from São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul or a bad reaction from public opinion, as a Minas Gerais politician already occupied the presidency, and the inconvenience of interrupting a recently installed administration.

[88] According to the book A Universidade Federal de Viçosa no Século XX, published by Editora UFV, the school's location was not an arbitrary decision by Bernardes and took into account the topography, water availability and proximity to the Leopoldina Railway.

The Minas Gerais government doubted the promise of a large steel plant and feared that the company would charge exaggerated prices on the domestic market and create a monopoly on ore transportation.

[123] Negotiations for the presidential succession began early, in the first months of 1921, due to the wear and tear of the federal government in multiple sectors: with the military, the urban population and the oligarchies of Minas Gerais and São Paulo.

[145] Bernardes continued to the traditional candidate presentation banquet, at which he read his platform:[144] a constitutional review at the initiative of Congress, budget balance, currency appreciation and the protection of coffee and industry.

[234] In his messages to Congress, Bernardes claimed that the measure was taken "unwillingly, but in defense of high national interests", to "prevent disorder, eliminating its causes", but the state of emergency would be nothing more than "a situation that can almost be compared to the constitutional regime under which many more advanced and free peoples normally live".

[247][248] Taking advantage of the legislation on the state of emergency, which allowed the "exile to other places in the national territory", some received remote and isolated destinations: the island of Trindade, in the middle of the South Atlantic,[249] and the penal colony of Clevelândia, on the border with French Guiana, where ill-treatment and tropical diseases killed around half of the deportees.

[260][261] The mission's recommendations were a scandal in the opposition press: privatizations, favors to foreign investors, dismissals of public servants and abandonment of the steel plant project and federal subsidies for the valorization of coffee.

[281] On 4 May of the previous year, the president attended the golden jubilee of D. Arcoverde, archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, with his entire ministry, making public the rapprochement of the Church with the Brazilian State.

[297] Historian Hélio Silva sought to refute accusations that the reform was promoted to oppress the opposition: it was only achieved at the end of Bernardes' term, its more specific conditions for federal intervention made it difficult for subsequent governments to apply the measure, and its narrower definition of habeas corpus was normal in other countries.

[309] More recent studies argue that the fiasco was also of the international system as a whole[308] and the president was informed about geopolitics (through correspondence with rear admiral Augusto Carlos de Souza e Silva) and wanted to show that Brazil had its own opinion abroad.

[321] Congress reduced the period of ineligibility for former presidents, from six to three months after their term of office, to allow Bernardes to run for senator in the February 1927 elections,[322] filling the vacancy left by Antônio Carlos.

[323] The following morning he embarked under police escort for Europe,[324] where he spent a period of vacation,[325] living in Paris at the house of his friend Lineu de Paula Machado and visiting several countries.

[328] With the Liberal Alliance defeated by Júlio Prestes in March–April, PRM leaders were convinced by Minas Gerais deputy Virgílio de Melo Franco and Rio Grande do Sul politician Batista Luzardo to join a future armed movement against the government, the Revolution of 1930.

[335] At the beginning of the armed movement, in October, Bernardes was in Belo Horizonte,[336] having been alongside Olegário Maciel when he ordered the assault on the 12th Infantry Regiment[334] and influenced him to accept the transfer of power from the Provisional Governing Junta to Getúlio Vargas.

At 80 years old,[340] Maciel was influenced by the rising figures who needed to reduce Bernardes' power — the "Mountain Bloc" of Francisco Campos (federal Minister of Education), Gustavo Capanema and Amaro Lanari.

They were blamed for a "mistake", as the federal government defined it: an attempted coup by the army organized by Oswaldo Aranha, Vargas' Minister of Justice, to install Virgílio de Melo Franco as governor in Olegário Maciel's place.

[359] The positive demonstrations upon his arrival in Belo Horizonte, on 21 August, were even reported by Estado de Minas, the official newspaper of the Progressive Party (PP), led by federal intervener Benedito Valadares, to which the PRM was in opposition.

[63] When president, Bernardes did not appear in public and only showed himself in closed spaces or to previously selected audiences, which can be explained by the angry mobs that welcomed him at the beginning of the campaign in Rio de Janeiro.

[394] According to Afonso Arinos, Bernardes carried out the "methodical destruction of all his enemies and former adversaries", less "out of feelings of revenge or in the interest of his security, than out of a spirit of public morality and the duty to maintain order in the country".

[410][411] The authorized biography Arthur Bernardes: Estadista da República, by Bruno de Almeida Magalhães, barely covers the bombing, repression and other sensitive topics to the former president's image.

Bernardes' actions in the Minas Gerais and federal governments demonstrate his sympathy for the general lines of the Brazilian Jacobin program: the protection of industry, nationalization of soil, exclusion of foreigners from politics, aid to small properties and tariff reforms.

[434] His messages to the National Congress argued in favor of compulsory and secret voting, the development of railways and colonization of marginal lands, reformulation of income tax,[435] restriction of firearms to the military and police personnel,[436] tightening of the naturalization criteria for foreigners and applicability of the death penalty during internal revolts.

[443][444] In Viçosa, the ESAV did not prevent the coffee growing crisis in Zona da Mata, but became a national reference nevertheless,[445] cultivating an agricultural intellectual elite in public administration, the private sector and academia.