Abolitionist demands gained new impetus at the end of the 1870s, with the actions of D. Isabel and statesman Joaquim Nabuco (who in 1879 proposed a bill, rejected by the Legislative, for the gradual abolition of slavery, with a definitive abolition date of 1890[5]) and with the extra-parliamentary work of the black engineer André Rebouças and the black journalist José do Patrocínio, who wrote for the newspaper Gazeta de Notícias.
The founding of the society itself, it is worth noting, followed a series of initiatives by certain sectors of the elites of the time, throughout the country: the maintenance of liberal clubs and associations aimed at defending abolitionismThe Society's Manifesto stated that: This Society, for example, embraces everyone; it is open not only to statesmen who can understand the plan and details of a gigantic work of social renewal, but also to obscure men of the people who can only hate slavery as the instinct of free men.The SBCE also published the newspaper O Abolicionista (named after an abolitionist newspaper in Spain,[6] El Abolicionista[8]), which was published from 1880 to 1881.
[6] Through Nabuco, the SBCE sought to get closer to important abolitionist institutions in Europe, with the circulation and translation of its Manifesto into English, French and Spanish.
[6] The creation of the Brazilian institution was reported in the prestigious French periodical Revue des Deux Mondes[9] and welcomed by the British Foreign and Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS).
As sociologist Angela Alonso notes, the very name of the SBCE was a translation of the British institution, which inspired Nabuco's abolitionist militancy and which he had been in contact with since 1879.