Abstract
Brazilian intellectual debate in the 1880s was simultaneously dominated by two issues - definitive abolition of slavery that finally managed to mobilize significant public interest, and abolition of monarchy proposed by the renewed republican movement. Even though the Brazilian republicans embraced liberal egalitarian values of their French and American counterparts, their attitudes towards slavery were complex and strongly differing from one province to another.
This paper explores the positions of the PRR, the Republican Party from the southernmost Rio Grande do Sul, that attempted to reconcile its staunchly pro-abolitionist positions with respect and admiration for their much more influential counterparts from São Paulo where the local Republican party (PRP) was controlled by the slave owning elite.