The proclamation of the 1831 law abolishing the transatlantic slave trade was one such moment of tension. In Espírito Santo, the law was interpreted as meaning emancipation for slaves from the town of Itapemirim. The same law also motivated slaves conspiring against their masters in the coffee-growing municipality of Campinas, São Paulo, in 1832, in a movement previously commented upon in this essay. Although the Campinas conspiracy was discovered and snuffed out, one slave claimed under interrogation to believe that the 1831 law was to abolish slavery altogether. In the very same year, enslaved people from the district of Carrancas, in Minas Gerais, reached the same conclusion. Two years later, frustrated that abolition still was not a reality, Carrancas' slaves organized one of Brazil's most violent uprisings, in which an entire family of white farmers was massacred, including men, women and children. The rebels were a mixture of Africans and crioulos. Twenty years later, and also in Espírito Santo, this time in the town of São Mateus, slaves organized another uprising in light of a new law renewing the prohibition of slave trafficking in 1850. The same occurred in Campos, Rio de Janeiro, when enslaved people became agitated after interpreting discussions on the  
law as a sign of slavery's definitive abolition (Almada, 1984, pp. 167-174; Andrade, 1998-99, pp. 45-82; Queiroz, 1977, p. 220; Mamigonian, 2017).