In Brazil, the Sexagenarian Law (1885) emancipated enslaved individuals older than 60 years (Soares, 2007, p. 299; Cowling, 2013, p. 42). The growth of the abolitionist movement and the ineffectiveness of the two emancipationist laws were evident. But since the 1870s, and especially during the 1880s, bondspeople had organized massive manumission campaigns as well as massive flights in urban and rural areas (Gomes, 2004, p. 742; Castilho, 2016, p. 88). Slave insurgency, along with widespread demands to end slavery, contributed to deepening the crisis of the Brazilian slave system (Machado, 1994, pp. 76, 82). Fearing revolts, masters freed thousands of enslaved men, women, and children, whereas hundreds ran away in the coffee zones of Brazil's southeast. Still, slaveholders counted on their representatives in the Chamber of Deputies to obtain financial compensation, or at least some kind of measure allowing them to maintain the relations of dominance with the future freed population (Albuquerque, 2009, p. 105). On 13 May 1888, Princess Isabel, the regent, finally signed the Golden Law, which emancipated nearly 700,000 enslaved men and women (Costa, 2008, p. 10).