Queirós Coutinho Matoso da Câmera, Eusébio de (1812–1868)

Eusébio de Queirós Coutinho Matoso da Câmera (b. 27 December 1812; d. 7 May 1868), Brazilian statesman. Born in São Paulo Luanda, Angola, Queirós was the son of a Portuguese magistrate who rose to the highest Brazilian judicial elite. He took his law degree at Olinda in 1832 and was immediately appointed a judge. Shortly thereafter, he became chief of police in Rio de Janeiro (1833–1844). Queirós's fierce defense of order, underwritten by marriage into a powerful merchant and political family (1835), helps explain his rise in the Conservative Party (1837). With Joaquim José Rodrigues Torres and Paulino José Soares de Sousa, Eusébio formed the trindade saquarema, the party's most powerful, reactionary leadership. Eusébio took up crucial political responsibilities early on: provincial deputy in Rio de Janeiro (1838); national deputy for that province (1842–1844, 1848–1854); desembargador da relação in Rio (1842–1848); minister of justice (1848–1852); senator for Rio de Janeiro Province (1854); and member of the Council of State (1855). Responsible for developing the Código Comercial of 1850, he is better known for suppressing the African slave trade (1850) when he was minister of justice and for maintaining the power of the saquarema "oligarchy" in the Senate.

See alsoBrazil: 1808–1889; Slavery: Abolition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Leslie Bethell, Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade (1970).

Joaquim Nabuco, Um estadista do império (1975).

Ilmar Rohloff De Mattos, O tempo saquarema (1987).

Additional Bibliography

Curto, José C., and Renee Soulodre-LaFrance. Africa and the Americas: Interconnections during the Slave Trade. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005.

Drescher, Seymour. From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery. New York: New York University Press, 1999.

Gonçalves, Maria José; Eusébio, António; and Maria de Fatima Nunes. A illustre casa Ramires de Eça de Queirós. Mem Martins, Portugal: Publicações Europa-América, 1987.

Johnson, Walter. The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.

Needell, Jeffrey. The Party of Order: The Conservatives, the State, and Slavery in the Brazilian Monarchy, 1831–1871. New York: Stanford University Press, 2006.

                                     Jeffrey D. Needell