A Journey in Brazil: Henry Washington Hilliard and the Brazilian Anti-Slavery Society is an investigative account of the vital career of Henry Washington Hilliard, who had a long and complicated relationship with slavery. A native Southerner, he was a former slave owner and Confederate soldier, but as a member of Congress Hilliard strongly opposed secession. Hilliard supported the constitutional legality of slavery; however, as a moderate he acknowledged the status quo and warned of the dangers of radical positions concerning the issue.
 
Throughout a diverse career that spanned six decades, Hilliard’s personal challenges, moderated by his faith in Divine Providence, eventually allowed him to return to his ideological roots and find a sense of redemption late in life by becoming an unlikely spokesman for the Brazilian emancipation movement through his association with Joaquim Nabuco. In A Journey in Brazil, authors David I. Durham and Paul M. Pruitt Jr. establish context for Hilliard’s beliefs, document his journey in Brazil, and offer a variety of primary documents—selections from newspapers, transcripts of letters, translations of speeches, and other documents that have never before been published.
 
AboutOccasional Publications of the Bounds Law Library
This collection offers a series of edited documents that contribute to an understanding of the development of legal history, culture, or doctrine. Series editors Paul M. Pruitt Jr. and David I. Durham have selected a variety of materials—a lecture, diaries, letters, speeches, a ledger, commonplace books, a code of ethics, court reports—to illustrate unique examples of legal life and thought.

David I. Durham has served as the Curator of Archival Collections at the University of Alabama School of Law’s Bounds Law Library since 2000. His book A Southern Moderate in Radical Times: Henry Washington Hilliard, 1808–1892, explores the role of a political and social moderate in a polarized society. He is coeditor and contributing author to the Occasional Publications of the Bounds Law Library, a series devoted to topics in legal history. Durham also teaches courses in Alabama history, early southern history, and the history of Brazil through the University of Alabama’s Department of History.
 
Paul M. Pruitt Jr. has been on staff at the University of Alabama School of Law’s Bounds Law Library since 1986. He has served as a Special Collections Librarian for almost that long. Pruitt is coeditor and contributor to the Occasional Publications of the Bounds Law Library. He is the author of Taming Alabama: Lawyers and Reformers, 1804–1929, and the editor of New Field, New Corn: Essays from the Alabama Legal History Seminar. Pruitt also teaches two courses at the University of Alabama’s School of Law, “From Domesday to the Black Death: English Legal History” and the “Alabama Legal History Seminar.”

“[Durham and Pruitt] have assembled a useful resource by including the published correspondence between Hillard and Nabuco, as well as a transcript of speeches given at an abolitionist dinner thrown in Hillard’s honor. Taken together, the volume tells a surprising story that should contribute to our understanding of Atlantic world abolitionism.”
—Journal of Southern History