again proposed federation. But the other republics had by this
time learned too much of the methods of the autocrat of Guatemala, even
while they admired his progressive policy, to relish the thought of a
federation dominated by Guatemala and its masterful President. Though
he "persuaded" Honduras to accept the plan, the three other republics
preferred to unite in self-defense, and in the ensuing struggle the
quixotic Barrios was killed. A few years later the project was revived
and the constitution of a "Republic of Central America" was agreed upon,
when war between Guatemala and Salvador again frustrated its execution.

In Brazil two great movements were by this time under way: the total
abolition of slavery and the establishment of a republic. Despite the
tenacious opposition of many of the planters, from about the year 1883
the movement for emancipation made great headway. There was a growing
determination on the part of the majority of the inhabitants to remove
the blot that made the country an object of reproach among the civilized
states of the world. Provinces and towns, one after another, freed
the slaves within their borders. The imperial Government, on its part,
hastened the process by liberating its own slaves and by imposing upon
those still in bondage taxes higher than their market value; it fixed a
price for other slaves; it decreed that the older slaves should be set
free; and it increased the funds already appropriated to compensate
owners of slaves who should be emancipated. In 1887 the number of slaves
had fallen to about 720,000, worth legally about $650 each. A year later
came the final blow, when the Princess Regent assented to a measure
which abolished slavery outright and repealed all former acts relating
to slavery. So radical a proceeding wrought havoc in the coffee-growing
southern provinces in particular, from which the negroes now freed
migrated by tens of thousands to the northern provinces. Their places,
however, were taken by Italians and other Europeans who came to work the
plantations on a cooperative basis. All through the eighties, in fact,
immigrants from Italy poured into the temperate regions of southern
Brazil, to the number of nearly two hundred thousand, supplementing the
many thousands of Germans who had settled, chiefly in the province of
Rio Grande do Sul, thirty years before.

Apart from the industrial problem thus created by the abolition of
slavery, there seemed to be no