Brazil's constitution of 1824 had created the usual three governmental powers—executive, legislative, and judicial—and a fourth, the moderating power.

The emperor holds this power, which gives him the right to name senators, to dismiss the legislature, and to shift control of the government from one party to the other.

In theory, he is to act as the political balance wheel.

It should be noted that the parties are more groupings of members of Parliament than ideologically based movements dependent on distinct electorates.

Historian Richard Graham observes that "No particular political philosophy distinguished one group from another."

In the 1840s, as today, the political system has an artificial aspect to it; it does not relate openly to the real power structure of the country—the "lords of the land" (senhores da terra) who run local affairs.

Also in 1850, British pressure finally forces the Brazilian government to outlaw the African slave trade.

London, tiring of Brazilian subterfuge, authorizes its navy to seize slave ships in Brazilian waters, even in ports.

Rather than risk open war with Britain, paralyzation of commerce, widespread slave unrest, and destabilization of the empire, the government outlaws the African slave trade.

It deports a number of Portuguese slavers and instructs the provincial presidents, police, judges, and military to crack down.

Over the next five years, even clandestine landings will stop, and despite the tempting rise of slave prices in the coffee districts of Rio de Janeiro Province, the trans-Atlantic trade will end.

Although the British claim  credit, it should be noted that for the first time a Brazilian government has the power to enforce a law along the length of the coast.

Also, internal support for the trade has weakened.

Most slave importers are Portuguese, who had been selling the ever more expensive Africans to landowners on credit at climbing interest rates, in some cases forcing the latter into insolvency and loss of property.

Xenophobia and the debts of the landed classes combine to support the government action.

Brazil's Land Law of 1850, which sets the pattern for modern landholding, is a good example of how the real power holders manipulate the system to protect their narrow interests to the detriment of the national interest.

The Land Law ends the colonial practice of obtaining land through squatting or royal grants and limits acquisition to purchase, thereby restricting the number of people who can become owners.

By creating obstacles to landownership, the law's framers hope to force free labor to work for existing landlords.

However, proprietors sabotage the law by not surveying their lands and not resolving their conflicting claims in order to keep titles cloudy and hence in their hands.

One result of the uncertain titles is that slaves are used as collateral.

Pedro I's death from tuberculosis in 1834 had sapped the restorationist impulse and removed the glue that held uneasy political allies together.

With the regency attempting to suppress simultaneous revolts in the South and North, it cannot easily reassert its supremacy over the remaining provinces.

Brazil could well have split apart in these years.

It did not for three reasons.

First, the military had been reorganized as an instrument of national unity under the leadership of Luis Alves de Lima e Silva, who was ennobled as the Duke of Caxias (Duque de Caxias) and who will later be proclaimed Patron of the Brazilian Army.

Second, the specter of slave revolt and social disintegration had become all too real.

And third, the "vision of Brazil as a union of autonomous pátrias" in Roderick J. Barman's phrase, had been replaced by the vision of Brazil as a nation-state.

Rather than risk their fortunes and lives, the elites, longing for a focus of loyalty, identity, and authority, rally around the boy-emperor, who ascends the throne on July 18, 1841, at age fifteen instead of the constitutionally specified age of eighteen.

Thus, the second empire is born in the hope that it will be an instrument of national unity, peace, and prosperity.

The Brazilian nation-state coalesces in the 1840sas authorities suppress revolts and rewrite Brazilian law.

These laws, however, do not bode well for democracy because they shape an electoral system based on government-controlled fraud.

In 1842, on the advice of conservative courtiers, Pedro II uses his constitutional moderating power to dismiss the newly elected liberal Chamber of Deputies and call new elections, which the conservatives win by stuffing the ballot boxes.

In so doing, he sets a pattern of favoring conservatives over liberals.

The Paraguayan War has important consequences for Brazil and the Rio de la Plata region.

It leaves Brazil and Argentina facing each other over a prostrate Paraguay and a dependent Uruguay, a situation that will soon turn into a tense rivalry that will repeatedly assume warlike postures.

Historians debate the number of Paraguayan casualties, some asserting that fifty percent of Paraguayans were killed, others arguing that it was much less, possibly eight to nine percent of the prewar population total.

Nonetheless, the losses from battle, disease, and starvation are severe and disrupt the development of the republic.

In Brazil the war had contributed to the growth of manufacturing, to the professionalization of the armed forces and their concentration in Rio Grande do Sul, to the building of roads and the settling of European immigrants in the southern provinces, and to the increased power of the central government.

Most important for the future, the war had brought the military firmly into the political arena.

Military officers are keenly aware that the war had exposed the military's lack of equipment, training, and organization.

Officers blame these shortcomings on civilian officials.

In the next decades, reformist officers seeking to modernize the army will criticize the Brazilian political structure and its peculiar culture as obstacles to modernization.

The Guarani-speaking Paraguayans, fiercely defending their homeland, defeats the allies at Curupaiti in September 1866.

The Argentine president, General Bartolomé Mitre (1861-68), takes the bulk of his troops home to quell opposition to his war policy, leaving the Brazilians to soldier on.

The famed General Lima e Silva, Marquis and later Duke of Caxias, takes command of the allied forces and leads them until the fall of Asuncion in early 1869.

With stubborn determination, the Brazilians pursue Solano Lopez until they corner and kill him.

They now occupy Paraguay until 1878.

The war had dragged on for several reasons.

First, the Paraguayans were better prepared at the outset and conducted an effective offensive into the territories of their adversaries, immediately handing them defeats.

Even later, when pushed back onto their own land, they had the advantages of knowing the ground, of having prepared defenses, and of fielding stubbornly loyal troops.

Second, it had taken the Brazilians considerable time to marshal their forces and considerable effort and cost to keep them supplied.

Third, the Argentines, hoping to improve their postwar situation in relation to Brazil, had delayed operations partly to force the empire to weaken itself by expending its resources.

Fourth, this is the era of "unconditional surrender."

It was militarily fashionable to pursue Solano Lopez to the bitter end.

Marshal Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Marquis and, later, Duke of Caxias, assigned on October 10, 1866 to command the Brazilian forces, arrives in Paraguay in November, finding the Brazilian army practically paralyzed.

The contingent of Argentines and Uruguayans, devastated by disease, are cut off from the rest of the allied army.

Mitre and Flores have returned to their respective countries because of difficult internal political conditions.

Tamandaré is replaced in command by Admiral Joaquim José Inácio, future Viscount of Inhaúma.

Osório organizes a five thousand-strong third Corps of the Brazilian army in Rio Grande do Sul.

In Mitre's absence, Caxias assumes general command and restructures the army.

The Duke of Caxias has organized a health corps (to give aid to the endless number of injured soldiers and to fight the epidemic of cholera) and a system of supplying of the troops between November 1866 and July 1867.

Military operations in this period have been limited to skirmishes with the Paraguayans and to bombarding Curupayty.

Francisco Solano López has taken advantage of the disorganization of the enemy to reinforce his stronghold in Humaitá.