This chapter looks at the tensions between slavery and freedom in the three slave societies of Cartagena, Antioquia, and Popayán, probing the ways in which specific officials and slaveholders interpreted and used the specter of slave insurrection in light of their own interests and local conflicts. In contrast to the stereotypes of insubordinate slaves, the chapter maps out slaves’ culture of expectation. Underpinned by a dynamic grapevine transmitting rumors and tales, this culture of expectation included notions about the end of slavery and discussions on tactics to improve working conditions or accelerate the coming of freedom. Many enslaved communities told hopeful fables of peaceful liberation and legally recognized emancipation. The rumor that a merciful monarch had decreed collective freedom reappeared periodically. For some, the hope was based on manumission promises by masters. Others thought that God would end slavery and punish the masters. Many slaves hoped that they could become law-abiding members of the body politic (paying taxes, obeying magistrates and priests, and living in their own towns) after emancipation.

This chapter explores the judicial forum as a political space relatively free from censorship in which some lawyers and litigants scrutinized aspects of the social order under Spanish rule. Some expressed their dislike of slavery and their aspirations for change. The chapter looks at litigation and intellectual culture in Popayán, where the lawyer Félix José de Restrepo asserted that slaves were people with dignity who deserved judicial compassion. The government, he argued, should facilitate slave emancipation, a trademark of prudent legislation. The former slave Pedro Antonio Ibargüen even argued that all vassals of the king, rich and poor alike, deserved equal protection from the magistrates. With a political crisis shattering the viceroyalty in 1810, political revolution had new implications for these positions. Some patricians who sympathized with independence now criticized the viceroyalty’s “pact” with Spain as "slavery." Pushing the boundaries of this metaphor, some slaves in Popayán saw their own freedom as a necessary extension of the freedom from Spain demanded by their masters. A few patricians now began to discuss a formal plan to reform slavery through legislation.