Brazilian liberal politician born in Valença Bahia, with an outstanding and agitated role during the imperial government, reaching the head of the Council of Ministers of the Empire. Graduated in law in Olinda, Pernambuco, where he was a university professor (1840-1841), and joined the politics, at the height of the Liberal Party, when he was named president of Sergipe and soon after Piauí (1845). Still with the liberals in power, he was elected general deputy (1850) and, reappointed to the Chamber of Deputies, by the Bahia, he was appointed president of the newly created province of Paraná (1853), and remained for about two years in the office. He was elected deputy for Paraná in the legislature (1861-1864), after which he entered the Senate. At the head of the opposition (1861), he achieved a great parliamentary victory by overthrowing the conservative cabinet, presided over by Duque de Caxias. But without a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, he was unable to organize a government. He remained at the head of a fierce group of liberals and conservative dissidents, which formed the Party. Progressive, and assumed the head of the liberal-progressive cabinet that only governed from June to August (1864).
He returned for the third time to the center of power (1866) which remained for two years, in one of the most troubled phases of the empire. Due to his differences with Caxias, then in supreme command of the forces operating in Paraguay, he fell (1868) into a definitive split between liberals and conservatives. He founded (1868) the Liberal Center and became, in the Senate, a relentless critic of the conservatives in power, especially during the cabinet of the Viscount of Rio Branco (1871-1875), when he defended the bishops arrested and prosecuted on the occasion of the Religious Question, and died in Rio de January.. He published a classic work to understand the mechanism of the Brazilian imperial regime, entitled On the nature and limits of moderating power (1861). But his great work was The Liberal Party Manifesto-Program (1870), of radical content, including taking advantage of that in that At the time, the empire no longer responded to society's growing aspirations for change, preaching regime change for revolution.
Source: http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/
Biography Z - Biography - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/zacarias-gois-vasconcelos.htm