Chapter 4 follows different groups of conspirators, with differing agendas, who began to find one another and come together. One group was composed of soldiers who felt that they had been passed over for promotions due to racism. Another small group that was disgruntled by a combination of low wages and racism came together in the shop of a master tailor. And a third group was composed of white professionals who were driven by republican ideas they gleaned from studying the French Revolution. For these groups to come together, there needed to be a delicate balance of maintaining secrecy while also growing the plot and preparing to reveal it publicly. This chapter demonstrates that it was the bonds of relation, and a conviction that they could take care of one another and administer society better than the state, that kept people committed to the plan as they worked through this dangerous moment of expanding the conspiracy. Seen from this perspective, their struggle constituted a definition of the political in which care, concern, rest, and the belief that the people were the seat of sovereignty were foundational to being radicalized.

Chapter 5 details how the High Court focused on soldiers when they attempted to discover the authors of the pasquins. It also examines how the first arrests that the court ordered triggered an attempt by the other leaders of the conspiracy to start the rebellion earlier than planned. In the final meetings, they were caught in the act of planning the rebellion by men whom they had invited to become part of the plot but who told everything to the authorities and then became spies for the regime. People of different ranks met and assessed each other for the first time at these gatherings and consequently made decisions about whether they would stay committed to the movement or not. The last days of the conspiracy were thus marked by a continuing commitment to rebellion but also by persecution, infiltration, and confusion about who was involved and what the web of relations were between the thirty plus men of African descent who were arrested and their relations with the few whites who were also interrogated.

Chapter 1 focuses on relations between soldiers and the Bahian people during the War for the Debatable Lands from 1776 to 1777. This war between Spain and the Portugal drew Bahia into an inter-imperial conflict that had a significant impact on local politics. The governor of Bahia tried to conscript young men into military service as well as step up efforts to catch deserters. People used a range of tactics to protect themselves and others from conscription as well as from slave catchers and brutal work conditions. Such protection could take the form of runaway enslaved people who hid deserters, to officers who refused to force young men into the army, to enslaved people and deserters fighting together against conscription officers. In short, many Bahians worked to avoid the wartime dictates of the empire at all costs. Colonial officials cited these relations as proof that the people of Bahia were disorderly. Yet the people castigated the military and the government as disorderly, and they acted accordingly when they felt threatened.