gave the Brazilian government the authority to combat the illegal slave traffic. With this new tool, Brazil moved to eliminate the importation of slaves and Britain recognized that the trade had been at last suppressed. With Brazil internally pacified and the British menace gone, the conservative cabinet could turn its attention to another serious foreign threat, the Argentine dictator Don Juan Manuel de Rosas. Rosas had sought to annex the Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul and planned the conquests of Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia. These moves threatened the creation of a dominion encompassing the territories of the old Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (a former Spanish colony in South America). Brazil's cabinet decided to forge alliances with other nations threatened by the dictator's ambitions and sent an army commanded by Luis Alves de Lima e Silva (later the Dukes of Caxias) to Uruguay which crossed the border on 4 September 1851. The Brazilian army split into two parts. Half of it, consisting of a division along with Uruguayan forces and Argentine rebel troops, invaded Argentina. On 3 February 1852, the allies defeated an army led by Rosas who fled to the United Kingdom. The victory over the Argentine dictator was followed by a period of stability and prosperity in Brazil during the 1850s. Chile was the only Latin American nation of the era which was comparable to Brazil in political cohesion and economic strength. Growth The Conciliation policy On 6 September 1853 Carneiro Leão was appointed President of the Council of Ministers and charged with organizing a new cabinet. He was at this time the most influential politician in the country and leader of the Conservative Party. Emperor Pedro II wished to advance his ambitious plan: the Conciliation. The goal of the Conciliation was to put an end to the recurrent factional conflicts which had started with the Restorationists at the beginning of the 1830s and had been continued by the Liberals. It had become usual for parties which were ousted from power in elections to attempt to regain it by force of arms as happened in 1842 and 1848. From that point on political disputes were to be settled democratically in the parliament. Both parties would be required to rise above partisanship and instead devote themselves to the common good of the nation. The new president invited several Liberals to join the Conservative ranks and