Two laws of slave manumission were issued in the republican New Granada, the first one in 1814, and the second one in 1821. The enslaved population made use of these legislation from the very beginning of their publication, presenting petitions of freedom before the republican tribunals, for themselves or for their offspring. In this article we intend to gather some individual cases of judicial strategies initiated by slaves in Medelli?n between 1815 and 1840 claiming for manumis- sion. We will use these cases to explore the hypothesis that they function not only as examples of the capacity of slaves as litigants but also as clues of the different ways in which they interpreted the idea of freedom in the context of the construction of a new political order.