The purpose of this dissertation is to study the Brazilian imperial experience under an original premise, the inland expansion, a set of practices composed by symbolic elements, to inscribe the imperial Order in the souls of the Brazilian citizens. Then a group of selected symbolic practices concerning the field of belief was established, so that the Brazilian people would be conformed and the national identity constituted, which would ensure the engraving of the imperial Order on the Brazilian souls. Concurrently with the development of this premise, it is displayed that the leaders of the imperial state had also carried out the establishment of the nation and their own establishment as statesmen. The dissertation is developed through two chronological backgrounds: the decade of 1860, during which the Saquarema direction has experienced its golden moment, and the 1880`s , when the Saquarema direction was already suffering severe criticism. In the first moment, the vehicle chosen to work the effectiveness of the inland expansion, in the midst of harsh debates and intense differences, was the equestrian statue of D. Pedro I, persona reinterpreted by the Conservative Party as the freedom´s herald and the Order´s guarantor. The second period of time features as centerpiece Pedro Américo`s Independência ou Morte painting, around which the inland expansion was claimed by the members of the Conservative Party on the Provinces of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, by monarchists and republicans, all of them aiming to, by connecting themselves to the painting and its meaning, reinstate the concept of freedom associated by some to monarchy - seeking to restore the regimen`s modernizing nature, among severe criticism the regimen was suffering - and, by others, to the republic - the regimen that would open up for Brazil, new horizons, associated with the republic itself and with Progress.