one whom the fortune of war had betrayed. The day was coming when Napoleon would expiate Bonaparte's cruelty, and the Emperor, feared by all Europe, in his turn be taken from those dear to him; then he would know in all its intensity the awfulness of a slow agony on a solitary island.
Death proved more charitable than men and put an end at last to all the petty annoyances, the humiliations and sufferings, physical and mental, which the late governor of Saint-Domingue was heroically enduring. On the 27th of April, 1803, Toussaint Louverture was found sitting by the fireplace, his hands resting on his knees, his head bent down slightly to the right: the greatest of all the blacks had ceased to exist! Even death did not appease the wrath of his torturers. His corpse was thrown into a common grave; so that at the present day it would be impossible for France to find out his remains in order to give them back to Haiti.
To Toussaint Louverture[1] does not belong the dis-
- ↑ In one of his Thanksgiving sermons, Rev. Frank De Witt Talmage gives the following account of the service rendered the United States by Toussaint Louverture: "The next great geographical expansion to which I would call your attention is the Louisiana Purchase. The indirect cause of this purchase is almost unknown to the majority of American citizens. And, in order to give the historical setting to this transaction, I shall first introduce to you as strange and weird a personality as George Rogers Clark. This man is not a white man, but a full-blooded negro. He is not living in France or Spain or in the United States, but in the island of St. Domingo. And yet this negro, this ex-slave, named Toussaint Louverture, whom Napoleon betrayed by false promises and brutally starved to death in the French dungeon of Joux, had as much to do with the Louisiana Purchase as Robert Livingston or Thomas Jefferson the President. Here it was in the days of Robespierre and Marat and Danton, led on by this modern Spartacus called Toussaint Louverture, that the slaves of that island rose in their might and fought for the honor of their manhood and womanhood and won their independence, and called their brave leader, Toussaint Louverture, their national chief. That was in 1801. … Then came the treaty of Amiens of 1802. … The 'Little Corporal' said to himself, I must have something to fight. I must keep my soldiers employed.' So he looked over the map and said, 'Here is Saint-Domingue. I will reconquer it, and again enslave its negroes.' The flower of the French army set sail for this far-off island. … Toussaint Louverture is treacherously betrayed and carried to France a prisoner, but his lieutenants of war continued his patriotic work. These disciples of the Washington of this Southern island, noble and brave, aided by the pestilence and disease which fought for them, drove the French troops, step by step, until, within a few months, six-sevenths of all the unprincipled French invaders were dead. … Napoleon, the Great Napoleon, the mighty conqueror Napoleon, who had his dreams of making the rich territory of Louisiana the brightest star in his royal diadem, said: 'If a few negroes in far-off Saint-Domingue can destroy my legions, I cannot hold Louisiana in case of war. I must sell right away.' … Thus, all of Indian Territory, all of Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and Wyoming and Montana and the Dakotas and most of Colorado and Minnesota and all of Washington and Oregon States, came to us as the indirect work of a despised negro. Praise, if you will, the work of a Robert Livingston or a Jefferson, but to-day let us not forget our debt to Toussaint Louverture, who was indirectly the means of America's expansion by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803." (Christian Herald, New York City, November 28, 1906.)
