The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI.
Indian and African Slavery in St. Domingo. — The Insurrections.
Hispaniola, St. Domingo, or Hayti, is not only one of the largest but also one of the most beautiful and productive of the West India islands. It is 390 miles long, its breadth is from 60 to 150 miles, and its scenery is diversified by lofty mountains, deep valleys and extensive plains, or savannas, dotted with the luxuriant vegetation of a tropical climate. The sea sweeps boldly into the land, here and there forming commodious harbors and extensive bays. The air on the plains is warm and laden with the perfume of flowers; and the sudden changes from drouth to rain, though trying to an unacclimated constitution, are favorable to the growth of the rich products of the soil.
Columbus and his successors having founded a settlement on the island, it became one of the Spanish colonial possessions, to the great misfortune of the unhappy natives, who were almost annihilated by the labor which the colonists imposed upon them. They soon dwindled away to a mere remnant. Of a population of a million found on the island by Columbus, scarcely twenty-four thousand remained at the time of the governorship of the island by his son, Don Diego Columbus, and these were fast sinking into the grave under the destructive influence of cruelty and hardship. In this emergency expeditions were fitted out to the Bahama islands in order to decoy from their homes the gentle and confiding race which inhabited them, to be sold as slaves in Hispaniola. They were but too successful. Availing themselves of the fond superstition of the natives, that the departed spirits of their friends, after an expiation of their sins by a purgatory of cold in the mountains of the north, passed to more sunny realms, under a more tropical sky, where they enjoyed an indolent paradise forever, the crafty Spaniards alleged that they came from this land of their departed relatives, and invited them to go thither and rejoin them.[1] The simple Indians trusted to the tale and went to inevitable and deadly servitude. Like their predecessors of Hispaniola, they died at their tasks, or in despair put an end to their own existence, while new cargoes of their race were arriving daily to the same wretchedness and death.
To the honor of the ecclesiastics of the colony, their exertions were unremitted to ameliorate the condition and retard the ultimate fate of the natives. Of the two orders of clergy to whom the spiritual interests of the colony had been committed, the Dominicans had ever manifested a zeal and unyielding ardor that left their brethren, the Franciscans, far behind. In the ranks of the former was Las Casas, the celebrated bishop of Chiapa. To save the interesting and gentle race of natives from the destructiveness of slavery, was with dim more than a passion — it seemed the ruling and guiding principle of his soul. In consequence of his pious appeals to Cardinal Ximines, the regent of Spain, three commissioners were sent out with full powers to adjust the condition of the Indians. There were two parties in the colony. The Dominicans, acting in accordance with what they esteemed a law of Heaven, denounced the right and impugned the justice of enslaving the Indians. The interested colonists, and the Franciscans, who were for a modified servitude, sustained themselves against their opponents on grounds of expediency and the right of conquest. To the deputation appointed by Cardinal Ximines were added a lawyer of distinguished probity, whose name was Zuazo, and Las Casas, upon whom had been conferred the title of Protector of the Indians. The first act of the commissioners was to set at liberty all the Indians that had been granted to the Spanish courtiers, or to any person not residing in the island.
This achievement of the commissioners spread anger and consternation among the colonists. The Spaniards were exasperated or discouraged. The lands could not be cultivated without laborers, and panic, discontent and discouragement were general. The commissioners soon began to doubt the solidity of their policy, and yielded to the storm of passion that was beating on them. The subject was maturely reconsidered, and the question and the colony set at rest by the final decision of the commissioners, that the state of the colony rendered the slavery of the Indians necessary.
The enthusiastic philanthropy of Las Casas had not been turned from its object by the decision of the commissioners. Not discouraged at the obstacles he had to encounter, he now ranged his eye through the whole horizon of possibilities to seek in some quarter for a gleam of hope to illumine the dark destiny of that unhappy people which occupied all his sympathies. A small number of a hardier race, the negroes of Guinea, had been imported into the island. They were found stronger than the Indians, and more capable of enduring labor under the burning heats of the climate; so much so, that it was computed that the labor of one negro was worth that of four Indians. "The Africans," says Herrera, "prospered so much in the colony, that it was the opinion that unless a negro should happen to be hung he would never die, for as yet none had been known to perish from infirmity." Las Casas proposed the substitution of African for Indian laborers in the new world. His representations were listened to with a favorable ear by the emperor, and a patent was granted allowing the introduction of four thousand negroes into Hispaniola and a regular traffic between the Guinea coast and the colony was soon established.[2]
This statement, however, has been contradicted by the abbe Gregoire, in his Apologie de B. de Las Casas, in the memoirs of the French institute; also by the writer of the article Casas, in the Biographie Universelle, after an examination of all the Spanish and Portuguese historians of that period. This charge, he says, rests solely on the authority of Kerrera, an elegant but inaccurate writer. "Negro slavery," says another writer, "was a device struck out in a bold and unconscientious age to meet a great emergency, — the age of Cortes and Pizarro." But by it an evil of fearful magnitude has been entailed upon our hemisphere.
The true sources of wealth in the island were now ascertained, not to consist in digging for gold among the barren mountains, but in cultivating the rich soil of the plains. The sugar-cane was introduced and extensively cultivated. In the hard labor necessary in rearing and manipulating it, the hardiness of the negro was shown infinitely superior to the fragile Indian. Plantation after plantation was brought under cultivation, and yielded a handsome profit. Both Indians and negroes were tasked beyond all reasonable bounds, and the consequence was that the former died and the latter rebelled.
As Spain, however, extended her conquests on the main land, the importance of Hispaniola as a colony began to decline; and at the beginning of the seventeenth century the island had become nearly a desert, the natives having been all but extirpated, and the Spanish residents being few, and congregated in several widely-separated stations round the coast. At this time the West Indian seas swarmed with buccaneers, adventurers without homes, families, or country, the refuse of all nations and climes. These men, the majority of whom were French, English, and Dutch, being prevented by the Spaniards from holding any permanent settlement in the new world, banded together in self-defense, and roved the seas in quest of subsistence, seizing vessels, and occasionally landing on the coast of one of the Spanish possessions, and committing terrible ravages. A party of these buccaneers had, about the year 1629, occupied the small island of Tortuga, on the northwest coast of St. Domingo. From this island they used to make frequent incursions into St. Domingo, for the purpose of hunting; the forests of that island abounding with wild cattle, horses and swine, the progeny of the tame animals which the Spaniards had introduced into the island. At length, after various struggles with the Spanish occupants, these adventurers made good their footing in the island of St. Domingo, drove the Spaniards to its eastern extremity, and became masters of its western parts. As most of them were of French origin, they were desirous of placing themselves under the protection of France; and Louis XIV. and his government being flattered with the prospect of thus acquiring a rich possession in the new world, a friendly intercourse between Fiance and St. Domingo began, and the western part of the island assumed the character of a flourishing French colony, while the Spanish colony in the other end of the island correspondingly declined.
From 1776 to 1789, the French colony was at the height of its prosperity. To use the words of a French historian, every thing had received a prodigious improvement The torrents had been arrested in their course, the marshes drained, the forests cleared; the soil had been enriched with foreign plants; mads had been opened across the asperities of the mountains; safe pathways had been constructed over chasms; bridges had been built over rivers which had formerly been passed with danger by means of ox-skin boats; the winds, the tides, the currents had been studied, so as to secure to ships safe sailing and convenient harborage. Villas of pretty but simple architecture had risen along the borders of the sea, while mansions of greater magnificence embellished the interior. Public buildings, hospitals, acqueducts, fountains, and baths rendered life agreeable and healthy; all the comforts of the old world had been transported into the new. In 1789 the population of the colony was 665,000; and of its staple products, it exported in that year 68,000,000 pounds of coffee, and 163,000,000 pounds of sugar. The French had some reason to be proud of St. Domingo; it was their best colony, and it promised, as they thought, to remain for ages in their possession. Many French families of note had emigrated to the island, and settled in it as planters; and both by means of commerce and the passing to and fro of families, a constant intercourse was maintained between the colony and the mother country.
Circumstances eventually proved that the expectation of keeping permanent possession of St. Domingo was likely to be fallacious. The constitution of society was unsound. In this, as in all the European colonies in the new world, negro slavery prevailed. To supply the demand for labor, an importation of slaves from Africa had been going on for some time at the rate of about 20,000 a year; and thus, at the time at which we are now arrived, there was a black population of between 500,000 and 600,000. These negroes constituted an overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the colony, for the whites did not amount to more than 40,000. But besides the whites and the negroes, there was a third class in the population, arising from the intermixture of the white and negro races. These were the people of color, including persons of all varieties of hue, from the perfect sable of the freed negro, to the most delicate tinge marking remote negro ancestry in a white man. Of these various classes of mulattoes, at the time of which we are now speaking, there were about 30,000 in the colony.
Although perhaps less cruelly treated than others in a state of hopeless servitude, the negroes of St. Domingo were not exempt from the miseries which usually accompany slavery; yet they were not so ignorant as not to know their rights as members of the human family. Receiving occasional instruction in the doctrines of Christianity, and allowed by their masters to enjoy the holidays of the church, they were accustomed to ponder on the principles thus presented to their notice, and these they perceived were at variance with their condition. This dawning of intelligence among the negroes caused no alarm to the planters generally. The French have always been noted for making the kindest slave-owners. Imitating the conduct of many of the old nobility of France in their intercourse with the peasantry, a number of the planters of St. Domingo were attentive to the wants and feelings of their negro dependents — encouraging their sports, taking care of them in sickness, and cherishing them in old age. In the year 1685, likewise, Louis XIV. had published a code noir, or black code, containing a number of regulations for the humane treatment of the negroes in the colonies. Still, there were miseries inseparable from the system, and which could not be mitigated; and in St. Domingo, as in all other colonies of the new world, slavery was maintained by the cruelties of the whip and the branding-iron. X It was only, we may easily suppose, by a judicious blending of kindness and severity, that a population of upwards of 500,000 negroes could be kept in subjection by 40,000 whites.
The condition of the mulatto population deserves particular attention. Although nominally free, and belonging to no individual master, these mulattoes occupied a very degraded social position. Regarded as public property, they were obliged to serve in the colonial militia without any pay. They could hold no public trust or employment, nor fill any of the liberal professsions — law, medicine, divinity, &c. They were not allowed to sit at table with a white, to occupy the same place at church, to bear the same name, or to be buried in the same spot. Offenses which in a white man were visited with scarcely any punishment, were punished with great severity when committed by a mulatto. There was one circumstance, however, in the condition of the mulattoes, which operated as a balance to all those indignities, and enabled them to become formidable in the colony — they were allowed to acquire and to hold property to any amount. Able, energetic, and rendered doubly intent upon the acquisition of wealth by the power it gave them, many of these mulattoes or people of color became rich, purchased estates, and equaled the whites as planters. Not only so, but, possessing the tastes of Europeans and gentlemen, they used to quit St. Domingo and pay occasional visits to what they as well as the whites regarded as the mother country. It was customary for wealthy mulattoes to send their children to Paris for their education. It ought to be remarked also respecting the mulatto part of the population of St. Domingo, that they kept aloof both from the pure whites and the pure negroes. Such was the state of society in the colony of St. Domingo in the year 1789-90, when the French Revolution broke out.
Although situated at the distance of 3500 miles from the mother country, St. Domingo was not long in responding to the political agitations which broke out in Paris in 1789. When the news reached the colony that the king had summoned the States-general, all the French part of the island was in a ferment. Considering themselves entitled to share in the national commotion, the colonists held meetings, passed resolutions, and elected eighteen deputies to be sent home to sit in the States-general as representatives. The eighteen deputies reached Versailles a considerable time after the States-general had commenced their sittings, and constituted themselves the National Assembly; and their arrival not a little surprised that body, who probably never expected deputies from St. Domingo, or who at all events thought eighteen deputies too many Cur one colony. Accordingly, it was with some difficulty that six of them were allowed to take their scats. At that time colonial gentlemen were not held in great favor at Paris. Among the many feelings which then simultaneously stirred and agitated that great metropolis, there had sprung up a strong feeling against negro slavery. Whether the enthusiasm was kindled by the recent proceedings of Clarkson and Wilberforce in London, or whether it was derived by the French themselves from the political maxims then afloat, the writers and speakers of the revolution made the iniquity of negro slavery one of their most frequent and favorite topics; and there had just been founded in Paris a society called Amis des Noirs, or friends of the blacks, of which the leading revolutionists were members.
The intelligence of what was occurring at Paris gave great alarm in St. Domingo. When the celebrated declaration of rights, asserting all men to be "free and equal," reached the island along with the news of the proceedings of the Amis des Noirs, the whites, almost all of whom were interested in the preservation of slavery, looked upon their ruin as predetermined. They had no objection to freedom in the abstract, freedom which should apply only to themselves, but they considered it a violation of all decency to speak of black men, mere "property." having political rights. What disheartened the whites gave encouragement to the mulattoes. Rejoicing in the idea that the French people were their friends, they became turbulent, and rose in arms in several places, but were without much difficulty put down. Two or three whites, who were enthusiastic revolutionists, sided with the insurgents; and one of them, M. de Beaudierre, fell a victim to the fury of the colonists. The negro population of the island remained quiet; the contagion of revolutionary sentiments had not yet reached them.
When the national assembly heard of the alarm which the new constitution had excited in the colonies, they saw the necessity for adopting some measures to allay the storm; and accordingly, on the 8th of March, 1790, they passed a resolution disclaiming all intention to legislate sweepingly for the internal affairs of the colonies, and authorizing each colony to mature a plan for itself in its own legislative assembly, (the revolution having superseded the old system of colonial government by royal officials, and given to each colony a legislative assembly consisting of representatives elected by the colonists,) and submit the same to the national assembly. This resolution, which gave great dissatisfaction to the Amis des Noirs in Paris, produced a temporary calm in St. Domingo. For some time nothing was to be heard but the bustle of elections throughout the colony; and at length, on the 16th of April, 1790, the general assembly met, consisting of 213 representatives. All eyes were upon the proceedings of the assembly; and at length, on the 28th of May, it published the results of its deliberations in the form of a new constitution, consisting of ten articles. The provisions of this new constitution, and the language in which they were expressed, were astounding; they amounted, in fact, to the throwing off of allegiance to the mother country. This very unforeseen result created great commotion in the island. The cry rose every where that the assembly was rebelling against the mother country; some districts recalled their deputies, declaring they would have no concern with such presumptuous proceedings; the governor-general, M. Peynier, was bent on dissolving the assembly altogether; riots were breaking out in various parts of the island, and a civil war seemed impending, when in one of its sittings the assembly, utterly bewildered and terrified, adopted the extraordinary resolution of going on board a ship of war then in the harbor, and sailing bodily to France to consult with the national assembly.
In the meantime, the news of the proceedings of the colonial assembly had reached France, and all parties, royalists as well as revolutionists, were indignant at what they called the impudence of these colonial legislators. The Amis des Noirs of course took an extreme interest in what was going on; and under their auspices, an attempt was made to take advantage of the disturbances prevailing in the island for the purpose of meliorating the condition of the colored population. A young mulatto named James Ogé was then residing in Paris, whither he had been sent by his mother, a woman of color, the proprietrix of a plantation in St. Domingo. Ogé had formed the acquaintance of the Abbé Gregoire, Brissot, Robespierre, Lafayette, and other leading revolutionists connected with the society of the Amis des Noirs, and fired by the ideas which he derived from them, he resolved to return to St. Domingo, and, rousing the spirit of insurrection, become the deliverer of his enslaved race. Accordingly, paying a visit to America first, he landed in his native island on the 12th of October, 1790, and announced himself as the redresser of all wrongs. Matters, however, were not yet ripe for an insurrection; and after committing some outrages with a force of 200 mulattoes, which was all he was able to raise, Ogé was defeated, and obliged, with one or two associates, to take refuge in the Spanish part of the island. M. Blanchelande succeeding M. Peynier as governor-general of the colony, demanded Ogé from the Spaniards; and in March, 1791, the wretched young man was broken alive upon the wheel.
The court convicted Vincent Ogé and Jean Baptiste Chevanne, his associate, of the intent to cause an insurrection of the people of color, and it condemned them to be conducted by the public executioner to the church of Cape François, and there, bare-headed, and en chemise, with a rope about their necks — upon their knees, and holding in their hands a wax candle of two pounds weight, to declare that they had wickedly, rashly, and by evil instigation, committed the crimes of which they had been accused and convicted; and then and there they repented of them, and asked forgiveness of God, of the king, and the violated justice of the realm; that they should then be conducted to the Place d'Armes of the said town, and in the place opposite to that appropriated to the execution of white men, to have their arms, legs, hips, and thighs broken alive; that they should be placed upon a wheel, with their faces towards heaven, and there remain so long as God should preserve their lives. After their death, their heads were to be severed from their bodies and placed upon poles — that of Ogé on the road to Dondon, and that of Chevanne on the road to Grand Riviere, and the property of both to be confiscated to the king.[3]
Chevanne died as he had lived, the stern, unyielding enemy of the whites; but Ogé in that terrible moment lost all his firmness. He implored the pity of his judges, and offered to reveal important secrets if they would spare his life. Twenty-four hours were granted him, and he revealed the existence of a wide-laid conspiracy among tin-mulattoes and negroes of the island; but as not much importance was attached to his communications, he was ordered hack to punishment. Twenty-one of his associates, among whom was his brother, were condemned to be hung, and thirteen others were sent to the galleys for life — the rest were pardoned.
Although the insurrection of Ogé was ill-timed and rash, and his death that of the most degraded criminal, his name and sufferings have ever been hallowed in the memory of his race; and the martyrdom of Ogé was ever afterwards the rallying signal to encourage and unite the mulattoes in deadly hostility against the whites. By this barbarous massacre the breach between these two races was made irreconcilable and eternal. However they were united by the sympathy of relationship, or the ties of interest and property, all these bands were sundered by a hatred, deep, rankling, and inexpiable.[4]
All this occurred while the eighty-five members of the assembly were absent in France. They had reached that country in September, 1790, and been well received at first; but when they appeared before the national assembly, that body treated them with marked insult and contempt. On the 11th of October, Barnave proposed and carried a decree annulling all the acts of the colonial assembly, dissolving it, declaring its members ineligible again for the same office, and detaining the eighty-five unfortunate gentlemen prisoners in France. Barnave, however, was averse to any attempt on the part of the national assembly to force a constitution upon the colony against its will; and especially he was averse to any direct interference between the whites and the people of color. These matters of internal regulation, he said, should be left to the colonists themselves; all that the national assembly should require of the colonists was, that they should act in the general spirit of the revolution. Others, however, among whom were Gregoire, Brissot, Robespierre, and Lafayette, were for the home government dictating the leading articles of a new constitution for the colony; and especially they were for some sweeping assertion by the national assembly of the equal citizenship of the colored inhabitants of the colony. For some time the debate was carried on between these two parties; but the latter gradually gained strength, and the storm of public indignation which was excited by the news of the cruel death of Ogé gave them the complete victory. Tragedies and dramas founded on the story of Ogé were acted in the theatres of Paris, and the popular feeling against the planters and in favor of the negroes grew vehement and ungovernable. "Perish the colonies," said Robespierre, "rather than depart, in the case of our colored brethren, from those universal principles of liberty and equality which it is our glory to have laid down." Hurried on by a tide of enthusiasm, the national assembly, on the 15th of May, passed a decree declaring all the people of color in the French colonies born of free parents entitled to vote for members of the colonial judicatures, as well as to be elected to seats themselves. This decree of admission to citizenship concerned, it will be observed, the mulattoes and free blacks only; it did not affect the condition of the slave population.
In little more than a month this decree, along with the intelligence of all that had been said and done when it was passed, reached St. Domingo. The colony was thrown into convulsions. The white colonists stormed and raged, and there was no extremity to which, in the first outburst of their anger, they were not ready to go. The national cockade was trampled under foot. It was proposed to forswear allegiance to the mother country, seize the French ships in the harbors, and the goods of French merchants, and hoist the British flag instead of the French. The governor-general, M. Blanchelande, trembled for the results. But at length the fury of the colonists somewhat subsided; a new colonial assembly was convened; hopes began to be entertained that something might be effected by its labors, when lo! the news ran through the island like the tremor of an earthquake — "The blacks have risen!" The appalling news was too true. The conspiracy, the existence of which had been divulged by Ogé before his execution, had burst into explosion. The outbreak had been fixed for the 25th of August, 1791; but the negroes, impatient as the time drew near, had commenced it on the night of the 22d.
The insurrection now burst forth in all its terror and calamity. The slaves of the plantation Turpin, headed by an English negro, set out at 10 o'clock at night, in their way drawing into their ranks the slaves of four or five other plantations, and commenced the horrors of a wide-spread insurrection. They proved to be the veriest tigers in rage and cruelty. The plain of Cape François, that might have rivaled the fabled garden of the Hesperides, both in richness and beauty, was soon in one universal conflagration, the gleams of which painted the sky in lurid horror, while the smoke enveloped the whole country in uncertain gloom. The ranks of the rebels were increased at every step of their progress, and along their march of devastation they murdered every white who fell into their power, without distinction of age or sex, viewing with fiendish delight the agonies and groans of those whom so lately they had not dared to look in the face.
These scenes of destruction were continued through the night, and on the following day the inhabitants of Cape François knew nothing of the disasters around them, but of the smoke that obscured the horizon and the fugitives that were pouring into their gates. Petrified with horror and panic, they quickly fastened themselves in their houses, and locked up their slaves. The troops of the garrison were the only living objects seen in the streets, as they were hurrying to their different posts. An alarm gun soon called the whole population to arras. The people came out of their houses, accosted and questioned each other, and catching courage from the effect of numbers, their former fear was soon changed to an inspiriting cry for vengeance, which, in their determined infatuation, was principally directed against the mulattoes. These were accused of having instigated the blacks to revolt, and on them it was thought immediate and summary vengeance should fall. In the delirium of the moment, a few of that unfortunate race expiated with their lives the suspicion of their being accomplices with the rebels in the plain. To stop this wicked injustice of murdering the innocent for the crimes of the guilty, the provincial assembly hastened to assign places of refuge for this proscribed caste, who ran thither to put themselves under the protection of the military. They demanded arms, especially the mulatto planters, and expressed an eagerness to march against the common enemy; and such was the blindness of creole prejudice that even the assembly hesitated at first to accept their offer.[5]
The insurrection spread like a stream of electricity, and within four days one-third part of the plain of Cape Francois was but a heap of ashes. Many members of the new colonial assembly, in their journey from Leogane to the Cape, were surprised and killed by the rebels, and a detachment of troops was found necessary to guard the route of the president, secretaries and archives of this body. M. Tousard was dispatched against the rebels with a detachment of troops of the line and national guards, together with some grenadiers and chasseurs of the regiment of the Cape; but nothing, without the courage and veteran skill of this able officer, could have kept the troops in an imposing attitude in such fearful circumstances. On every side, and in every direction, they were beset by swarms of the rebels, who seemed to despise danger and defy the utmost that could be done against them. An order from the governor general, however, recalled the forces of M. Tousard in haste to Cape François, where, from the advance of the negroes on that town, the consternation was heart-rending. The place was now entirely surrounded with blazing plantations, and even the hideous outcries could be heard of those fiends, who were every where triumphant in their march of desolation and massacre. The advance guard established on the plantation Bongars, had been affrighted from its defense of that post, and thus the two most beautiful quarters of the colony, those of Morin and Limonade, were given to the torches of the rebels. They even advanced to the Haut de Cap, and the cannon brought to play upon their huddled masses was scarcely sufficient to check them in their headlong march. The return of Tousard upon their rear dispersed them, but by his retreat they were left in undisputed possession of the country. They immediately extended their ravages-from the sea-shore to the mountains, and when nothing more was left for them to destroy, their headlong tumultuousness began to give place in their leisure to a regular organization and a more systematic warfare. Their continuance in the field, notwithstanding the vast amount of plunder to tempt them from their course, and the celerity and skilfulness of their movements, had already given rise to the suspicion that they were guided in their enterprise by some being superior to themselves. They no longer exposed themselves in masses to the destructive sweep of cannon and small arms, but by scattering their detachments, by suddenly dispersing to the shelter of hedges and thickets, when occasion required, they often succeeded in surprising or surrounding their enemy, and when neither could be done, in crushing them by a vast superiority in numbers. While the preparations for the attack were in progress, their obies performed the Ouangah, or mysterious rite to their demons, by which the imaginations of the multitude were heated and strained to the utmost degree of tension, and the women and children danced an accompaniment to the ceremony with bowlings and outcries that savored of Pandemonium. Amid the excitement of this wild uproar, the attack began with yells and terrific gesticulations. If they met with a firm and effective resistance, the energy of their attack soon slackened; but if the defense was weak and faltering, their boldness and audacity became extreme. They rushed forward to the cannon's mouth, and thrusting in their arms and bodies, purchased the retreat of the enemy by this self-immolation. Contortions and bowlings were not the only means they used to intimidate their adversaries — the flames which they applied to the highly inflammable fields of cane, to the houses and mills of the plantations, and to their own cabins, covered the heavens with clouds of smoke by day, and illuminated the horizon by night with gleams that gave to every object the color of blood. After a silence the most profound, there would arise an outcry from their camp the most appalling; this would again be followed by the plaintive cries of their prisoners, whom the savages made it their sport to sacrifice at their advance posts.
The insurgents, in full possession of the plain of Cape François, were reveling amidst the spoils of the vanquished. The colonists, to intimidate them, changed the sluggish and inefficient war they were carrying on to one of extermination. This was ill-timed and impolitic, for the insurrection had grown too strong to yield to fear, and the negroes repaid the cruelty by augmenting the tortures of their own captives. The negro chiefs would have no neutrals among those of their race, and the more faithful slaves, who were found concealing themselves from the rebels, were immediately put to de by their own countrymen. On the other hand, parties of enraged whites were traversing the country, and, with an undiscriminating vengeance, killing every living thing that was black. The faithful slave, who, in this reciprocal destruction, came to claim the protection of his master against those who on either side sought his life, was in many instances put to death by that very master himself. This blind severity served no purpose but to swell the ranks of the rebels, for the peaceable negro could find no security for his life but by assuming arms in the ranks of his countrymen.
In the first moments of the rebellion, the negroes had murdered all their prisoners, but as success increased, the complacency of triumph taught them more clemency, or perhaps they had become glutted with cruelty and crime. They no longer massacred the women and children, and only showed themselves cruel to their prisoners taken in battle, whom they put to death with such studied tortures as cannot be named without a thrill of horror. They tore them with red-hot pincers — sawed them asunder between planks — roasted them by a slow fire — or tore out their eyes with red-hot cork-screws. Their principal leader, Jean François, assumed the title of grand admiral of France, and his lieutenant, Biasson, called himself generalissimo of the conquered country. They were evidently under the guidance and instruction of demons higher in intelligence than they. The rebels stated that they were in arms for their king, whom their enemies and his had cast into prison; but at other times they asserted that their sole object was to save themselves from their tyrants, the planters.
Te Deum was daily sung by both belligerents, in impious thanksgiving to God for what was nothing but a continued massacre. The heads of murdered whites, stuck on poles, surrounded the camp of the rebels, and the hedges that bordered the way conducting to the posts of the whites were filled with the dead bodies of negroes swinging in the wind.
After a long succession of skirmishes which had resulted in nothing but to drive the rebels from the plain to the mountains, whence after the withdrawal of the troops they rushed back again to the plain, the negroes were nearly subdued by a combined movement, which had been ordered by M. Blanchelande, and executed by M. Tousard. Camp Lecocque and Acul were taken by the whites, and a large body of negroes were surrounded upon the plantation Alquier, who were surprised by night, and all who were unable to effect an escape were cut in pieces. M. Tousard was fortunate enough in this expedition to save from the hands of the negroes a great number of white children, and eighty white females, who were found shut up in the church at Limbé.
The rebels ascribed their late disasters to treason in their camp. A negro named Jeannot was of all their-chieftains the most ferocious. Suspecting the fidelity of a negro under his orders, who was also accused of having saved his master from the knives of the insurgents, this monster ordered that he should be cut in pieces and thrown into the fire, on the charge that he had drawn the balls from the cartridges of the blacks in their late unsuccessful conflicts with M. Tousard. Other acts of cruelty still more revolting are related of this rebel chief. The plantation of M. Paradole, situated on Grande Riviere, suffered an attack from the insurgents, in which the proprietor himself was made a prisoner. Four of his children, who in the first moments of their panic had fled to places of concealment, came to implore the negro chief to liberate their father. This filial devotion, which was interpreted as defiance by the unfeeling black, irritated him to fury. He ordered that the four young men should be slain separately before the eyes of their parent, who was then himself put to death, the last victim in this domestic tragedy. The atrocity of this action was even too much for Jean François, who had already become jealous of Jeaunot's growing ascendency. The latter affected the state and bearing of a monarch, never proceeding to mass but in a chariot drawn by six horses. The envy of Jean Francois was soon imbodied in action. He attacked his associate chief and overcame him, and the monster was shot at the foot of a tree that had been fitted up with iron hooks upon which to hang his living victims by the middle of the body. Buckman, also, the original leader in the insurrection, fell a sacrifice to the vengeance of the whites during this expedition of M. Tousard, and his head was brought into Cape François and exposed on the gates of the town.
While ruin was thus universal in the north, the mulattoes of the south were seizing the present conjuncture to establish their rights by force. Their leaders showed themselves more skillful than Ogé. Instead of remaining in Port-au-Prince, they made their rendezvous at Croix des Bouquets, and made no demonstration of their design till their organization had been made complete. Port-au-Prince considered itself strong enough to punish this schism, and the military force of the place took up their march immediately for the encampment of the mulattoes. Some detachments of cavalry from both sides had already met in the plain of Cul de Sac, and the advantage was clearly on the side of the mulattoes. On the night of the 1st of September, a body of adventurers and sailors, joined to a force of two hundred troops of the line and a detachment of the national guard, and furnished with a small train of artillery, set off from Port-an-Prince to attack the post of Croix des Bouquets. They continued their march until the break of day, when they found themselves in the grounds of the plantation Pernier, and the fields of cane in flames on every side of their column. A brisk fire of musketry from an ambuscade of mulattoes immediately followed, and the field was strewed with killed and wounded. The whites were thrown into disorder, and their rout soon became complete. The mulattoes, with admirable tact, followed up their advantage by making immediate offers to negotiate, which their defeated opponents accepted without a moment's hesitation. A treaty was made, called a concordat, in which the whites promised to make no farther opposition to the late decree of the national assembly, as well as to recognize the political equality of mulattoes with themselves, and to secure the complete indemnification of all those who had suffered for political offenses, either in property, person or life. The mulattoes demanded that the garrison of Port-au-Prince should be composed of whites and mulattoes in equal numbers — that the judges who had condemned Ogé should be consigned to infamy — that the future legislature of the colony should be composed of members chosen conformably to the late decree, and that whenever the principles of this decree were not recognized in the elections, both contracting parties should unite to enforce their execution. The discussions being all finished on the several articles of this treaty, which secured to the mulattoes all that they had ever demanded, it was signed oil the 23d of October, 1791.
Meantime the war continued in the plain of Cape François with unmitigated fierceness, and human blood still flowed in torrents amid the cruelty practiced on both sides. It was estimated that within the space of two months, more than two thousand whites had fallen victims to the insurrection — that one hundred and eighty sugar plantations, and nearly nine hundred plantations of coffee, cotton and indigo had been laid waste, and their mills and houses consumed to ashes. The negroes, in the wantonness of their fury, left nothing undestroyed that was not in itself indestructible. The thick walls of edifices, which remained standing after the tire had consumed all enclosed within them, were by painful manual effort razed to the ground. The iron kettles of the boiling houses, and the bells which called them to their labors, were crushed into atoms, as if to destroy from the very face of the earth all memorials of former servitude. Twelve hundred families, once opulent and happy, were reduced to utter poverty, and driven in their destitution to subsist on public charity or private hospitality in their own or foreign countries. More than ten thousand of the rebels also had perished by the sword or by famine, and many hundreds of them had met their fate from the hands of the public executioner.
Meanwhile strange proceedings relative to the colonies were occurring in the mother country. The news of the insurrection of the blacks had not had time to reach Paris; but the intelligence of the manner in which the decree of the 15th of May had been received by the whites in St. Domingo, had created great alarm. We are afraid we have been too hasty with that decree of ours about the rights of the mulattoes; it is likely, by all accounts, to occasion a civil war between them and the whites; and if so, we run the risk of losing the colony altogether." This was the common talk of the politicians of Paris. Accordingly, they hastened to undo what they had done four months before, and on the 24th of September the national assembly actually repealed the decree of the 15th of May by a large majority. Thus the mother country and the colony were at cross purposes; for at the very moment that the colony was admitting the decree, the mother country was repealing it.
The flames of war were immediately rekindled in the colony. "The decree is repealed," said the whites; "we need not have been in such a hurry in making concessions to the mulattoes." "The decree is repealed," said the mulattoes; "the people in Paris are playing false with us; we must depend on ourselves in future. There is no possibility of coming to terms with the whites; either they must exterminate us, or we must exterminate them."
Hostilities were renewed in the streets of Port-au-Prince. A battery of twenty cannons opened its fire upon the ranks of the armed mulattoes, who retreated from the city and gained the road to the mountains. Scarcely had they departed, when both the north and south portions of the city were discovered to be on fire, and in an incredibly short space of time the whole city was wrapt in conflagration. The fire made such progress that no exertions could arrest it, and it continued to rage for forty-eight hours, when it began to abate for want of further materials to minister to its fury, and twenty-seven out of thirty squares of the town were utterly destroyed.
Affright, disorder and pillage augmented the horrors of the calamity. The fire was of course attributed to the mulattoes; and their wives and children, two thousand in number, found themselves obliged to fly, not only from their burning habitations, but from the sword with which, in the blindness of vengeance, the whites were pursuing them. Driven by this two-fold terror, they fled to the country or rushed toward the sea shore, where, not finding boats enough to contain them, and in their anxiety to escape the death that was following on their footsteps, pressing in crowds upon each other, great numbers of them were forced into the sea, there to find a death as dreadful as that they were escaping. The accusation was afterwards transferred to the merchants, who were charged with having recourse to this means of destroying all documents and securities, as an easy method of ridding themselves from such liabilities. Suspicion was immediately taken for evidence, and executions followed; the mercantile establishments which had escaped the fire, were given up to be pillaged by the mob. A simpler explanation, says Lacroix, is easy. In a town built entirely of wood, and upon a soil where a burning sun dries up every thing not endowed with life, the wadding of a single cartridge would be sufficient to kindle a fire upon the roofs of houses as inflammable as tinder; and that a battle could be fought in such a place without causing a conflagration would be a matter of astonishment. The loss has been estimated at fifty million francs.
The year 1791 was concluded amid scenes of war, pestilence and bloodshed. The whites, collected in forts and cities, bade defiance to the insurgents. The mulattoes and blacks fought on the same side, sometimes under one standard, sometimes in separate bands. A large colony of blacks, consisting of slaves broken loose from the plantations, settled in the mountains under the two leaders, Jean François and Biassou. They planted provisions for their subsistence, and watched for opportunities to make irruptions into the plains.
The national assembly had sent three commissioners to the island to restore peace and subordination to the distracted colony. At the time of their departure they had not been informed of the slave insurrection, nor the vast extent of the calamity that was then desolating the country. On their arrival, the commissioners were struck with horror and astonishment at what they saw. At Cape François they found two wheels and five gibbets in constant employ, to execute the numerous victims that were daily adjudged to death. Horror and loathing made them insensible to the civilities which were proffered them, and despairing of effecting any beneficial measure, they returned to France. Meanwhile the revolution in the mother country was proceeding; the republican party and the Amis des Noirs were rising into power; and on the 4th of April, 1792, a new decree was passed, declaring more emphatically than before the rights of the people of color, and appointing three new commissioners, who were to proceed to St. Domingo and exercise sovereign power in the colony. These commissioners arrived on the 13th of September, dissolved the colonial assembly and sent the governor, M. Blanchelande, home to be guillotined. With great appearance of activity, the commissioners commenced their duties; and as the mother country was too busy about its own affairs to attend to their proceedings, they acted as they pleased, and contrived, out of the general wreck, to amass large sums of money for their own use; till at length, in the beginning of 1793, the revolutionary government at home, having a little more leisure to attend to colonial affairs, revoked the powers of the commissioners, and appointed a new governor, M. Galbaud. When M. Galbaud arrived in the island, there ensued a struggle between him and the commissioners, ho being empowered to supersede them, and they refusing to submit. At length the commissioners calling in the assistance of the revolted negroes, M. Galbaud was expelled from the island, and forced to take refuge in the United States. While this strange struggle for the governorship of the colony lasted, the condition of the colony itself was growing worse and worse. The plantations remained uncultivated, the whites and the mulattoes were still at war, masses of savage negroes were quartered in the hills, in fastnesses from which they could not be dislodged, and from which they could rush down unexpectedly to commit outrages in the plains.
In daily jeopardy of their lives, and seeing no prospect of a return of prosperity, immense numbers of the white colonists were quitting the island. Many families had emigrated to the neighboring island of Jamaica, many to the United States, and some even had sought refuge, like the royalists of the mother country, in Great Britain. Through these persons, as well as through the refugees from the mother country, overtures had been made to the British government for the purpose of inducing it to take possession of the island of St. Domingo and convert it into a British colony; and in 1793, the British government, against which the French republic had now declared war, began to listen favorably to the proposals. General Williamson, the lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, was instructed to send troops from that island to St. Domingo, and attempt to wrest it out of the hands of the French. Accordingly, on the 20th of September, 1793, about 870 British soldiers, under Colonel Whitelocke, landed in St. Domingo — a force miserably defective for such an enterprise. The number of troops was afterward increased, and the British were able to effect the capture of Port-au-Prince, and also some ships which were in the harbor. Alarmed by this success, the French commissioners, Santhonax and Polverel, issued a decree abolishing negro slavery, at the same time inviting the blacks to join them against the British invaders. Several thousand did so; but the great majority fled to the hills, swelling the army of the negro chiefs, Francois and Biassou, and luxuriating in the liberty which they had so suddenly acquired.
It was at this moment of utter confusion and disorganization, when British, French, mulattoes, and blacks, were all acting their respective parts in the turmoil, and all inextricably intermingled in a bewildering war, which was neither a foreign war nor a civil war, nor a war of races, but a composition of all three — it was at this moment that Toussaint L'Ouverture appeared the spirit and the ruler of the storm.
He was one of the most extraordinary men of a period when extraordinary men were numerous, and beyond all question, the highest specimen of negro genius the world has yet seen. He was born in St. Domingo, on the plantation of the count de Noé, a few miles distant from Cape François, in the year 1743. His father and mother were African slaves on the count's estate. On the plantation there was a black of the name of Pierre-Baptiste, a shrewd, intelligent man, who had acquired much information, besides having been taught the elements of what would be termed a plain education by some benevolent missionaries. Between Pierre and young Toussaint an intimacy sprung up, and all that Pierre had learned from the missionaries, Toussaint learned from him. His acquisitions, says our French authority, amounted to reading, writing, arithmetic, a little Latin, and an idea of geometry. It was a fortunate circumstance that the greatest natural genius among the negroes of St. Domingo was thus singled out to receive the unusual gift of a little instruction. Toussaint's qualifications gained him promotion; he was made the coachman of M. Bayou, the overseer of the count de Noé — a situation as high as a negro could hope to fill. In this, and in other still higher situations to which he was subsequently advanced, his conduct was irreproachable, so that while he gained the confidence of his master, every negro in the plantation held him in respect. Three particulars are authentically known respecting his character at this period of his life, and it is somewhat remarkable that all are points more peculiarly of moral than of intellectual superiority. He was noted, it is said, for an exceedingly patient temper, for great affection for brute animals, and for a strong, unswerving attachment to one female whom he had chosen for his wife. It is also said that he manifested singular strength of religious sentiment. In person, he was above the middle size, with a striking countenance, and a robust constitution, capable of enduring any amount of fatigue, and requiring little sleep.
Toussaint was about forty-eight years of age when the insurrection of the blacks took place in August, 1791. Great exertions were made by the insurgents to induce a negro of his respectability and reputation to join them in their first outbreak, but he steadily refused. It is also known that it was owing to Toussaint's care and ingenuity that his master, M. Bayou, and his family escaped being massacred. He hid them in the woods for several days, visited them at the risk of his own life, secured the means of their escape from the island, and, after they were settled in the United States, sent them such remittances as he could manage to snatch from the wreck of their property. Such conduct, in the midst of such barbarities as were then enacting, indicates great originality and moral independence of character. After his master's escape, Toussaint, who had no tie to retain him longer in servitude, and who, besides, saw reason and justice in the struggle which his race was making for liberty, attached himself to the bands of negroes then occupying the hills, commanded by François and Biassou. In the negro army Toussaint at once assumed a leading rank; and a certain amount of medical knowledge, which he had picked up in the course of his reading, enabled him to unite the functions of army physician with those of military officer. Such was Toussaint's position in the end of the year 1793, when the British landed in the island.
It is necessary here to describe, as exactly as the confusion will permit, the true state of parties in the island. The British, as we already know, were attempting to take the colony out of the hands of the French republic, and annex it to the crown of Great Britain; and in this design they were favored by the few French royalists still resident in the island. The French commissioners Santhonax and Polverel, on the other hand, men ol the republican school, were attempting, with a motley army of French, mulattoes and blacks, to beat back the British. The greater part of the mulattoes of the island, grateful for the exertions which the republicans and the Amis des Noirs had made on their behalf, attached themselves to the side of the commissioners and the republic which they represented. It may naturally be supposed that the blacks would attach themselves to the same party — to the party of those whose watchwords were liberty and equality, and who consequently were the sworn enemies of slavery; but such was not the case. Considerable numbers of the negroes, it is true, were gained over to the cause of the French republic by the manifesto the commissioners had published abolishing slavery; but the bulk of them kept aloof, and constituted a separate negro army. Strangely enough, this army declared itself anti-republican. Before the death of Louis XVI., the blacks had come to entertain a strong sympathy with the king, and a violent dislike to the republicans. This may have been owing either to the policy of their leaders, François and Biassou, or to the simple fact that the blacks had suffered much at the hands of republican whites. At all events, the negro armies called themselves the armies of the king while he was alive; and after he was dead, they refused to consider themselves subjects of the republic. In these circumstances, one would at first be apt to fancy they would side with the British when they landed on the island. But it must be remembered that, along with the blind and unintelligent royalism of the negroes, they were animated by a far stronger and far more real feeling, namely, the desire of freedom and the horror of again being subjected to slavery; and this would very effectually prevent their assisting the British. If they did so, they would be only changing their masters; St. Domingo would become a British colony, and they, like the negroes of Jamaica, would become slaves of British planters. No, it was liberty they wanted, and the British would not give them that. They hung aloof, therefore, not acting consistently with the French, much less with the British, but watching the course of events, and ready, at any given moment, to precipitate themselves into the contest and strike a blow for negro independence.
The negroes, however, in the meantime had the fancy to call themselves royalists, François having assumed the title of grand admiral of France, and Biassou that of generalissimo of the conquered districts. Toussaint held a military command under them, and acted also as army physician. Every day his influence over the negroes was extending; and François became so envious of Toussaint's growing reputation as to cast him into prison, apparently with the further purpose of destroying him. Toussaint, however, was released by Biassou, who, although described as a monster of cruelty, appears to have had some sparks of generous feeling. Shortly after this, Biassou's drunken ferocity rendered it necessary to deprive him of all command, and François and Toussaint became joint leaders, Toussaint acting in the capacity of lieutenant-general, and Francois in that of general-in-chief. The negro army at this time judged it expedient to enter the service of Spain, acting in cooperation with the governor of the Spanish colony in the other end of the island, who had been directed by his government at home to carry on war against the French commissioners. Toussaint was for some time an officer in the Spanish service, acting under the directions of Joachim Garcia, the president of the Spanish colonial council. In this capacity he distinguished himself greatly. With 600 men, he beat a body of 1500 French out of a strong post which they had occupied near the Spanish town of St. Raphael; and afterwards he took in succession the villages of Marmelade, Henneri, Plaisance, and Gonăives. He was appointed lieutenant-general of the army, and presented at the same time with a sword and a badge of honor in the name of his Catholic majesty. But the Marquis D'Hermona having been succeeded in the command by another, Toussaint began to find his services less appreciated. His old rival, François, did his best to undermine his influence among the Spaniards; nay, it is said, laid a plot for his assassination, which Toussaint narrowly escaped. He had to complain also of the bad treatment which certain French officers, who had surrendered to him, and whom he had persuaded to accept a command under him, had received at the hands of the Spaniards. All these circumstances operated on the mind of Toussaint, and shook the principles on which he had hitherto acted. While hesitating with respect to his next movements, intelligence of the decree of the French convention of the 4th of February, 1194, by which the abolition of negro slavery was confirmed, reached St. Domingo; and this immediately decided the step he should take. Quitting the Spanish service, he joined the French general Laveaux, who — the commissioners Santhonax and Polverel having been recalled — was now invested with the sole governorship of the colony; took the oath of fidelity to the French republic; and being elevated to the rank of brigadier-general, assisted Laveaux in his efforts to drive the English troops out of the island.
In his new capacity, Toussaint was no less successful than he had been while fighting under the Spanish colors. In many engagements, both with the British and the Spaniards, he rendered signal services to the cause of the French. At first, however, the French commander Laveaux showed little disposition to place confidence in him. It is highly creditable, therefore, to this French officer, that when he came to have more experience of Toussaint L'Ouverture, he discerned his extraordinary abilities, and esteemed him as much as if he had been a French gentleman educated in the schools of Paris. The immediate occasion of the change of the sentiments of Laveaux towards Toussaint was as follows: In the month of March, 1795, an insurrection of mulattoes occurred at the town of the Cape, and Laveaux was seized and placed in confinement. On hearing this, Toussaint marched at the head of 10,000 blacks to the town, obliged the inhabitants to open the gates by the threat of a siege, entered in triumph, released the French commander, and reinstated him in his office. In gratitude for this act of loyalty, Laveaux appointed Toussaint lieutenant-governor of the colony, declaring his resolution at the same time to act by his advice in all matters, whether military or civil — a resolution the wisdom of which will appear when we reflect that Toussaint was the only man in the island who could govern the blacks. A saying of Laveaux is also recorded, which shows what a decided opinion he had formed of Toussaint's abilities: — "It is this black," said he, "this Spartacus, predicted by Raynal, who is destined to avenge the wrongs done to his race."
A wonderful improvement soon followed the appointment of L'Ouverture as lieutenant-governor of the colony. The blacks, obedient to their champion, were reduced under strict military discipline, and submitted to all the regulations of orderly civil government.
Since the departure of the commissioners Santhonax and Polverel, the whole authority of the colony, both civil and military, had been in the hands of Laveaux; but in the end of the year 1195, a new commission arrived from the mother country. At the head of this commission was Santhonax, and his colleagues were Giraud, Raymond, and Leblanc. The new commissioners, according to their instructions, overwhelmed Toussaint with thanks and compliments; told him he had made the French republic his everlasting debtor, and encouraged him to persevere in his efforts to rid the island of the British. Shortly afterwards, Laveaux, being nominated a member of the legislature, was obliged to return to France; and in the month of April, 1196, Toussaint L'Ouverture was appointed his successor, as commander-in-chief of the French forces in St. Domingo. Thus, by a remarkable succession of circumstances, was this negro, at the age of fifty-three years, fifty of which had been passed in a state of slavery, placed in the most important position in the island.
Toussaint now began to see his way more clearly, and to become conscious of the duty which Providence had assigned him. Taking all things into consideration, he resolved on being no longer a tool of foreign governments, but to strike a grand blow for the permanent independence of his race. To accomplish this object, he felt that it was necessary to assume and retain, at least for a time, the supreme civil as well as military command. Immediately, therefore, on becoming commander-in-chief in St. Domingo, he adopted measures for removing all obstructions to the exercise of his authority. General Rochambeau had been sent from France with a military command similar to that which Laveaux had held; but finding himself a mere cipher, he became unruly, and Toussaint instantly sent him home. Santhonax, the commissioner, too, was an obstacle in the way; and Toussaint, after taking the precaution of ascertaining that he would be able to enforce obedience, got rid of him by the delicate pretext of making him the bearer of dispatches to the Directory. Along with Santhonax, several other officious personages were sent to France; the only person of any official consequence who was retained being the commissioner Raymond, who was a mulatto, and might be useful. As these measures, however, might draw down the vengeance of the Directory, if not accompanied by some proofs of good-will to France, Toussaint sent two of his sons to Paris to be educated, assuring the Directory at the same time that, in removing Santhonax and his coadjutors, he had been acting for the best interests of the colony. "I guarantee," he wrote to the Directory, "on my own personal responsibility, the orderly behavior and the good-will to France of my brethren the blacks. You may depend, citizen directors, on happy results; and you shall soon see whether I engage in vain ray credit and your hopes."
The people of Paris received with a generous astonishment the intelligence of the doings of the negro prodigy, and the interest they took in the novelty of the case prevented them from being angry. The Directory, however, judged it prudent to send out General Hedouville, an able and moderate man, to superintend Toussaint's proceedings, and restrain his boldness.
The evacuation of St. Domingo by the English in 1798, did not remove all Toussaint's difficulties. The mulattoes, influenced partly by a rumor that the French Directory meditated the reëstablishment of the exploded distinction of color, partly by a jealous dislike to the ascendency which a pure negro had gained in the colony, rose in insurrection under the leadership of Rigaud and Petion, two able and educated mulattoes. The insurrection was formidable; but, by a judicious mingling of severity with caution, Toussaint quelled it, reducing Rigaud and Petion to extremities; and the arrival of a deputation from France in the year 1799, bringing a confirmation of his authority as commauder-in-chief in St. Domingo by the man who, under the title of first consul, had superseded the Directory, and now swayed the destinies of France, rendered his triumph complete. Petion and Rigaud, deserted by their adherents, and despairing of any further attempt to shake Toussaint's power, embarked for France.
Confirmed by Bonaparte in the powers which he had for some time been wielding in the colony with such good effect, Toussaint now paid exclusive attention to the internal affairs of the island. In the words of a French biographer, "he laid the foundation of a new state with the foresight of a mind that could discern what would decay and what would endure. St. Domingo rose from its ashes; the reign of law and justice was established; those who had been slaves were now citizens. Religion again reared her altars; and on the sites of ruins were built new edifices." Certain interesting particulars are also recorded, which give us a better idea of his habits and the nature of his government than these general descriptions. To establish discipline among his black troops, he gave all his superior officers the power of life and death over the subalterns: every superior officer "commanded with a pistol in his hand." In all cases where the original possessors of estates which had fallen vacant in the course of the troubles of the past nine years could be traced, they were invited to return and resume their property. Toussaint's great aim was to accustom the negroes to industrial habits. It was only by diligent agriculture, he said, that the blacks could ever raise themselves. Accordingly, while every trace of personal slavery was abolished, he took means to compel the negroes to work as diligently as ever they had done under the whip of their overseers. All those plantations the proprietors of which did not reappear, were lotted out among the negroes, who, as a remuneration for their labor, received one-third of the produce, the rest going to the public revenue. There were as yet no civil or police courts which could punish idleness or vagrancy, but the same purpose was served by courts-martial. The ports of the island were opened to foreign vessels, and every encouragement held out to traffic. In consequence of these arrangements, a must surprising change took place: the plantations were again covered with crops; the sugar-houses and distilleries were re-built; the i sport trade began to revive; and the population, orderly and well-behaved, began to increase. In addition to these external evidences of good government, the island exhibited those finer evidences which consist in mental culture and the civilization of manners. Schools were established, and books became common articles in the cottages of the negro laborers. Music and the theatre were encouraged; and public worship was conducted with all the usual pomp of the Romish church. The whites, the mulattoes, and the blacks mingled in the same society, and exchanged with each other all the courtesies of civilized intercourse. The commander-in-chief himself set the example by holding public levees, at which, surrounded by his officers, he received the visits of the principal colonists; and his private parties, it is said, "might have vied with the best regulated societies of Paris."
Successful in all his schemes of improvement, Toussaint had only one serious cause for dread. While he admired, and, it may be, imitated Napeoleon Bonaparte, he entertained a secret fear of the projects of that great general. Although Bonaparte, as first consul, had confirmed him in his command, several circumstances had occurred to excite alarm. He had sent two letters to Bonaparte, both headed, "The First of the Blacks to the First of the Whites," one of which announced the complete pacification of the island, and requested the ratification of certain appointments which he had made, and the other explained his reasons for cashiering a French official; but to these letters Bonaparte had not deigned to return an answer. Moreover, the representatives from St. Domingo had been excluded from the French senate; and rumors had reached the island that the first consul meditated the reëstablishment of slavery. Toussaint thought it advisable in this state of matters to be beforehand with the French consul in forming a constitution for the island, to supersede the military government with which it had hitherto been content. A draft of a constitution was accordingly drawn up by his directions, and with the assistance of the ablest Frenchmen in the island; and after being submitted to an assembly of representatives from all parts of St. Domingo, it was formally published on the 1st of July, 1801. By this constitution, the whole executive of the island, with the command of the forces, was to be intrusted to a governor-general. Toussaint was appointed governor-general for life; his successors were to hold office for five years each; and he was to have the power of nominating the first of them. Various other provisions were contained in the constitution, and its general effect was to give St. Domingo a virtual independence, under the guardianship of France.
Not disheartened by the taciturnity of Bonaparte, Toussaint again addressed him in respectful terms, and intreated his ratification of the new constitution. The first consul, however, had already formed the resolution of extinguishing Toussaint and taking possession of St. Domingo; and the conclusion of a treaty of peace with England (1st October, 1801,) increased his haste to effect the execution of his deceitful purpose. The expedition was equipped. It consisted of twenty-six ships of war and a number of transports, carrying an army of 25,000 men, the flower of the French troops, who embarked reluctantly. The command of the army was given to General Leclerc, the husband of Pauline Bonaparte, the consul's sister.
The French squadron reached St. Domingo on the 29th of January, 1802. "We are lost," said Toussaint, when he saw the ships approach; "all France is coming to St. Domingo." The invading army was divided into four bodies. General Kervesau, with one, was to take possession of the Spanish town of St. Domingo; General Rochambeau, with another, was to march on Fort Dauphin; General Boudet, with a third, on Port-au-Prince; and Leclerc himself, with the remainder, on Cape François. In all quarters the French were successful in effecting a landing. Rochambeau, in landing with his division, came to an engagement with the blacks who had gathered on the beach, and slaughtered a great number of them. At Cape François, Leclerc sent an intimidating message to Christophe, the negro whom Toussaint had stationed there as commander; but the negro replied that he was responsible only to Toussaint, his commander-in-chief. Perceiving, however, that his post was untenable, owing to the inclination of the white inhabitants of the town to admit Leclerc, Christophe set fire to the houses at night, and retreated to the hills by the light of the conflagration, carrying 2000 whites with him as hostages.
Although the French had effected a landing, the object of the invasion was yet far from being attained. Toussaint and the blacks had retired to the interior, and in fastnesses where no military force could reach them, they were preparing for future attacks.
The correspondence which Toussaint entered into with Leclerc produced no good result, and the war began in earnest. Toussaint and Christophe were declared outlaws, and battle after battle was fought with varying success. The mountainous nature of the interior greatly impeded the progress of the French. The Alps themselves, Leclerc said, were not nearly so troublesome to a military man as the hills of St Domingo. On the whole, however, the advantage was decidedly on the side of the French; and the blacks were driven by degrees out of their principal positions. The success of the French was not entirely the consequence of their military skill and valor; it was partly owing also to the effect which the proclamations of Leclerc had on the minds of the negroes and their commanders. If they were to enjoy the perfect liberty which these proclamations promised them, if they were to continue free men as they were now, what mattered it whether the French were in possession of the island or not? Such was the general feeling; and accordingly many of Toussaint's most eminent officers, among whom were Laplume and Maurepas, went over to the French. Deserted thus by many of his officers and by the great mass of the negro population, Toussaint, supported by his two bravest and ablest generals, Dessalines and Christophe, still held out, and protracted the war. Dessalines, besieged in the fort of Crete a Pierrot by Leclerc and nearly the whole of the French army, did not give up the defense until lie hud caused the loss to his besiegers of about 3000 men, including several distinguished officers; and even then, rushing out, he fought his way through the enemy, and made good his retreat.
The reduction of the fortress of Crete à Pierrot was considered decisive of the fate of the war; and Leclerc, deeming dissimulation no longer necessary, permitted many negroes to he massacred, and issued an order virtually reëstablishing the power of the old French colonists over their slaves. This rash step opened the eyes of the negroes who had joined the French; they deserted in masses; Toussaint was again at the head of an army; and Leclerc was in danger of losing all the fruits of his past labors, and being obliged to begin his enterprise over again. This was a very disagreeable prospect; for although strong reinforcements were arriving from France, the disorders incident to military life in a new climate were making large incisions into his army. He resolved, therefore, to fall back on his former policy; and on the 25th of April, 1802, he issued a proclamation directly opposite in its spirit to his former order, asserting the equality of the various races, and holding out the prospect of full citizenship to the blacks. The negroes were again deceived, and again deserted Toussaint. Christophe, too, despairing of any farther success against the French, entered into negotiation with Leclerc, securing as honorable terms as could be desired. The example of Christophe was imitated by Dessalines, and by Paul L'Ouverture, Toussaint's brother. Toussaint, thus left alone, was obliged to submit; and Christophe, in securing good terms for himself, had not neglected the opportunity of obtaining similar advantages for his commander-in-chief. On the 1st of May, 1802, a treaty was concluded between Leclerc and Toussaint L'Ouverture, the conditions of which were, that Toussaint should continue to govern St. Domingo as hitherto, Leclerc acting only in the capacity of French deputy, and that all the officers in Toussaint's army should be allowed to retain their respective ranks. "I swear," added Leclerc, "before the Supreme Being, to respect the liberty of the people of St. Domingo." Thus the war appeared to have reached a happy close: the whites and blacks mingled with each other once more as friends; and Toussaint retired to one of his estates near Gondives, to lead a life of quiet domestic enjoyment.
The instructions of the first consul, however, had been precise, that the negro chief should be sent as a prisoner to France. Many reasons recommended such a step as more likely than any other to break the spirit of independence among the blacks, and rivet the French power on the island. The expedition had been one of the most disastrous that France had ever undertaken. A pestilence resembling the yellow fever, but more fatal and terrible than even that dreadful distemper, had swept many thousands of the French to their graves. What with the ravages of the plague, and the losses in war, it was calculated that 30,000 men, 1,500 officers of various ranks, among whom were fourteen generals, and 700 physicians and surgeons, perished in the expedition.
It is our melancholy duty now to record one of the blackest acts committed by Napoleon. Agreeably to his orders, the person of Toussaint was treacherously arrested, while residing peacefully in his house near Gonáives. Two negro chiefs who endeavored to rescue him were killed on the spot, and a large number of his friends were at the same time made prisoners. The fate of many of these was never known; but Toussaint himself, his wife, and all his family, were carried at midnight on board the Hero man-of-war, then in the harbor, which immediately set sail for France. After a short passage of twenty-five days, the vessel arrived at Brest (June 1802); and here Toussaint took his last leave of his wife and family. They were sent to Bayonne; but by the orders of the first consul, he was carried to the chateau of Joux, in the east of France, among the Jura mountains. Placed in this bleak and dismal region, so different from the tropical climate to which he had been accustomed, his sufferings may easily be imagined. Not satisfied, however, with confining his unhappy prisoner to the fortress generally, Bonaparte enjoined that he should be secluded in a dungeon, and denied anything beyond the plainest necessaries of existence. For the first few months of his captivity, Toussaint was allowed to be attended by a faithful negro servant; but at length this single attendant was removed, and he was left alone in his misery and despair. It appears a rumor had gone abroad that Toussaint, during the war in St. Domingo, had buried a large amount of treasure in the earth; and during his captivity at Joux, an officer was sent by the first consul to interrogate him respecting the place where he had concealed it. "The treasures I have lost," said Toussaint, "are not those which you seek." After an imprisonment of ten months he was found dead in his dungeon on the 27th of April, 1803. He was sitting at the side of the fire-place, with his bauds resting on his legs, and his head drooping. The account given at the time was, that he had died of apoplexy; but some authors have not hesitated to ascribe it to less natural circumstances. "The governor of the fort," observes one French writer, "made two excursions to Neufchâtel, in Switzerland. The first time, he left the keys of the dungeons with a captain whom he chose to act for him during his absence. The captain accordingly had occasion to visit Toussaint, who conversed with him about his past life, and expressed his indignation at the design imputed to him by the first consul, of having wished to betray St. Domingo to the English. As Toussaint, reduced to a scanty farinaceous diet, suffered greatly from the want of coffee, to which he had been accustomed, the captain generously procured it for him. The first absence of the governor of the fort, however, was only an experiment. It was not long before he left the fort again, and this time said, with a mysterious, unquiet air to the captain, 'I leave you in charge of the fort, but I do not give you the keys of the dungeons; the prisoners do not require anything.' Four days after he returned, and Toussaint was dead — starved." According to another account, this miserable victim of despotism, and against whom there was no formal or reasonable charge, was poisoned; but this rests on no credible testimony, and there is reason to believe that Toussaint died a victim only to the severities of confinement in this inhospitable prison. This melancholy termination to his sufferings took place when he was sixty years of age.
The forcible suppression of Toussaint's government, and his treacherous removal from the island, did not prove a happy stroke of policy; and it would have been preferable for France to have at once established the independence of St. Domingo, than to have entered on the project of resuming it as a dependency on the old terms. Leclerc, with all the force committed to his care by Bonaparte, signally failed in his designs. The contemptuous and cruel manner in which the blacks were generally treated, and the attempts made to restore them as a class to slavery, provoked a wide-spread insurrection. Toussant's old friends and generals, Dessalines, Christophe, Clerveaux, and others, rose in arms. Battle after battle was fought, and all the resources of European military skill were opposed to the furious onsets of the negro masses. All was in vain: before October, the negroes, under the command of Dessalines and Christophe, had driven the French out of Fort Dauphin, Port de Paix, and other important positions. In the midst of these calamities, that is, on the 1st of November, 1802, Leclerc died, and Pauline Bonaparte returned to France with his body. Leclerc was succeeded in the command by Rochambeau, a determined enemy of the blacks. Cruelties such as Leclerc shrunk from were now employed to assist the French arms; unoffending negroes were slaughtered; and bloodhounds were imported from Cuba to chase the negro fugitives through the forests. Rochambeau, however, had a person to deal with who was capable of repaying cruelty with cruelty. Dessalines, who had assumed the chief command of the insurgents, was a man who, to great military talents and great personal courage, added a ferocious and sanguinary disposition. Hearing that Rochambeau had ordered 500 blacks to be shot at the Cape, he selected 500 French officers and soldiers from among his prisoners, and had them shot by way of reprisal. To complete the miseries of the French, the mulattoes of the south now joined the insurrection, and the war between France and England having recommenced, the island was blockaded by English ships, and provisions began to fail. In this desperate condition, after demanding assistance from the mother country, which could not be granted, Rochambeau negotiated with the negroes and the English for the evacuation of the island; and towards the end of November, 1803, all the French troops left St. Domingo.
On the departure of the French, Dessalines, Christophe, and the other generals proclaimed the independence of the island "in the name of the blacks and the people of color." At the same time they invited the return of all whites who had taken no part in the war; but, added they, "if any of those who imagined they would restore slavery return hither, they shall meet with nothing but chains and deportation." On the first of January, 1804, at an assembly of the generals and chiefs of the army, the independence of the island was again solemnly declared, and all present bound themselves by an oath to defend it. At the same time, to mark their formal renunciation of all connection with France, it was resolved that the name of the island be
changed from St. Domingo to Hayti, the name given to it by its original Indian inhabitants. Jean Jacques Dessalines was appointed governor-general for life, with the privilege of nominating his successor.
The rule of Dessalines was a sanguinary, but, on the whole, a salutary one. He began his government by a treacherous massacre of nearly all the French who. remained in the island trusting to his false promises of protection. All other Europeans, however, except the French, were treated with respect Dessalines encouraged the importation of Africans into Hayti, saying that since they were torn from their country it was certainly better that they should be employed to recruit the strength of a rising nation of blacks, than to serve the whites of all countries as slaves. On the 8th of October, 1804, Dessalines exchanged his plain title of governor-general for the more pompous one of emperor. He was solemnly inaugurated under the name of James I., emperor of Hayti; and the ceremony of his coronation was accompanied by the proclamation of a new constitution, the main provisions of which were exceedingly judicious. All Haytian subjects, of whatever color, were to be called blacks, entire religious toleration was decreed, schools were established, public worship encouraged, and measures adopted similar to those which Toussaint had employed for creating and fostering an industrial spirit among the negroes. As a preparation for any future war, the interior of the island was extensively planted with yams, bananas, and other articles of food, and many forts built in advantageous situations. Under these regulations the island again began to show symptoms of prosperity. Dessalines was a man in many respects fitted to be the first sovereign of a people rising out of barbarism. Born the slave of a negro mechanic, he was quite illiterate, but had great natural abilities, united to a very ferocious temper. His wife was one of the most beautiful and best educated negro women in Hayti. A pleasant trait of his character is his seeking out his old master after he became emperor, and making him his butler. It was, he said, exactly the situation the old man wished to fill, as it afforded him the means of being always drunk. Dessalines himself drank nothing but water. For two years this negro continued to govern the island; but at length his ferocity provoked his mulatto subjects to form a conspiracy against him, and on the 17th of October, 1806, he was assassinated by the soldiers of Petion, who was his third in command.
On the death of Dessalines, a schism took place in the island. Christophe, who had been second in command, assumed the government of the northern division of the island, the capital of which was Cape François; and Petion, the mulatto general, assumed the government of the southern division, the capital of which was Port-au-Prince. For several years a war was carried on between the two rivals, each endeavoring to depose the other, and become chief of the whole of Hayti; but at length hostilities ceased, and by a tacit agreement, Petion came to be regarded as legitimate governor of the south and west, where the mulattoes were most numerous; and Christophe as legitimate governor in the north, where the population consisted chiefly of blacks. Christophe, trained, like Dessalines, in the school of Toussaint L'Ouverture was a slave born, and an able as well as a benevolent man; but, like most of the negroes who had arrived at his period of life, he had not had the benefit of any systematic education. Petion, on the other hand, had been educated in the military academy of Paris, and was accordingly as accomplished and well-instructed as any European officer. The title with which Petion was invested, was that of president of the republic of Hayti; the southern and western districts preferring the republican form of government. For some time Christophe bore the simple title of chief magistrate, and was in all respects the president of a republic like Petion; but the blacks have always shown a liking for the monarchical form of government; and accordingly, on the 2d of June, 1811, Christophe, by the desire of his subjects, assumed the regal title of Henry I., king of Hayti. The coronation was celebrated in the most gorgeous manner; and at the same time the creation of an aristocracy took place, the first act of the new sovereign being to name four princes, seven dukes, twenty-two counts, thirty barons, and ten knights.
Both parts of the island were well governed, and rapidly advanced in prosperity and civilization. On the restoration of the Bourbons to the French throne, some hope seems to have been entertained in France that it might be possible yet to obtain a footing in the island, and commissioners were sent out to collect information respecting its condition; but the conduct both of Christophe and Petion was so firm, that the impossibility of subverting the independence of Hayti became manifest. The island was therefore left in the undisturbed possession of the blacks and mulattoes. In 1818 Petion died, and was succeeded by General Boyer, a mulatto who had been in France, and had accompanied Leclerc in his expedition. In 1820, Christophe having become involved in differences with his subjects, shot himself; and the two parts of the island were then reunited under the general name of the republic of Hayti, General Boyer being the first president. In the following year, the Spanish portion of the island, which for a long time had been in a languishing condition, voluntarily placed itself under the government of Boyer, who thus became the head of a republic including the entire island of St. Domingo. In 1825, a treaty was concluded between President Boyer and Charles X. of France, by which France acknowledged the independence of Hayti, in considertion of 150 millions of francs (£6,000,000 sterling,) to be paid by the island In five annual instalments, as a compensation for the losses sustained by the French colonists during the revolution. The first instalment was paid in 1836; but as it was found impossible to pay the remainder, the terms of the agreement were changed in 1838, and France consented to accept 60 millions of francs (£2,400,000,) to be liquidated in six instalments before the year 1867
As the engagements which Boyer had entered into with the French increased the taxation and bore hard upon the population, an insurrection broke out against his authority in May, 1838. This was suppressed, but was followed by repeated collisions between the president and the representative body. tn 1842 a revolution broke out and President Boyer was compelled to flee to Jamaica; and in 1844 the inhabitants of the Spanish portion rose, overpowered their Haytian oppressors, and formed themselves into a republic, under the name of Santo Domingo. After various individuals had, for a short period, occupied the presidential chair of the Haytiau republic, the election fell upon General Soulouque, who, in 1849, made an unsuccessful attempt to subjugate the Dominican republic. In the latter part of the same year, however, he ascended the throne of the Haytian republic, under the title of Emperor Faustin I. The independence of the Dominican republic was virtually recognized by Great Britain, by the appointment of a consul to it, in 1849; and it was formally recognized by a treaty of amity and commerce, ratified September 10, 1850. It has also been recognized by France and Denmark; but the Emperor Faustin I. (Soulouque) still refused to recognize its independence.
The present population of the whole island is estimated at 950,000. The effective force of the llaytian army is estimated at 40,000 men, and that of the navy 15 small vessels and 1000 men. Hayti now possesses an established system of government, an established system of education, a literature, commerce, manufactures, a rich and cultivated class in society. In the short space of half a century, it has raised itself from the depths and degradation of servitude to the condition of a flourishing and respectable state. Slavery has been eradicated in the new world from the very spot of its origin.
