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Title: St. Domingo, its revolution and its hero, Toussaint Louverture.

Author: Charles Wyllys Elliott

Release date: March 13, 2023 [eBook #70281]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: J. A. Dix

Credits: Bob Taylor, deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. DOMINGO, ITS REVOLUTION AND ITS HERO, TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE. ***





  Transcriber’s Note
  Italic text displayed as: _italic_




  HEROES ARE HISTORIC MEN.

  ST. DOMINGO,

  ITS

  REVOLUTION

  AND ITS

  HERO,

  TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE.

  AN HISTORICAL DISCOURSE CONDENSED FOR THE NEW YORK LIBRARY
  ASSOCIATION, FEBRUARY 26, 1855.

  BY C. W. ELLIOTT.

  Printed for the uses of the Committee.


  NEW YORK:
  J. A. DIX, PUBLISHER, 10 PARK PLACE.
  1855.




  Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
  C. W. ELLIOTT,
  In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States
  for the Southern District of New York.


  HOLMAN & GRAY, STEREOTYPERS AND PRINTERS,
  Corner Centre and White Streets, N. Y.




  Contents
                                                                   Page
      I.  THE BLACK MAN.                                              3
     II.  THE FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THOUSAND.                       4
    III.  THE MULATTOES.                                              8
     IV.  THE FEAST OF ST. LOUIS.                                    14
      V.  THE MAN.                                                   23
     VI.  CONFUSION.                                                 28
    VII.  TOUSSAINT.                                                 31
   VIII.  ENFRANCHISEMENT.                                           35
     IX.  THE OPENING.                                               36
      X.  PEACE.                                                     44
     XI.  PROSPERITY.                                                50
    XII.  GREATNESS.                                                 54
   XIII.  NAPOLEON.                                                  56
    XIV.  SAMANA.                                                    60
     XV.  CHILDREN.                                                  66
    XVI.  WAR AGAIN.                                                 68
   XVII.  DEFEAT.                                                    72
  XVIII.  TREACHERY.                                                 75
    XIX.  CONSEQUENCES.                                              80
     XX.  DEATH.                                                     82




I.


I have thought that a short life of TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE might
be desirable for two purposes:—one is, that it may, in some
degree, weaken that bitter prejudice of color, which denies the
blacks the rights of citizens—which drives them away from the
Communion-table—and will not let them enter an omnibus, nor, if it
can prevent it, into Heaven.

The other is, that it may encourage the blacks to deserve respect and
honor—as he did—by growing industrious, and rich, and intelligent,
and brave, and noble, and strong, and so prove their manhood against
all infidels, north and south—in the Church and out of it.

It should be borne in mind, that Toussaint was a negro, and that he
was not more ashamed of being black than he should be of being white.




II.


Columbus called the Island of St. Domingo “The Paradise of God.” The
beauty of its valleys, the wildness of its mountains, the tropical
luxuriance of its plains, confirm his opinion. But the Spaniards who
followed him cared not for beauty or fruitfulness; they were hungrier
then than now for gold, and plunged into the bosom of the beautiful
island for that: a million of the simple natives was sacrificed
without mercy or care, to discover and dig the yellow metal. Las
Casas only was moved to pity, and he said, “Might not the grosser
and hardier African be made to take these burdens, and spare this
destruction of the mild Indians?”

To steal, to seduce, and to buy negroes from the African coasts,
and to sell them to this island, soon became a great and profitable
traffic, yielding large returns to the Lisbon merchants. Kings and
emperors participated in it, and bishops did not always condemn.
Three hundred slave ships, every year, spread robbery, conflagration,
and carnage along the African coasts.[1] Eighty thousand creatures,
torn from their homes, crowded their holds, and were carried to
market. “The laws and usages of Africa forbade this,” but those of
Europe did not.[2]

As early as the year 1503, the importation of men from Guinea began,
blessed by the Pope, encouraged by the State. At that time, too, it
was no disgrace, and not rare to sell white slaves;[3] but they were
poor creatures apt, too soon, to break down. The true sources of
wealth in the island were found to be in the fruitful earth, not in
the unexplored mines, and after the settlement of the western part
by the Buccaneers, and the supremacy over it of France, emigration
became the rage. It was found to be profitable—plantations were
opened; the cry of “Sugar!” was heard; thirty per cent. profit
seduced capital; the importation of black slaves was stimulated.[4]
In the year 1790, their numbers had come to be 480,000, while that of
the whites was some 35,000, and of the free people of color, about
25,000.

All these 480,000 were worked to purpose. They were not there to seek
their own good, but to raise sugar and coffee for others—and they
were made to do it. So the island exported, in 1788, some 5,000,000
pounds sterling[5] worth of these things, and the mercantile world
was exultant. None asked if the _men_ of St. Domingo were steadily
advancing in intellect, and conscience, and strength, and manhood.
Who demanded schools? Who built hospitals? Who thanked God for a
new idea in St. Domingo? Literature and the Arts were unknown and
unheeded; not these, but “Sugar! sugar! more sugar!” was always heard.

The returns per negro were greater in St. Domingo than in Jamaica,
owing to one or both of these causes: 1st, that the land was more
fruitful; or, 2d, that the men were harder worked.

St. Domingo was, then, a tropical paradise, about the year 1790!
The planters were deeply in debt[6]—nigh every estate heavily
mortgaged—yet they got large returns and paid heavy interests—the
merchants freighted their ships, and made rich commissions; France
found places for her favorite courtiers, and a ready market for her
wares. Travelers were delighted with the balm of the atmosphere, the
hospitality of the planters, and the heedlessness of the negroes.
Humboldt was charmed—he said: “Every evening the slaves of both sexes
were to be seen dancing in festive circles—and the sound of music and
the voice of gladness were heard on all sides.” Happy slaves! simple
traveler.

’Tis true, some remembered that, away in the past (1522,)[7] the
slaves had risen, slain their overseers, and been hung by scores:
this was but the beginning. Other daring, desperate men had headed
them in 1702. Again, Polydor (1724), at the head of his brigands,
had ravaged and assassinated. Macandal, the one-handed negro, had
been burnt alive at the Cape, in 1758, and a superstitious memory
of the desperate chief lived among the negroes. He had proved his
brotherhood to the Borgias by his use of poison; with his Maroons
behind him, for years he had been the terror of the whites. The Chief
Kebinda had filled the mountains with his fame, as Rob Roy has the
hills of Scotland.




FOOTNOTES:

[1] LACROIX, _Mem., etc._, v. 1., p. 17.

[2] BROWN’S _Hist._, p. 36.

[3] B. EDWARDS, p. 202.

[4] EDWARDS, p. 143.

[5] DALMAS says 135,768,000 francs. Pref., p. 9.

[6] “For enormous debts were due to the commercial towns of France
from the planters.”—BROWN’S _Hist._, p. 227. [Brown detested the
Revolution, and had no faith in the negroes.]

[7] BROWN, p. 38.




III.


The mulatto yet holds a doubtful place in the history and destiny of
man. It is urged by many, that he has lost that pure and unlimited
sensuous nature which, in the black, will be the basis for a new and
surprising development, and that he has not gained the force of will
and nervous intellectual power which, in the present time, gives the
Caucasian race the control of the world. If this be so, we can look
in them but for an imitative civilization and a temporary existence,
and their large production in slave countries is then, at least,
a waste. We will look at them for a moment as they existed in St.
Domingo, where they nearly equaled the whites in numbers.

When the Revolution broke out in France, lavish luxury abounded among
the planters in the colony of St. Domingo; but the poor whites, “the
petits blancs,” were poor and discouraged, as they are in all slave
communities, and were envious of the rich planters.

The whites set up the tree of liberty, and shouted over the rights
of man, as they did in Paris. The poor whites (the petits blancs)
were bitter, the mulattoes discontent, and the slaves reckless,
or sullen, or indifferent. The planters did not believe themselves
fools or mad! When the mulatto Lacomb presented his petition to the
authorities, asking the rights and privileges of a man, in the name
of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, he was only hanged for doing it.
When a respectable planter, Beaudiere, at Petite Goave, presented a
petition, asking for rights for the mulattoes, he was simply derided,
and then torn in pieces.[8] The temper of the times was hot.

Many of the mulattoes were rich, many educated, with the tastes and
manners of well-bred men. The whites hated them from the moment that
it appeared that the “rights of man” included _them_, and that they
knew it. The self-constituted General Assembly of the whites declared
“that they would rather die than participate their political rights
with a bastard and degenerate race.” Both parties knew who had made
them bastards; and the injurers always hate the injured.

The mulattoes were by thousands the slaves of their own fathers—often
freed, and favored, but all despised. The murder-spots would never
out; no time, no talent, no wealth, no virtue, no genius, could wash
away the stain. African blood, even if of princes, “tainted the
character for ever!”[9] Their condition was worse, “in truth, much
worse,” than the same class in the British Islands.[10]

They could hold no public office—no mulatto could be a priest, or
a physician, or lawyer, or schoolmaster. He could not even take the
surname of his father. They were as the Tiers Etat of ancient France,
which at last drowned the noblesse in their own blood. By a law (not
often enforced) a mulatto who struck a white man, upon any pretext,
was to have that hand struck off; a white man who struck a free
mulatto was dismissed with a small fine.[11]

By law, the free mulattoes were at the mercy of the King’s army
officers—they could be compelled to serve indefinitely in the army,
as horse or foot, without pay, to provide themselves with arms and
to defray their expenses. They were free mulattoes, truly, but the
slaves of the State.

They could acquire property—the pursuit of wealth alone was free.
Many were, therefore, immensely rich. The presence of cultivated
and manly fellows, such as some of these mulattoes were, in Paris,
increased the zeal of the extreme Republicans in their favor, and the
society of “Amis des Noirs”[12] (formed in 1787) comprised some of
the best and most brilliant men of France. These asserted, with power
and eloquence, that the civil rights of this class of “_free men_” in
the French Colonies were guaranteed by the Declaration of Rights.

To this class belonged Vincent Ogé, the son of a rich coffee-planter
of St. Domingo. Educated in Paris, accustomed there to the society of
the first men, the equal of Brissot, Lafayette, Gregoire, and others,
he felt keenly, saw clearly, and at last determined rashly to seize
what the rights of man and the French nation asserted and admitted,
what only a few blinded planters and slave-drivers refused and denied
him.

His plans were known in St. Domingo before he reached there. He
landed from an American sloop on the north side of the island, on
the 23d of October, 1790,[13] freed and armed his mother’s slaves,
drew to his cause a small number of mulattoes, (some 300 in all)—was
defeated, driven into the Spanish part of the island, was given up
by the Spaniards, brought to Cap François, the chief town of the
island, and executed speedily and without mercy. The sentence ran
thus:[14]—“The court condemns the said Vincent Ogé, a free quarteron
of Dandon, and Jean Baptist Chavanne, a free quarteron of La Grande
Rivière, to be brought by the public executioner before the great
door of the parish church of the city, and there, uncovered, in their
shirts, with ropes about their necks, on their bare knees, etc. * *
* This being done they are then to be taken to the Place d’Armes,
and to the opposite side to that appointed for the execution of
white people, and have their arms, legs, thighs, and ribs broken,
alive, upon a scaffold erected for that purpose, and placed by the
executioner upon wheels with their faces turned towards heaven, there
to remain as long as it shall please God to preserve life; after
this, their heads to be severed from their bodies and exposed on
stakes, their goods to be confiscated, etc.”[15]

How long it pleased God(!) to preserve their lives we are
not informed. His brother and one other suffered the same
fate,—twenty-one were hanged and thirteen condemned to the galleys
for life. Thus was the devil worshiped in the year of grace 1790.

These judicial massacres sent a thrill of horror through earth and
heaven. The deeds were done—not by savages—not by slaves—not by
beasts—but by enlightened men of a most civilized nation—which had
heard the name of Jesus for centuries. The vibration reached across
the ocean and shook the heart of France. The friends of the blacks
were eloquent, the friends of slavery dumb. The question was pressed,
and on the 15th of May, 1791,[16] the National Assembly passed the
famous decree which declared that the people of color born of free
parents—not the blacks—were entitled to and should be allowed all
the privileges of French citizens. The sufferings of the Ogés had
sanctified them martyrs. Deep in the hearts of the mulattoes was
their memory cherished, and they vowed vengeance; they seized their
arms, for the whites threatened. This decree, raising them to a
civil equality, roused the scorn of the whites and aggravated the
irritation to a fierce fever. Dissension had weakened the whites:
during the year (1790) a struggle went on between the officers
appointed by the Crown and the Colonial Assemblies, and now their
hour was coming, and they knew it not. “Yes,” said Mirabeau, “they
sleep on the verge of the volcano, and the first convulsions do not
waken them.” They tore off the tricolor cockade and trampled it under
foot—they determined to resist the foul indignity of sitting in the
assemblies side by side with colored men (even if their own sons) at
all hazards. They forced Blanchelande (the Governor) to promise to
suspend the operation of the obnoxious decree. They derided the idea
of danger from the slaves; the _free mulattoes_ were to be guarded
against. “I know,” said M. Odeluc, “I know the slaves; they love
their masters; experience has taught me that they confide in those
who feed and govern them.”[17] M. Odeluc was a fool, and too soon met
a fool’s fate. He left a large posterity, who believe to rule men,
white and black, by fear. All despotism rests upon that principle.
Despotism is infidelity systematized; its principle is a lie; its
companions ignorance and degradation, and its fruits revolution and
destruction.


FOOTNOTES:

[8] LACROIX, vol. i., p. 20.

[9] BROWNE’S _Hist. and Present Condition_, p. 3, Philad., 1837.

[10] BRYAN EDWARDS, p. 9.

[11] EDWARDS, p. 12.

[12] LACROIX, vol. i., p. 16.

[13] BROWN. LACROIX, p. 55. EDWARDS says. 12th Oct., p. 46.

[14] LACROIX, vol. i., p. 64.

[15] _Quarterly Rev_., No. 42.

[16] EDWARDS, p. 65. _Quarterly Review_, No. 42.

[17] _The Hour and the Man._




IV.


But now, when all was prosperity, much sugar ground out, when the
slaves of both sexes were seen dancing every night, when “Liberty!”
and “To arms! To arms!” were on every tongue, who could fear or
suspect the blacks! The happy, careless creatures who loved their
masters.

“Not a sparrow falls to the ground without the knowledge of God,” has
been truly said—not a pebble rolls from its mountain-bed, but the
relations of matter in the whole creation are changed: for the laws
of gravitation are universal, and sustain the worlds. Nor is mind
less universal or less mighty than matter. No thought is thought,
no word is spoken, no act is acted, but it thrills the mind of the
universe. We may not be conscious of this, yet it must be so; and
it is well, therefore, for every man to see to it, that his secret
thoughts are noble, not base.

The innate necessity for freedom had found expression in France,
and the loftiest aspirations and most earnest hopes went, like the
lightning, from mind to mind, from man to man, from nation to nation,
and lighted even the benighted mind of the slave in St. Domingo.

Thus matters stood in 1789. The Third Estate, the slaves in France
had risen, and grasped the handle of the whip. Centuries of political
and ecclesiastical misrule and profligacy had exasperated the people
to a state of frenzy. The battle of liberty and despotism was begun;
the Bastile had fallen! The principles of manhood had been asserted
and seized; the petit blancs in St. Domingo felt the impulse, and
aspired to self-government. The whites were rent into parties[18]—for
the king and against the king—but all against the men of color “les
sangs melées.”

The _free_ mulattoes claimed their rights, and had presented Ogé as
their bloody sacrament. Their rights were declared by the French
nation;—their rights were resisted by the whole body of the planters.
Arms were in every hand; all was combustible, and a spark might start
the conflagration.

The whites and mulattoes stood upon the thin crust of the crater;
under their feet were four hundred and eighty thousand negro slaves.

On the 25th of August was the feast of St. Louis.

For the week preceding, the planters gathered at Cap François, to
concert measures against the mulattoes—against the National Assembly
and—to dine. The great men, and the rich, and the brave, were there.
It was not a time to drive the slaves; and during that week they
“danced” more than before. On the evening of the 22d August,[19]
the best dishes of the cook Henri (a born prince, whose future
no one could suspect) tempted the palates of the born whites. In
brave counsels, in denunciations of the mulattoes, in songs for
Blanchelande and Liberty, the time passed, the wine flowed, and
hearts swelled—so the shadows of the night stole on. Light! more
light! was called for; they threw open the jalousées; curious black
faces swarmed about the piazzas—but what meant that dull glare which
reached the sultry sky! The party was broken up—they rushed to the
windows—they could smell the heavy smoke—they could hear the distant
tramp of feet. The band, unbidden, struck the Marseillaise; it was
caught up in the streets; and from mouth to mouth, toward the rich
Plain du Nord, passed along the song:

  “Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
  Aux armes! aux armes! pour Liberté!”[20]

Consternation followed the feast—each man grasped his arms—into the
midst of the company rushed a negro covered with dust, panting with
heat. He sought his master. Pale with fear, and excited with wine, he
received him on the point of his sword. As the life and blood flowed,
he gasped, “Oh, master! Oh, master!” Murmurs of disapprobation filled
the room, but it was too late—the hour had come! the slaves had
risen. This poor creature had wished to save the man that owned him.

The rebellion broke out on the plantation of Noe, nine miles from
Cap François. At midnight the slaves sought the refiner and his
apprentice, and hewed them in pieces—the overseer they shot. They
then proceeded to the house of Mr. Clement—he was killed by his
postillon. They proceeded from plantation to plantation, murdering
the whites; their ranks swelled by crowds of scarred and desperate
men, who had nothing to lose but life; and life with slavery was not
so sweet as revenge. Everywhere, they applied the torch to the sugar
mills (those bastiles, consecrated to the rites of the lash and to
forced labor, dumb with fear), and to the cane fields, watered with
sweat and blood.

Towards morning, crowds of whites came pouring into Cap François,
pale, terror-stricken, blood-stained! Men, women, and children,
found the day of judgment was come—none knew what to do—all was
confusion—the signal gun boomed through the darkness, warning of
danger—and every man stood to his arms. The inhabitants of the city
were paralyzed with fear. They barred their doors and locked up their
house-slaves. The only living objects in the streets were a few
soldiers marching to their posts. Panic ruled the hour. The Assembly
sat through the night. Touzard was sent out to attack the negroes,
but was driven back. Guns were mounted, and the streets barricaded.

The morning dawned, and with the rising sun came rising courage. “It
is nothing!” said some—“Burn and hang a few negroes, and all will
go on as before.” The exasperation against the mulattoes, who were
charged with having fomented the rising, resulted in hatred, insult,
bloodshed, and murder, in and around Cap François; and a butchery
was only stayed by the vigorous opposition of the governor. Whatever
negroes were seized were tortured and massacred. “Frequently,” says
Lacroix, “did the faithful slave perish by the hands of an irritated
master, whose confidence he sought.”

The maddened negroes had tasted blood. They seized Mr. Blen, an
officer of police, nailed him alive to one of the gates of his
plantation, and chopped off his limbs with an axe.

M. Cardineau had two sons by a black woman. He had freed them, and
shown them much kindness; but they belonged to the hated race,
and they joined the revolt. The father remonstrated, and offered
them money. They took his money, and stabbed him to the heart. If
they were bastards, who had made them so! “One’s pleasant vices
aye come home to roost.” Horrors were piled on horrors—white women
were ravished and murdered—black were broken on the wheel—whites
were crucified—blacks were burned alive—long pent-up hatreds were
having their riot and revenge. M. Odeluc was wrong, then? The slaves
did _not_ seem to love their masters. What could it mean? Pork and
bananas—slavery and ignorance, with some dancing and the free use of
the whip seemed to be producing surprising results. The whites could
not understand it. Much sugar was raised, and yet the _negroes_ were
not satisfied, and now seemed to have gone mad. Destruction hung over
the whites, and they concluded to try hanging and burning in their
extremity, having no faith in justice and honesty for the blacks.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, owed their safety to the kindness of
their house-slaves.[21]

Mons. and Mad. Baillou, with their daughter, her husband, and two
white servants, lived about thirty miles from Cap François, among
the mountains. A slave gave them notice of the rising; he hid them
in the forest, and joined the revolt. At night he brought them food,
and led them to another place of safety. He did this again and again,
led them through every danger and difficulty till they escaped to
the sea. For nineteen nights they were in the woods, and the negro
risked his life to save theirs. Why repeat instances? This was one of
hundreds.

Mr. Odeluc was the Superintendent of the Gallifet estate, the largest
on the Plain:—“As happy as one of Gallifet’s negroes,” was a saying
in the district. He was sure of _his_ hands, and regretted the
exaggerated terror of the whites:—with a friend and three or four
soldiers, he rode out to the estate, and found his negroes in arms,
with the body of a white child for a standard. Alas! poor Odeluc! He
believed the negroes were dogs, and would lick the hand that struck
the blow. It was too late—he and his attendants were cut down without
mercy—two only escaped to tell the tale.[22] Four thousand negroes
were in arms, and they were everywhere successful; the Plain was in
their possession; the quarters of Morin and Limonade were in flames,
and their ravages extended from the shore to the mountains. Their
recklessness was succeeded by regular organization and systematic
war. In the first moments of their headlong fury, all whites were
murdered indiscriminately. This did not last—they soon distinguished
their enemies, and women and children were saved. The blacks were
headed by Jean François and Biassou, generals not to be despised.
Brave, rapid, unscrupulous, vain of grandeur, greedy of plunder, they
were not far from the marshals of France.

This, then, was not a revolt, but a revolution![23] Success would
decide. Never could the whites believe that the blacks were men. Ogé
had revealed a wide-spread conspiracy, headed by well-known slaves.
The whites concealed this. They did not believe him; they believed
only that the blacks were their born slaves, fit for the whip,
incapable of courage, or honor, or martyrdom. Experience only was to
teach them _there and elsewhere_.

At first, the whites acted upon the defensive. The Assembly was
rancorous against France in the midst of this destruction, and
effaced from behind the Speaker’s chair, the motto “Vive la Nation,
la Loi, et le Roi:” even when destruction was over them they heeded
not: their bickerings continued. The negro generals declared that
they were fighting for their king, and against slavery—for a rumor
had reached them that Louis favored emancipation. They had the
strongest party and the strongest side. At length, the whites
determined upon a war of extermination. The blacks responded. Heads
of whites were stuck on poles around the negro camps. Bodies of
negroes swung on gibbets in the white encampments, and on trees
by the roadside. Within two months 2,000 whites and 10,000 blacks
perished. Te Deum was sung in both camps, and daily thanksgivings
were said for what was done. Pale ghosts hovered over them, and
sighed in the tropical groves—but they could not speak for pity
or for justice. The insurrection spread to the southwest, and two
thousand mulattoes, headed by Rigaud, rose to revenge the death of
the Ogés. Many negroes joined them, and they threatened Port au
Prince. The colonists were now thoroughly alarmed, and proceeded to
try reconciliation. The inhabitants of Port au Prince and Rigaud
agreed upon a truce, and the whites admitted that the death of Ogé
was “infamous,” and agreed that the civil rights of the mulattoes
should be allowed them. At last! Was it not too late?[24]

The Governor, Blanchelande, issued a proclamation, earnestly
entreating the revolted negroes to lay down their arms and return to
their duty. It was too late. They laughed in derision at his small
request. What! to slavery, and work, and degradation, and cruelty,
even! They had burst their fetters, and stood with arms in their
hands. “Will you,” they replied to the Governor, “will you, brave
general, that we should, like sheep, throw ourselves into the jaws of
the wolf? It is too late. It is for us to conquer or die!”

On the 11th Sept., 1791, the whites at Port au Prince had consented
to the civil rights of the mulattoes. On the 23d of October, the
“Concordat” had been signed; the whites and mulattoes had walked arm
in arm through the City, and peace seemed possible, when word came,
that on the 24th of September, the National Assembly at Paris had
reversed the decree of the 15th of May. The mulattoes at once flew
to arms, and the struggle between them and the whites went on with
increased carnage and cruelty. This continued, with varied results,
through 1792. “You kill mine and I’ll kill yours,” was the cry. As
it had been from the outset, so it continued among the whites—open
war between the colonists and the governors—between the people of the
North and the South; contention and bitterness—intrigue—treachery.
They made head nowhere against the mulattoes, nowhere against the
negroes. And, in Dec., 1791, three commissioners arrived from France,
to distract the confusion. They accomplished nothing, and were
succeeded, in Sept., 1792, by Sauthonax, Polverel, and Ailhaud;[25]
ordinary men, not sufficient for so extraordinary a state of things
as this.


FOOTNOTES:

[18] LACROIX, vol. i., p. 83.

[19] BROWN and MARTINEAU. LACROIX, vol. i., p. 90.

[20]

  “The day has come—the glorious day!
  To arms! to arms! for Liberty!”


[21] Let it be remembered, that nine in ten negroes were strangers to
their owners. They were worked in the field in gangs during the day,
and folded into barracks at night.—RAINSFORD, p. 139.

[22] EDWARDS, p. 75.

[23] LOUIS XVI., and LIANCOURT. _French Rev_., vol. 1, p. 200.

[24] Two hundred negroes who were with Rigaud were paid for by the
State, and landed clandestinely in Jamaica: they were sent back by
the English. The Colonial Assembly sent them in irons on board a hulk
at the Môle St. Nicholas. Sixty of them were butchered in one night,
and the rest left to perish.—_Quarterly Review_, No. 42.

[25] BRYAN EDWARDS, p. 117.




V.


The hour had come, but not the man: the world waited for him, but
none knew where to look, for none believed him to be among the
degraded negroes. The old custom of master and slave was broken in
pieces, and a nation of men, with no cultivation, with no education
in self-government, with none of the conservative strength which
hangs about privileges and possessions, and long-honored habit, were
now up, inspired only with a hatred of slavery and vague aspirations
for that which they knew not how to name. In this chaotic hour, the
man who could express this longing for freedom, this need of growth,
this aspiration for infinite good, not only in words, but in deeds
and in life, was needed: without him all would come to nothing, and
the struggle of the blacks would be but a spasm, to end in exhaustion
and discouragement; for successful revolutions have been secured by
developing from among the unknown the known man, around whom the
elements of the new State could gather for new Order.

Among the half million blacks there must be one—and more than one—who
could redeem his race; to whom the outcast and despairing might look,
and take courage, and say, “Such as he is, I may try to be.” This
man was longed for—consciously or not, the blacks yearned for their
king, could they but see him. The presentiment existed, for had not
the Abbé Raynal long before predicted a vindicator for the race? No
man can save another, and no nation. Each race must look for its
salvation and its leaders in its own comprehensive soul. The Moses
who will lead the blacks out of bondage must be a black! and he will
come.

Let us go back for a moment. On the arrival of the first
commissioners, Mirbeck, Roume and St. Leger,[26] the mulattoes in
the West were in arms under Rigaud—the blacks in the North under
Jean François and Biassou. They were a ragged crowd—pikes, muskets,
cane knives, axes, whatever the hand could find, were their arms,
and they fought without order or discipline, inspired by revenge
and hatred to slavery. Jean François, if vain and ostentatious,
was sagacious and full of resource. Biassou was bold, fiery, and
vindictive. The blacks had slaughtered and been slaughtered—hanged
and been hanged—plundered and been plundered. There seemed no end to
it and no object. They heard that the Commissioners were placable, so
they wished to make terms. But who would dare to venture among the
whites? We’re not all outcasts, hunted beasts—fugitive slaves. Raynal
and Duplessis (mulattoes) at last took the hazard. The Governor
sent them to the Commissioners, they to the Colonial Assembly. The
Assembly that day was in an exalted state—it emulated the gods. It
replied loftily:—“Emissaries of the revolted negroes, the Assembly
established on the law and by the law cannot correspond with people
armed against the law. The Assembly might extend grace to guilty
men, if, being repentant, etc., etc.,” and Raynal and Duplessis were
ordered sharply to “withdraw!”

They did withdraw, amid the hootings of the mob. They returned to
Grande Rivière. The army and the people came out to meet them wishing
peace—they told their story and peace was turned to war, love to
hatred. Biassou, in a rage, ordered all the white prisoners in the
camp to be put to death. “Death to the whites” went along the lines
and among the people. The insane pride of the whites worked its own
punishment, and now a hundred more were to be slaughtered. No white
was there to save them, and no God to wrest them away. Then a man,
black as Dr. Pennington, indifferent in person, unpleasing of visage,
meanly dressed, makes his way among the crowd to Biassou swelling
with rage; he speaks to him a few words, quietly, calmly; they are
to the purpose. The General’s face is composed; he listens, he
countermands his orders, and the whites are saved.[27]

The negro who saves them is Toussaint Breda, afterward called
Louverture.

The son of an African chief, Gaou-Guinon, with no drop of white blood
in his veins, he had been the born slave of the Count de Breda, and
had been well treated by his Manager, Bayou de Libertas. He was the
husband of one wife, and the father of children. With religious
aspirations, an inflexible integrity, an inquiring mind, he had
been a valuable slave, and had been raised from a field hand to be
M. Bayou’s coachman. Toussaint was never hungry while a slave; he
was not whipped. His hut was comfortable, vines grew around his
door. Bananas and potatoes luxuriated in his garden. The sky was
serene over his head, and the birds sang to him, too, as at evening
he sat among his children. What more could he wish in such a fool’s
paradise? Is, then, a full belly all? Thomas Carlyle—he _knew_
what you do not; what Sterne said, “Disguise thyself as thou wilt,
still, slavery, thou art a bitter draught!” Toussaint, it seems, was
_not_ a beast of burden. To make sugar, he was worth no more than a
Bozal just stolen, but with these rare virtues—Patience, Courage,
Intelligence, Fidelity—he might have sold for five hundred dollars
and might be trusted to drive horses. When the rebellion broke out,
he did not join it, but assisted M. Bayou with his family to escape,
and shipped a rich cargo to the United States for his maintenance.

Toussaint was then fifty years old. None knew the day of his birth;
the records of stock then and there were not carefully kept. For
fifty years this negro had lived the life of a slave, his only
occupations the hoeing of cane and the grooming of horses. What
thoughts, what struggles, what hopes had taken shape in that black
brain no man knows, for Toussaint was a man of few words, and he
left no writings. It was late in life to begin a new trade; late to
begin to find out his own powers and strength; late to trust himself
to freedom, he who had always had a master; late to speculate upon
the destinies of the black race; late to attempt to shape them.
But in revolutionary times men learn fast; great men need only the
opportunity, they rise to the emergency. Cromwell was not a _born_
or _trained_ general or ruler, nor was Washington, nor was Tell.
Toussaint had bided his time. This slave was ignorant, knew nothing.
He learned to read when approaching the downward years; then he
studied—Raynal, Epictetus, Cesar, Saxe, Herodotus, Plutarch, Nepos,
these were the books and lives he knew.[28] But the great book of his
own life was before him. Nature, the page of God, was open at his
feet, before his eyes, and over his head. Human beings were about
him revealing the Infinite, and, more than all, through his own soul
God spoke the voice of truth. Books are well, but are not the only
educators.

He decided to join his race, and having some knowledge of simples,
was made physician of his forces by Jean François. Here he served
well as he always did, and learned the trade of war. Shocked at the
cruelties of whites and blacks, he took the side of mercy and saved
lives from the sword as well as from disease. He saw the vanity of
François, the rashness of Biassou, the cruelty of Jeannot. But he
retired disgusted to no stupid monastery—he returned not to the
ease and degradation of slavery, but was equal to the facts of
life, however hard, and grappled with them and mastered them as a
MAN should. He was then loyal to the King, and he was loyal to the
Church, a devout Catholic. But he came to be the servant and King of
the blacks, loyal to his race, and to speak his prayers in deeds more
than in words.


FOOTNOTES:

[26] December, 1791.

[27] LACROIX, p. 303. _Life of Toussaint_, by JOHN E. BEARD, D. D.,
of Leipsic. London, 1853.

[28] RAINSFORD.




VI.


In 1792, the three Commissioners, sent out from France to “settle”
the affairs of the colony, had been thwarted and finally driven
away-by the whites. In Sept. (1792), Santhonax, Polverel, and
Ailhaud, had arrived with troops, money, and instructions, and a
new governor (Desparbes) in place of Blanchelande. He soon became
disgusted, alarmed, and he fled. The Commissioners distributed
themselves to settle the commotion. The rich planters were for the
King; the Petits Blancs were for the Directory; the mulattoes, under
Rigaud, ravaged the west; the revolted negroes under Jean François,
Biassou, and others, hung upon the north. France herself, that
ancient kingdom, was now fermenting; struggling (yet with hope) to
realize in the State her unformed faith in Democracy—with the energy
of despair, to beat back the waves of bayonets which bristled on her
borders. The dynasties of Europe were against her, for, on the 21st
of January, 1793, the people of France, determined no more to be
taxed, shot, and despotised by a dynasty, had, as Danton said, “flung
at their feet, as wager of battle, the head of a king!” Thus matters
stood in France—thus in St. Domingo. The slaves in both countries had
risen, and rushed to arms. Their remedy was desperate; so was their
disease.

General Galbaud, a new governor, arrived from France in May, (1793).
The Commissioners were engaged in the west, in fighting Rigaud. They
returned to Cap François to fight the governor, whose authority they
disputed. Galbaud held the ships and the arsenals, and determined
to assert his authority. His soldiers and sailors entered the town
and abandoned themselves to drunkenness, pillage, and brutality.
(21st June, 1793). The Commissioners armed the slaves in the town,
promised them freedom, and sent for aid to the negro generals. Jean
François and Biassou refused; but a chief, Macayo, at the head of
three thousand blacks, entered the town, and the conflict raged—the
whites were driven into the sea and slaughtered. Madness ruled—none
were fiercer than the mulattoes. Galbaud fled, and half the city was
destroyed by fire.

At last—for a while—the whites gave up the hope of recovering their
slaves. Thousand fled (some suppose nine-tenths),[29] and found
refuge along the American coasts. Gentlemen they mostly were,
certainly, (as far as their back teeth), but quite useless, a
spectacle to gods and men, of those who, having lived so long on the
forced labor of others, must now live on charity or die.

Famine had more than once increased the misery during these three
years—yet the island was fruitful, and cultivation, here and there,
went on. The sagacious Jean François had initiated cultivation along
the mountain-sides, and among their valleys; and he enforced it. He
thus secured an unfailing magazine. Rarely the songs of labor now
were heard, those sounds with which the negroes are wont to lighten
their weariness. Small parties were to be seen at work; but no man’s
life was safe, nor was he secure of the produce of his labor; and the
men and women scattered like frightened partridges at the tramp of
feet. They lay hidden among the canes, or in the ravines, till the
danger passed.


FOOTNOTES:

[29] EDWARDS, p. 153.




VII.


Toussaint, meanwhile, continues his duties with the negro troops.
Steadily and surely, if not rapidly, he gains strength and influence,
and knowledge of war. He has measured himself with Jean and Biassou,
and is not wanting. His prudence, patience, silent will, and courage,
make him useful to them, and his justice, and determination, and
mercy, make him the idol of the men. The last are often imposed upon
by demagogues, but give them time to _know_ a true, brave, and wise
man, and axes cannot hew them away. The Marquis Hermona, governor of
the Spanish part of the island, made advances to the negro chiefs.
Santhonax, in his extremity, after the destruction of Cap François,
sent Macayo to propose an alliance. They distrusted him—Louis was
beheaded. They said, “We have lost the king of France, but the
king of Spain esteems us and gives us succors.” They declined the
proposals of the Commissioners, and threw themselves on the side of
Spain. Toussaint was loyal to the memory of the king, and followed
François and Biassou. Hermona saw that Toussaint was a man; and while
Jean François was advanced to the first rank, Toussaint was raised to
that of colonel in the Spanish army. He at once applied himself to
his duties, and what he did was always well done. His troops became,
as if by a word, the best disciplined in the army. The reason was
plain—he knew what men ought to do, and what they can do; and the men
knew that he was upright and wise. So these ragged, ignorant, roving
hordes became efficient troops. Confidence begat confidence—the
commander trusted his men, and they relied on him: together they were
strong. Idleness was not Toussaint’s policy. The insurgents, under
Jean François, Biassou, and Toussaint, held strong positions in the
mountains south of Cap François. Brandicourt, the general of the
French troops, was at once trapped and compelled to order his troops
to lay down their arms. Grande Rivière, Dondon, Plaisance, Marmalade,
and Ennery, the most important places in the north, quickly fell into
Toussaint’s hands.

The French Commissioners were getting into straits. The Spanish
troops were against them, the blacks were against them, the remaining
whites were divided—some wore the black cockade, others the white;
the troops and friends of the commissioners, the tricolor; the
mulattoes, the red; war was everywhere, and no man was safe but
with arms in his hands, and in the strongest party. But this was
not enough; some of the planters mounted the English hat and sent
to the English for succor. Even “Perfide Albion” was welcome, if
they might but reëstablish slavery and get again their estates. In
this extremity, Santhonax decided to make friends with the blacks,
and proclaimed at Cap François universal freedom (20th Aug., 1793).
Polverel repeated the proclamation at Port au Prince.[30] The
enthusiasm among the negroes was great, but not universal. Their
leaders were not moved; they distrusted the Commissioners, and they
doubted the stability of the French Republic; so the war went on.

In September, the English landed at Jeremie, in the extreme
southwest. They took possession of St. Nicholas, in the extreme
northwest, and during the year 1794, the whole western coast was in
their possession—St. Nicholas, St. Marc, Jacmel, Tiburon, Jeremie;
and at last, on the 4th of June, Port au Prince, the capital,
yielded. “Twenty-two top-sail vessels,” with their cargoes, worth
400,000 pounds sterling, were a part of the spoil. The mulatto chief,
Rigaud, had taken the side of France. Educated in Bordeaux, he had
followed, in St. Domingo, his trade of a goldsmith, which the whites
thought “too good for a nigger.” He was a brave man, mild in peace,
terrible in war, and, aided by Petion, he kept up a harassing fight
against the English. Shortly after the fall of Port au Prince, a
ship arrived with a requisition for the Commissioners to return to
France; they must answer for their doings there, and General Laveaux
was left as provisional governor. His case, and that of the French,
was desperate. Shut up in Port de Paix, the last stronghold of the
French, he wrote, (24th May, 1794):—“For more than six months we have
been reduced to six ounces of bread a day, officers as well as men;
but from the 13th, we have none whatever, the sick only excepted. If
we had powder we should have been consoled. We have in our magazines,
neither shoes, nor shirts, nor clothes, nor soap, nor tobacco. The
most of the soldiers mount guard barefoot: we have not flints for
the men. But be assured, that we will never surrender; be assured,
too, that, after us, the enemy will not find the slightest trace of
Port de Paix.”[31] Dark was the outlook, but brave was the heart of
General Laveaux.


FOOTNOTES:

[30] BROWN’S _Hist._, v. i, p. 255.

[31] BEARD’S _Life_, p. 82. BROWN’S _History_.




VIII.


Let us look at France: she had grown desperate in her revolutionary
fever; had risen _en masse_ against the powers of Europe, and
had beaten them back. Dugommier even had carried the war across
the Pyrenees, and his soldiers, like demons, shouting the
_ça-ira_, threatened Spain. _The Convention at Paris on the 4th of
February, 1794, confirmed and proclaimed the_ FREEDOM _of all the
slaves!_[32]—news of which came slowly across the Atlantic, and
reached the ears of Toussaint upon the heights of Dondon.


FOOTNOTES:

[32] _Biographie Universelle_. Art. Toussaint L.




IX.


The hour was nigh! The hands advanced on the dial plate of time.
Events, which no man could have foreseen or controlled, had gathered
for judgment, and at last a great nation had decreed freedom to a
poor, debauched and servile race. But who should lead them, who
should now defend them against themselves—give shape and system to
their undisciplined wishes—carry them safely through the anarchy of
unbounded liberty, and crystallize them into a STATE, whose only
sure basis is the _Rights and Duties of Labor, Thought, Speech and
Worship, the Rights and Duties of Manhood_?

The Hour _has_ come and the Man. Toussaint Breda, from his eyrie near
Dondon, sweeps the horizon. In the East he sees the decadent power
of Spain—it has spoken no word of freedom for the blacks. In the
West he sees the white sails of England—she is hand and glove with
the planters to reëstablish slavery. In the North France and Laveaux
are nigh death. France only has proclaimed liberty to the blacks.
Toussaint sees the “opening” for his race and for himself, and from
this day he is Toussaint Louverture—the first of the blacks. Bone of
their bone and skin of their skin, he alone knows their needs, their
capacities and their hearts. With the clear glance of inspiration he
sees the moment, with the firm grasp of talent he seizes it.

General Laveaux saw that this was the man, and through the Priest
La Haye made advances to him. Toussaint is wise and he is wary, he
keeps his own counsel—he consults not Jean François, who had once
cast him into prison, nor Biassou, nor the Marquis Hermona. As usual,
he performs his duties; as usual, he partakes of the communion;
as usual, his troops look to him, and Hermona said “there exists
on earth no purer soul.”[33] He has placed his wife and children
in safety—he has ordered his affairs—his horse stands saddled and
bridled: then, tearing off his epaulettes, he casts them at the
feet of the Spanish officers, flings himself on his horse and rides
like the wind out of the camp. The Spaniards are for a moment
paralyzed—they pursue him; but neither hoof nor pistol can reach him.
Toussaint is not to be caught. On the 4th of May (1794), he pulls
down the Spanish and hoists the French colors. Marmalade, Plaisance,
Ennery, Dondon, Acul and Limbé submit to him. Confusion and fear
prevail among the Spaniards. Joy exalts the negroes. Laveaux is
saved, and the colony not yet lost to France. Toussaint is a power
in the State—the negroes everywhere respond to the sound of his
voice—they look to him as their hero, defender, guide, and guard.

Did he deceive or sacrifice them? The mulattoes and whites have
called him treacherous, ambitious and unscrupulous. It is easy to
do so, and so to account for the power and success of this singular
man—but the explanation is not satisfactory. No brave man will seek
for a base motive, even in his enemy, when a noble one is patent and
suffices better. Toussaint’s talent, courage, and honor were inspired
by the lofty hope of redeeming his race; and the negroes, fanatic in
their hatred of slavery, became invincible. The electric spark which
fired his soul fired theirs. Great is he who spends his blood and his
life, fighting for liberty—but base is the man who kills and destroys
for fame or plunder.

Toussaint sets himself to his work. The whole province of the North
soon falls into his hands, and he drives the Spanish ally, Jean
François, westward along La Montaigne Noire. Then he hastens into the
rich valley of the Artibonite, attacks and beats back the English,
and besieges the strong fortress of St. Marc; but neither forces nor
ammunition are sufficient and he retires to the mountain fastnesses
of Marmalade to recruit his troops. On the 9th of October (1794),
he carries the fortress of San Miguel by storm. Laveaux and Rigaud
cannot withhold their admiration at his skill and prowess. His
horse and he are as one. This black centaur carries success at his
saddlebow. His troops love and admire, while his enemies fear him.

Toussaint determines to drive away the English, and he falls with
fury upon General Brisbane in the Artibonite, and compels him to
retreat. But Jean François hung over him in the heights of La Grande
Rivière. Again he retires to Dondon and organizes his forces to
repel the Spaniards—in four days he takes and destroys twenty-eight
positions—but Jean François with a superior force threatens his
rear, while the English are in front: again he is baffled; he returns
to Dondon. Toussaint is no longer the leader of marauding bands, but
the head of an army. His troops are mostly raw and ignorant, badly
clothed, armed, and fed, but they trust in him and have courage.
He seeks for efficient officers, and finds Dessalines, Desroulaux,
Maurepas, Clervaux, Christophe and Lamartinière: these he must
command with discretion—his troops he must provide with arms,
ammunition and food—he must watch the forces of the Spaniards, the
movements of the English—intrigues abroad and treachery at home:
henceforth he must organize campaigns. He has now little time for the
pleasures of sense—the enjoyment of books—the rest of home. Rarely
can he snatch an hour for his wife and children from the life of
ceaseless care. But does he, then, sigh for the hut and the bananas
and the careless slavery of M. Bayou? Human nature is one; no one
would have changed the life of a man, every faculty in action, for
the repose of a dog: not the black Toussaint.

The treaty of Basle had secured the cession of the whole Spanish part
of the island to France. Jean François was, therefore, at liberty
to retire to Spain, to enjoy his honors. There remained but the
English now to distract the plans of Toussaint and the French. One
more disturbing element yet existed. The mulattoes felt themselves
superior to the blacks, and the rightful successors to the whites,
in the honors and government of the island. Jealous of Toussaint and
the favors shown the blacks, headed by Villate, they rose against
Laveaux, the governor at the Cape, and threw him into prison; his
danger was extreme.[34] Toussaint descends on the town with ten
thousand blacks and saves him. Laveaux appointed him his lieutenant,
second in command in the island, and declared that he was the
“Spartacus” foretold by Raynal, who should avenge the sufferings of
his race.[35] Confidence grew now, between the blacks and the whites,
and Lacroix, who is no way friendly to the blacks, admits that “if
St. Domingo still carried the colors of France, it was solely owing
to an old negro who seemed to bear a commission from Heaven.”[36] The
French continued to send commissioners (Santhonax among them), but
Toussaint was the moving mind; and when Laveaux, having been elected
delegate to the Assembly, sailed for France, Santhonax finally
appointed him Commander-in-chief.[37]

This history will, for a short time, be more simple. Toussaint has
filled the “Opening;” he is “Louverture.” A strong hand and a clear
head, though black, direct the affairs of the island. Daily he gains
strength, and the confidence of the negroes. They flock to his
army—they listen and obey his words. Christophe, in the North, had
encouraged cultivation. Toussaint throws his powerful influence into
the work—his maxim, “that the liberty of the blacks can never be
solid without agriculture,”[38] passes from mouth to mouth among the
negroes, and rouses in them the desire for lands and wealth—for the
_first time_ now possible. He wishes that Cap and the towns along
the North should be rebuilt. It is done; they rise from their ashes.
All hopes are centered in the General-in-chief: HE can restore peace
and prosperity: he alone.[39]

The English now were sore bested. The French pressed them in the
West; Desfourneaux in the North; Rigaud in the South; Christophe
had carried the heights of Vallière, the Vendée of St. Domingo.
Louverture again attempts to take St. Marc: thrice he storms it,
thrice he deserves success; but again he fails to clutch this strong
fortress. He turns now to Mirebelais, an interior Thermopylæ,
strongly fortified by the English: his lieutenant, Mornay,
intercepted Montalembert, who was advancing with 700 men and two
pieces of artillery. The next day he drives in all the English
troops, invests the village of St. Louis, carries the forts by
assault, and in fourteen days totally defeats the English, taking
200 prisoners, eleven pieces of cannon, and military stores. The
efforts of the English are nearly at an end—weak and weary, their
strength is spent. Whitlocke, Williamson, Whyte, Horneck, Brisbane,
and Markham, have tried to subdue these rebels and to wrest the
colony from France: they have bitten a file. Millions of pounds have
been wasted; Brisbane and Markham are killed; thousands of soldiers
slain; the yellow fever, too, has done its work. Poor fellows! The
“bloody ichor” has been bloody tears. “Condemned to fall without
a conflict, and to die without renown!”[40] If the ghosts of the
dead hover about us, as some love to think, heavy must be the air of
St. Domingo—pale shades of black and white still carrying on their
conflict, or sighing over the past.

General Maitland at last decided to leave the island, and between him
and Toussaint there went on a struggle of diplomacy; but Louverture
was more than his equal: he accepted his honors, but refused his
bribes. They made terms, and Maitland evacuated Port au Prince and
St. Nicholas. One incident illustrates General Maitland’s confidence
in Toussaint. Before the disembarkation of his troops, he determined
to return Louverture’s visit. He proceeded to his camp, through a
country full of negroes, with but three attendants. On his way he
heard that Roume, the French commissioner, had advised Toussaint to
seize him; but he proceeded, and when he reached the camp, after
waiting a short time, Toussaint entered, and, handing him two
letters, (Roume’s and his reply), said: “Read; I could not see you
till I had written, so that you could see that I am incapable of
baseness.”[41]

Gen. Lacroix has written that he saw, in the archives at Port au
Prince, the offers made to Toussaint, securing him in the power and
kingship of the island, and liberty to his race, with a sufficient
naval force on the part of England, provided he would renounce France
and form a commercial treaty with England.[42] The event leads one to
regret that Toussaint’s ambition was not superior to his loyalty to
France.

During these proceedings with the English, Santhonax had departed for
France, partly at his own request, partly because he was in the way
of Toussaint’s plans for the restoration of the island. With him,
Toussaint sent his two sons to receive some education in France,
and to show, as his letter stated, “his confidence in the Directory
* * * at a time when complaints were busy against him:” he said,
“there exist no longer any internal agitations; and I hold myself
responsible for the submission to order and duty of the blacks—my
brethren,” etc.

Rochambeau and Santhonax had both found that Toussaint’s power was
superior to theirs. The planters and the mulattoes in Paris were ever
busy against him: he had much to fear. But the Directory sustained
him, and sent Gen. Hedouville (who at once betrayed his distrust)
to watch and control him. This was not an easy thing to do, for
Louverture knew more than they all about St. Domingo.


FOOTNOTES:

[33] LACROIX, vol. i., p. 301.

[34] _Biog. Universelle_, T. L.

[35] _Quarterly Rev._, No. 42.

[36] The Commissioner Polverel exclaimed: “Comment! mais cet homme
fait ouverture partout!” Everywhere he opens his way.

[37] BROWN, vol. i., p. 294.

[38] LACROIX, vol. i., p. 324.

[39] BROWN, vol. i., p. 205. _Quarterly Review_, No. 42. BEARD’S
_Life_, p. 92.

[40] RAINSFORD. MOSELEY’S ACCOUNT _in Tropical Diseases_. BRYAN
EDWARDS.

[41] _Quarterly Review_, No. 42.

[42] _Biog. Universelle_, T. L. LACROIX, vol. i., p. 346.




X.


Peace was at last come to this distracted island. The Halcyon bird,
rocked by the gentle billows, could now hatch its young, and men
might pray that the new births would be harbingers of prosperity.

Toussaint rests in the bosom of his family on the estate Deschaux,
among the mountains of the Artibonite. He knows himself to be the
first man in St. Domingo; the people everywhere accept him as such.
This “old negro with a commission from Heaven”—the “maggot rolled in
linen,” as some of Hedouville’s followers called him—this “chattel,”
prized at 500 dollars, has come to strange places. His praises,
even, are chanted in the “Conseil des Anciens,” and Europe wonders
about this black.[43] In the face of the example of civilized
nations and the orders of the Directory, he proclaims an amnesty
for all political offenders—and keeps it! He invites whites and
blacks to return to their pursuits; he orders Te Deum to be sung in
the churches, and that all officers shall have morning and evening
prayers read to their respective corps. Of course his enemies said
this was hypocrisy.[44]

The sword is sheathed, and Toussaint applies his whole powers to the
restoration of confidence and industry. The country is traversed by
parties of black troops, engaged in restoring the whites, the owners
(when they could be found), to their estates, and the blacks to their
labors. Hedouville proclaimed the expulsion of those who had taken
part against France, the confiscation of their estates and universal
liberty to the blacks. Toussaint pronounces an amnesty, and places
the slaves at an apprenticeship of five years, giving them a share
of the productions. The blacks obey him rather than Hedouville, and
the whites are lost in wonder. Many who, in the evening, had looked
upon him as a brigand, in the morning knew him as their beneficent
deliverer.

The negroes were stimulated to exertion, by the prospect of wealth
and manhood, and were sustained in it by the determination of
Louverture: no man but the drunkard is wholly indifferent to worldly
good. His justice and moderation taught the whites to confide in him,
and his wisdom, strength, and heroism, rendered him potent with the
blacks.[45] His soldiers were subject to an iron discipline—each
officer was supreme, but let him beware lest he be unjust or cruel.
Lacroix, who was an eye-witness, says:—“It was strange to see naked
Africans giving an example of the strictest discipline, and making
a campaign with nothing to eat but bananas and a little maize.”
Property was respected and life was safe, while Toussaint guided
these naked blacks. One class only was discontented—the mulattoes.
They could not forgive the blacks for taking the preëminence, and,
brave as he was, Rigaud was not superior to envy. Hedouville, deeply
mortified at Toussaint’s superiority, plotted mischief with the
mulattoes; uneasiness prevailed, and insurrection again lifted its
head. The whites attempted to disarm the blacks under Gen. Moyse, at
Fort Dauphin. The tidings spread, and over the plain of Cap François
the negroes were roused. Toussaint appeared at Cap, and all again
became quiet. Hedouville hastily embarked for France—but he threw
from the deck of his ship the apple of discord to the shore. He
issued his proclamation, charging that Toussaint was sold to the
English, and he gave to Rigaud authority over the South. Toussaint
now expressed his wish to retire from power, and his quarters were
thronged with deputations, whites, yellows, and blacks, praying him
to continue their protector and father. Two kings cannot sit on
the same throne: Louverture was the hero of the blacks, Rigaud the
chief of the mulattoes—both were superior men. Roume, the remaining
French commissioner, entered into the large plans of Toussaint, and
pronounced him “a philosopher, a legislator, a general, and a good
citizen.” Rigaud, in a sullen humor, departed for the South; there
the mulattoes flocked to his standard, and enrolled with them many of
the blacks. The idea of black supremacy was hateful to them; the FACT
was intolerable, and occasions were not wanting, so the war—a war of
races—once more broke out. It is not necessary to dwell upon it—it
was one of terrible and bloody ferocity: no man asked or received
quarter; on both sides, hecatombs of victims were sacrificed. The
vindictiveness of Rigaud was surpassed by the ferocity of Dessalines,
and through 1798 and ’99 this destruction continued—the fields
could not be tilled, and gaunt famine stalked over the South. The
energy and perseverance of Toussaint were too much for the skill
and desperation of Rigaud. He was reduced, step by step; undone, he
staggered to his fall, and at last, with Petion, sailed for France.

On the 1st of August, 1800, Toussaint makes his triumphal entry
into Aux Cayes. The mob shouts, of course, for the mob worships
success, and the mulattoes are at his feet—one word of his, and
they are exterminated. Toussaint is either merciful, or he is wise,
or he is very crafty. He assembles them together, he ascends the
pulpit, firm, sad, perhaps severe. What might those firm lips not
express? He says:—“I have published a proclamation—‘Forgive us our
transgressions as we forgive those who transgress against us.’ I
have ordered all citizens to return to their parishes, to enjoy the
benefits of this general amnesty. Citizens, not less generous than
myself, let your most precious moments be employed in causing the
past to be forgotten; let all my fellow-citizens swear never to
recall the past; let them receive their misled brethren with open
arms, and let them, in future, be on their guard against the traps of
bad men.”[46] Peace now is possible—his task is done! Alas, his task
is not ended! During the confusion, a brisk slave trade had sprung up
in the eastern end of the island. At the city of St. Domingo, vessel
after vessel sailed with a living freight, to the English islands and
elsewhere, stolen, captured, and sold from St. Domingo. Toussaint
determines that such an anomaly shall not exist, and that the Spanish
towns, secured to France by the treaty of Basle, shall be given up.
Napoleon having assumed the powers of first consul, had confirmed
Toussaint in his position. He now remonstrates with commissioner
Roume, upon the continuance of the outrageous traffic. Roume was
indifferent, perhaps guilty of complicity; and Toussaint sets about
this new work. He marches a body of troops into the Spanish end of
the island, and, in January, enters the ancient city of St. Domingo,
and hoists the French colors upon its ramparts. In February, he
announces the pacification of the colony.

The star of Louverture has culminated; from the Bay of Samana on the
East to Cape Tiburon on the West his power is everywhere acknowledged
and established—a French colony, but controlled by a black, the only
man who can order the incoherent elements.

Through ten long years, war has desolated this island: distracted
counsels have discovered small wisdom: the French had no other idea
than to retain it as a rich colony for France, and to strip its
breasts of soft down for her luxurious head. The mulattoes wished
to share in the spoil. The blacks had an indistinct but obstinate
aversion to being plucked at all! This took shape in the brain of
Toussaint Louverture: founded, as this idea was, upon the profoundest
instincts of human nature, it could not be driven out of these men,
not even by whips or bayonets. Toussaint knows what ought to be done,
and he alone knows how to do it.

He declares, that no State can be prosperous, but with agriculture as
its material basis.

That men of _all colors_ must be secure in their lives, and in the
enjoyment of the products of their own labor.

That good morals and measures are necessary to the State.

That churches and schools must be restored and sustained.

That, to preserve their liberties, the blacks of St. Domingo must be
ready to defend them with arms in their hands.


FOOTNOTES:

[43] _Biog. Universelle_, T. L.

[44] LACROIX thinks so, vol. i., p. 350.

[45] RAINSFORD, p. 228. LACROIX, vol. i., p. 348.

[46] Proclamation, BEARD, p. 128.




XI.


Generals Christophe, Dessalines, and Moyse, his nephew, were
appointed to the command of the troops (in three departments), and
to the superintendence of the labors of agriculture. The mulatto
Clervaux commanded in the Spanish portion. The whites were invited to
resume their estates, allowing a proportion of the proceeds to the
laborers; and, where the owners had disappeared, the estates were
worked by the State, the same proportion, one-fourth or one-third,
being allowed the cultivators—industry was everywhere encouraged,
idleness rigorously suppressed. In so fruitful a land the results
were like enchantment. The hoe replaced the sword—prosperity
smiled upon the neglected fields—the songs of labor were heard
on every hand—contented and hopeful negroes thronged the path
of Toussaint.[47] Vessels under the flag of the United States
crowded the ports—the whites looked to him as their deliverer and
protector—whites, blacks and mulattoes were appointed to offices
of trust—the duties of morality and religion were enforced—the
decencies and refinements and arts of life were cultivated—the drama
revived—men of science and learning were encouraged.[48] There is
abundant evidence, from friends and enemies, to prove that, under a
system of justly paid labor, the island was rapidly advancing to a
degree of prosperity which it had never reached.[49] Time and a just,
firm hand, like that of Toussaint, only were necessary to steady the
new State, and to solve the problem of the capability of the blacks.
So far the white race has degenerated in the enervating and seductive
air of the tropics. The capacity of the blacks to develop there is an
interesting question, not yet settled.

Toussaint is now proud of his color. He says:—“I value myself for
being black.”[50] He has reason. His public levees are marked by
the strictest propriety, and his private parties are not stupider
than those of white men. In the midst of luxury this “old negro”
practices his simple tastes, only indulging in splendor upon state
occasions. Unlike most men, he does not, with success in his hand,
deserve to forfeit it. Luxury and sloth do not beguile him, for he
knows that stability alone is success. His activity is untiring—his
correspondence exhausts five secretaries—he trusts to the eye of the
master and his vigilance is everywhere. He works! for his soul is
steel and his body iron. Relays of fast-pacing horses are stationed
at proper points; on these he rides, outstripping all but his two
trumpeters. Fifty leagues, without stopping, it is said he rode.[51]
The whole energies of his life are devoted to the realizing of a
great idea—_the liberty and elevation of the blacks_. Neither he nor
any sagacious man doubts that he is the chief to secure these, if
they are yet to be. He says:—“I have taken my flight in the region of
eagles; when I alight it must be on a rock, and that rock must be a
constitutional government, of which I shall be the head so long as I
shall be among men.”[52]

This is clearly the next step: government must be firmly established
and order consolidated.

France had decreed the liberty of all its subjects, whites, blacks,
and mulattoes. It had authorized the election and action of the
colonial Assemblies; the island was, therefore, legally capable of
self-government: the only question was, how far it was dependent upon
France?

Toussaint calls together a council, for the consideration of the
question of a constitution. It was headed by Borgella, once mayor of
Port au Prince, and composed of eight whites and one mulatto, and no
blacks, not even Louverture himself.

In May (1800) they presented him a carefully-prepared draft, which
he approved.[53] Assuming that slavery was abolished and could never
more exist in St. Domingo, it made no distinction in the political
rights of citizens—it established the Roman Catholic religion as
that of the State—it required that agriculture should be especially
encouraged—it declared _commerce free_ (this was in 1800)—it
entrusted the executive to a governor appointed for five years.

“In consideration of the important services rendered the colony by
General Toussaint Louverture, he is appointed Governor for life,
with power to choose his successor.”

This constitution was provisionally established, and a copy forwarded
to “Citizen Buonaparte, First Consul of the French Republic,” by
General Vincent, July 16th, 1800. Toussaint wrote:—“I hasten to
lay it before you for your approbation and for the sanction of the
government I serve.” On the island it was made public and accepted
with solemn formalities and universal joy. The blacks were not only
ready but enthusiastic in their obedience to Toussaint Louverture.

The “old negro” had proved his commission to be from heaven, and
Lacroix’s phrase had become a fact.


FOOTNOTES:

[47] _Biog. Universelle_. T. L. RAINSFORD, p. 240. LACROIX, vol. i.,
pp. 324, 397.

[48] RAINSFORD, p. 222. LACROIX, BROWN, BEARD, _Quarterly Rev._, No.
42.

[49] LACROIX said:—“Under his system ten blacks would do more than
twenty slaves.”

[50] LACROIX, vol. i., p. 404.

[51] IB., vol. i, p. 407.

[52] BEARD, p. 141.

[53] LACROIX, vol. ii., p. 22.




XII.


The great man, who has proved himself, knows himself; unconsciousness
is the condition of ignorant genius. Toussaint had expressed in
deeds, in ACTIONS, the dumb aspirations of his race for freedom,
self-development and manhood; he had given them a chance to rise, and
they felt it in every throb of their susceptible hearts, and they
told him so in their love and loyalty to his person and commands. He
was a leader of men, and he accepted his position with its powers and
its cares.

He who retires from men, and dreams in the serene solitude of his
hermitage, may solace himself with great thoughts, and poetic ideas
and vague hopes—he may be a philosopher.

But such is not the fullest manifestation of God. It is when Thought
is crystallized into Action; for a good deed is greater than a good
word.

Nebulous, undefined, shadowy, matter floats in space till God speaks
his thought in Act—then the vague, misty mass comes into harmonious
order, and goes on its certain way through the boundless sky, a
brilliant, beautiful star—a guide to the uncertain mariner, and the
wandering fugitive, and the home for unknown life.

Creation is the speech—the Word of God.

Whoever, therefore, brings Order out of Chaos, Life and Action out of
Thought and Aspiration, approaches to God, and such are the men whom
the world (in the past) has deified: such were Hercules and Osiris,
Confucius and Budha, Mahomet and Thor: these were godlike men.

Such, also, were Oberlin, Cromwell, Winthrop, Penn, Oglethorpe, and
Washington.

Such, too, was Toussaint Louverture.




XIII.


This is the place to stop; from this point to watch with solicitude,
but without fear, the development of this enfranchised people, under
the direction of their chief. It cannot be—history does not stop; its
march in the past cannot be changed—only the present and the future
are plastic.

At this point, the horizon in St. Domingo is clear and serene; no man
can see signs of a coming tornado. Only in the heart of Toussaint
Louverture does the mercury tremble, indicating “change.” The
convulsions which had shaken Europe are spent. Napoleon is the master
of France, and the treaty of Amiens (1801) has secured a treacherous
peace. Toussaint watched, with feverish solicitude, the movements of
Napoleon. Dull flashes streaked the eastern horizon, and muttered
threats hardly moved the air. Repeatedly he wrote to Napoleon, once
addressing him as “The first of the blacks to the first of the
whites”—repeatedly he urged his own loyalty, and that of his race,
to France. Napoleon’s vanity was touched—Toussaint was talked about
in Europe—in Paris.[54] He was another star—a black Napoleon! The
Corsican stomach was quick.

What cared Napoleon, for France? What cared he for a St. Domingo
negro? Napoleon Buonaparte was Napoleon’s god, and him he worshiped.

He received Toussaint’s suggestions and requests with contempt. This
neglect moved Toussaint more than all other things; for, in the
distance, Napoleon seemed to him a magnanimous and god-descended
hero, a lover of liberty—as, indeed, at that time he did to many men
in France—as he does to one Abbott at the present time. If we look
for weakness in Louverture, we shall find it here; he trusted France,
he trusted Napoleon, and he trusted the planters of St. Domingo. He
believed that, by his justice and magnanimity to them, he could move
them from their insane purpose of reënslaving the blacks. If he had
brayed them in mortars he could not have got it out of them. Knowing
the experience, education, resources, and power of the whites, and
the ignorance and weakness of the blacks, he sought support in his
work from the whites. He, in a degree, dimmed the prestige of his
greatness, in the eyes of the blacks, by concessions made to the
whites. So desirous was he of the confidence of the whites, and of a
character for strict impartiality, that when the blacks in General
Moyse’s district, in their sensitive fears of reënslavement, rose and
murdered some of the whites, and were not hindered by General Moyse,
he had him court-martialled, and allowed him to be shot, and he a
superb officer and his own nephew. He disarmed his troops and sent
them back to the labors of agriculture. But all these availed nothing.

Peace in Europe foreboded war in St. Domingo. Exasperated planters
gathered in Paris; they clamored as ever for their old wealth and
rights—they said:—“No slavery, no colonies!” Napoleon’s counselors
recommended force. “What do you think of the matter?” said Napoleon,
to the Abbé Grégoire. “I think,” said he, “that if these counselors
were to change color, they would change opinions.” He never said
more truth with less words. Make the blacks white, and to-morrow
negro slavery would be ended. The restoration of slavery was
resolved on in the Legislative body, by a vote of two hundred and
twelve against sixty-five![55] This was in Republican France, under
a Republican Consul, who shouted the words, “Peace” and “Liberty”
till he was hoarse, and the world became sick of them and him. On
the 20th May, 1801, Buonaparte issued the decree restoring the
colonies to their condition previous to 1789—this authorized the
slave-trade and abrogated liberty. But, perhaps, he had gone too
fast? He afterwards decreed that St. Domingo and Guadaloupe should
be excepted—for how long, he omitted to say. When General Vincent
presented to him the draft for the Constitution sent by Toussaint,
he caught his opportunity—“Here,” said he, “is a revolted slave whom
we must punish—the honor of France is outraged.” Vincent pleaded;
the minister, Forfait, attempted dissuasion—he was silenced by
this answer:—“There are sixty thousand men that I want to send to
a distance!” Old soldiers of the Republic—some of whom believed
“Liberty” to be other than a shout.

The expedition was resolved on—man could not hinder it. The whites
interested in this island were exultant; their joy vibrated in the
hearts of some whites and mulattoes in St. Domingo. They reckoned
that the blacks would at once pass under the yoke—created by God, as
they were, for slavery; they forgot what twelve years of struggle
and liberty might have done for the negro.[56] Yet, why is this
great army sent? The colony is not in rebellion; it has not denied
the authority of France—indeed, has not Toussaint driven out the
Spaniards and English—those enemies of France—and refused liberty and
protection from England? For what, then, is this mighty armament!
these fifty-six warlike ships, this General Le Clerc, this Admiral
Joyeuse, these 30,000 veteran soldiers—are all these needed to
restore to France the island which she has never lost? If not for
that, then for what are they intended?


FOOTNOTES:

[54] _Biog. Universelle_, T. L.

[55] BEARD, p. 154.

[56] LACROIX, vol. ii., p. 71.




XIV.


Not more sensitive to the breath of the evening air is the tender
mimosa, than is Toussaint to the suspicion of danger—he who has
suffered and hoped so many years, for the liberty and improvement
of the blacks. He who has done so much for his own race and for the
whites, who has shown mercy, when others were blood-thirsty, who has
steadily looked to a great end, and has had faith that, in all his
good purposes and hopes, he should be sustained by that generous
nation, which had poured out its blood like water for freedom—he now
hears, with dismay, that that great nation had resolved on something,
and the whites said to restore him and his race to slavery; that all
the blood, and toil, and suffering, were to be as nothing, and that,
directed by the greatest captain of the age, these soldiers and these
ships were approaching for his destruction.

Toussaint stands on the heights which overlook the wide and beautiful
bay of Samana[57]—he, alone with Christophe. (Jan.) Sail after sail
whitens the horizon and gathers to the rendezvous; and they count
ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty-six! The mercury in the heart of
Toussaint sinks from sight: he sees the hopes of his life made havoc,
and destruction again driving away peace. He turns from the vision,
and, with heavy steps, seeks his place.

From the ships went up the Te Deum and songs of thanksgiving, that
Heaven had smiled on the speedy and prosperous voyage—the gods were
propitious and success seemed certain. The ships were furnished
with every munition of war. They bore Le Clerc as the leader of
the expedition; and, with him, his wife, Pauline, the fascinating
bacchante _venus victrix_, sister of Napoleon—for, was not this a
holiday affair? With him were Admiral Vallaret Joyeuse, General
Kerverseau, Rochambeau, Boudet, and Hardy. Were there not the mulatto
chiefs, Rigaud, Petion, and Boyer? sagacious and brave mulattoes who
may live to repent this suicidal act. It was clear that the blacks
must again clasp their chains, that Toussaint must return to the
grooming of Bayou’s horses, and a peaceful banana life. But not yet
had Toussaint accepted the meanest existence possible to man. With
his troops scattered over the island, (less than 20,000 men), what
might yet be done? To die at least! “I took up arms for the freedom
of my color,” said Toussaint; “it is our own—we will defend it or
perish.”

The fleet had gathered in the Bay of Samana—in four divisions it had
sailed away. On the mountain-range of Artibonite Louverture awaits
the shock. Christophe is in the North, Dessalines in the South. The
armaments approached the island at Fort Dauphin and Cap François
on the North, at St. Domingo on the South, at Port au Prince on
the West. No declaration of war, no negotiations preceded them.
Christophe, at Cap François, waited the approach of the division
led by Le Clerc and General Hardy. Large-hearted, prudent, active
and daring, Christophe felt himself equal to the emergency. Lebrun,
the aide-de-camp of Le Clerc, landed, and was conducted through the
streets of the city to Christophe. He admired its well-built houses
and its air of wealth, and he dropped along his route proclamations
addressed to the inhabitants, breathing peace and liberty.

General Christophe received him—replied that the Commander-in-chief,
Toussaint Louverture, only could receive his dispatches, that the
fleet could not be allowed to enter the harbor, nor the troops
to land except at his order. Lebrun whispered to Christophe,
that Le Clerc had for him great marks of favor from the First
Consul. Christophe turned from him and said:—“I know no chief but
Toussaint.”[58]

The proclamations scattered by Lebrun made no mention of the chief
of the blacks, and threatened conflagration and destruction in case
of disobedience: they but increased the distrust of Christophe. He
assembled his troops in the Place d’Armes, and administered an oath
that they would conquer or perish, if force should be used against
Toussaint, or the liberty of their race. The inhabitants of the
town were distracted with conflicting fears; on the one hand was
new, untried white dominion, with possible or probable slavery—on
the other, the destruction of their beautiful town, desolation, and
again the horrors of war. These doubts did not last long, Rochambeau
had landed, driven the blacks before him, breached and carried Fort
Dauphin, slaughtered his prisoners, and was marching on Cap. War was
begun!

Disorder and panic spread on the Plain du Nord, and the frightened
blacks came pouring into Cap, crying for arms. Christophe ordered
all the unarmed inhabitants to leave the town; he took under his
protection 2,000 whites, men, women, and children, and sent them to
the interior. He steeled his heart, he was inexorable, he prepared
for desperate measures:—“Go, tell your General,” he said, “that the
French shall march here only over ashes, and that the ground shall
burn beneath their feet.” Le Clerc feared delay; he put his ships
in motion, and the noise of his cannon spread tumult and alarm.
Christophe knew he could not successfully resist the combined attack,
so he furnished his soldiers with torches, took one in his hand,
and, raising it to Heaven, called God to witness, that he was driven
to extremity! His own house, costly and beautiful, was his first
sacrifice; then burst over the city an ocean of flame: it revealed
the dismay of the whites, the bitter and silent fury of the blacks.
They retired to the hights above Cap, the French marched over the
burning ashes, and the explosion of the magazine completed the work
of despair.

Port au Prince came nigh sharing the same fate. General Agé (a
white), to whom it was entrusted, was not proof against persuasion
or fear; but in Lamartinière, a quarteron, there was a determined
soul. When Lacomb, who insisted upon admitting the French, refused to
give up the keys of the magazine and arsenal, Lamartinière shot him
through the head; such was his power of persuasion in extreme cases.
“If the French land before we can be informed of the resolution of
Toussaint, three cannon shot shall be the signal for destruction!”
That was his reply. They did land, and the three cannon boomed over
the plain. Flames arose on every hand and frightful disorder—the
infuriated blacks fell upon the whites, and slaughtered them even to
the gates of the church. The French charged up, rushed into the city
and stayed the conflagration. Lamartinière fell back towards General
Dessalines, afflicted at his failure to destroy the city rather than
at his defeat.

In the East, the city of St. Domingo, under Paul Louverture, yielded
to Kerverseau.

In the South, the seat of Rigaud’s triumphs and defeats, La Plume,
the mulatto leader, had been treacherous to Toussaint; so had
Clervaux. The principal towns were thus in the hands of Le Clerc: but
was the island won? Toussaint, with Dessalines and Christophe, now
retired toward the mountains, burning whatever might be a solace to
the French. He knew, and the blacks now knew, what they were to look
for from the invaders: the mask was torn away. There would be small
chance for the blacks, when once they were disarmed; small chance,
with a powerful French force in all the strongholds of the island,
and with them, Rigaud, Petion, Boyer, and Chanlette, vindictive
opponents of Toussaint. In the mountains, therefore, Toussaint
gathered his shattered forces; but, the island was not yet won.


FOOTNOTES:

[57] Famous, now, for Mr. and Mrs. Cazneau’s two-horse diplomacy,
1854.

[58] The cajoling of Le Clerc and the manliness of Christophe, are
sufficiently apparent in their published correspondence.—_See ap. to
the Hour and the Man._




XV.


New tactics now seem necessary, and Le Clerc has them at hand.

Inland among the mountains, two days distance from Cap François, is
the village of Ennery; there Toussaint has stationed his family. The
quiet of the place is moved by an unwonted stir—what can it mean,
for the sounds are not those of troops? Towards nine o’clock at
night messengers bring word to the wife of Toussaint that her sons,
they who had been so long absent in France, are coming. With a few
friends, she goes with torches into the highway to meet them. In the
midst of that great crowd, hushed to silence in the serene night,
she greets them with joy and tears. Towards midnight of the next day
Toussaint arrives; he presses his sons to his breast, and tears once
more water the furrows of his worn face.

The young men present their tutor (M. Coisnon), who, after receiving
the warm thanks of the father, hands him a golden box containing a
letter from Napoleon. Toussaint reads it. Highly complimentary to
him, it objected to the Constitution already formed, but suggested no
other; it advised submission to the new Captain-General Le Clerc, and
threatened punishment for disobedience; it spoke of their liberties
as due to France (Toussaint is grave—he does not even smile here);
it did not promise anything on this score, but pointed to the liberty
France had given to other nations, and stated that they could only
enjoy liberty as French citizens, and asked submission, co-operation,
and peace.[59]

Toussaint turns to M. Coisnon, and says—“Three months after the date
you bring me a letter which announces peace; the action of General
Le Clerc is war. I had established order and justice here; now all
is confusion and misery. Take back my sons, M. Coisnon, I cannot
receive them as the price of my surrender.” The children were again
sent to him; they threw themselves into his arms with entreaties.
Toussaint remained inflexible. “My children,” he said, “make your
choice—whatever it is, I shall always love you.” Placide alone
said—“My father, I am yours; I fear the future—I fear slavery.”


FOOTNOTES:

[59] BEARD’S _Life_, p. 174.




XVI.


Le Clerc was indignant; and declared he would take Toussaint
before he had his boots off! He issued his proclamation—almost as
grand—brief as Napoleon’s, and declared Toussaint and Christophe
outlaws, etc., etc., Toussaint reads it to his soldiers; with one
voice they cried—“We will die with you!” His plan now is to harass
the French continually, to leave them no rest, never to meet them in
open warfare, but to cut them off in detail—to destroy all before
them, houses, food and water; “throw corpses and horses into the
fountains, burn and annihilate everything in order that those who
come to reduce us to slavery may have before their eyes the image of
that hell which they deserve.” “Do not forget while waiting for the
rainy season, which will rid us of our foes, that we have no resource
but destruction and flames.” Such are his instructions—the fierce
Dessalines more than obeyed them. He drove the whites before him and
destroyed their towns, and left dead bodies lying in heaps to tell
the French of their desperation and ferocity. The “horrors” again
were abroad—fear began them, the French seconded them; blacks again
murdered whites—whites again slaughtered blacks. All the blacks,
however, were not savage, nor all the whites bloodthirsty, for the
heart of man returns to mercy.

The strong redoubt of Crête à Pierrot, built by the English, defends
the entrance to the wild mountains of the Artibonite; there a small
army can fight against numbers. Thither Toussaint collects his beaten
forces, thither came Dessalines and Lamartinière, their leaders. He
strengthens Crête à Pierrot, and charges them to defend it.

The French drew near under Debelle, Rochambeau, and Hardy; they
were the troops of Italy and the Nile, twelve thousand strong,
before whom this rabble of blacks were to fly like sheep. When they
appeared Dessalines opened his gates and called upon all who feared
or favored the French to walk out of the fort. Some went, but the
rest were the stronger. The French came on with their usual ardor;
the firing began; the moment they were within reach of the blacks the
batteries swept them down. Four hundred men went down that day, among
them Generals Debelle and Devaux. Le Clerc heard and was chagrined;
he hastened from Port au Prince with General Boudet’s division.
Dessalines had improved the time to build another strong redoubt. The
French again advanced, Rigaud and Petion among them, and drove in the
blacks; again the well-manned batteries mowed them down, and Boudet
was wounded. General Dagua brought in his division; he was struck and
but one general officer (Lacroix) kept the field. The blacks then
charged and beat the assailants, and Le Clerc himself received a
slight wound. The French in this attempt lost eight hundred men.

Le Clerc was still obliged to wear his boots, for Toussaint was not
taken, nor even Crête à Pierrot. The French then sat down before this
fort to invest and besiege it in regular form, for the blacks fought
like devils; they would not fly.

During this time, Toussaint is not idle—everywhere the master-spirit
is at work. He goes like the wind—he counsels—he schemes—he fights—he
dares—he goes into the churches of the island, and with few and
manly words rouses his people—he strengthens Charles Bellair in the
mountain of Verettes—he cheers Maurepas in the northwest—he comes
with a small force to Ennery, and the French garrison fly before
him—he appears before Gonaïves—he hastens to Marmalade, and sends
a new plan of operations to Christophe in the North—he goes to
Plaisance, captures a fort, marches his troops to meet Desforneaux,
and beats him back. Learning, then, that the fort of Crête à Pierrot
was in danger, he hastens with a small and resolute force, determined
to surprise and carry off Le Clerc. It is too late! Lamartinière, to
whom Dessalines had entrusted the defense of the fort, had done all
that skill, and courage, and heroism, could do, and at last had cut
his way through the French lines, leaving only the ruined fortress
and the bodies of dead men to the French army—no more, not even
glory![60]

The fortress of Crête à Pierrot had fallen, and five thousand gallant
Frenchmen were disabled or dead! The black soldiers of St. Domingo
had met the white soldiers of France, and had proved themselves men.

The fortress had fallen, but not Toussaint. The French army, in
separate divisions, took different directions. The country seemed to
swarm with blacks, and they spared neither their own lives nor the
lives of the French. General Hardy dragged his weary march towards
Cap François, and five hundred of his men were destroyed before he
reached it, yet no battle was fought. Boudet’s division returned
to Port au Prince. Charles Bellair hung upon him—harassed him, and
when he entered Port au Prince, a studied display was necessary to
conceal his frightful losses. In the North, the war was kept alive by
Christophe.

The blacks were everywhere beaten—but the situation of the French was
one of extreme difficulty. Le Clerc had learned the truth of what
Vincent had told Napoleon—“At the head of so many resources is a man,
the most active and indefatigable that can possibly be imagined.”
Though many of the blacks had joined the French, yet, fear of
slavery, and hatred of white dominion, made the rest desperate—they
were men to die. Of what use to fight against these? Victory was
barren: ruined forts—burned cities—putrefying carcasses—desolate
fields, were the rewards of the French. The climate was intolerable,
the work of the soldiers severe, and they murmured; they said, “the
Consul has sent us here to perish.” Twelve thousand of them were dead
or in the hospitals. Le Clerc again tried diplomacy and persuasion,
and with success.


FOOTNOTES:

[60] LACROIX, vol. ii., p. 170.




XVII.


Into the recesses of Mount Cahos Toussaint retires with a few
soldiers and friends, here for a few days to enjoy repose, once more
in the bosom of his family. The future is dark! What has he not
attempted, achieved, suffered, and lost? Liberty, development and
manhood for the despised blacks. The struggle is against the French
nation—no sympathy or aid from without is possible, for England and
America are both committed to Slavery. Not only so, but treachery,
and weakness, and weariness, are among the blacks—La Plume, Clervaux,
and Paul Louverture had succumbed—another blow followed—the defection
of Charles Bellair:—and yet another, Maurepas, one of the bravest
of his generals. Dark as is the prospect, Toussaint determines to
deserve success. He resumes his operations with active energy,
seconded by Christophe, Dessalines, and Lamartinière—everywhere his
blows are felt, though he is not seen. He draws near Cap François and
threatens the city, when fresh troops arrive from France.

Le Clerc now made overtures to Christophe; he intimated to him that
as the mother country would, no doubt, confirm the liberty of the
blacks, nothing was needed to close the war but to seize Toussaint,
which, together, they might do. Christophe rejected the perfidy. He
replied:—“Show us the laws which guarantee our liberty. How could
we believe the Consul’s words, amid such demonstrations of war?
Excuse the fears and alarms of a people which has suffered so much
in Slavery—give it grounds of confidence if you wish to end the
calamities of St. Domingo.”[61] An interview followed, and, relying
on the protestations and oaths of Le Clerc, Christophe went over
to the French—Dessalines followed him. The bad news spread fast.
Toussaint stood alone: his indignation and his courage were roused.
Every means were now put in action to move Toussaint; he replied:—“I
am powerful enough to burn and ravage, and can sell my life dearly.”
Le Clerc sent envoys—he said:—“I swear before the face of the Supreme
Being to respect the liberty of the people of St. Domingo.” Toussaint
listened—he wished for peace if he could have Freedom—he replied:—“I
accept everything which is favorable for the people and the army; for
myself I wish to live in retirement.”

Le Clerc now wished to meet Toussaint: he, wishing to beget
confidence with confidence, comes down from the mountains to Cap,
and is received everywhere with acclamations and tears. Four hundred
horsemen came with him, and with drawn sabers sat in the court-yard
while the interview continued. Le Clerc received Toussaint with
honors—he had found him quite another than a “Chief of Banditti,”
as he had once written to Napoleon. He now treated him with marked
distinction. He lauded the good faith and magnanimity of Napoleon;
spoke of the happiness now about to dawn on the island, and asked
his coöperation. Toussaint spoke with regret of the strange fact,
that he should have been forced to take up arms against France. He
said:—“Had _explanation_ preceded your arrival, or after arrival had
you waited to explain to me your _pacific_ mission, you would have
served equally well France and St. Domingo.” Le Clerc replied:—“Let
us forget the past—all shall be repaired.” He asked:—“Where would you
have got arms to carry on the war?” Toussaint replied:—“I would have
taken yours.” He could not have said better if he had been a white
man or a Roman.

Le Clerc renewed his oaths solemnly and in the presence of a large
body of people, blacks and whites. Toussaint could then do no more:
he retired to his estate at Ennery, determined to await the event.


FOOTNOTES:

[61] Letter of Christophe, BEARD’S _Life_, p. 205. RAINSFORD, p. 312.




XVIII.


Twelve years have passed since at the door of his slave home
Toussaint stood with his wife and his small children, and, as the
fires reddened the sky, with prophetic fear said, “the slaves have
risen!” Three score years are upon the head of the “old negro,” and
once more he is to enjoy the repose of home and the satisfaction of
his family. He has seen great things in those twelve years—he is to
see more. To his present affairs he gives himself with interest; his
coffee and orange groves flourish under his eye, briars and cactus
thickets vanish, the rich juices of nature are turned to delights. In
his district he is the one upon whom all eyes rest, to whom all come
for counsel and assistance—everywhere he is equal to the demand, and
he is visited by strangers and by natives—for he is _the_ man of St.
Domingo. Does he fear nothing? If he is too wise not to fear evil
would proceed from pride, he is also too wise to urge pride into evil
by distrust and reproaches. That he has small faith in the wisdom of
the planters, who had so signally shown that they had none, or in the
ultimate honor of the French, it is easy to believe. He knew that
neither the French nor the planters would rule the island for the
good of the blacks, and therefore that their rule must be short. But
he had the oaths of Le Clerc, and he is the man to wait the proof.

But did Le Clerc fear nothing? He feared everything. The French
soon got into straits—their provisions failed them—their white
officers would not be ranked by the black officers who retained their
commissions—the black troops must be fed, or they must be disbanded
to prowl the country and indulge in plunder, perhaps in worse. Le
Clerc determined to disarm them, but they were wary and suspicious,
for they yet feared slavery more than death. Le Clerc was perplexed.
The heat increased, and the scourge of the foreigner came among them;
it came silently but surely, this consuming fever of the Tropics—none
could see it, feel it, touch it, smell it—it was impalpable but it
was deadly. The weak went down before the yellow pestilence, and the
strong were as grasshoppers. Then the French cursed the day that
Napoleon sent them to St. Domingo—but they could not escape, they
were doomed to die—and to die ingloriously. They rotted like sheep;
five hundred a day were carted away, thrown into holes or into the
sea, the living among them. Despair and dismay produced riot and
revelry—drunkenness and songs were the companions of death. Through
all the death, Pauline, “the Venus Victrix,” kept her court and her
beauty. One after another of her courtiers or lovers was struck down;
others came and she was not dismayed. Meanwhile the blacks were at
home in St. Domingo, and were proof against the pestilence. Toussaint
had foreseen that this must come, and only hoped to maintain the
liberty of the island till the fever should destroy the armies or
drive them away. Now is his hour for vengeance; but he does not raise
his standard—he yet waits.

The true sportsman gives his bird the wing. The true knight strikes
not his unarmed enemy. The true man rests upon honor. The assassin
strikes in the dark—the dastard deals in treachery—the base man
knows not honor. The one was the black Toussaint—the other the white
Napoleon!

Le Clerc believed the blacks must take advantage of his weakness;
why should they not? If they rose, would not Toussaint be compelled
to lead them? Might he not, even then, be plotting to do so? He
suspected this, and he waited not for proof. He filled the district
of Ennery with troops, which only excited the blacks. Toussaint
sent a remonstrance for them. “This was exactly what was wanted,”
said one who knew Le Clerc’s plans. General Brunet (7th June) wrote
to Toussaint, inviting him to his house, to arrange the matter,
saying:—“You will not find there all the pleasures I could wish,
to welcome you, but you will find nothing but the frankness of
an honorable man who desires only your happiness and that of the
Colony.”[62] Toussaint at once agreed to meet him at the house
Georges (10th June), on the road between Cap and Gonaïves.

With a few attendants Toussaint goes. The day is fine—Brunet and his
companions charming. They confer as to the troops, they go over the
maps; Toussaint is himself again; he knows the country thoroughly and
the wants of the inhabitants—is ready and proud to do what is in
his power to suit their wants, and the requirements of the General.
The shades of evening draw on—Brunet leaves the room. Colonel
Ferrari enters it with twenty men, with swords drawn. He says: “The
Captain General has given me orders to arrest you; your guards
are overpowered; if you resist, you are a dead man: give me your
sword!”[63]

The deed was done!

’Twas a wicked one in the annals of dynasties and despotisms. No
earthquake yawned, no thunderbolt came down—yet the deed was not
forgotten nor unexpiated. Toussaint was hurried aboard the frigate
Hero, shut up from his family, who were also prisoners, and sent from
the home and the island he knew and loved so well.

He stands in his manacles on the deck of the ship, and as she slowly
parts from the island, he says: “They have in me struck down but the
trunk of the tree; the roots are many and deep, they will shoot up
again!”[64]

These were his last words! But he might in his destruction have thus
recorded his accusation, before the throne of God, and in the face of
men:—

1. I charge—That you white man, with no orders from God, stole the
black man from Africa and subjected him to labor, to tyranny, and to
the lash—for _your_ ends, not for _his_ benefit.

2. I charge—That for centuries you made a beast of him, and when he
turned in desperation and rent you, you wondered that he was a beast.

3. I charge—That you have ever denied him all chance for improvement,
all chance to be a MAN.

4. I charge—That when I, Toussaint Louverture, “with a commission
from Heaven,” triumphantly vindicated his manhood and mine, you
ruthlessly trampled him and me down again into degradation and ruin.

5. I charge—That the misery, the blood and the “horror” of St.
Domingo lie at your door, white man, for you sinned knowingly and
willfully.

6. I charge—That you, white man—not God!—are the father and defender
of Slavery, that you disgraced your Bible, corrupted your State, and
depraved your soul to sustain and continue this great wrong towards
me, and to entail unknown misery upon your children and the world.


FOOTNOTES:

[62] Brunet was what is called a gentleman, and had been baptized.

[63] LACROIX, v. ii., p. 203.

[64] The French have charged that, at that time, Toussaint was deep
in plots for their destruction. If he had been, he would not thus
have been trapped. This fact answers them.




XIX.


A few words more, and the life is told. The deed of treachery
vibrated through the island. Charles Bellair and Sanssouci
at once seized their arms and headed the risings, but these
were not universal. The negroes were astounded; they wanted
leaders:—Christophe and Dessalines were yet loyal to the French,
but the insurrection spread surely and certainly, and other
leaders appeared; treachery produced fear—fear cruelty—cruelty
revenge—revenge horror!—The ravages of the fever were now excelled
by the ravages of the war—Charles Bellair and his heroic wife were
betrayed and shot by black troops, forced to the deed. Maurepas, one
of the first to join the French, was suspected, seized:—epaulettes
were spiked to his shoulders; he was mocked, his wife and children
were tortured and thrown to the sharks before his eyes—death was the
end of all.

Slavery had been reëstablished in Guadaloupe. A shipload of
refractories was brought to St. Domingo and sold; and Le Clerc
had published an order, directing the proprietors to resume their
authority over their slaves.[65] These things produced their proper
results: Petion left the French, Clervaux followed, then Christophe,
then Dessalines.

In the night of Nov. 1, 1802, died General Le Clerc, in fever and
agony; regrets could not deliver his soul. Rochambeau succeeded to
the command of a debauched and demoralized army, and an exasperated
colony. He believed only in fear and terror[66]—and he tried them,
with due consequences. What were they?—Desperation. Before the end
of the year 1803[67] he was forced to eat the blood-hounds which had
been brought from Cuba to hunt the blacks, and he and his fragments
of troops were driven into the sea to become the prey of English
cruisers.

On the 22d of Nov., 1803, Christophe, Dessalines and Clervaux
proclaimed the independence of St. Domingo, and restored its name of
Hayti.

French dominion and negro slavery were ended in the beautiful island,
though the fear of them distracted it till 1820. General Buonaparte
could not reëstablish it, and General Pierce, formerly of New
Hampshire, now of Washington and hereafter of Alabama, will probably
fail.


FOOTNOTES:

[65] RAINSFORD, p. 303.

[66] Sixteen of Toussaint’s generals were chained by the neck to the
rocks of a desert island, and left there to die. Men were chained to
the stones of the court-yard—blood-hounds tore their limbs asunder,
and devoured their quivering flesh. The crowd looked on from the
galleries with admiring horror.—BEARD, pp. 257, 258. _Qu. Rev._, No.
42.

[67] RAINSFORD, pp. 339, 428.




XX.


On the 13th of August, a close carriage rolls rapidly away from
Brest—rapidly through France, guarded only by a few dragoons. Few
knew whom it contained, few remarked upon it; for such things were
common enough in Napoleon’s day, as they were before and have
been since. The Castle of Joux, in the high rocks which border
Switzerland, receives the prisoner. Alone with his servant, he passes
the weary days in inaction,—with crushed hopes, with lacerated
affections. He sees his wife, his children, no more—no more the
sunny hights of St. Domingo—no more the luxuriant valleys of Ennery.
He knows he is doomed; yet his soul is too strong for despair. His
letters to Napoleon are manly and simple; they meet with no reply
but a visit from Caffarelli, to discover where he had buried his
gold![68] Ten long months drag themselves away—the cold winds of the
mountains pierce the sensitive body of the prisoner—the trickling
water on the walls of his dungeon is turned to ice[69]—the single
servant is taken away.[70] For three days the governor of the castle
is absent, and none see the prisoner. When he returns, cold, hunger,
and disappointment have done their work. The kind angel, Death, has
carried the soul through the prison bars.

The Hero of the Blacks is no more. Toussaint is dead![71]

The first of the whites stands alone! A few short years, and Waterloo
came, and then the unscrupulous victor of a hundred fights fretted
out his diseased life, and cursed his angry gods, on the lonely rock
of St. Helena.

The first of the blacks died at Joux; the first of the whites at St.
Helena. Judge between them.

The following is Wordsworth’s sonnet, written during the
disappearance of Louverture.

    “Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men!
    Whether the whistling rustic tend his plough
    Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
    Pillow’d in some deep dungeon’s earless den:
    Oh, miserable Chieftain! where and when
    Wilt thou find patience? Yet, die not; do thou
    Wear rather, in thy bonds, a cheerful brow.
    Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
    Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
    Powers that will work for thee: _air_, _earth_ and _skies_.
    There’s not a breathing of the common wind
    That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
    Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
    And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”


FOOTNOTES:

[68] LACROIX, v. ii., p. 208.

[69] IBID., v. ii., p. 204.

[70] RAINSFORD, p. 324.

[71] _Biogr. Universelle._ RAINSFORD says that he died at Besançon.
p. 323.




  Transcriber’s Notes

  pg 16 Changed: unbidden, struck the Marsellaise
             to: unbidden, struck the Marseillaise

  pg 16 Changed: killed by his postillon
             to: killed by his postillion

  pg 66 Changed: Toussant reads it.
             to: Toussaint reads it.

  pg 67 Changed: now all his confusion and misery
             to: now all is confusion and misery

  pg 70 Changed: in the mouutain of Verettes
             to: in the mountain of Verettes

  Table of Contents was created by the transcriber.



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