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“None so fitted to break the chains as
they who wear them. None so well equipped to decide what is a
fetter.” - James Connolly
Enslavement by the Enlightened in
Revolutionary Times
In 1789, the year of the French Revolution,
Saint Domingue (now Haiti) was the richest colony in the world.
The source of this wealth was the exploitation of half a million
black slaves who furnished the labor for the sugar, indigo,
cotton, cocoa, and tobacco extracted from over 2,000
plantations.
In principle, a series of royal
edicts called the code noir (slave code) regulated the
conduct of the white slave owners in France’s colonies. The
code noir sanctioned corporal punishment, among other
things, but in practice even this code’s few admonitions to
feed, clothe, and refrain from raping one’s slaves went
unenforced, and the plantation owners did as they wished. In
fact many worked their slaves to death, since it was usually
cheaper to buy than raise a slave. Hence the common proverb of
colonialists of those days: “The Ivory Coast is a good
mother.”
As a result of such
barbarism and the enthusiasm for expanding the slave work force,
although the first slave ships arrived at the island in 1510,
even as late as 1789 two-thirds of the slaves in Saint Domingue
were African-born.
Many thousands of black souls,
some of whom had been warriors sold into slavery, disappeared
into Haiti’s forests immediately on arrival to form communities
of “negres marons” (escaped slaves).
About 28,000 free blacks and
mulattoes also lived in Saint Domingue at the time of the French
Revolution, and most of them owned slaves. These property owners
quickly became interested in what new rights they might extract
from the Revolution because, compared to the French, their
rights were radically curtailed.
As the spirit of the
Enlightenment inflamed everyone, the Haitian slaves would prove
to be those most faithful to its ideals.
 The
Non-Violent Route: Struggle for Representation in the French
National Assembly
Representatives of two groups went to
France to request representation in the French National
Assembly.
Black slaves. Not being permitted to
represent themselves, the black slaves were represented by “the
Society of the Friends of the Blacks.” This society
initially promoted the abolition of slavery and wrote countless
pamphlets opposing slavery and the slave trade. In the end,
however, when it was accused of promoting a slave insurrection,
the society denied that it had ever wanted to abolish slavery
and defended itself by arguing that all it had ever wanted was
to abolish new importation of Africans to the French colonies.
So much for friendship.
Mulatto slave owners. The ultimate
ambition of this group was to become white slave owners. Vincent
Ogé, a wealthy planter and leader of the mulatto slave owners,
presented his clan’s views to the white planter delegates.
Unsatisfied with that meeting, in October 1790 he took part in a
rebellion involving 350 mulattoes. The rebellion was squelched
and Ogé was executed, but on May 15, 1791, the National Assembly
granted rights to “all free blacks and mulattoes who were
born of free mothers and fathers,” in a decision so
qualified that it affected only a few hundred people.
White plantation owners. The white
planters began to grumble about taxation without representation
and the possible advantages of independence. They refused to
abide by the National Assembly’s ruling and concluded that this
decision was the beginning of a move toward the emancipation of
the slaves.
 The
Slave Revolt
On August 22, 1791, Saint Domingue’s slaves
rose up in what would ultimately become history’s first and only
successful slave revolt. The initial rebellion was led by Vodou
priest and maroon rebel leader Boukman. The slaves murdered
their white masters by every possible means, trashed the towns
and burned down the plantations. The scale of the attack was
such that for three weeks ships could not approach the coast,
and the smoke from the fires obscured day from night.
On September 24, 1791, the
French National Assembly responded to news of the revolt by
rescinding the rights of free blacks and mulattos. The rebel
leaders were caught and publicly tortured to death. Boukman’s
severed head was put on public display. But even as another
iteration of France’s parliament (the “Legislative Assembly”
that replaced the National Assembly in October 1791) voted on
March 28, 1792 to reinstate the political rights of free blacks
and mulattos, and again decide nothing about slavery, the slaves
were regrouping.
L’Ouverture
From the conflicts, a disciplined
leadership emerged in Toussaint Breda, who later earned the name
Toussaint L’Ouverture for being: Toussaint – the one who
raises all souls. L’Ouverture – the one who finds the
crack in the enemy’s defense and shows the way forward.
Toussaint L’Ouverture, born a
slave in Saint Domingue in 1745 and self taught in many things,
including military strategy, would ultimately drive huge
battalions of the armies of Napoleon, the Spanish, and the
British from the island of Hispaniola and guide Haiti to its
independence.
The image above is thought to
be the most authentic representation of Toussaint. Until
recently, when one portrait was found that had been executed by
Alexandre Francois de Girardin, there existed no authentic
portrait of this remarkable man.
Toussaint is thought to have
learned about Africa from his father, who may have been a tribal
chief called Gaou-Guinou. Despite being a slave, Toussaint had
been permitted to learn to read and write, and he taught himself
to read French and Latin. His readings included Julius Caesar’s
military writings. The notions of equality and liberty in the
works of French Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques
Rousseau also resonated well with Toussaint.
On the Breda Plantation,
Toussaint worked as the overseer of livestock, a horticulturist,
horse trainer, and coachman. According to Marcus Rainsford, one
of the earliest chroniclers of the Haitian Revolution:
“Among other traits fondly
preserved in St. Domingo of the conduct of Toussaint during the
early period of his life, are his remarkable benevolence towards
the brute creation, and an unconquerable patience…. He knew how
to avail himself so well of the sagacity of the horse, as to
perform wonders with that animal; without those cruel methods
used to extort from them the docility exhibited in Europe; he
was frequently seen musing amongst the different cattle,
seemingly holding a species of dumb converse, which they
evidently understood, and produced in them undoubted marks of
attention. They knew and manifested their acquaintance, whenever
he appeared…. The only instance in which he could be roused to
irritation, was when a slave had revenged the punishment he
received from his owner upon his harmless and unoffending
cattle.”
Toussaint joined the revolution
about 10 years after being freed from slavery at age 33. Soon
after he took that momentous step, he helped his former master,
M. Bayou de Libertas, escape to Baltimore, Maryland.
Toussaint’s military training
began under the black leader Biassou, but Toussaint was soon
appointed next in command and quickly given his own division.
Initially, he trained a crack team of only a few hundred
extremely well disciplined revolutionaries.
In the fall of 1792, the French
government sent emissaries to Saint Domingue to bring the slave
revolt to heel. In response, Toussaint and the other rebel slave
leaders struck agreements with the British and Spanish to fight
with their armies against the French. If the British and Spanish
merely viewed this as an opportunity to weaken France, so did
the rebels.
By 1793, the French revolution
was being steered by the Jacobins. This group, led by Maximilian
Robespierre, is best known for the Reign of Terror campaign to
rid France of the “enemies of the revolution.”
Though the Jacobins were
ruthless, they were also purists who strived to push the ideals
of revolution as far as they would go. And so it was they who
formally voted to end slavery in the French colonies (including
Haiti) when they took up the issue of equality. Specifically,
after the Haitian slave rebellions and the slave-assisted
invasions from the Spanish and British caused a near total
collapse of Saint Domingue’s economy, the National Convention
(the Jacobin assembly that succeeded the Legislative Assembly)
agreed to hear a multiracial delegation from Saint Domingue
describe the evils of slavery and then voted on February 4, 1794
to end slavery in all the French colonies. Saint Domingue’s
mulattoes opposed this move almost as vigorously as the whites,
who fled Saint Domingue by the thousands. In the end, however,
the slave trade continued because this decree, like so many
others, went unenforced.
Nevertheless, the Haitian slave
rebels felt sufficiently encouraged by the Jacobin vote to offer
to help the French army eject the British and Spanish from the
island. By then Toussaint was leading 4,000 fighters. In January
1798, Haiti’s slave armies, guided by Toussaint’s brilliant
military strategy, defeated the British (an army of 60,000) in
seven major battles over seven days and forced them from the
island. Two years later, the slave army evicted the Spanish army
from the eastern half of Hispaniola (now the Dominican
Republic). By then, Toussaint commanded 55,000 experienced
fighters.
Toussaint L’Ouverture soon
became the de facto ruler of Haiti as the country’s “colonial
governor” and began the even harder tasks of promoting
reconciliation and rebuilding the war-ravaged economy (Compared
to 1789, by 1800 production from the plantations had dropped by
80%.)
According to Rainsford: “Such
was the progress of agriculture from this period, that the
succeeding crop produced (notwithstanding the various
impediments, in addition to the ravages of near a ten years war)
full one third of the quantity of sugar and coffee, which had
ever been produced at its most prosperous period…. Health,
became prevalent throughout the country….”
Haiti’s first Constitution was
written in 1801 under Toussaint’s rule. C. L. R. James best
describes this document’s embodiment of the Enlightenment
ideals.
“The Constitution is
Toussaint L’Ouverture from the first line to the last, and in it
he enshrined his principles of government. Slavery was forever
abolished. Every man, whatever his color, was admissible to all
employments, and there was to exist no other distinction than
that of virtues and talents, and no other superiority than that
which the law gives in the exercise of a public function.”
Enter Napoleon
For a while it looked as though Haiti would
be allowed to continue as an independent state and a French
colony in name only, but soon the French executed Maximilian
Robespierre and returned to business as usual. Ultimately
Napoleon Bonaparte managed a coup d’état and proclaimed himself
emperor. He resolved to retake Saint Domingue for the French
plantation owners and quietly dispatched a huge force to crush
the slave revolt, reinstate slavery, and abolish the rights that
had been granted to the free blacks. The French force wound up
losing Napoleon’s brother-in-law (a reputed sadist) along with
24,000 soldiers and, due to the shame of being beaten by a bunch
of “barefoot slaves,” they formally attributed most their
deaths to yellow fever.
By 1803 Toussaint calculated
that the defeats of Napoleon’s emissaries should have reasonably
persuaded him to consider a peace accord. Toussaint’s offer was
that he would retire from public life if Napoleon would
recognize Haitian Independence. Within a few months, Toussaint
was drawn into a trap. He was invited to a negotiation meeting
and on Napoleon’s orders, put on a boat to France.
On realizing his betrayal,
Toussaint spoke these famous words to the ship captain: “En
me renversant, ils n’ont abattu à Saint Domingue que le tronc de
l’arbre de la liberté des noirs. Il repoussera par des racines
parce qu’elles sont profondes et nombreuses.” (In
overthrowing me, they have only felled the trunk of the tree of
black liberty in Saint Domingue. It will regrow from the roots
because they are deep and many.)
These words acquire greater
meaning with every decade that passes and never fail to make me
shiver. Now I can see Toussaint as a self-possessed man who
fully knows his worth. He is saying here that Napoleon is
deluding himself if he thinks he is decapitating the Haitian
Revolution. Toussaint appreciates that he is supported from the
grassroots: a concept that a top-down general like Napoleon
could never grasp. In addition, Napoleon could not have
understood that several other brilliant black commanders would
continue the fight. Toussaint’s fatal mistake was to
under-estimate Napoleon’s racism.
Thus on the orders of Napoleon,
Toussaint was thrown into a dungeon in the Jura mountains in the
French Alps. When the poet William Wordsworth learned about
Toussaint’s news, he wrote the following sonnet:
….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.
Toussaint died of cold and starvation in
Fort de Joux prison on April 7, 1803.
The Struggle Continues
As Toussaint predicted, other Haitian
revolutionaries continued the fight against slavery. At the
Battle of Vertières on November 18, 1803, the rebel army, now
led by General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, conclusively devastated
the French army led by Napoleon’s new emissary Rochambeau.
Consequently, within months of
killing Toussaint, Napoleon was forced to concede his loss of
Haiti by giving up his other New World possessions. This
included the sale of the French territory in North America to
the United States: Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana purchase.
Incidentally, Thomas Jefferson
agreed to allow slavery in the newly acquired territory when
U.S. Southerners pushed for it.
On January 1, 1804, with the
consummation of the first and only successful slave revolt in
history, Haiti’s self-emancipated slaves declared “The
Independent Republic of Hayti.”
Years later, during his exile
at Saint Helena, when Napoleon was asked why he had behaved so
dishonorably toward Toussaint. True to form, he replied: “What
could the death of one wretched Negro mean to me?”
The present has a way of
warping one’s perception of men, and it takes distance and
perspective to measure them. Three centuries later, the despotic
Napoleon is shrunk to size, and Toussaint continues to stand as
the giant he always was.
C. L. R. James said it best: “Toussaint
L’Ouverture was the finest product of that greatest period in
human history: The Age of Enlightenment.”
Sources: The Black
Jacobins, Toussaint and the San Domingo Revolution (1938), by
CLR James | An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti
(1805), by Marcus Rainsford | Wikipedia
Dady Chery is the editor of the website Haiti Chery,
where this text was first published. She is a journalist, playwright, essayist, and poet who writes
in English, French, and her native Créole. She hails from an
extended working-class family in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She
holds a doctorate. |
