Immediate abolition of slavery") in 1842, following his return from the West Indies. He was a member of the Société française pour l'abolition de l'esclavage ("French Society for the Abolition of Slavery") founded in 1834, modeled after contemporary British abolitionist societies. After the early 1830s he was also a republican activist in France, and was one of the founders of the progressive newspaper La Réforme in 1843, to which he was a regular contributor. Schœlcher elaborated on social, economic, and political reforms he believed would be necessary to the Caribbean colonies after the abolition of slavery. He argued that the production of sugar could continue, though it should be rationalized with the construction of large central factories, and opposed the concentration of land ownership. Schœlcher was the first European abolitionist to visit Haiti after its independence, and had a large influence on the abolitionist movements in all of the French West Indies. He was actively against the debt collected from the Haitians as French slave owners sought reparations for their property lost in the Haitian Revolution. In February 1848, a revolution in France overthrew the July Monarchy. Schœlcher arrived from Senegal on 3 March, and quickly went to meet with François Arago, the Minister of the Navy and Colonies of the provisional government of the new Republic. Arago appointed him under-secretary of state for the colonies the next day, as well as president of a new commission charged with drafting the immediate abolition of slavery, with Louis Percin and Henri-Alexandre Wallon assigned as secretaries. Schœlcher had convinced Arago not to wait until the election of the constituent National Assembly, which would be deeply occupied with organizing the new republican institutions, to establish the abolitionist commission, arguing that any postponing of the emancipation could lead to revolt and bloodshed in the colonies. In his capacity as under-secretary of state and president of the commission, Schœlcher prepared and wrote the decree that was issued on 27 April 1848, through which the French government abolished slavery in all of its colonies and granted citizenship to the emancipated slaves. Later career Schœlcher's ultimate success in ending slavery gave birth to a new republican movement in the Caribbean colonies. He was elected deputy to the National Assembly in 1848 by the department of Martinique. The next year he ran for reelection but lost to Cyrille Bissette, a former "free man of colour" and abolitionist, but