ous work of clearing new lands.
The French Revolution of 1789 overthrew the monarchy and landed aristocracy and brought the mercantile bourgeoisie to power. It proclaimed the watchwords of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity and issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Yet the bourgeois revolutionaries in Paris dragged their feet on equality for freedmen and looked with horror on abolishing slavery in the colonies. This seeming paradox is explained by the fact that the wealth of the leading capitalists of the epoch – the shipbuilders, merchants and slave traders of Bordeaux, Nantes and Marseille – was dependent above all on the enormous profits flowing out of the sugar islands of the Antilles. The Girondins, who took power following the execution of Louis XVI and the proclamation of the French Republic in 1792, were named after the region around Bordeaux, the Gironde. Even as the Revolution radicalized, it was not until the end of the Jacobin reign in 1794 that they reluctantly abolished slavery, and then only in the face of black revolt and to ward off an English attack on France’s most lucrative colony.
The successive stages of the French Revolution were directly reflected in the developing revolution in Saint-Domingue, but through the prism of race/color/class divisions of the plantation society. The first phase of the Haitian Revolution resulted from the debate in the French Constituent Assembly on the question of who should have voting rights. The Amis des Noirs (Friends of the Blacks), which opposed the immediate emancipation of the slaves, asked only for the rights of freedmen under Louis XIV’s Black Code. But despite their modest demands, the Assembly’s resolution of 28 March 1790 did not resolve the rights of mulattos. It decreed that “any adult male person” with certain property qualifications could vote, without specifying that freedmen were “persons.” (Slaves were considered “property.”) And implementation of the decree was put in the hands of the colonial assembly, which refused to promulgate it. Both the mulattos and the planters were infuriated. The balance of forces would decide.
The freedmen’s response came from Vincent Ogé, a mulatto intellectual who had been active in Paris among the Amis des Noirs. Disappointed with the decree of March 28, he returned to Saint-Domingue via the United States where he obtained guns and ammunition. He was joined by Jean-Baptiste Chavannes, a professional soldier who had fought with the French in the American war. The mulatto revolt at Cap-Français in October 1790 was quickly crushed; the leaders fled to the Spanish side of the island, but were captured and turned over to the French colonists. Even though they appealed to the common interests of whites and mulattos as slaveowners, Ogé and Chavannes were brutally tortured and executed on the wheel – at the opposite end of the square to that reserved for the execution of white.
Blood was flowing in the colonies, and the division among the slaveowners threatened to provide an opening for the blacks to rise up. Raymond, leader of the Amis des Noirs, pleaded for equality for the mulattos, arguing that “if nevertheless the blacks want to revolt, they will not be able to, because the persons of color, interested in keeping them in slavery, will unite with the whites and will then constitute a single class.” On 15 May 1791 the Constituent Assembly granted the mulattos some political rights, while constitutionally “protecting” slavery. These concessions were the cement that held together the French-mulatto alliance for the next several years. They were aimed at maintaining property rights and the vital economy of Saint-Domingue, all the more urgent in the face of the rising of the Paris masses and attacks on the French Revolution by the European monarchies. But it was already too late. While the Revolution was marking time in the metropole, the blacks were rising in Saint-Domingue.
Planters in the North were in revolt against the decrees of the Paris Assembly. They had arrested a mulatto leader, André Rigaud, a large landowner who had also fought along with the 800 Saint-Domingue “colored” volunteers at the siege of Savannah in the American Revolutionary War. French troops freed Rigaud, and the mulattos prepared to form a federation in the South. But before they could move, a black slave insurrection broke out. The leader was Boukman, a work-gang leader in Limbé, the same place where Macandal had launched his conspiracy. On the night of 14 August 1791, Boukman held the famous ceremony at Bois Cayman where the slaves vowed to revolt. A week later the insurrection was general in the northern plain – the richest and most prosperous area of the country. Some 200 sugar plantations and 600 coffee estates were laid waste and hundreds of whites killed. At this point, it was more an inchoate jacquerie (peasant revolt) than a revolution. When they attacked Cap-Français, they were defeated and Boukman killed.
Yet the battle had been joined. It was at this time that Toussaint Louverture threw in his lot with the rebels. Toussaint was, as his best biographer, C.L.R. James has written, undoubtedly one of the political and military geniuses of the late 18th century. In ten years of warfare, he forged groups of illiterate slaves into a disciplined army which evoked the astonishment of European commanders and defeated both a British expeditionary force and the best troops Napoleon could muster at the height of his power. A British military historian, Fortescue, has put total British losses at 100,000, including 40,000 dead – more than the total losses of Wellington’s army from all causes in the Spanish Peninsular campaign. The French lost over 55,000 soldiers in Saint-Domingue, including veteran troops of Napoleonic victories.
After Boukman’s death, Toussaint rose rapidly. A small, frail man with an iron will, Toussaint had led a relatively privileged life under an enlightened master. He was literate and had read widely, including the 1780 treatise on the politics and economics of the Indies by Abbé Raynal, who declared of the fugitive slaves: “Those lightnings announce the thunder. A courageous chief only is wanted.” From Caesar’s Commentaries he derived valuable military knowledge. He had already gained organizational experience, having risen to the position of steward of livestock, in charge of hundreds of slaves and foremen. With this background, at the age of 45, “Old Toussaint” joined the slave revolt. But with the Constituent Assembly under Girondins in alliance with the mulattos, the former slaves faced the combined forces of the mulattos and the French.
The blacks were considered outlaws, to be dealt with as such. In order to give himself time and establish a safe retreat, Toussaint formed a temporary alliance with the Spanish, retaining his freedom of movement and command, and the organization integrity of his forces. Nevertheless, Toussaint was on the verge of failure when Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. The British, seeing an opportunity both to defeat the hated Revolution and regain a monopoly of trade in cotton, indigo, coffee – and slaves! – declared war on France and prepared to seize the French colonies in the Antilles. The threat of invasion of France and the Paris masses’ demands to halt the spiraling price of food brought the Jacobins to power. Still the Revolution refused to come to grips with the question of slavery. But the all-sided civil war in Saint-Domingue forced the issue.
“Brothers and friends.
Since Sonthonax’ decree had not been ratified by the Convention, Toussaint did not trust it and continued to fight against the mulatto armies under Rigaud and Beauvais. Faced with the British invasion and Toussaint’s progress, in February 1794, the Convention finally ratified the abolition of slavery in the colonies. When news of ratification reached Saint-Domingue weeks later, the British were on the verge of successfully occupying the entire island. Toussaint immediately broke with the Spanish and rallied to the forces of the Republic against the slaveholding British. In a series of lightning campaigns, winning seven victories in as many days, Toussaint’s army rapidly reversed the situation, and drove the British onto the defensive.
Toussaint Louverture soon became master of the island. The governor was General Laveaux, who after being saved by Toussaint from mulatto rebels at Cap-Français acclaimed his rescuer “that black Spartacus foreseen by Raynal, whose destiny is to avenge the outrages on his race.” In France, in the meantime, the Jacobins had been overthrown in the coup of 9 Thermidor (24 July 1794) and the Directory was in power. Encouraged by Thermidor and by appeals from the colonists, the British hung on in isolated outposts for two more years before finally evacuating. The Directory formally approved Toussaint’s victories and increasing power. He was made Lieutenant Governor of the colony in April 1796 and commander in chief of the French forces in 1797. At the same time, the Directory rightly realized that the logical extension of Toussaint’s course was independence and, unwilling to accept something akin to a commonwealth status, which Toussaint desired, they began plotting his ovrthrow.
In 1797 Paris sent a new emissary as Sole Agent to her colony, [Count Gabriel Marie Joseph] Hédouville. Hédou