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St. Domingo, its revolution and its hero, Toussaint Louverture.
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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.
[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]
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