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:!?<>ec ""-- ;)Joc )77- 60 7 J The Making ofHaiti "" The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below
Carolyn E. Fick
The University of Tennessee Press KNOXVILLE !
l Slavery and Slave Society
its height in l789. the french colony of Saint Dornin~ue.the Pearl of i A the Antilles and· the pride of France. wa'i bv far the wealthiest and
most Aourishin~of the slave colonies in the' Carihbean. Tl~t•trememlous for tunes amassed by the white planters. as well as the men· hunt bourgeoisie of that era. had been generated by the forced labor of over half a million black slaves, raided from their homelands in Africa and forcihly broul!ht to the 'l"ew World to till the preeminent and ever-e:":panding demand for labor and profits. Yet there was very liule in its early seventeenth-1:enturv beginnings to ' indicate that Saint Domingue would become the colonial Hercules that she was by the eve of the revolution. The lln;t french settlers were. in fact. of a dubious nature, composed of fanner jlibu.,tiers. or pirates and freebooters operating in tht· coastal waters. along with the inland boucanien involved in hunting and the trafficking of hides. 1 What little subsistence farm in!! the houcaniers did engage in eventually gave way. by the 1670s. to the more lucrative exploitation of tobacco and, by 1685, of indigo. thus initiating the ; transition to a plantation-oriented economy and the introduction of forced labor, •~ The first imported laborers to Saint Domingue. however. were the t>n J gagis, or white indentured servants of peasant and laboring class origins. initially from the western maritime regions of f'rance. who came to serve ~ under three-year contracts and eventually worked and lived side by side 1 in m~ar-equalnumbers with black slaves. It was the conversion to indigo. though, financed in part through capital derived from spurious fiibu.,te opera < tions. that accelerated the utilization of Africans as plantation laborers. Tht> ' larger-scale. labor-intensive production of sugar and the ex:c\usive induc tion of black slaves into the colonial work force were by then hardly two decades away. with the engages en•ntuall)' occupying the lower ranks of econome, or overseer, specialized tradesmen. and. occasionally. stewanl on the plantations.-' It was from these disparate elements that a dominant white colonial
planter class emergell in I he ei~~:hteenthcentury.' and bv the eve of the rem lotion constituted the most sigmt-icunt segment of the white-population. for it .u: 11 ~ ' /Jw·k!!rmtwllo H.l!l."o/utirm 11nrlSlun• SIH:IP/l" 111•1 ~ S/un•n 1171
""'""upon tlw plautatiun ~~~ternand sla1·e labor that t!w t>ntire enmomy ,md reprt'"sentati,·es nf the Freneh maritime huurgeoisie and the French-born
1wahh uf ~aintOomin!!:ue
ni.Li n·!!imt•. hnwe1·.-r. most planters nu lun~erelaimed pt'rmanent fl'sidence '· .-\t the head of the bu!"f'allcracy were the ~ovemorand the intendant. both
111 tht• colon\. lrulet>d. one rardy came to !:'aint Domlll)!Ue "ith the de,ire to ;tppoinlt."'d hy the king as his Hffirial representatives and eharged with the
~ta~··IllY lon!!er than it would take to make a quiek fortune. Simp!~·stated. functions and eontrol of t:olonial administration. Together they represented th,. first and foremost aim of the planters was to make money. to make more the absolute authority of the king. Jg:ainsl which there was no recourse, and
money. anti to make it all as quickly as possible in order to return to France -~ thus created a constant souree of bitterness for the colonists. The planters to .. njoy the luxuries and comforts that their overseas investments ensured t hated them for their arrogant. despotic pretensions and were only further them. In general. most colonists considered themselves as mere travelers frustrated by the special privileges and protection accorded by the Crown to in the colony and spoke continually of revisiting or of returning to France the merchant bourgeoisie. .. within the following year. In fact, a significa~tportion of the planter class ' Alongside the grands blancs in city and country were the lower- and ~ seldom. if ever, even set foot on the island.~· middle-class whites who. as plantation mat'!agers. procureurs, and tEconomes These absentee planters were represented in the colony either by their ' in the country, were known as petits blancs. In the towns. they occupied posi "f:l:"nts or plantation managers. who kept them more or less infonned of tions as lawyers. shopkeepers, retail merchants. grocer-;. and tradesmen. production levels. profits. expenses, and the general operations of the plan usually carpenter-; or masons. While many of the petit.i blancs were descen tation. The agent. or procureur, usually a pennanent resident in the colony, dants of the fonner seventeenth-century engages, there were also among the thus took over full administration of the plantation and assumed all the rights •·" urban "small" whites a whole host of vagabonds, petty criminals, debtors, and prerogatives of the owner:6 in his turn, the procureur could become a ' and soldiers-of-fortune who swanned to Saint Domingue, where, regardless plantation owner himself. But the delegation of powers to an agent almost ' of one's background or origin. the single privilege of race could elevate the 'l 11 imariably meant harsher treatment for the slave than if the master were ; most despicable to a position of social respectability. A British soldier who present to check the excesses of an overzealous or often sadistic overseer. 7 was sent to Saint Domingue some years after the revolution began, spoke of For the colonial planter, life was generally one of monotony and isolation, ' .. the necessity the White People are under, of making a pointed difference compensated by sheer dissipation and indulgence.~The arrogance and con between the two Colour-;," and offered these observations: "A white Man
ceit of the white planters was sustained by surrounding themselves with a ~ how ever low his Situation, in every sense of the Word mav be, conceives swann of domestic slaves to satisfy every need. want, or caprice. Indeed. himself equal to the Richest Man in the Colony ... in regard to the respect ' the most visible sign of wealth and the most flagrant indication of superiority . he expects shall be paid him ... 12
consisted in the number of domestic slaves at one's disposal, for .. the di~ It would be an oversimplification. however, to argue. as one historian has nity of a rich man consisted in having four times as many domestics as he done, that despite the social and economic differences that separated the needed."' To further ensure their prestige and enhance their status, some '' planters from the petits blancs, these differences were of relatively minor planters would usurp nobility by merely inventing a fictitious past, laying importance since they were subsumed under the one unifying factor of race j false claims to their ancestry. and thereby hiding their lowly origins. 10 prejudice, tying together all the diverse sections of the white population. 13 Yet all this extravagance merely contributed to the boredom and social Race prejudice was undeniably practiced by white society against the mu
alienation of the typical planter. separated as he was bv !on~distances over la\\(){'"Sand the blacks, and by virtue of the common bond of superiority that deplorable roads from the nearest neighbor. Whatever social life existed in membership in !he white race alone afforded them. the various categories of Saint Domingue was to be found in the two principal cities of le Cap and whites, as diven;e in their origins as in their : ~''lt>s: so for the rural planter. social life centered invariably around his color, who constituted an intermediate sector of colonial society but whose business: hi5 slaves. his ~U~(If,his cotton. his coffee. his prutits. numbers. estimated roughly at twentv-'>even thousand. near!~·equaled that These pl11nters. as well. as their white eountt>rparts in the cities-the of the whites. 11 There was a universally aecepte{l and a JUridically enforced J . . : ~ I /io!< h'!!f'11Uit/ 1•1 h'o"'lit 11 .l p<~p11\.t1J Tilt' lll dllf,//1< lu_,_ rnu~t.,f "hom '"'n· !'wt• rmd;uto .. s .. -. ··;_~de~qf t\\t' t•o\om,ll n-;:unt', 11.he<1t\w frt"t' c•n\ured population jlllll]Wd from ,1 nwre iu to 27 ..-JOO Ill \7:l'J. lH' tlwir numlwrs far ext:eeJed tht"ir tutalm thl' H'~lof the Fn•neh and Briti~h ~inn•II ~aint Domin~ue''l ~UJ!iiTeronotm·. th1· pPtit.< blrwn witne."s!"O the 11 alarmiu~ "·'~ thi~ )l!1>J!r<'ssiH~clu,.ing off nf thetr •:hanet's fur prup.-rty owm·r~l,ip.tbt~one \\'e>'t lnJi••s l't'mlmwd. En•n mon• for the 11hiks t)'lat denm~raphicinerease was paralleled b~-~ustained.-cunomtc gwwth amon~ nitt>riun that would j!;uarantee thetr so~:iulinte,grution and ~ati,fvtheir frus 16 tr:llt•d U>iptrati(Jns. In addition. they suffered mcrr>a~lllJl:~:umpetitiunfrom thl" r!jfmllfh!.~. lf at lir.it the afffnnchJ.S pruvHied compt'Lition with thP. pelil5 for dw a({mnchi.s and even the upper-~tratasla\·es fur jobs in the trades.17"on• bluno than that. riffrrmchis and slaves J.like \·iewed'the prtit hlnnc as an ohjed jobs in the speemli7.P.f!trades on the plantations. by mid-century anJ e!:>pt"' •·ially aftl'r 17(,:~-many be1.:omt' plantation themselves ;1s th .. ••f dens1un. thus further exacerbatin~;the pswhological effeets of ~conmmc had u"ners hrou~ht unrlev~C"\ 111~ccurityin a society where. without prnpeT1y nwnef"hip. entry into th~ rise and rapid e.xpansion uf coffee production much of the uped mountainous regions of the West ami the virtual frontier in the South upper e-chelons was all but impo~sihle.The slave,, tho~~ most discerning and can de>icnbe the various categories of whites. Onlv the grand~Manes, the ,2:reat and a characteristically sober life st~le.they had made l"OIIsiderable eco sugar planters. were the real whites. the B!ancs-bhmcs. The pnit hlanc. the nomic strides and were amassing fortunes that rivaled and. at times, f'V~n small white who worked for a salary. was little more than a Blanchet and ~urpassedthose of some whites. Thts. moreover. \O afmtx blanc by comparison: if he were in the militia he mi~htbe c-alled a evident as early as the 1750s. as the colonial admmistrators th~C"ninformt>d B!anc-soldat or perhaps even a Negre-blanc. 18 the ministry of the marine: Irascible. insolent. with much to lose out on in the >iocioeconomic struc- These men are hf'll!innmp; to fill the colon~and it 1s of the gn>atbt Jl't'rvers1on ture of Saint Domingue, the pelitJ blancs wl"re. in one sense. the most vul to ~eethem. their numbers •·ontinuall~increa~ingamon~sl the whitl's, with for nerable and consequently the most volatile element in the white colonial tunes often greater than tho~"'of the white~.... Thc1r strict fn1ga!itv prompt in~! regime. Though they despised the planters as their soc1al superiors. the them In p\m::e their profits in the bank ev.. rv year. thl-y accumulate huge capital ;< wealth and prestige of this class nevertheless represented thf"ir ultimate and sums and become utTOgant because the~are nch, and their atTOgance increa.;es vet unattainable goals. Thus, when interests periodically clashed between in proportion to their wealth. They bid on properti~C"sthat are for ~ale in every district and cause their prices to reach such a~tronmniea\heights that the whl\es the colonial planters and the royal buream~racy.at times culminating in de whu have not so much wealth are unable to buv, or else ruin them~eh·esif they ~ fiant rebellion. it was among these dis~lfectedelements of the pelils blancs do persist. In this manner, in man~distrit·ts th~best land is owned by the half- / that the planters readily recruited their support. And equally as hitterly. the eastes .... These coloreds, {moreover]. imitate the sty\"' of the whites and trv to colonial planters opposed the metropolitan bourgeoisie. the great merchants wipe out all memon~of their original state.~ and slave traders by whom. because of their exclusiH! I'Omrnercial priVI leges. they felt unjustly exploited. lmbu~dwith feelin~s of uutonorny and The administrators' report went on to predict. somewhat hyperbolicallv. uf contempt for metropolitan authority. the 1:nlunial planters saw them~elw~s that. should this pattem continue. tlw mulattoes would even try to contract marria~eswithin the most distinguished white families and, worse. through as the legitimate heirs to Saint Domin,!!:ue[~lSan ennobl._.o\ r;we [,~.virtue •lbsentee owners of their own claSs for their affinities with 1he metropolis. 1'' were taken. ~3 But beneath these divergent elements were the fr('e rnubttoe-; ilnd frf'e By 1789. the ajfranchis owned one-third of the plantation property. one- , blacks who. becattsf" of their color. constituted an illlermf'diarv •·aste b<" quartl"r of the slaves, and one-quarter of the r"'al estate property in Saint j t-...een the whites and the slaves. Due In thf' \\i1lespread praetiec of eoncu Domin~ue:in addition. they held <1 fair pnsition in commen.·e and in the 1 hinag"' by the white masters with their female sLm:s. follmH·rl hy eventual tra(les. as well J.S in the nulit:l~--~CircumstaJW1:'~permittin~.a few had grants of freedom to the offspring mamlj!.l'l':< n·tum I<' ~:uropo•"r en:n inheritors ll• 17hJ .. 11 l•·•t~lllm•r· humlrt>d 11hitl" pbnll'r.: WI"TP marri•·•llu "'mwn o)i' o·w!usivt>ly o·o!on·•L the 1,-hltes ,-,mld incidt>ntall~·r.-inforn~the conh•mpt ,f ,-,~lor111 ~a!lll Dumingut'. 111 ~pill"of Ihe ~ocial•b]lf'f>'H>Ih o·asl upon tlwm the fret> mu!allo l(,r his own hhll·k ongin~ami at the ~ametime e' ,L"i m,;_la{/ie.~.;o, Th .. rtjfmnchi.Y irntlated ,,-hite 1n.umers. Wt"ft> oftt>n ,.dut·ato•d .1llinities 1o ;\white ~la\esociety. even though it denie~lh1m full equalit~·- ill FratK<'. and. in tum. St'nl tht>ir own .:hildrl:'n abroatl to he edueated. The colomsts left nothing to circumstance. though, and out of their own flavin:-: !.1-'<:ome slave-lwlclin~plantation owners, they could even l"mplo~ !t"ars of ~laveconspiracy denied the 11_/frunchi.sthe right to freely a~semble "·hite r·ontrat'l labor amon~the pPiit.~blrmcs. i11 public after 9 P.~t.for anv reason whatsoever, be it for a we•lrlin!!, for a .'lot only .-:lid their situation pose a potential thre;tl to the political he~e public dance. or any other festivit~··This was punishablf' bv a fine of three n!OilY of the whites. but because of their l'Oior ami thetr fn•e status. the hun.-l.re.--llivn·~for the firs! offense and the loss of freedom for any subsequent whites ~awthem as a threat to racial he;:remony in the colony and, from then•, offense. l11e free blacks also risked losing their freedom if l'aught sheltering \tl the maintenance of slavery itself. The ironY, of it was that many of the oH in any way aiding a fugitive slave. The mulatto~sand free blacks wt>re u/fmncht5 wen~themsehes ~lavenwnersand. if onlv tlwnretin1lly. allies of equally forbiJ{len to engage in games of chance and. by the 1770s. to tra\'el property with the whites.!' So it was only through repressive soriallegislation to or enter France for anv purpose.·13 Thev were forbidden to take the name of that the whites of Saint Domingue could hope to maintain their privile)!:es their former master and natural parent. Their mferior status wa:> reinforced ;.111<1prero!talives against the economic and social encroachments of the al hy regulations stipulating their mO ~lartiniquein 1777 unequivocally stated the policy of the metropolis con outside of owning property and slaves, about .. the onh- privilege the whites cerning the state of the colored population in the French colonies: "The geru allowed them."' as James wrote ... was the privilege of lending white men de couleur are either free or slave: The free are affranchis and descendants money."J:; of affranchis: however far removed they may be from their [black] origins. If the affranchU thought of themselves as equal, deference reminded 28 :': tht-y retain forever the imprint of slavery. " This, then, .,.,·as the general ,j- them that, in social relations with the whites, they were still inferior. Should principle preventing any effective assimilation with the whites. By virtue of they invite a white to their house for dinner, they could not sit with that ,their ra<:ial origins. the affmnchis were legally defined, for all intents and person at the same table. They were obliged by law to submit with ut purposes, as a distinct and subordinate social .. caste." ' most respect to the arrogance and contempt which whites not uncommonly 36 Although restrictions against the social advancement of the affranchi.s ~ displayed toward them. A mulatto who publicly struck a white person in date as far hack as the early 1720s, the turning point in colonial. as in retaliation, in self-defense. or for any other reason could ultimately (even metropolitan, legislation came after 1763 and accompanied both the eco 'i 37 \_- though it rarely happened) be punished by having his right arm cut off. nomic and demographic expansion of the affranchi_s.1.9By strictly forbidding But, "for insults and a premeditated assault"' on a white man, one free black free persons of color to hold any public office in the colony, to practice was condemned to death by hanging. And since it was imperative to keep law. medicine. pharmacy, or certain privileged trades, :>uch as that of gold free blacks and slaves subordinate, the Crown ordered that the decree be smith,JO the whites sought to establish insurmountable barners to frustrate published throuj!:hout the colony. A free mulatto of le Cap was sentenced to the social and political aspirations of the free coloreds and to preclude all three years on the public chain gang for having raised his hand against a possibility of their assimilation on an equal basis. Yet at the same time. white man who forcibly tried to remove a slave woman accompanying him the affran.chU were required to participate in the defense of the eolony. as along the road. Another free mulatto received the same sentence simph for an ordinance nf 1768 made militia duty compulsory for all free mulalloe: causing a white man to fall off his chair when he threw a stone that broke and free blacks between the ages of fifteen and fifty-11\·e. They were to pro the cross bar. On the other hand, a white man of le Cap. having struck a vide their own uniforms and equipment. were lo serve in separate units. and free mulatto and nearly causing him to lose his eye. was simply tined three 31 would be commanded by white officers. In addition. a local law-enforcin~ thousand livres.311 In spite of their freedom from the institution of slavery, bodv. the mart?chau.m~e.had been created for the chief purpose of hunting the mulattoes, as the free blacks. never escaped the opprobrium of their down and capturing runaway slaves, or maroons; it was composed e:o:clu· ongms. si,·ely of affran.chiJ. whose superior capabilities in pursuing slave deserters But the g~atmass of the population consisted of the slaves. and it was into inaccessible and dangerous mountain retreals were candidly recognized upon their backs that the tremendous fortunes of the colonial planters. as ' ::iltRPrl" nnd S/uu .'ion~f•· ]23] I :!:! I Hnck~mundto R.-mlution to uflicial ~overnmt"nt~latistics for 1789. the value nf colonial imports to <~ftlw French rnaritimP. bourgeoisil". were builL It was upon their continu Franc~. ~u~ar ine: labor, as slan!s, that all this ~eeminglyendless pmsperity depended. primarily and coffee. as well as indigo. cotton. cocoa. and a few h1des. had ~oaredlo rrJU!!:hly 218 million livre;:. :\hhough exports B~·17H9. Saint D"mingue boasted well over sew•n thousand plantations. from to Hour. OJ\t'T thn-e thousand in indigo, twent~·-ftvehundred in coffee, close to eight the metropulis the islands. such as meat. wine. and textiles. hundred in cotton. with some fifty-odd in cocoa, but the cornerstone of her totaled 78 milliun lines hy comparison. still. a full two-thirds of the 218 economy and the key to her rapid expansion was sugar:n If prior to 1690 the million hvres were reexported to the markets of Europe. either in bulk or colony had not one sugar plantation. within fifteen years there were already after having eventually been turned into refined goods. l.i 120, more than 100 of these being established over a mere four-year period Bordeaux was without question the center of the French colonial trade. from 1700 to 1704.40 The first decade of the eighteenth century thus set in By the end of the Old Regime. the city was furnishing over 50 percent of motion a veritable .. take-off"' period for what would be another eighty-five Saint Domingue"s imports from France and by the 1760s already accounted years of sustained and unparalleled growth. By mid-century, the number of for up to half of all French exports of colonial commodities to Europe.-10 sugar plantations had increased fivefold to six hundred and reached its peak With such a tremendous volume of impoits and exports, where "'so much at nearly eight hundred on the eve of the revolution, making the colony by wealth provided endless possibilities for enterprising businessmen." there far the single most important sugar colony of the Caribbean (having long was little reason for Bordeaux merchants to invest directly in the slave trade, 17 since surpassed Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Lesser Antilles, as well which actually existed only .as an auxiliary element in the local economy. as Barbados, in the British West Indies) and certainly one of the greatest Yet without slavery and the slave trade to supply the laborers producing the wealth-producing colonies of the world. But the explanation for that wealth colonial commodities, Bordeaux's role as the center of the French colonial may, in part, be found in the particular requirements of sugar production it trade would have been diminished considerably. Colonial economic pros self. The cultivation of cane and the multi-stage process of producing sugar perity hinged on sugar, and sugar production. a labor-intensive operation. necessitated both a large and a highly diversified labor force.~•This invari required massive numbers of slaves. The slave trade was thus fundamental ably brought about dramatic increases in the number of slaves imported into to the triangular system and, in fact, became the cornerstone of the Nantes the colony and provided perhaps the greatest impetus to the expansion of economy, as it additionally stimulated and directly financed other sectors of the French slave trade in the eighteenth century. 42 economic activity. foremost among which was shipbuilding, but which also By comparison, the seventeenth-century slave trade was almost insig included printed textiles, iron works, and sugar refining. ts nificant, supplying the French West Indies with little more than one or two These derivative activities were hardly exclusive to Nantes, however. As thousand slaves annually toward the end of the century. "'1 Though figures for in the area of refining, colonial sugar supplied the refineries of Orleans, the eighteenth century periodically fluctuate, they reached an overall aver Oieppe, de Bercy-Paris, Marseilles, and, of course. Bordeaux. 1n the Bor age from 1700 to 1792 of some 14,500 captives per year. In actual numbers, deaux suburbs alone, some sixteen refineries had been in operation by the however, the slave trade had significantly increased after the Seven Years' mid-eighteenth century and, as early as 1740. were refining a yearly average War, averaging roughly 26,400 per year from l764to 1792. and, in the last of fifty shiploads of raw sugar at roughly two hundred tons each. w Whereas, decade of the colonial regime, from 1783 to 1792, some 37,000 slaves per by the eve of the revolution. her sister city, Nantes. had become the ship year. 44 building leader of all French ports in order to meet the needs of the slave A highly lucrative business. the slave trade was by no means an autar trade, for Bordeaux the shipbuilding industry. as that of refining, rapidly kic economic activity, but a constituent part of a much broader and more flourished in response to her colonial trade.;o One may safely say. then. highly diversified system tying together slavery, the colonial trade (including that the colonies contributed to the development of french industry while, both colonial imports and their reexportation to foreign markets throughout at the same time. supporting a sizable portion of her international trade. Europe), and the slave trade into an interdependent and interlocking web. as well. As to the political vitality of the French bourgeoisie on the eve of In most cases the ~ur,or outfitter, of a slaving expedition to Africa the revolution. it had, as Jean Jauri!s obser;ed, been holstered by the for was also an importer of colonial commodities. which were loaded in the tunes generated both directly and indirectly by the slave trade itself: "Sad islands for the return voyage to France once the captives were sold to colo irony of human history! The fortunes created at Bordeaux. at Nantes. by the nial planters. In fact, more often than not, colonists made partial payment slave trade gave to the bourgeoisie that pride which demanded liberty and 1 for their slaves with colonial products, usually sugar or coffee. According so contributed to human emancipation.~' :; • [...:1[ &wk{!rmmd '" Rernlutron Slan·n- und .')'/m·f ::ivn'Pt,- ]1.) 1 I '•·rh.Lps tb .. mt~stimpnrtant suurc .. of wealth liJr the maritime bour!!eoisie. dt>nce upon the mt>trnpo\is. The inlUI!~lin~hy p\antt>rs "I o·lwaper foreii!n IL"'"'' .. r. k1y in the area of financf" capitaL :\s mt1sl colonists Llt'\'f't had suffi. •laves. nr even fonJ:stulfs an <'it·nt <' .11Juwm)! him to dda.v or defer his pavmf'n\s tWf'r ~eH·ral~·ea~.II !() p<'H't•nt of their deht to slavers "-en\ regular!~·unpaid. During the final n•lat]()ns might superficially be cordial. hut on the whole. they rf'mained •lt•L'atle of the Old Regime. the period from 178:3 to 1792. the slave·lra,Jing '. perpetually antagonistic and characteristically hostile .., •ldJts of colonial planters to the Nantes tra lines. much of which, with the outbreak of the Saint Domingue slave revo. -slave against master, mulatto against white, '"'small~white again.<;\ .. big~ lutinn. would never get paid.:.z ~onpaymentor deferred payment of debts v.hite. both of the latter, at various times. against the local administra· by col land or a plantation. they never pay."~>.!But if merchants and traders were interests arising out of the specific conditions and contradictions <)f class creditors to the colonial planters (a situatjon they did not appreciate), they and caste. intertwined and confounded as they were by the colonial politics I thems..Jves had become debton; in the process. of race. II To offset the colonial debts owed them and their own consequent lack But once the revolution had opened. it was not the seditious activities of .I of capital reserve, they borrowed heavily from the huge banking houses of ;_ colonial planters seeking independence from french authority. but the great Paris. as well as those of Bordeaux, Nantes, or Marseilles, locally. Many mass of black slaves themselves, who would deliver the deciswe death blow a slave trader finally found himself in the position of having to take over II to colonial Saint Domingue. When they revolted in full force in 1791 and •I the financially troubled plantation of a debtor colonist, thus becoming con· ' !i . onward. the whole system, already seriously shaky. crumbled into pieces currentlv a plantation owner and a buyer of slaves. as well as a supplier ·, impossible to put together again. The year 1791 marked the climax of a long of slaves and shipper of colonial raw material. His reliance, if not depen· ' and deep·rooted tradition of slave resistance in many forms. some overt. ~;, dence, upon the Parisian (and often foreign) banks was, on the one hand, some covert, some individual, and some collective. some even potentially ' reinforced, while, on the other, he began to play an increasingly direct role self-destructive. In conjunction with the impact and inftuence of the French in the colonial economy and in colonial affairs. ~l Revolution, which provided the historical conditions for the emergence of \ Relations between creole planters and the french merchant bourgeoisie a full·scale revolution in Saint Domingue. the more limited scope of tradi· were characteristically marked by deep hostilities and jealousies on both tiona! slave resistance was thrown wide open. New avenues and alternatives sides. If the merchants saw the colonial planters as a vile and deceiving race ~ for achieving old goals were now within reach, Even more than by the legis· of profiteen;, unscrupulously defaulting on payments and falsifying both the lative decrees of France, it was through the obtrusive intervention of their ! quality and quantity of their produce for personal gain. the planters hated the ' own efforts, their own popular initiative, and often spontaneously organized merchants for the unfair (as they saw itl privileges bestowed upon them by activities into a complex web of political and military events. that the Saint french mercantile policy. According to the policy known as the Exclusive. Domingue slaves won their own freedom and finally hecame a politically dating baC'k to the days of Colbert. "the colonies are founded lly and for the independent nation . .\letropoli~. "'>'>That is. to assure maximum economic benefits for the mother t'ountry. all manufactured goods consumed by the colonists were imported By 1789, two-thirds of the roughly half a million slaves in Saint Domingue from france. By the same token, all exports of raw materials from the colony were African-hom. 57 Over a period of three centuries, Africans had been were to he sold exclusivelv to france and to be carried exclusivelv aboard uprooted by force from their homelands, packed on slave ships, and sold in F'rench ships. The mercantile policv of the Crown both encouraged .and sus. the Americas to fill a constantly expanding demand for labor in what one tained the economic ~~:rowthof the merchant bourgeoisie while leaving the writer has called ,.the most colossal demographic event of modem times.~ I Saint Domingue planter virtually in a state of political ilnd economic depen· the Atlantic slave trade. 51 I :?.7\ S/m ~rr•md Slm·~Soc!t'f\ [:.'!11[ Hm:k~roundf With the slaw trade. however. came a rich 11i\'t>n hlt•••·n ~eano.''1.uul it 1~asc.-rtuinh- nu longer than tho1t for ..:reulizetl .-\fricans llalions. tribes. lanlituages. religions. dasst>s. customs. Llll ~ubsumedunder .lul h;~d~urvi\"t'd the inillal lt' : ..::ll /Jru:li{!rrmnrl tn Rernlution S/aurv and 5/m·f.' Socif.'tv \:!'.1\ "t11•·h ··•••re tusks uru].. rtuk~nhy the m.. n. Thest' ..-orb•rs Wt>re IIIHit>r the ""rk for thf' ~econd,.;hift of -;]aves precederl a full twl'he-hnur workda\ th.11 •hr~·dorder~.,] tht> dril·t>r. ur rommandeur. himself u.~l.tn•. ··nded ..11> In the ~mallt•rnr St'com.lar\' rltt>lier. then. one woulrl fiud tlw 1.. ~,.robust: -n ,)s to keep operations unintem1pted. So. during the )!rinJin!!: -;1-'as•m. :h .. 1wwk aiTiH•d Africans n•JI ~·etmte)!:rated into the re~lurwork force. ' "hwh ran for f1w·to si:otmonths. roughh· from January to Julv. many a ,Ia\ I' ~· womt'n in lht>ir sevt>nth ur t>ighth month of pregnancy and others who were J n••·eivetl little more than four hours sleep per day. The only compensation nun;m~infants. us well as rhildren between eight and thirteen who were not X for night work was a slightly better diet and more tafia. yet rea1ly for the major atelier. Work in these smaller ateliers was generally In general. women were used to load the mills for grinding. It was a ;[. lighter and more varied. such as planting foodstuffs. fertilizing plants. or particularly d~ngeroustask as one could easily lose a finger. a hand. or J;- weeding and clearing dried leaves from the ~ane.As in the major att·liers. ' o.me's whole ann in the mill wheel. and all the more dangerous since it was however. thev too were subject to the direct orders of a cnmmandeur. J part of the night work.:3 Once the juice was extracted, the residue cane. or .'f.. The uften~citedobservations of Girod~Cha.ntrans.a Swiss traveller of the bagasse, later to he uSed as fuel for the boilers, was gathered and stacked ~ 7 time. vividly riescribe the working conditions of the field slaves on ..1typical by children and the less vigorous slaves. l Once the grinding was done and sugar plantation. where 'f. their shift over. these women and children were then sent back to the fields. Simultaneous with this operation, the lroilers \usually arranged in a series The slaves numbered roughlv one hundred men and women of different ages. all 't engaged in digging ditches in a cane field [in preparation for the planting of the ·:~ of five) were maintained by slaves who stoked the fires from beneath, while cane]. most of them naked or dressed in raf!:S.The sun beat stm1ght down on .;, several others, specially selected for their capabilities, supervised the whole -"*' process from boiling to eventual crystallization. These workers remained their heads: sweat ran from all parts of their bodies. Their anns and le.~.worn ·5 out by excessive heat, by the weight of their picks and bv the resistance of the at their posts and were separated from the ordinary field slaves. at least ~ clayey soil be.-:ome so harrlened that it broke their tools. the slaves ne,·erthe~if for the grinding season, before returning to the fields themselves. All were less made tremendous efforts to overcome all obstacles. A dead silence reigned \j: supervised by a head master, or maitre-&ucrier, usually a white plantation among them. In their faces. one could see the human suffering and pain they en ;;.' employee but not uncommonly an exceptional black slave. As can be imag for not yet dured. but the time rest had come. The merciless eye of the plantation .. ined, when the maitre~sucrierwas himself a slave, frictions and jealousies steward watched over the workers while several foremen. dispersed among the " were easily aroused between him and the commandeur, the two positions workers and anned with long whips. delivered har!!h blows to those who seemed 1f being of relatively equal importance in sugar production and requiring much too weary to sustain the pace and were forced to slow down. Men, women. young " the same knowledge of soil conditions, watering, fertilization, the health and and old alike-none escaped the crack of the whip if they could not ket>p up the ."{: pace. m • maturity of the plants, their ripeness when cut, and so forth. In fact, the maitre~sucriercould often become a commandeur and vice versa. Th By far the most intense utilization of the slaves' labor was on the sugar l The type of work, however, the rhythm of production, and the intensity of plantations, where, during the harvest and grinding season, an Qrdinary ., labor in which a slave was involved varied both according to the seasons and workday could easily average eighteen to twenty hours. Because of the nature " the nature of the crop being produced. While the sugar plantations were by ~·irtua1iy 1 of sugar production, work on the sugar plantations was nonstop and far the mostlabor~intensive,on the coffee plantations. where the rhythm and followed a nearly complete twenty-four~hourschedule. ;o As one historian ~ 1 seasonality of production were quite different, work was no less arduous and put it, .. the operations of cutting, hauling, grinding, clarification. filtration. the hours just as long. These estates were situated on mountainous slopes evaporation and crystaJlization had to be carried out in that order, without i in the newer, uncleared and unsettled regions of the colony. where the cli interruption, simultaneously, and at top speed."~'Since the processing of mate was far cooler and the rains more frequent. Yet this hardly made for the cane once cut had to be completed in a matter of hours lest its yield t healthier living or working conditions for the slaves. Ill~protectedagainst the in juice diminish and spoil, night work was inevitable, For the niJ!!:htshifts. ' evening and night chill with inadequate clothing, ill-fed, undernourished. slaves were recruited from the major atdier and divided into four sections, and overworked, the slaves on the coffee plantations suffered a mortality rate ; the first two working from eight to midnight. and the second two from mid that was exceedingly high,or. especially so since the slaves on these plants~ 72 night until six the next mornin~.Night work for the first shift naturally tions were almost entirely African, manv having just arrived. Although the followed a full day's work of cutting and hauling in the fields from five or planting and intennittent harvesting of coffee was. by comparison with work \ six in the morning until sundown at six or si:ot-thirty in the evening. Equally. on the sugar estates, less routine and rigid and the discipline somewhat less [.1\ \ :il t•xac..:tin~. ' un the ·~veof tilt' 179luutbrf'";~k.'"T\wir rank 1•as 1isibly ••nhanet>d !J, _-\ft 11,.. ~laH'·s followed a full day's harvesting and glt>anml!. .. r .. \f'lllll!': meal. liner clothtnj!:. \wtter food. a far les~arduous work sl"he \ exposure to and contact with white society, they also were instrumental 111 l .1:! I /1m·k_a'T 1<1 l;.~borin the !ield until sumJ01.. n. On many plantations ,;luws 11er~forcer! wished to go. Passes were distrtbuted ,-elc~·tivelyand in rotation. most oftt·n .11 the .. nd of the da~-to gather fee(! for the draft animal,;. oft~·llha,·in~ to to cn~oleslan•s and especially lo the women. tran•l eonsiderable Jistan~esfrom the pluntation. Finally. firt-'woud had to who receive•! a pass were allowed to lea\·e on tht> following ~unda~·morning he gathered. and dinner. consisting of lwans and manioc. or a few potatoes. hut w~rf"rt>quired back at sundown. whereupon thev were to gn·e up thdr hut rarely. if ever. any meat or !ish. had to be prepan•d. During the grinding passes. Naturally. man~did not. keeping them or altering the dates for thf' season on the sugar plantations. slave~then faced what must lta\·e seemerl purposes of trafficking amongst themselves.~;So the market ~xperif'nceaf like intenninable hours of night work at the mills. or of husking and ,;ortinJ.( fonled certain opportunities. as did their small gardens. for at least some of on the coffee plantations. the slaves. As well as allowing them to use and develop marketinj!; skills. What little time the slave had for rest was consumed by other types of the market also provided for encounters with slaves from other plantations, work. The two hours per day for rest at noon, as well as ~undaysand holi for the exchange of news, ideas. and opinions, not to mention for refining days, were granted the slaves by law. And on most plantations. slave families their techniques at forging passes. were allotted a small piece of land on which to gr.ow their food. Cuhivation However, until 1784, the practice of allotting small pieces of land to the of their garden. upon which they wen~more often ·than not totally dependent slaves for their own cultivation was not a legally recognized S\'stem and was for their subsistence. could be undertaken only on Sundays and holiciays, not necessarilv the rule on all plantations.118 Where this was the case. the or in the meager time remaining after preparation of the midday meal. (On master would be required to supply the minimum food rations stipulated in plantations where a piece of land was not provided. slaves were sometimes the Rlack Code: 2Yt pots of manioc and either 2 pounds of salt beef or required to work Sundays. as well.) By allotting small plots to the slaves for :3 pounds of fish per week.~~'~Rarel~.if ever. were any of the Code'" provi their own subsistence. the owner freed himself from the cost and responsi sions governing the conditions of the slaves enforced in Saint Domingue. In bility of feeding them; yet these "'kitchen ~ardens.~1m•ager as they were and reality, an average slave's diet provided by the master to sustain an entire with as little time as the slaves had to plant and tend to their crops. came day's work amounted to little more than seven or eight boiled potatoes and a to be seen by the slaves as their own and thus eventually contributed to the bit of water. ?tl development of a sense, if not of "proprietorship," at least of the finn notion -under slavery, it has been written. "all is a question of practice: the will of that the land belonged to those who cultivated it. as the master is everything. It is from his will, and his will alone. that the slave It was in the kitchen gardt>ns, as well as in the fields. that slaves acquired may expect misf'ry or well-being.~,,In general. slaves were hoth underfed ~nddeveloped not only certain agricultural skills. hut also a knowlt>dge of and undernourished. It was a common practice for slaves to steal chickens the soil and the abilit~·to cultivate new crops, And where their survival de or a few potatoes from the master. even at the risk of severe punishment. pended upon being able to produce their own food and to assure their own One historian notes how a slave woman. for having stolen a duck. recei1'ed subsistence, their ingenuity, creativity, and resourcefulness were keenly fifty lashes of the whip, had spiced lemon juice robbed over her wounds, stimulated and pushed to new limits. As laborers, slaves knew their own was chained to a post, and remained there to expiate her "crime. "'l'2 M. de worth. An anecdote cited by de Wimpffen reveals in all its utter simplicity ( Gallifet. one of the wealthiest planters of the North Plain, stated the case -and perhaps even with a tinge of naivete-this self-recognition and self bluntly when he wrote in 1702 that "Negroes steal at night because they lite affinnation. Preaching from the pulpit in front of a large congregation of nut fed b,· their masters." 93 By 1784. over eighty years later. nothing had slaves. one priest declared that everything they had came from God. As he changed. The Baron de Saint-Victor, in a prophetic statement. related that went on to enumemte vegetables. fruits. and all other crops for which they "'three-quarters of the masters do not feed their slaves and rob almost all of were indebted and owed thanks to God. an elderly black rose up and shouted them of the time provided them by law for rest. It is too much. and sooner or out: ''That's mockery, Father Boutin. If I hadn't planted them myself. thev later these unfortunates will be driven to the horrors of desperation ... ,, The would never have grown.""" ;~busesof the planters had rt"ached a point where the Crown found it nec For those slaves fortunate enough to have produced a small surplus from essary. the same year, li84, to reimpose by royal ordinance the provisions their gardens. Sundays and holidays meant market dav, and they were of the 1685 Black Code concerning the hours of work. food allotments for ,Ulowt'd to sell their produce in town, if a town happened to he nearby. slaves. restrictions on punishments. and establishing minimal controls over usualh· at a distance of several miles. if not more, from the plantation. Per the inhumanity of the masters. The ordinance now made it a legal obligation \ mission to go into town wa~not, howevf'r. given out gratuitously to whoever of all masters to provide the slaves with small plots exclusively for their per- ;t! flm·!.-s:-rnlll!tl a~an ••nli!!ht• ' 1" f,.,.,l .m <'lll!P• rlldia. tilt' nniin.uwt' n•qUJrt•d that tlw plantation m.HLag•·r~ ,.ned. hum;mitarian nwasun~and ;I ~l••pfun,.wl Lll m,J~tl'r-~la,•·p·latt•ln~. .L~~Ulll<'thLs n·~pnn,;ibilitl. ,-, The Black l;mlt> ,11~"~a\f'tilt:' ~h,v•·lht' ri:;:htlo brin!': '' •·a~t'of nutri~ht •·m• That •!llh lw •·xpl.Linetl h~the U~t-'.nulnet·es~ity uf lmth P"'Tholn<:ical ,md ph1~i· pur~uanceof the complaint "'a~\eft to tlw di ..cr..tiun uf the pro~enJtor.In o·al 1 iolence by the masters. Just as the slave's t'XLSlt-'ncedepended ·~ntirdy f(·ality. law rcmauu~d,J.S it ha1l alwavs Iwen. in the hands of the indi\·iJu;tl upnn the master's will. so there o_•oul1lbe rm mastt"rs without sla1es. And to ,-bvehulder. Tht' fate uf the slaw~.and in more than a few ca~esthe1r life rt'Juce the human spirit to the lew·! uf submission requirt'd of slaves nt>cessi or death. 1lependl:'d rather upon the character an1l personality of the n1aster; \Jt<•d il regime of calculaterl hrutalitv. While the uri~insof :'>lew Worlt1 slavery It was through terror that the colonists instilled fear in the sla~esand ashes, or quicklime on the ~lave'sopen and bleeding wounds. under the through fear that the slaves' labor was motivated. The Baron de Wimpffen. pretext of cauterizing the skin. while at the same time increasing the torture. who knew the colony well, nonetheless wrote with a sense of incredulity that This method was particularly utilized for interrogating or "putting to the some slaves simply could not be made to move in the mommg without being question- slaves suspected of some criminal wrongdoing ..... lt was expressly whipped.96 In Saint Domingue. where slavery rapidly assumed a modern forbidden by an ordinance of 1712. not only for the "unheard of cruelty [of capitalistic orientation, where profit was. if not the sole. at least the domi the treatment] even among the most barbarous nations." but also because nant. motive for owning slaves, and where profit depended not merely upon ·'other slaves who have not yet suffered such punishments. intirnidaterl by maintaining a constant flow of production hut upon e)[panding it. the uses the example. are taken to desertion in order to escape such inhuman it~·as and refinements of teiTor took on ghastly proportions. One is almost tl"mpted thi!:i.- 100 Other examples exist of slaves being thrown into hot ovens and to sum up the situation crudely: the greater the need for profits. the greater eonsumed bv fire; or of being tied to a skewer above an open fue. there and more insidious the violence. s· to roast to death; or of having white-hot slats applied lo their ankles and ,;ole5 of their feet. this being repeated hour after hour. There were masters Punishment, often surpassing the human imaginatmn in its grotes11ue re ·~ finements of barbarism and torture, was often the order of the day. Only who would stuff a slave with gunpowcier-like a cannon-and blow him lo with the advelll of the Black Code in 1685 were eertain written restrictions -~ pieces. Women had their se:o~ua1parts burned by a smoldering log; others placed upon the masters to limit the extent of their brutality. h recognrzed ! had hoi wax splattered over hands. arms. and backs. or boiling cane syrup whipping with a rod or cord as the single right of the master over the slave ' poured over their heads. in administering punishments, though it smgularly omitted any limitation Some preferred the art of direct mutilation. They would hang a slave by on the number of blows. The degree of latitucie planters utTered themseh·es thP ears, mutilate a leg. pull teeth out. gash open one's side and pour melted is suggested in a statement made by \1. de Gallifel. a purportedlv humane \anl into the incision. or mutilate genital organs. Still others used the torture master but one who, in 1702. nevertheless felt that "anv wrongdoing that uf live burial. whereby tbe slave. in the prest>nce of the rest of the slaves was not sufficiently pumshed by one hundred blows of tht> whip jhould he who were forced to bear witness. was made to dig his own grave. Some would handled by the courts."q7 Nominally, the Code left sud1 forms of pumsh have a 5lave buried up to the neck and the head coated with sugar. leaving it ment as torture, mutilation. quartering, hanging. anci the like. to the judicial to he devoured by flies. while others managed to invPnt insidious variatinm. system. while the severity of punishment by whippin!! was left. for a full Less refined cruelties. but none the le! ber of blu"'s a mastt'r could deliver or have deliw~reJ[),· the •Jv•·rst'er or foot r:ut off or h~ingwhipped to death when !'aught and retuml"d. One young i :~,; llm·k~mundIn R.-rnlution Slaver• allll S/m·l' Sartell· [17[ pl.mh·r ''"'!1 o·ut th~t'ars uf six slaves that his fath~rhad ~iw•n him in ,;uch the colunv. makes this rlear in ilis /n.stnu:l10n:s to the rnanal(ers of his ~everal .1 1011 105 "a\ .1,. to j,.. .1hle to tell them apart. ~ugarplantations. The Instructions ~d down has1c minimum standar.l~ t)ne mi~ht"·1!11 ar~uethat the ruthl~sslylabliT~inten!ii\·e. eapitalistic of ht:'alth carl'. hygiene. nutrition. and housing for the ->laves. as wdl as •wture ut t:,,ribhean ~laver;.·necessitaterl the t'XIraction l)f maximum labor "P~cificinstructions regarding methods nf working !he slaH"s and af ;~dmm· Irom tht' ,.1.1n· in the shortest period of time and that. to do this. the uti "'lt•rin~pumshments. Given the excessi\'e indulgence in cruelty of rnanv lizatwn uf f(.;~r.1nd the creation of an atmosphere of terror were requisite. masters. his guidelines on punishment might even seem humane by compari ,,..t at tht> ~arnetime, in colonial Saint Domingue there seemed to be an ~un.Basically, however. they reveal a highly controlled. highly rationalizeJ indetenninate line between economic interest, on the one hand, and pure ~ortof madness and underscore the master mentality. Concerned with the ,-,elf-indulgent sadism. on the other. Where the one began and the other left smooth and Jisciplined functioning of the plantation, 1\ was necessary that ofT in these cases was hardly clear. Certainly not all masters indulged in nne develop the "art" of executing punishments: such unrestrained excesses of cruelty. There:were good ones, and there were :/ had ones. But the point is not to detennine whether slavery was, afler all. ~lowpunishments make a greater impressio.n than quick or violent ones. Twenty a good or bad. a moral or an immoral, system. On the average sugar plan fi,·e Iashe~ of the whip administered in a quarter of an hour, interrupted at to always tation. even comparatively benevolent masters by colonial standards could intervals hear the cause which the unfortunates plead in their defense, and resumed again, continuing in this fa.~hiontwo or three times, are far more not protect their slaves from being overworked and underfed. nor for that like\v to make an impression than fifty lashes administered in five minutes and matter from the occasional whipping: Even here, though, the benevolence less a danger to their health. This objective is especially important for serious masters may have had toward their slaves was more a question of sparing the .O:: punishments. Woe to him who punishes with ple8.!1ure. He who does not know slaves' heahh to prolong their profits than one of altruism; in the end, mas how to punish is unfit to command. 106 ters still had absolute rights over the sla¥e. And as objects of property, all t slaves, even domestics, could be and were indiscriminately sold, bartered, ; While defenders of slavery claimed that those masters who indulged in purchased, families at times broken up, wives separated from husbands. <' sadistic and barbaric treatment of their slaves were the rare e~ceptionin mothers and fathers separated from their children. Even though the Black Saint Domingue and were, in any event. socially and politically ostracized Code prohibited the breakup of slave families in cases of repossession and ' by their class, certain cases suggest otherwise. The most blatant and often resale bv the owner's creditor, it apparently posed no restrictions on the "• cited example is that of the Le Jeune case in 1788. right of masters to voluntarily sell any one of their slaves as they may have LeJeune was a wealthy coffee planter from Plaisance, in the North Plain. seen fit. and. in any case, it concerned only slave families legally recog i He believed that his slaves were being killed off by poison and had put nized by the church. More than that. the code still considered slaves as ·A to death four of his sla"Yes who he suspected were responsible. Two other belonging to the personal estate of the master and. as such. they would be ·~ women were mercilessly tortured by fire while being interrogated. Le Jeune divided up equally among the inheritors upon the owner's death.102 Such oc ~ thereafter threatened to kill all of his slaves who spoke French if they tried currences were even cause for slaves to poison their master and particularly ' to denounce him before the courts. In defiance of these threats, fourteen of ·'' their master's children, especially when these were "too numerous,~for, as .:. LeJeune's slaves went tole Cap to register an official complaint against their I one colonist revealed upon learning of these moti,·es ... the slaves would then master's barbaric beha¥ior. Two magistrates of the state went to the plan find themselves all dispersed and forced to abandon father, mother, wife. ~ tation to investigate the matter. only to find the allegations of the fourteen ' children. brother.; and sisters. relations which effecllvely .,,.wr~1" _,,.,.,HJllt lor their .-leeds. The Black Code n-mallled ,hit ulwa~,.. .\ '"ml. that the ~eeuritynf the •·oluny depends up"n tlw U<:rjuittal of l..e u.l :,-,.n. 1 dc·:.~dlc·\ler. The :teneralh- accepte1l and practice.\ 1-1rinciple in J,·une.- ~"\.t ,;m~lejud~e or mu~Jstratewanted the rt'-"JlOlbibilitv uf ··un dt"mning: LeJeune. reu:ardless of the inl"untrovertible evidence agamst him. ,,.. ,.,],nl ·sas that a white ean nr>H·r f-w in the wrong 1·i,;;-i1-\"iSa black. : n,.. pLl<"lll~~upwme,IUthurit\" o\'er the ~lan•sin the hands of the masters 1-"inall~·.ali.er a lung ,]day. the jurlges rPnderefl a negatn e verdict. acqmttmj1: 1 [ ~,\IW\Ionim:this tvrannv through the ,.umplicity of the legal and judic1al <~gamst Lc Jeune and rendering the ':ase him null and void. w: 1110 amon~ \\"u.s this merely an 1solated case? Or was it but one ewmple a mul .,~t··m. titude of crimes com milled and condoned by the whites ugainst slaveoluterights of life and in master-slave relations. And as it was highly unlikely that slaveowners .].>;1th U\f"T the sluve and could and did exercise these at will. Existence for would denounce each other. about the only cases heard were those in which ul.\111.a shwe wa& at times one of total fear-ft"ar for one"& entire beinj!:, the te:.H uf utter death. But from this state of fear. in which sla\·es constantlv a slave's initiative may have caused a maste~.tobe charged lwfore thl" court. l:1ct>d the possibilitv of torture and often the ~arshreality of a brutal .-Ieath. In fact, it was only with the royal ordinances of 1184 and 1785, during the 112 last few years of the colonial regime, that slaves were pNmitted to legally .1rn,.cea enns~.:iousnessof one"s own self-existence. Slaves existed in and for themselves. an.-1 in this ongoing life-and-death denounce the abuses of a master, overseer, or plantation mana~er.Even so. slaves' statements were still not received as legal testimony against their ~tnw~le.thev '\eveluped a &ense of their own identity. one inexorably op pu~edto the very persons upon whom their lives rlt"pended. Resistance own masters and could be used only to clarify circumstances surrounding a case. 106 But if some slaves did respond to the new measures by denouncing ' .llld protest were therefore both natural and necessary features of slavery. their master's brutality, in general. they were still held in fear of punishment llut when one considers the relationship of power upon which the system ,C:·, and torture if they dared to do so. Le Jeune himself later commented that, was hmlt and the overwhelming odds in favor of the master. the human problems involved in the whole phenomenon of slave resistance far far from the fear U:nd equity of the law, .. it is the feeling of absolute power the become master holds over the slaves' person that prevents them from stabbing the more cnmplex. Open resistance was not always possible, nor even prudent. master to death. Remove this brake and the slave will u:tempt anything."' 109 Thus slaves adapted and aceommodated themselves to the situations and ,·ucUJnstances surrounrling them at different moments. and measured their So official cases on record were few. In addition, the dossiers of those cases 111 ,,•. 110 resistance in relation to the reasonable or perceived chances of success. · that did reach the courts were conveniently burned every f1ve years. '~! The LeJeune case does, however, provide insight into the class and race . \Vithin the system. however. were areas nf autonomous slave activity. forms interests at stake in Saint Domingue society and reveals the precarious posi of cultural resistance contributing to a reinforced sense of self-identitv and tion in which the masters found themselves, a position that necessitated ' foun1l within the slaves" own popular cuhure. 't At night. or on Sundays or holidays when not working, slaves freely ex and invariably evoked white solidarity in its defense, especially in the most .:\ shocking and incriminating of cases. The obsessive need to protect white pressed another side of their personality. The Baron de Wimpffen. who took ~ the trouble to observe and to listen to slaves when they were supremacy at all costs and to ensure the consequent submission, not only of assembled the slaves, but also of the free colored population, was conversely manifested to~ether.away from the master and the plantation steward. remarked with in a 1784 decree condemning a free black slaveowner. Since the death of his astonishment on the dynamic nature of the slave peno-onality: ~onehas to hear with what enthusiasm. with what precision of ideas and accuracy of female slave was a direct result of his cruelty, he was to b1~publiely beaten with a rod by the Executioner of High Justice 'a slave whose death penalty judgment. these creatures. gloomy and taciturn during the day. now squat had been commuted in exchange for this odious duty), then branded on the tinj!: before their fire. tell stories. talk. l!esticulate. re \,l~·n•lm,!!of o·ultures. anti fnun this historwl.l ~ituatmn<:'11lt'rj:"ed I' hat <" lure ;md rhythm. !Jut characteristical\~·European in it~le:>.ical dynamics. last spark of sensiti\·it\". 1~ !"he genesis and suhsequent e\"olution nf this language. a~sumedto have The variou>' dances in whil"h ,;\a;·es ~o;·oracinusly mdu\~edhad their occurred out of the verv early eighteenth-century slave exp,.rience in Saint origins in Africa and were :1 fundamental part of the cultural heritage they 110 Domingue, thus provided a common linguistic framework for communi brought with tht'm to the colony wher ... upon contact with the European cui cation among slaves, one into which new African arrivals nf rliverse ethnic lUres, they evolved to what they are today. Common to all slave dances was groups and languages could readily be integrated. In fact, through cultural the vital and pivotal role of both the drum and the drummer to animate and adaptation to their New World setting, slaves had, by the eve of the revo govem the elaboni.tion of these dances. Also of African origin was their .. call lution, acquired an essential unifying tool that enabled both Africans of response'' structure and the distinctive group formation within which each widely different origins, as well as slaves bo~in Saint Domingue, to share performer could individualize his or her contribution, thereby displaying experiences, exchange views and opinions, communicate their ideas. and unique talents and agility. The group fonnati_on of these dances also assured even conspire against the master. the uninterrupted duration of the festivities well into the night. as dancers But at tite same time. slaves expressed their African 1dentity in cultural successively replaced one another upon the slightest sign of fatigue.m But ways that the sociolinguistic necessities of .'>laverv did not impinge upon, more than this. the various dances served as rulturalties uniting all those of and to which they remained intensel:-· attached. One of the favorite leisure common origin: ~Eachnation displayed its own originality, and the dancers, time activities of slaves, practiced with passion and fen:or, was dancmg. eager to sustain the prestige nf their respective nations. would solicit the Despite the rigors and fatigues of slavery and in addition lo the repeated approval of the spectators in its favor.~wSo closely felt were the cultural prohibitions against nocturnal gatherings \especially if they included slaves ties that a dancer of a different nation was sometimes seen as an intmder by from different plantations), in Saint Domingue as in all plantation societies those present and not particularly welcomed by them. The naturalist Des throughout the New World. slaves invariably found the energy to dance. and c•.mrtiltz related during hio; stay in Saint Domingue how one lbo dancer had even to travel several miles if necessary for the occasion. desperately offered gifts of tafia. a bit of money. even his last few chickens The calenda, the most popular dance. involved young and old alike. en•n to be received into an Arada gathering in the Artibonite valley; with each 11 small children barely able to walk. K \1oreau de Saint-,lery remarked that 1 attempt the poor man was invariably rejected. ~' one actually had to see this dance performed to believe how livt"ly, how But not all dances were secular. Voodoo. both a sacred dance and a reli animated, and yet how rigorously measured and graceful it was.ll'l The or gion. was expressly forbidden in the French colonies. and from the very 1 chestra consisted of two type.; of dmms, the smaller of the two called a beginning, the colonists trit:"d in vain to crush it. 2<> And not only was the bamboula, along with numerous gourds filled with pebbles or grains of com strict practice of voodoo forbidden to slaves. but severe restrictions were for accompaniment. The banza. a primitive type of violin with four strings. also imposed on the calendas. which sometimes served as a cover for voodoo completed the arrangement. Women, gathered round in a circle, responded gatherings. Pere Labat observed that in chorus to the ~call,"an improvised phrase or song forcefully delivered by they have passccl laws in the islands to pre\"ent the calendas, not only because of two womt>n one or singers, after which both men and would enter the circle the indecent and lascivious postures which make up this dant·e. but especial\:-< in pairs, to hegin dancing and. in succession, continue almost indefinitely to prevent too many blacks from assembling and who. finding themselves thus into the night. ~atheredtogether in jov and usuallv inehriated. are capable of revolts. insmn•c.· Another dance. as evenly measured as the calenda but 1listincti\·ely tion<>or ra1ds. But in spite of these laws and all of the precautions the master-; lusci,•ious. was the r:hica, of We,;\ .\frican origin and practiced generally take. it i~a \most impllSsible to suppress [the dances}. because . .,{ all the diver· throughout the Caribbean. 120 Describing the steps and the bodily move sions. this is the one which [the slaves} enjoy the most and to which they are the 1 ments of the rlancers. male and female, Moreau depicts the chica as "a most sensitive. ~7 kind of struggle where t'very mse of love and every means of triumph are ln fact more than one planter often fouod it necessary to ~ivein to so vital brought into action: fear, hope. disdain, tenderness. caprice, pleasure. re an element in the slaves' culture and at leasttacitlv tolerate the dances. fusal. frenzy. evasion, ecstasy, prostration: all has its own language in this Voodoo had not only survived. but had evolved under slavery for over two I 121 dance.~The impression it created was so powerful. in the author's words. hundred years and had become. by 1he eve of the revolution. a far more p ..:q .'l/ur-..n raul :'ImP Sorit'l.l l ' II:! I Uuckgmund to Remfution _;~ twl. role •I» 'I nht .md l it \HIS pradK't"d and ~~~~tamrdin ~ecrecy. and new adl'pls wt'rf' ,l(lmittetl ,!nrrns tlu:nJsf'ln•s then, vnudon ~•·r\-'ellto bind mnre closd,- tht' loose p~~··hulo~~caltit•s.u·i~in~ tntnwruus funulies of i!Otls cJnt! p~[eas<'•·ntuin -lii~"Li•: l out of the common <'xperience of organized plantation lahor ;mJ the ma lw"·d to -work" on those wlm ,irt' "umrn•med. Tlw dirncJx of the ct~rem terial condilions of life under <;lavery. raising the~eto a fonn uf collel'live •><'<'Ill'S with the blood sucrille~.wherein a ;!Oal or fuv.ll~ offPrf'd to the /011. ·''' consciousness. l!R Th~killing is preceded b~a ritualistic aet ernhraeill!' both divination and One dance !hut hdtl a particularly prominent place in the overall practice ,-umlliU!lion. after which a sacred type or food or tlrink is given to the ani of voodoo in Suint Duminj!:ue was the dame a Don Pedre. introduced into the milL If consumed. it is deemed acceplah\e to the go the Spanish part of the island. Don Pedre established his at Petit-Guave, mvsti~ it.~ cuh , bodi~swith the powers investe.--1 in The blood is collected in a in the South Prodnce. which served as a base from which to propagate gourd and lasted by the ltoungan. or pri~t.and then successively bv the 130 ,, his inRuence throughout the colony. The dance was far more violent in i!Ssisting hourul, or .. servants of the gods.-1.11> its movements than other voodoo dances. With eyes fixed downward while Communication between the gods and mortals is then established through ~ drinking t.afia. reputedly mixed with gunpowder, the dancers would enter ~ the phenomenon of -possession which .. i& nothing more than the descent of into a stale of frenzy, producing what observers described as epileptic-like a god or spirit come to take possession of a chosen person. . . The god contortions. and would continue dancing until near or total exhaustionY1 "'< uses the body of a man or a woman to manifest himself to his worshippers. During the ceremony a pact was made among all participants, committing share their amusements. make known his wishes or his will. wreak ven 7 them to secrecy, solidarity, and the vow of vengeance. IJ2 geance or express gratitude, as the case may be."' u The possessed thus Voodoo, however, was more than merely a ceremonial dance bent on ven· becomes both the ves&el and the instrument of the god, through which the geance. It was a religion and, as such, played a vital role in 1he daily lives latter expresses his or her personality. Posses&ion is therefore a fundamental and general world view ofits adherents. During the ceremonies. slaves often element in the religious experience of the initiated. Moreover. "{it] is a con called upon the various gods, or loa, for spiritual comfort. guidance. protec trolled phenomenon obeying precise rules [and] every god is expected to ... 38 tion from misfortune, and cures for their sicknesses, as well as vengeance appear in his tum when the devotees summon him by songs in his honor... , against their oppressors. 133 The French anthropologist Alfred Metrnux re· The psychological implications of possession for the Haitian peasant. as lates. in the words of a present-day Haitian peasant woman, a statement for the slave living under dehumanized conditions and the !error of brutal that sums up for him what voodoo devoteel!o expect from their gods: "'The Wa punishments. are profound: "The very real satisfaction to be gained by a love us, protect us and watch over us. They show us what is happening to poor peasant woman who becomes the vessel of a god and is able to parade our relatives living far away, and they tell us what medicines will do us good about in silken dresses acknowledging marks of respect from the crowd has when we are sick. If we are hungry, they appear to us in a dream and say: not been sufficiently underlined by studies of possession as a phenomenon. 'Don't despair, you will soon earn some money,' and the money comes.~134 What a relea3e for repressed bitterness and prisoned hatred!" (italics mine) ll'l Metraux hasLens to suggel!ot that "she might. however, have added: The loa While voodoo constituted for the slave a unique and autonomous cul inform us of the plots being hatched by our enemies.,.. us tural fonn, it would nevertheless be wrong to assume that its development Although Metraux 's study is based on twentieth·century practices in and proliferation in Saint Domingue occurred independentlv of other influ Haiti. it nevertheless provides keen insights into a rt"ligion whose basic ences. All religious practice. except for Catholieism, was outlawed in the elements have largely remained unaltered and which occupied such an im. colony, and in accordance. all slaves were to he baptized in the Catholic portant place in the lives of most slaves. It has the further advantage of church. However, the religious, as well as the educational, instruction of the lreatin~voodoo from a purely anthropological vantage point. thus removing slaves was never seriously or widely undertaken. either by the masters or by it from the romanlicized and denigrating category of "fanaticism.- .. or!!ias the church. Thus, superficially. many of the ritualistic aspects of Catholi· tic frenzy,'' "collective hysteria,"' or just plain superstition. to which it was cism appeared in voodoo, but consciously adapted and reinterpreted by the 1 1 relegated by almost all seventeenth- and eighteenth·century observers. slaves to accord with their own religious beliefs. " In this way. Catholicism \ In a voodoo ceremony, dancing plays not only a prominent. but ,m essen- Sial'~')·Slar~ r>1 Bn.ckground to R~rolution and Sunny 1 I ~i , -n\l·ol .L>o a l..iud of mil~k.or fa~ade. behind which their own heliefs and ;:,n·e them a sense of human di~tnityand enabled them to ,;urviw~.lndt'ed pra..tin·s t•uuld tlourish. One might e\·en say that. under the Black Code. ., the sheer tenacity and vigor with which slaves worshiped their go•ls .mcl tlw prolubition to practice \"oodoo and the ahemate obligation of nominal 1lanced in their honor-in spite of the risks. in spite of incredibly lone: ami nwrn[,,.rsllip in the Catholic church provided "an external structure for the plwsically exacting hours of labor during the day and often half the night 1 1 ,,JOfloot consciousness. a consciousness which arose out of slavery itsdf."~ eloquently attest to voodoo as a driving force of resistance in the daily lives ~imilarly.slave burials were often an occasion for the expression of Afri of the slaves. ' But insofar as voodoo was a means of self-expression and of psycho ean wa~·s.The Black Code not only obliged masters to have their slaves ' baptized in the Catholic religion but also to provide for their burial in church logical or cathartic release from material oppression, the slaves" acquired t:emeteries. though in designated sections. Given the generalized disregard consciousn~sas autonomous beings remained stoically imprisoned within and neglect of cemeteries in Saint Domingue, coupled with their frequent ·~ themselves as they invariably faced their oppressors the next day. It was displacements and relocations, slaves even'!Jally came to appropriate for only when slaves were able at various times to translate that consciousness themselves the sites of cemeleries abandoned by the whites. 142 There they into active rebellion and, finally, into the ·life-and-death struggle of revo lution aimed at the total destruction of their masters and of slavery, that came at night to bury their dead. Moreau de Saint-Mi:ry relates one such • case. among many others, in the South: "[At Aquin] can still be seen what emancipation could and did become reality. For self-hatred turned outward, is said to be the ruins of the [old} chapeL A cross was noticed there not so the drive to affinn one's own existence and the urge to destroy the oppressor long ago. A superstition, the grounds for which are difficult to imagine, has were as fundamental a part of the slaves • daily existence as were submission led the slaves of the Aquin parish to bury their fellow companions there. All and accommodation in appearance. attempts to make them bring the dead to the present cemetery h3.ve been in vain: they would wait for night to fall to elude surveillance. In the end. we .were wise enough not to make of these circumstances an object of religious persecution." 143 It is evident here that Moreau's use of the tenn "religious persecution" refers not to Catholicism but to the slaves' own religion. He depicts a typical funeral procession in the South, where "the African slaves gather together in a large crowd to bring their [deceased} companions to the cemetery. The women, preceding the corpse. sing and clap their hands while the men follow. A slave accompanies the corpse with a bamboula on which he strikes, once and again, a mournful note." 144 Paradoxically. the once-communal cemeteries now abandoned by the whites had become the .. privileged" sanctuary for African slaves to freely continue their own religious practices and cultural ways concerning the dead, while the funeral ceremonies themselves served as an occasion for slaves to gather together in traditional celebration. 145 And like the voodoo ' dances, slave funeral ceremonies, when they did occur. were at least tacitly t tolerated by the colonists. though expressly forbidden by law. Despite rigid prohibitions, voodoo was indeed one of the few areas of ' totally autonomous activity for the African slaves. As a religion and a vital spiritual force, it was a source of psychological liberation in that it enabled them to express and reaffirm that self-existence they objectively recognized through their own labor \and of which they were subjectively conscious through the daily realities of coercion and fear). Voodoo further enabled the slaves to break away psychologically from the very real and concrete I chains of slavery and to see themselves as independent beings: in short. it 1 • Si•n·p R,s,.•wn.·e l \ '; 1 blacks were so mtserable and wtthnut fc,.Jin~m their natn·e land. wh~arc the' drh-en by despa~rto o·ummit ~uictdc.nnt• of the chief rt';tSt>n~fur whidt tho•\· are so scrupulouslv kept in chains on the houts? ... How is 11. then. that tho·ir 2 vramin~for freeJom i$ so in~atiuble!' Indeed. the first instance of resistance. and of ~uici1leas resistance. "'-'· Slave Resistance curred aboard these slave ships. most often while still at port. in the initial stage of what was to become for most a long and tortuous journey toward a life of perpetual bondage in the colonies. For those unable to escape before being boarded as captives. suicide was a fatal affinnation of their refusal to hrough repression and terror the white masters managed to erect a sys accept the conditions of bondage imposed on them. One trader cautioned: T tem of social control to contain and regiment the half million black --The moment one has completed one's trade and loaded the Negroes on the slaves whose labor created their weahh, but ihey could not annihilate the ·•. ship, one must set sail. The reason for this is that the slaves have such a slave's human spirit. love for their land that they despair to see that they are leaving it forever. Slave resistance to the brutality and human degradation of the system look and they die from sadness. I have heard merchants who participate in this many fonns, not all of them overt. and some of them even self-destructive. commerce affinn that more Negroes die before leaving port than during the "! Similarly, not all slaves resisted to the same degree or in the same ways, voyage.-s depending upon their place in the ranks of slavery, their treatment as a ' While some captives succeeded in throwing themselves into the sea. often slave, their cultural background or. simply, their individual level of toler -.' with chains still attached. others would knock their heads against the ship ance and capacity to endure. It was well known, for example. that lbo slaves ' or hold their breath until they suffocated; still others would attempt to starve were more inclined to suicide, even collectively, as a response to slavery themselves aboard the ships, hoping to die before the end of the voyage. To i than slaves of other nations. Of the lbos, Moreau de Saint-Mery wrote that force recalcitrant slaves to eat, some ship captains would have the slaves' they had to be closely watched, as .. feelings of chagrin or the slightest dis • lips burned by hot charcoal: others would try to make them swallow the coals satisfaction pushes them to suicide, the idea of which, far from terrifying •' if they persisted. To set an example, one captain even reportedly went to the them, seems rather to offer something alluring because they believe in the _:,. extreme of having molten lead poured into the mouths of those who stub 1 transmigration of souls." bornly refused all food.~ln another instance, a young African girl of sixteen. l' Suicide, however, was certainly not limited to the lbos. One reads time ,, having been taken captive aboard a slave ship, was so profoundly affected and again throughout the literature how slaves often prefeiTed death to a that she categorically refused everything given her to eat. In a short time her lifetime of slavery. In the words of d' Auberteuil: '111e greatest dangers and i physical and moral condition deteriorated to the point where death was im ~ even death do not frighten the Negroes. They are more courageous than men minent. The captain, concerned chie8y with the loss of potential profit that subjected to slavery ought to be. They appear insensible amidst tonnent and \ her death would incur, had her returned to land to be cared for until the boat 2 are inclined to suicide." Or, in the nearly exasperated tone of the second ~ was ready to depart. Upon seeing once again her native village and friends, captain of a slave ship leaving Mozambique: "The blacks, an impossible upon reexperiencing her fanner state of freedom. she rapidly regained her race, prefer death to slavery."l ' health. When, however, she learned that she was to be taken back aboard In response to those who sought to justify the slave trade by claiming the ship. she killed herself. 7 that they were saving the blacks from a life of hunger, misery. and mutual Once sold and introduced into the plantation system. slaves continued to destruction in primitive Africa, a white colonist. himself creole. remarked ' resist individually and collectively by means of suicide. Death was seen not with astonishment: • only as a liberation from the extreme conditions of slavery but. according to popular African beliefs. as a means of escape pennitting the dead to return '·, If the blacks ~reso undernourished and so miserable [in Africa] how is 1 ... 8 to their native land. However. feelings of despair or. conversely. of out~ i it that they are !10 ~11-proportioned.strong anrl in such vigorous health when 1 they arrive in the colonies? And how is it that at the end of one year here. their raged dignity and pride were not the only factors provoking suicide. By the health diminishes. they become weak. thin and unrecop:nizable-a state from beginning o( the eighteenth century, contemporary observers became aware \ which. if they do not die, they never completely recover? ... Likewise. if the of a calculated motive on the part of slaves who·commilled suicide either ' SI(Jt~R~Ji.!tanc.- -\.') \ ~:~I Bru:kground to R~·ol111Um 1 l ul n1;n. uprm the master. Regarding slaH~suicides, Pere Labat wrote in 1701: .Utll rluring the voyages than in ~aintDomingue itsell. it mav lw that. 1)\1\ ~iJe -Th .. ~-rle!'trov themselves. they off-handedly slit their throats for trivial rea uf desperate and propitious revoh at the one l:"nd. nr sllll'lllt' hy .liH'Tl'l' ··•ms. but rnust often. they do this to cause damage to their masters.-., M. de means at the other, alternative modes of resistance aboard "hip ,-.•re fe\• in ,md far between. An organized slave society no doubt afforded more •aried. t;,,llifet. one of the wealthiest slaveholders the i'lorth Plain. also observed ,., the l'ame motive: .. Last night a slave choked himself to death with his tongue .uHI perhaps even more effective, long-term ways and means uf resi!'>tin~ur while his master was having him whipped. This happens quite often. as protesting one's conditions than open revolt. Significantlv. the re,-olts ..mJ there are slaves who are desperate enough to kill themselveS in order to in ,·vnspiracies to revolt that did occur in Saint Domingue were nearly all .;itu ltict loss upon their masters... '" As a means of resistance. then. suicide was ated in a relatively early period of the colony's economic and sociopolitical .1lso an offensive measure that could go beyond purely personal consider development, the very first one occurring in 1522 while the island was still ations and. in the same blow, aim at the ecoaomic base of the planter. under exclusive Spanish rule. 16 Within the twenty.fi.ve years between 1679 Slave women often resorted to abortion and even infanticide as a form of and 1704, four other armed conspiracies had been planned by slaves in resistance rather than permit their children to grow up under the abomina different parts of French Saint Domingue, ·,all aimed at the massacre and tion of slavery. D'Auberteuil, himself a colonial planter and a slaveowner, annihilation of their white mastersY In the end, however. they were local criticized the tyranny of the system that pushed women to commit acts of ized affairs that the authorities quickly crushed. and so colle('tive armed abortion and spoke of the slaves' self-destructive acts in these terms: .. If they revolt remained at this time a limited form of slave resistance with minimal ;;ee the earth as a place of torment and pain. is it not those who are dearest to chances of success. With the one notable- exception of the Makandal con them who will be the first to be sacrificed by their deadly compassion?" 11 ln spiracy in 1757. no other organized slave revolt was conceived before the cases of infanticide, the death of the child usually resulted from a sickness revolution in 179l.U' But then the conspiracy of 1757. as well as the re,·oh referred to by contemporaries as mal de m&hoire, or lockjaw [tetanus], a of 1791, which dramatically opened the black revolution, occurred within sickness that struck only newborn babies and only those delivered by black a context substantially different from that of the earlier revolts. The revolt midwives. Invariably, death occurred within the first few days. One slave that was planned by Makandal in the North, and which subsequentlv was to woman from the Rossignol-Desdunes plantation in the district of Artibonite have spread to "all comers of the colony," was both conceived and organized admitted having poisoned or killed in this manner over seventy children in in marronnage. Also, some evidence exists to suggest that marronage- may order to spare them the pains of slavery.12 Although other considerations indeed have contributed to the basic groundwork and general form of the may have played an additional role in the motivation of such acts-ven massive outbreak of 1791. 19 geance against a master for cruel treatment, the desire to inflict pain upon Of the many and diverse forms of resistance. marronage proved in the end a master when the slave child was in fact his own, jealousy, retribution to be the most viable and certainly the most consistent. From the very begin in all instances, lhe net result was the near decimation of a potential work ning of the colony under Spanish rule, throughout its long history under the force. 13 French. until the abolition of slavecy in 1793-94, slaves defied the system Equally as characteristic of slave resistance. however. was its opposite. that denied them the most essential of social and human rights: the right to outwardly aggressive or assertive, rather than self-destructive, nature. One be a free person. They claimed that right in marronage. But it was not until slave captain complained before arriving to unload his captive cargo: "'The 1?91 that this form of resistance. having by this time acquired a distinctively older ones are uncontrollable; they tum fugitive. Not only are they of little f. collective characteristic, would converge with the volatile political climate of " use in the colony. but they are even dangerous."H Aboard this particular the time and with the opening of a revolution that would eventually guaran ship they broke out in revolt. Armed revolts were actuaily not unusual dur " tee that right. That marronage had become an explosi,·e revolutionary force ing the first stB@eSof captivity and. in fact. occurred far more frequently l ' in 1791 was due as much to the global context of revolutionary events as to aboard slave ships along the African coast or during the voyage than in the ~, the persistent traditions of resistance which. necessarily, remained narrower colony itself. The sheer nonchalance with which they are often treated or in scope. passingly referred to in ships' registers may strongly suggest that slave re Prior to the revolution. colonial observers who bothered to question the \"Oit!l in these situations were indeed commonplace occurrences and. in the motives of ~laveswho left the plantation to eke out an existence for them opinion of a recent historian of the French slave trade, were even ..expected selves in the mountains or in other secluded. inaccessible areas. or on the I anr-1ac,-. .. otffla• iniP!!rnl nart~of thP tti11n~l... - 15 fringes of plantation society where they risked being recaptured. almost ' [50[ Backgro!Uid to Rn.'oluwm Sian• R•·.•i,lm!ee \51] in\·anably invoked undemourishm~nt.cruel treatm~nt. or owrwork as th~ It was practice•! in .1 varit>t\· of "'a\"S ami irwolvt'd ~lan•,;uf all o<.:cupa chi~fcauses: in short. tile living ;md working: conditions of ~lan~t;o·.While tions, the ereole elite as \•ell as the .-Hn•:an lield \abnn!r."' T\w \·a:-t majorit~· all of these factors contributed to tile slm·es' flecision to ••!'t'ap~.it leaves of the maroons "ere men. on ;m ..1\·eraf!:ebetwt'en tht ages of se\ en teen and the question unanswered as to why reputedly humane masters oft~nhad as thirty-five. thus in th~irpnmc .. \lthou~hthe~·were more than twice as nu many fugitives as the cruel ones.lll For the planters to voluntarily ac•:l"d~that merous as the women in th~slaw population of ::Saint Domingue. one finds fugitive slaves had Hed to become free persons, that thev had the ability to nonetheless a significant propurtion of women (estimated at l5 to 20 pereenU consciously and materially negate the condition of perpetual bondag:e im among the maroons. in addition to young children and even an occasional posed upon them by slavery, would be to undermine the ideological founda aged slave. lS tions of slavery itself. More than that, such an admission would require both Marronage was practiced both collectively and individually. in small a fundamental reevaluation and a consequent rearrangement of the entire groups as well as in larger established communities, in organized anned economic base of their wealth and power. thus. jeopardizing the viability of bands or by slaves as free persons with a trade in the urban centers. When the slave svstem to which their own survival w~iiTevocablv tied. No ruling slaves left the plantations, they left with no.knowled~teof what their future ' - ' class does this gratuitously. They convinced themselves. rather. that it was would be, nor did they know how long their marronage would last. nor merely a recurrent manpower problem, which in part it was. whether they would be recaptured. While some may have Her! to escape pun On the other hand, contemporary literature and administrative corre ishment or cruel treatment and returned in a plea for clemency, others had spondence (especially in the two decades preceding the revolution) reveal a made a consciously planned and determined break from sla,·ery, from the tendency, both implicit and explicit, to see in marronage not only the indi master and the plantation regime, and were prepared to face the unknown. r': They caiTied out their escape with the bare minimum of clothing and food. vidual will of the slave to be a free person, but a force that. if left unchecked, t threatened to destroy the colony. In an extract from the register of the Upper often taking with them a few tools. a horse, a mule, or a canoe and. not ·; Council of le Cap, one finds this statement. written in 1767: '1'he slave ... , uncommonly, arms of some sort. Rarely, if ever. did the African-born slave inconstant by nature and capable of comparing his present stale with that to "'•' live in marronage alone. Many went off to join other slaves already estab which he aspires, is inceSsantly inclined toward marronage. It is his ability .,' lished and subsisting in bands in the heavily wooded mountains. often living to think, and not the instinct of domestic animals who Hee a cruel master in in entrenched camps closed off by walls of woven Iiana and surrounded the hope of bettering their condition, that compels him to Hee. That which by ditches of some twelve to fifteen feet deep and eight or ten feet wide, ~ appears to offer him a happier stale. that which facilitates his inconstance, lined at the bottom with sharpened stakes . .!ft Others. fortunate enough to find 21 is the path which he will embrace" (italics mine). Or. a memoir of 1775 on some long-abandoned piece of property in an isolated re~ion.attempted to ' the state of the maroons in Saint Domingue that declares that ' assure their survival off the land. Once established. some e,·en risked their ..~ marronage. or the desertion of the black slaves in our colonies since thev were newly acquired freedom by going back to the plantation at night to secure founded, has always b("en regarded as one of the J>OSsihlf'causes of their de 'l the escape of their wives or children. left behind under circumstances that struction. . The Minister should be infonned that there are inaccessible or ' rendered impossible the collective Hight of the family. ~T reputedlv inaccessible areas in different sections of our colon:- whil·h ~<:"roeas • The most frequent refu!;e for the field slave wa5 in the Spanish part of retreat and shelter for maroons: it is in the mountains and in the forests that these the island. the colony of Santo Domingo. or in the extensive range of moun tribes of slaves establish themselves and multiply. invading the plains from time tains in the South. extending eastward to form the border betwef'n the two to time. spreading alarm and always causing ~::realdamage In the inhalntams. !~ colonies. Here. since the beginnings of slavery. slavf's had formed perma Of the maroons. Pete Charlevoix wrote earlier that "onet' they St't' that they nent and collective maroon communities. The vt>ry lirst of the! ,.,·~lo·mlimit,. of Ja•·nw!. in t!w ~.. uth . .Ir ,,.h p.1rt uf tlw tsland.··· lu th"' cas~.,f tlw \lamd marmlltS. tht" authorities CoJe of 1685. ~lavt•snf different plantattons were now forbidlien to a~~~tnhle ,,f :O:aiut Dmuin.!nw hat! ;tllt'Ulpted. ~im·t"tht' ht>;!lllniu!!. ,,f tlw eightet""nth together. be it in celehration of u marna,e.e. to Orl!anit.e a calenda. or for ou1v ,-,•ntun·. to rt•::~chan accord \\ith the Spam~hfor tlw return •Jf tlw fu!!:itives reason whatsoever. under punishment of the wh1p nr the burning brand of frtun the Fwnch colon~-and to join eiforts in eapturin~and dispersing the the jl,.ur dl' ly.~.For those who persistell. 1t could mean death. :Slave-; wen: marouns alon~the border. all without much ,mcet'S!i. In !';'85. the French fOrbidden to carry anything that might he construed as a weapon •H to cir "'·~· autlwrities finally compreht"nded the futilitv of their .1ims and y1elded. A culate without a written pass from the master. A fugiti,·e slave in 1\ight up p.-ace treaty was signed granting pardon and acconlin!! independence to the '' to one month from the date of his reported e':icape would have his ears cut remaining maroons. Each family would rereive a small plot of land and pro 4 off and the fielu- de ly.1 branded on one shoulder. If his flight should span \'isions for eight months to assure their subsistence untilthetr fanns became another month. he would be hamstrung, in addition, and the fleu.r t:k ly5 ~ productive. jO stamped on the other shoulder. After that. the punishment was death. Any ''0· In addition to these long-established and well-known communities. other (lffranchi providing asylum to a fugitive sla~ewas fined three hundred livres bands in various parts of the colony. smaller in number and pt>rhaps lesser in sugar for each day of protection given. An affranchi offering ~helterto a known, waged similar struggles throughout the colonial era in defense of fugitive or in any wa.,. aiding a slave in committing thefts. or in becoming their precariously acquired freedom. Establishing them.<;elves in the forests a maroon, could lose his freedom and be sold into slaverv along: with his or in the thickly wooded foothills of the mountains, they maintained a mar family.-13 Planters were now pennitted to shoot on sight any slave they be ginal but independent existence. They, too. had their chosen leaders whose lieved to be a fugitive, a provision that incidentally caused innocent slaves decisions governed the organization and functioning of the group. When mistaken for fugitives to be recklesslv killed. H conditions no longer permitted them to subsist off the land. it became neces In 1741, following a maroon attack on the town of Mirebalais, additional sary for them to descend at night upon neighborin~plantations in organized punishments for marronage were imposed. Captured fugttives were put in raids. pillaging, ransacking, sometimes even devastating the plantation to public chain gangs for a specified period of time, sometimes for life. Two secure food, animals. additional anns. or other necess survival. These marauding maroon bands often created such terror as to Jeath.l5 In spite of these restrictions. as well as subsequent ordinance~;of cause certain planters in relatively isolated areas to sell out or simply to similar consequence, marronage remained a well-entrenched mode of resis abandon their holdings. tance to slavery. In fact, official estimates in liSl had brought the number In 1705, the Upper Council of lkogane published an official report on the of French slaves living in marronage in the Spanish colony alone to nearly movement and activities of the maroons in the South: three thousand.·16 The administrators of the colony passed a new ordinance They gather together in the woods and live there exempt from service to their in li67. The ajfranchi-5 were now forbidden to purchase arms or munitions ~nnission masters without any other leader but one elected amon~them: others. under without the express of the Crown prosecutor. The attempt was cover of the cane fields by day, wait at night to rob tho~ewho travel along the clearly made to cut off all sales of arms between the free persons of color main roads, and go from plantation to plantation to steal farm animals to feed 4 and the maroons, and thereby control the problemY Yet during the two de themselves, hiding in the living quarters of their friends who, ordinarilv, partici ' cades before the massive slave revolt of l'i9l. while the planters themselves pate in their thefts and who, aware of the goings on in the master's house. advise seemed relatively imperturbable, colonial correspondence, official reports, the fugitives so that they can take the necessary precautions to ~tealwithout i and administrative ordinances continued to underscore the threat of mar 3 getting caught. 1 ronage to the general security of the colon.,.. as new groups and new maroon Two years later a special body, later reinstated permanently as the mare leaders successively emerged. chau.ssee, in which the affranch~would be required to serve, was created in But this type of collective marronage. of fugitive slaves living in small the North to hunt down and capture fugitive slaves. groups. forming armed bands or even large, organized communities. consti It was precisely the aggressive and intrepid aspects of marronage that tuted only one of its aspects. It predominantly involved the African-hom, necessitated, from the beginning of slavery, the adoption of repressive and ' non-creole field slaves and certainly characterized its more openly aggres· \ punitive measures to eliminate what manv contemporaries came to consider sive form. The domestic slave. on the other hand, profited from the numerous a continual plague and a danger to the security of the colonv:12 The first avenues of escape available to those slaves whose particular position in the 1-' ~I ll.w/.:l!mruu/ Ill R~mlutivn Slt'l"l'" Rr.1!.1/UI!<"~ J.l:iJ plalltoltluu ~v,;lemaffunleolthem )!:water muhilily and freedl!m of movement by ingenuity. intelligence. c~uda~:ity.,.kill. mulcunni:t~. the fugiti\1' .. ~a,-..·-~ than that of the tield slave. freedom became u fait accompli . \lan~· ~ituation ·Ia~·· . took advantage of the when "ent bv the master on a En~;enderedhy the ,;ocial all'\ t'l"Onumic relations uf ,:,\an·r;.· it>;.. If. mar havin~ timt' errand. and never came back. lhhers. learned to read and write, wn 0 ; .K·o·umllll)!btiun ouul perpo>tual submission. It meant that avenues uf es ;!Un~rnin~oilawn·. Though they existed on the fringes of the plantations. ,·ap•• diJ ,.xist-perhaps they were no less perilous than life under slavery. thev werf' nuntlu•less an integral dement of sJa,·e s•JCiety generally. Thus tn in ,m_,. case-and whether ur nut the individual ~lavede,-.i•led to resort to sf'e them ~implyas a distinct or separate group might be to suppose that them was as much a matter of ehoiee as the force of eircum,;;tance. Nlar fuJ!:,itive slal'!:~s.once punished, were never reintegrated into the plantation ronage offered no guarantees. but its continued existence in colonial society amongst the others. or that they never repeated their acts of dellance to was testimony that slavery was not an irrevocably closed system. Second. turn fugitive again, or that the hard-working and apparently accommodatin~ '• a contingent relationship necessarily developed between the fugitives and plantation slave who stayed on to bide his time never turned fugitive himself. their plantation counterparts. who often sheltered them, gave them food. Signillcant relations did exist between maroons and other elements of the helped them steal for provisions. and. aware of the goings-on in the master's larger society. and it is perhaps from this dynamic that the practical conse house, could advise and warn them.~Reciprocally, the impact of armed \ quences of marronage and, ultimately, its potential for popular revolutionary maroons who audaciously raided nearby plan:tations and occasionally even organization and activity in Saint Domingue might best be understood. ·' attacked white colonists. forcing them to organize night vigils. could be Similarly. reciprocal relations existed b.etween marronage as a mode of 9 highly disruptive of the plantation slaves. ~Although it was strictly forbid slave resistance. in itself, and other fonns of resistance for which marronage den for slaves to carry arms of any sort, exception was made by the colonial provided conditions that allowed these to pervade. Among them was voodoo. administrators for the slave commatukurs, "in order to defend the slaves' ! As one of the llrst collective fonns of resistance, it was both a cultural quarters and keep guard of their animals and crops against the outrages of and, in its practical applications, a politically ideological force. Since it was 50 the maroons. " severely outlawed in the colony and therefore forced into clandestinity.53 its If a certain complicity, tacit or otherwise, existed between the fugitive development and proliferation were reinforced in the general context of mar '1 and the plantation slaves, it also existed between the fugitive and the free :;;. ronage. The maroon leaders of African origin were almost without exception blacks. A royal ordinance of 1705 revealed that the punishments established ! either voodoo priests or. at least, voodoo devotees.->-4-And, of course, the in the Black Code of 1685 "against free blacks who facilitate the means by ., case has generally been made for the perpetuation, or at least reconstitution which slaves may become maroons or commit acts of theft did not stop them ,, within a New World context, of African ways in marronage. from sheltering such maroons in their homes, from concealing their thefts Characteristically, it was in the voodoo ceremonies that African tradi and sharing the booty with them." Consequently, any free black who com .' ' tions: language, dance, religion, world view, and medicine were all evident. mitted one of these acts ..would lose his freedom and be sold into slavery ! Indeed, the words of the sacramental voodoo hymns were almost ali. if along with his immediate residing family." The profits. with the exception ' not exclusively, of African origin.~In a sense, then, the various African of one-third reserved for the infonner when there was one. would go to the ~ languages constituted in themselves a form of cultural protest against the 1 :_;· Crown. ~And so, here again, one finds evidence of reciprocal relations be colonial order. as well (as we have seen) as a means of reinforcing a self tween two sectors of the black population, the one not so far removed from !' consciousness and a cultural identity independent of the white masters. slavery itself. Through repressive and discriminatory legislation, the free ' Voodoo as generally practiced in Saint Domingue (and especially its linguis coloreds were to serve as a buffer to protect white supremacy and buttress ~ tic diversity) constituted, in effect, a broad synthesis of the various religious the slave system, but their mere presence as free persons in colonial slave beliefs and practices of all the African nations funning the slave popula society could also facilitate avenues of marronage and flight for slaves. Con tion.-';6 One of the most famous voodoo hymns. chanted in unison for the versely, however, the repercussions of this contact with fugitive slaves could initiation of a neophyte, according to Moreau de Saint-Mery, is the following: drastically influence both the status and ">OCialconditions of the free blacks, Eh! eh(B;~b;;)hen! hen! who themselves risked becoming slaves. S2 ' In this vein. one ought perhaps to be cautious of succumbing to the Canga bafio te Canga moune de te tendency to classify the maroons as a type of separate entity that existed Canga do ki la entirely outside of the system. While this seems to have been the case with Canga lis; the Maniel maroons on the Spanish border. it did not exclusively charac terize marronage within the colony. The maroons, one ought to remember, It is of Congolese origin: more specillcally it is in the Kikongo language and \ were still slaves and, when caught. were subject to the laws and practices might he translated this way: [.'}8[ BackgmUild to RenllutiM , S/m't' Rcsi.!tunn• 1.j') 1 Eh~eh! .\lbumba [rainbow spirit"" ~erpent]\UDfY'I" 1'-'' By the eve of the revolution the Cunj!:olese wew t·~rtumhamon)!: tlw Tie up the Bafioti [a eoastal African sluve-tmdin!!: pcoplt>[ most numerous of the ethnic )!:roupinJ!S t·nmposin)!: the \frwan-IJ.,rn :<1.1\"t' Tie up the whites [i.e., Europeans] population. and although reputedlv well·adju~te.-1ttJ slavery. tht'\. ,·nnsti Tie up the witches 1 Tie them. 'ill tuted the predominant nation amon~the mamnns.'' Their prt'pundt'ram·1• hy the end of the colonial period al:o.o helps e:~;plainthe con..<;iderable cultural The significance not only of the words but of the levels of meaning is to be input of this grouping into a religion embraced and informed hy the f'thni found both within the African society and culture of the Kongo, or Bakongo. cally diveffie African slave masses. b.> It was precisely this pluralistil· nature and the New World setting of Saint Domingue. For if. as Moreau de Saint of Saint Dominguean voodoo and its disinclination to separate into ethnic Mery observed, the incamation was used for the initiation of a neophyte. cults, as was the case in Brazil. for example, that allowed it to function then it may pertinently involve the creation of a nkisi chann, whereby one as a far-reaching collective force. Not surprisingly. it was from the voodoo symbolically "ties up, .. or gathers together, the enumerated powers by tying tradition that the African-hom maroon leadert! generally emerged. Almost a string around the combined elements. Mbumba may be Mbumba Luangu. exclusively, if not voodoo priests, they were !lt least fervent voodoo devotees the rainbow serpent invoked in adoration in the coastal Kongo initiation of one rite or another, whether rada, congo, or petro."" And so. a popular society, Khimba:W Bafioti, meaning "'the coastal people,.. more than likely religion on the one hand, voodoo constituted. on the other, an important referred to the coastal Fioti. who were slave tradeffi that hunted down and organizational tool for resistance. It facilitated secret meetings. as well as captured people of the Kongo interior to trade them as slaves to the Euro the initiation and the adherence of slaves of diverse origins. provided a net peans. or the white man, the Mundele. The Fioti were thus feared and work of communication between slaves of different plantations who gathered believed capable of using their powers, not the least of which was witch clandestinely to participate in the ceremonies. and secured the pledge of '• craft.60 And so, the tying up of the ndoki, {)r witches, may refer as much solidarity and secrecy of those involved in plots against the masteffi. De ' to these slave tradeffi, the Fioti, as to any other person believed to be an scribing the inside goings-on of a colonial voodoo ceremony. Moreau de evil spirit causing hardship. taking other people's goods. making animals Saint-Mery writes: disappear, making the.earth sterile. killing in mysterious ways. or. more They propo!!e plans. they decide upon steps to be taken, they prescribe actions pertinently, being responsible for the slaves' bondage. 61 that the Vaudoux priestes~always sanctions with the will of ltheir\ God. and they By the eve of the 1791 slave revolt in the North, in a changing context ' are actions that do not so habitually have the public order and tranquilitv as of war and armed slave rebellion, it may perhaps not be too presumptive to object. A new oath, juat as abominable as the first one. requires each one to re infer an even more literal connotation to the "tying up" of the white man. as main silent on what has transpired, to concur on what has been concluded. and in the physical act of capturing and tying up the enemy, and thereby con sometimes a vase, cuntaining the still-wann blood of a goat. will seal on the lips quering those poweffi. But in the context of slavery, the chant was generally '•' of the participants the promise to suffer death rather than reveal anything. and used to initiate a newcomer into the rite of Saint Domingue an voodoo. and in even to administer death to whomever may foq;et that he had 50\emnly bound lhis sense it was most certainly an invocation of protection from the dreaded himself to the oath. 67 poweffi ranged against the slaves. Here, then, we find a culturally specific • And of the powerful influence the voodoo high priests held over the mem Congolese ritual contained within an overall religious structure with rules, beffi: procedures, hierarchy, and general principles that Moreau himself distinctly One can hardly believe the extent of depP.ndence in which the Vaudoux chiefs described Dahomean, or more generally, Arada.62 Among most highly as the hold the members oft he sect. There is not one of these who would not prefer the structured of African animistic religions, Dahomean Vodu thus provided an worst of everything to the misfortunes that threaten him if he does not a~siduous\y existing substructure in Saint Domingue within which the religious, cultural, attend the meetings. if he does not undiscemingly Comply with v. hat raudmu and linguistic traditions of the diverse African nations successively found a demands of him .... In a wort!, nothing is more dangerous in everv respect place and effectively contributed to its evolution. Moreover. it was precisely than this cult of Vaudoux, founded on the e:dravaganl notion~but one which can through the dispersion of nations among different plantations in the colo become a tenifyin~;weapon-that the ministers of the beinp; decorated by this nial era (and through intermarriages later in the Haitian period) that other name know all and can do all. 1>11 cults influenced and enriched the content of voodoo, the overall structurf" of By far tlte most extraordinary and awesome of these prerevolutionary which remained Dahomean. 63 voodoo mnroon leaders was Fran'>ois Makanda\. According to a contempo- [tJ() 1 Bttckground tv R~ulution Slat·•· RPJI.!tanc~ \61\ (~ 11 ra~·source. he was born in ·'Guinea- into an Illustrious family that under~ poinL One of these suggests that he was at the head of a band of tift~·~some maroons.;8 while another claims that. together with his two chief associates. tuuk his e{lucation at a \'ery early age. He was -;uppo>'edly !nought up 1n the ,. \luslem reliJ!;ion and apparently had an e.'(cellt.•nt command of Arabic. As _\tayombe and Teysselo. ~takandalhad assembled -a tonsiderable number " ,·oung man he possessed a remarkably inquisitive mind and. introduced .... of maroons."' Moreover. on the summit of their nearh· inaccessible mo•Jntain to the arts. {lisplayed a keen interest in music, painting, and sculpture. retreat. "they had their women. their children, and well-cultivated farms: ~ "Pile his young age.f>'~Very little else is known about his background, for at to spread terror and ravage the plantations of the neighboring plains, or to the age of twelve he was captured as a prisoner of war, sold as a common extinguish those who had disobeyed the prophet ....7<1 Having persuaded many slave to the European traders, and shipped to Saint Domingue.''0 Here he a slave that it was he whom the Creator had sent to carry out the destruction of the whites and to liberate his people, Makanda! was thus able to extract was sold again, this time to Lenormand de Mezy in the district of Limbe, -·~ whose plantations were among the largest a~wealthiest in the North. Ot not only the most unyielding allegiance from his fugitive followers. but to was. incidentally, at another of Lenormand's plantations in Morne Rouge extend his influence over vast numbers of s!aves on the plantations of the that the plans for the August 1791 revolt were drawn up less than fifty years whole North Plain region. later.) According to one version, Makanda! turned fugitive after his hand Here, a few considerations may be posed concerning marronage in the was amputated, having caught it in the machinery of the sugar mill while New World context, and in Saint Domingue particularly. At a first glance, working the night shift.''1 Another, however, attributes his marronage to the one may be inclined to interpret this case of prerevolutionary marronage as consequences of a dispute between himself and his master over a young and one of the many "restorationist" movement! of traditional slave resistance, beautiful Negress. Apparently Makandal's master had, out of vengeance, given the messianic style of leadership espoused by Makanda\, as well as t ordered him to receive fifty lashes of the whip, whereupon Makanda.! re~ the existence of a fairly settled community of followers in apparent with fused this humiliation and precipitously took to the woods. 12 Here he began drawal from slave society.80 Even more, Makandal's conspiratorial movement his long and notorious career, one that spanned nearly eighteen years, as a in the 1750s was not yet a part of that "bourgeois, democratic revolutionary prerevolutionary maroon leader. wave" sweeping through the Age of Revolution in the late eighteenth cen Operating from his mountain retreat during these years, he carefully built tury. Yet, as a maroon leader, Makanda! did not restrict or marginalize his an extensive network of resistance with agents. as one account goes, in activities exclusively outside the plantation system. nor did he attempt, in nearly all points of the colony, 73 Whether the extent of his machinations the isolation of wooded mountain retreats, to create an independent, socially actually reached these limits is queslionable; it is certain, however, that his and politically organized Afro~Caribbeancommunity, as was evidently the influence covered the better part ofthe North province. His uhimate weapon case with the Bahoruco and Maniel maroons on the eastern border, or as was poison. Having acquired considerable knowledge of herb medicine. a in other Latin American and West Indian colonies. Rather, marronage be talent that hls master recognized very early, he instructed his followers in its came the organizational vehicle, drawing nonetheless upon existing African uses and developed, according to the above account, an .. open school of this beliefs and practices, religious animism, and herb medicine, for building a 7 't; e." 1 trifles from Europe in the slaves' quarters.~It was. as another source re pacotilleun, as domestic slaves on an errand, or as "occasional" maroons. lates... among these pacotilleun that Makandal's disciples and most trusted actively procured and distributed various poisons. potions, and other ..reme~ partisans were to be found, and, above all, it was they whom he used for the dies."' Here. then, was a case o£ a maroon band with a formidable leader good or the evil that he wished to accomplish ... 1(> operating in a pennanent state of marronage, but one that extended itself, His qualities of leadership, his sense of organization. his stature as a at the same time, to set afoot a vast movement of resistance. It was a type religious cult leader, his eloquence as an orator. not only rivaled that of of marronage that differed qualitatively from that practiced by other Saint the European orators of the day, but surpassed it in strength and vigor, Dominguean maroon bands or communities in tenns of its organization. its affording him an immeasurable influence and command over the slaves in infiltration into the plantation system for the recruitment of slave allies and his following. Every contemporary account of Makanda! substantiates this adherents,81 and in terms of its overall goal. !i" [h:!] Backgmund to Re~ulutwn Sian• Rl'5i.slance ! u:~1 I Hut for many blacks. :\1akandal was still ali\e and wnuld return some dav •l In this u•in, the observations of de Vaissiere appear sinj!:ularh hlcid: lt" -\lal'andal was more than simply a leader of maroon han1ls. :'lot that lw dis to fullill his prophecies.~~For others. his memory was sufficient to nourish tht> ,[ained the rillagin,: and ransacking of plantations. or the theft of cattle and lun~,md bitter struggle that would one da\· lead to their emancipation .. -\sa •ltl~~c•ronlinar:-· exploits of fugitive slaves: but he seemed at the same time J,.~enllaryfigure. his name became identified with <~lm<)stall forms of fetish· .;- to ha,·e sensed the possibility of creating out of marrunage a center uf orga t~m.with poisoning, sorcery. and slave dances. Thereafter. the lwungnn. I 8 ~ ntzed black resistance against the whites. " More than that. he had a solid ,:.~. •lr \oudoo priests. were often referred to as ~makandals~:to po,;sess certain understanding of the racial origins and development of Saint Domingue, as -~' pnwers or simply to practice voodoo was to be a .. makanda!": his name was -..\ well as their broader implications. To illustrate this before a large gathering -;~ a~cribedto certain voodoo dances; voodoo talisman~were thereafter often 118 of slaves, he had a vase full of water brought to him, in which he placed n•ferred to as .. makandals~and were strictly forbidden. three yellow, one white, and one black. Pulling out the yellow Who were the slaves who followed Makanda1. who joined him in mar· scarves-one .;:' scarf first, he told his listeners: "This repres~tsthe original inhabitants of ,, runage. who poisoned their masters and members of their family, who poi~ ~' Saint Domingue. They were yellow." "These," he said. pulling out the white soned other sla\"es that could not be trusted? We know from one source scarf. "are the present inhabitants. Here, finally, are those who will remain ·!: that Makanda! recruited some of his closest agents from among the pacotil masters of the island; it is the black scarf."lll leur.; who would buy and resell trinkets and sundries in the slaves' quarters. i! For the first few years, he remained completely unknown to the white The 1757 prison record for le Cap indicates the names and status (slave or !, masters (except his own who, after a number of years, most likely gave him free black) of the accused but does not indicate their slave rank (domestic, i up for dead) and. with extraordinary audacity, went from plantation to plan commandeur, artisan, field worker); and while the names of their masters are given in most cases, their specific plantations of residence and their tation to proselytize and stir up the zeal of his partisans, often under cover ·c-" of the anonymity afforded by calendas and other nocturnal slave gatherings " ages are rarely and only sporadically given. However. certain indications or festivities. During the next twelve years of marronage. he and his fol 9: revealed in a letter, dated 24 June 1758 and written from le Cap, suggest lowers pursued their ultimate plan with a constancy and ingenuity, as one that the majority of those arrested after Makanda\ were in fact house slaves: report goes, that "one V."Ouldalmost be tempted to admire." 84 Finally, the '*.;! "We are alarmed to discover that almost all the guilty are those who work day and the hour were set when the water of all the houses in le Cap was to _, in the master "s house and in whom was placed the greatest confidence be poisoned. Within the core of his band he had disciplined agents-cap :t• the coachman, the cook and other domestics at our disposition .... Note tains, lieutenants, and various other officers-operating and organizing on '.~,,.._ that aU of the guilty ones are highly priced slaves. and even at four to five the plantations. He knew the names of every slave on each plantation who <·• thousand livres each, they are not spared."119 supported and participated in his movement. He had an exact list of those To these can be added a considerable proportion of free blacks, arrested 1:'" slaves who, once the poison had struck panic throughout the town, were to -~ either for acts of poisoning or, most frequently, for the composing, traffick -, organize in contingents from le Cap and spread out into the countryside to :i!: ing. or distributing of poison to the slaves. The November 1757 prison report massacre the whites. 85 '· for le Cap, drawn up two months prior to Makanda1's capture, indicates eigh The aim was to overthrow the white regime, whereby the blacks would -~ teen prisoners arrested on charges relating specifically to poison. Of these. become the new masters of Saint Domingue. It was the first real attempt in twelve were slaves and six were free blacks.110 Other evidence suggests that ~ the long history of slave resistance at disciplined, organized revolt aiming • free blacks. who were only one step removed from slavery but who enjoyed not only at the destruction of the white masters and of ! ~· carelessness on the part of Makanda! that led to his capture.116 He managed were sold at auction upon his death. Among the possessions sold were ar to maneuver a spectacular but short-lived escape and was promptly recap senic and other drugs. A free black purchased certain quantities of these tured when dogs were finally sent upon his trail. He was summarily tried ' and had more purchased by others. According to d'Auberteuil. he worked and burned at the stake. in liaison with Makandal and was himself a distributor of poison. Ql Bat:kgroiUid ro Ret·olution Slm:~Resisrallft' [65] ! " ~I _\nmn::: those arrested for crimes relating to poison was .\~~am.a youn~ authorities were able to arrest Makanda!. -who was their \e-;uler.-·•; Finally. -l.tu· 1u 1man lu•lunging to the planter l\1. Vallet of Ia Sou!Triere. and Pnmpi:e, • she was accused of twice having administered poi5on to her u"'n master.'"' •1 fn-e black and fanner on the plantation of Sieur De~euttres{des Gen- '1. Cuurtin. the sene.;chal of le Cap. had spent two days .tnd two nights 1res~ J. who sen·ed as intennediary. The official interrogation of Assam. {lated with Assam to extract infonnation from her. During this t1me. she also de· :!7 ~t'plember1757. offers certain insights into the attitudes and motives. dared that the Jesuit priest Father Duquesnoy. a cure des ntgres charged .1s wdl as the methods used by slaves in their covert undertakings."'! Upon with the religious instruction of slaves, had come to visit her in prison for reading and evaluating the interrogation, it seems clearly evident. in spite confession. He had forbidden her, under punishment of eternal damnation. of her protests to the contrary, that Assam knew full well it was a death :• to reveal the names of her accomplices. advising her that it was far better to inducing potion she administered to two slaves of the plantation who had endure the tonnents that could be inflicted upon her rather than succumb fallen ill and finally died shortly after her treatments. Originally, she told to the whites and ris~the tonnents of eternal damnation. This type of tacit her master she would be able to obtain a remedy to cure their illness but ••' complicity was not entirely untypical of the Jesuits. Some even provided 7 needed a pass for at least a day. Pompee directed her to the quarters of a protection and asylum for maroons.'~Bui the reputation the Jesuits had ac slave named Jean on the Laplaine plantation at Limbe. There she met sev quired for appearing to justify marronage and other acts of resistance to eral other Negres~swho had evidently come for the same purpose. Jean grossly inhuman treatment by masters and overseers. not the least of which asked her to stay for four or five days; this would give him enough time to ' was poisoning, was due chiefly to the individual acts of certain priests in collect the herbs he needed and to prepare the concoction. which he did defense of the slaves. Though inoffensive in themselves, such acts could, in her presence: sage, mh:ed with an egg yolk and boiler scrapings, into '·• by implication, be deemed highly subversive and therebv send shock waves which was mixed pois puants, blue verbena, and wheat herb. These were all ·~,. through the white slaveholding community. Father Boutin, a cure des Mgre3, ' boiled together and a black powder added. Before Assam left his quarters, "• gave a "solemn" religious burial to a Negress accused and hanged for poi· Jean drew some blood from her shoulder, rubbed the cut with gunpowder, soning. To spare other slaves from inevitable torture. father Duquesnoy and scraped the blood off with a knife, placing it in a piece of ram's hom. \ effectively offered spiritual absolution to Assam if she withheld the names 93 k which he then put in his pocket. Upon returning, Assam administered this :-:. of her accomplices. Another Jesuit, in Guadeloupe, protested the execution remedy to the sick slaves, but far from alleviating their illness, she precipi ,-;~, of slaves who were only reputedly, but not proven to be. guilty. At le Cap, tated their death. Then, so as not to be caught with the substance in her l.' the Jesuits were reproached by the Upper Council for fostering too close a possession, Assam threw away her concoction, though insisting all the while i contact with the slaves, in general, and with their own, in particular. whom that it was a "good remedy" Jean had given her. they designated as "servants" rather than slaves.98 The order was suppressed Further, her reactions to Pompee's condemnatory attitudes toward the by royal edict in 1764 after having been expelled from the colony in 1763 on white masters and even his offer to purchase her freedom were, in the face charges of "being in complicity with the slaves."9'J of her interrogators, nominally negative. She declared that she had nothing il As an official body, however, the Catholic church generally worked h&nd against the whites and got along well with her master. On the whole, it is in hand with the white masters and the colonial administration. In the slave doubtful she was sincere in her declarations. But was she lying in a plea community, its institutional role was in fact one of utter domination and for clemency? Was she lying to conceal names and infonnation? Or was she :. spiritual terror aimed at breaking the slaves' spirit of rebellion and libera ~ a willing and conscious participant in the use of poison. who, at the same •~· tion. By virtue of a special regulation issued by the french government and time. found herself unable to overcome a certain inner ambivalence? Thus ~ addressed to the priests of the french colonies. slaves who committed acts of caught in tonnent, facing torture and fearing for her total being, did she ~ marmnage, abortion, poisoning, or arson were threatened by the priests with feel inclined to express a sympathy toward her master?<14During her trial in ~• being refused the sacraments of the church. with excommunication, and December 1757 it was only as she was being terrorized with burning laths t eternal damnation. In addition, the regulations ordered the priests to deliver ~-~ that she agreed to tell all she knew, not wanting to "suffer the fire twice.~ ' specially prescribed sennons to these slaves, designed to infuse them with -1- At this point. she finally divulged the names of some fifty accomplice!>, both a sense of worthlessness and self-hatred for their acts.100Voodoo. on the men and women. admitted to having poisoned three of her master's children i- other hand. provided slaves with amulets and talismans believed to protect ~~ whom she had nursed. as well as a certain number of slaves on his planta ·,.. the holder &gains\ any hann while committing an act of resistance that was tion. and, according to the same source. provided the means by which the justified by this religion. Because voodoo was practiced·clanJestinely. it not I (;. [Ofl) Background to Remlution Slm-,. ReJist,tm·e ( 1/:' 1 only provided an important vehicle for resi~tance.hut Jlso hdpt>d to 1·reate .\not her letter. written two months later from le Cap. in June 17.':>8.rt>veals -·--' .md sustain an atmosphere of terror that tended at timP,; to ltwk the planter -';;,.• that. since the execution of Makanda!. four or five w~reburned at the stake in a state of psychological insecurity. not paranoia. ;Ji;l' if '."-:(• ,.,·erv month. Already twenty-four ~laves.both men and women. and three \Vhether the poisons that slaves obtained and ust>d with such alarming . . •\ frt>e blacks had suffered the same punishment. The author goe~nn to state proficiency were actually to~icherbal potions derin•d from cf:'rtain plants :::tt: that and prepared by African blacks who held the knowledge and highly guarded _.-:~i :.. ~ ..;- as soon as they are put to questioning, the marichaU5Jle arrests nine or ten ' ...,, secrets of herb medicine; or whether they were simply compositions of an ar· others as declared accomplices. Thus the number of criminals increases in pro senic base, disguised by the presence of various colonial herbal substances, . <. !)Ortion as one is e~ecuted.... There are now 140 accused in prison . remained for the colonists a matter of dispute. 101 What is more significant, '"'_:_'i; Of the blacks who have been executed. some have admined to killing by poi· however, in the context of voodoo and marronage, is the impact the use of son thirty to forty whites, even their maste111,their wives, their children; other.;, ·Ill poison had upon the colonial mentality, at times producing collective panic ·-,. two to three hundred staves belonging to various masters. 1"-"t' There are some planten who had fifty to sixty slaves workinl!: on their planta and hysteria among the white population. Thus. in addition to the countless -,-;·- fatalities resulting from the use of poison as a weapon of slave resistance, this ' ·,.;,. tion. ln less than two weeks, they had only four or five remaining, and sometimes practice contributed greatly toward maintaining the master class in a stale ·-~-.... not even one. l know many who have had this misfortune befall them. 104 of fear from which there appeared to be little effective recourse. Through What was particularly alanning was that "for every one unfortunate that " 10 the uses and abuses of poison, the slaves themselves placed the masters in ·"' P·lakandal] instructed, a hundred more can likewise be instructed."~An· a position of uncertainty and dependence, for, in the final count, their eco· other letter, written the same month, slates that nomic survivaJ, as well as their own life or death, were matters that could there are hardly any slaves, especially th0$t' of the nations from the Gold Coast, equally be determined by those they oppressed. As a social relationship of who in our colonies do not have knowledge of various plants containing poisons forces, power in the hands of the Saint Dominguean colonists was never or the necessarv elements with which to compose them. There have always been totally absolute, nor were the slaves ever totally victims. It was a double· those who have used this knowledge, but for two or three yean the practice had become so common in the North that. in addition to a very large number of whites edged sword that could just as eW~ilytum against the master, and often did. Gabriel Debien even accedes that it was possible the slaves using poison who ... have perished by poison, one can add at least six to seven thousand had as their aim "to dominate their master, to make him suffer the supreme slaves who were destmyed by this wretched practice.... A considerable number of accused still remain in the prisons of le Cap. as well as those of Fort Dauphin humiliation of his ruin; it was a hidden power they had, but one close at hand." 100 and Port-de-Paix. 106 To what degree, then, were the colonists' fears justified? The correspon· What becomes striking]y evident from these reports, then, is the gener· dence of local administrative officia1s gives some indication as to the extent alized state of shock in which the colonial authorities, and many a planter, of popular involvement in the use of poison. In the words of du Millet, found themselves. On the one hand, such shocking revelations may indeed lieutenant·judge of Port·de-Paix, situated at a considerable distance from le have stimulated the masters' fears, while these fears, with a cumulative Cap along the northern coast of the colony: effect, may then have prompted excessive slave arrests and executions to provide the masters with a desperate sense of security, regardless of the This colony is swanning with slaves, so.called soothsayers and sorcerers who cost. And so in this vein, in the fundamental relationship between master poison and who, for a long time, have conceived the plan of insensibly wiping out and slave. what the masters believed their slaves capable of doing, what all the whites .... These blacks are of a sect or a new kind of religion fonned by they thought the slaves could and would do. was equally as important as two leaden, old Ne,;roes, who for many long years have been fugitive and whoee that which the slaves actually did or did not bring about through poison. names are Macandal and Tusereau: These two sectarians have fortunately been arrested ... , but unfortunately they have a considerable number of sectarians And yet, they learned exceedingly little from this whole episode. Had they and disciples; there are presently over two hundred in the prisons of le Cap; heeded their own fears over what could have happened in 1758, instead We have roughly a doten in those of Port-de-Pai~since instructions have been of psychologically displacing them through both a literal and a figurative delivered a fortnight ago, and twenty-two more have been denounced; and I have witch hunt, thus erecting a precarious sense of security, they may well have reason to believe that those who remain to be discovered in the various quarten been better prepared and less incredulous and dumbfounded over what did of this department are equal in number to those at le Cap. 103 happen in 1791. l 5/·n·,. Re.li.!t,m<'e ! hH! Htlc~·groundlo Rt'1·o/ution l (JQ 1 :~- • tJf L:nfnrtunatd~'any ~vo;temutil·. quantitative soeial -;tudy of the Makanda! , To this end. many acts poisoning were earried out against plantation •-onspiracy omd the ~epidemic~wave uf pmsunings surrounding the event is ,;:_· work animals. as well as a@:ainst other sla\·es or UJ!:ainst th.e master and his 10\l J.ll hut impns:>ible. The e\'idenee. wht>n it doe,; exist. is far too fra~mentary.;·- family. Additiondl!y. slaves who could nut be trusted with the s{"{;rets of J.llll we must rely upon the colonial correspondence and administrative re .., these homicidal endeavors were among the first to fall victim to the poisons ports for the elen1ents with which to construct an interpretation. Given the .:;.~,, used by fellow slaves. in As to the personal desire for freedom on the part of slaves ~hoindividually torture tactics used extracting confessions from suspected slaves, one may "·~ ·:";!· justifiably raise questions as to whether all of those arrested and executed committed acts of poisoning against their masters. sufficient evidence exists were actually guilty: whether the numbers of slaves having perished by poi -~ to reveal the conscious and deliberate nature of such acts. A letter from the interim intendancy le Cap, dated January just a week before son. reaching into the hundreds by one report and the thousands by another. ~ at 13 1758, were accurate; whether the numbers of slaves incarcerated in colonial pris Makandal's execution. revealed the motive of four slaves, three women and ons were exact. But that these massive a~tsmay have served more to one man, who poisoned their masters. These slaves were tempted by the assuage the fears that gripped the masters than to actually punish the guilty "expectation of enjoying their freedom soo.ner than they could have hoped ones need not obviate the fact that the fears were themselves perpetrated. in for in the testament that their masters had left. and that is what prompted the first instance, by the homicidal activities of at least some of the slaves. them to cut short their masters' lives by poisoning them." 110 In a similar And then, one may also assume that there were a good number of slaves and vein, Pompie had told the Negress Assam that when the whites live too free blacks who used or distributed poisons and who were never caught or long, the slaves who were waiting for their freedom gave the masters drugs to identified. make them die sooner, that many free blacks had gained their freedom this Yet in the end, Makanda! and his followers did not succeed in exter way and that she should do the same.111 In the opinion of the intendants, the minating the whites nor in becoming ..masters of the island," a fact that practice ·of granting freedom by testament would, if left unchecked, lead to led some observers to conclude that these never were the clear intentions the destruction of the colony. The problem, then, could be remedied only by of the slaves who engaged in acts of poisoning. Rather. the failure of the passing a law that. except in the case of a slave noted for ..distinguished ser conspiracy prompted them to interpret such acts purely in terms of indi· vices," would annul all future acts of liberty granted to slaves by testament. 112 vidual interest: vengeance, jealousy, reduction of the work load, inAiction In yet another letter, written only a month. earlier, additional evidence of the of economic loss on a master, elimination of inheritance rights by poisoning desire for personal freedom in the poisoning of masters is provided, but the the master's children and thus preventing the breakup of their own fami blame for this widespread practice is placed upon the decadence of colonial lies,107 or the hastening of the day of emancipation provided in the master's lifestyles: creole women afraid to die with the reputation of being poor if testament. A.s we have already seen in the general correspondence of the they did not provide for the emancipation of their slaves; or the concubinage period, acts of poisoning were as often inAicted upon other slaves as upon of the masters with their Negress slaves, eventually assuring the freedom of the masters. In many of these cases, however, slaves aimed at damaging the latter. Thus, given the promises of freedom that were ,.lavishly accorded the master financially, at reducing the size of his work force to prevent the by the masters," many slaves were prompted to poison them and become expansion of his operations, and thereby to exert a measure of control over free by virtue of their testament. Hl th.eir own working and living conditions under slavery. In a letter addressed Individual acts of poisoning, then, could be motivated by diverse factors. by a colonist to the Cornie de Langeron, these motives are clear: but whatever the motive, the consequences of such acts struck at the eco nomic base of the slave system. However. the fact that individual instances The hatred which slavery aroused in them against us has ~ivenrise to extraordi of poisoning occurred for individual reasons on a more or less wide scale does nary thoughts of vengeance. the sad effects of which we have suffered in seeing not necessarily exclude the motive of coll{"{;tive liberation in the Makan three-quarteB of our laboreT!Iperish from sicknesses of a cause unknown even to da! conspiracy, nor does it undermine the material objectives of the revolt. doctors. When we discovered who the followeB of Macandal were, they admitted that they had put to death a large number of whites and an even larger number Yet the historical relationship between the generalized social phenomenon of blacks, and that the only reason they did this was to restrict their masten to of slave poisonings and sorcery. as cited by various colonists throughout a small rrumber of slaves in order to prevent them from undenaking production the North Province, and the actuall757 political conspiracy of Makanda!, that would cause them to be overworked. 101:1 f remains for.the historian a conj{"{;tural one. One can argue. however, that ~ 'oil' • 1:-o1 H dw~.. poi,c ~lmerv.mJ the colonial order. and m; such contributed to the creatwn of a \ated manner. Of the roisuns useJ. som,. were so 1lau!!emus and "" \'iolt>nl ~tat~nf ff'ar. uncertainty. and even paranoia ami h\-steria within tht" mas that when given to dogs. they inflicted immediate death. Other!> had a mueh ~tower hef ·>. • ! ;":! I Badcgrormd to Ren1lution Slav<' RtJi.!tmu:t \73\ to tht> destruction of the colony, of which the whites are totally unaware and and repressive legislation after Makandal's death. they prm·ed 3in~ularl~· 127 ,,( \,hich tht<: free blacks are the principal cause. using all possible means ~hortsighted. to innease their numbers in order to be in a position to confront the whites During the 1760s. it became clear that actually or.!~·a mmority of the 12 "'ht'nt>ver necessary.~~Indeed. had not the free black Pompee advised the "laves who engaged in poisoning, or who were belie\·ed to haw~dune so. had slave A ,;sam to obtain her own freedom by poisoning her master? been eliminated. Cabon relates that during this period. $0me plantations had With the onslaught of arrests, interrogations, and executions following o>venbeen decimated due to massive executions of suspected slaves. l:.'!l As the 'lakandal affair. colonial opinion tended to discount the existence of 't, the poisonings continued, the general feeling was that the principal culprits, an organized plot or even a general tendency among the slaves toward lib as well as the rest of their leaders, remained untouched by the combined eration and the eventual extennination of the masters. lz:J Yet the impact of campaigns of planters and administrators to torture, to inflict a multitude of the whole affair upon the colonial mentality and upon subsequent legislation -'· cruelties, to bum alive suspected slaves from whom they attempted to ex· suggests at least that the white masters' fea~of continuing slave resistance " tract confessions and denunciations of accomplices. One legislator wrote that were nonetheless real and not necessarily Without due cause. In faet, the ' "[p ]unishment by fire to which the criminals. have been condemned is totally repercussions of the Makanda! affair, as those of the Le Jeune case in a :-I incapable of frightening them, of making them admit to their crimes and of similar fashion, may actually tell us as much about the master mentality in preventing those who wish to imitate them from continuing the intrigues of Saint Domingue as about slave activities relating to poison per se. their secret undertakings. " 129 While some colonists suggested suppressing On 11 March 1758, two months after Makandal's execution, the Upper ' grants of freedom by testament altogether, others proposed their retention, Council of le Cap declared illegal the fabrication or distribution of "makan· ' but only in very special cases, thus keepiOfj alive the illusory hope of even· dais," or talismans, as well as the casting of evil spells, under the pretext ' tual freedom in order to maintain the docility and obedience of slaves. A few that these constituted a profanation of holy artifacts.ll4 The same ordinance • of the more enlightened minds proposed humane treatment and sufficient equally forbade slaves to compose or to distribute any sort of remedy to other food as a palliative to stimulate respect among slaves for their masters, all slaves without the master's permission. Another ordinance of 7 April 1758 "·~· -e;,;* to little avail. prohibited any slave ceremony involving a death prayer for one of the mem· Ji 1f by the 1780s, however, the wave of poisonings that had seemingly hers. The prohibition against "makandals" was also extended to free blacks swept the North in the 1750s had finally subsided. the sporadic use of poison and mulattoes. For the slaves, prohibitions were reinforced against bearing -~ as a means of resisting slavery continued to be noted: in 1777, for example, arms, the sale of foodstuffs in the towns, and assemblies after 7 P.M., even i the slave Jacques, belonging to Corbit:res, arrested for having poisoned over in churches. A free black providing asylum to a fugitive slave would. along .•' one hundred of his master's animals in eight months; in 1781, an apothecary with his entire resident family, lose his freedom. A further act of the Upper '\ arrested for selling a lethal drug to a slave who poisoned himself: or in 1784. Council of le Cap ordered in 176lthat churches be closed after sundown and the Negress Elizabeth, called Zabeau, arrested for attempting to poison her between noon and two o'clock-the periods acC1lrded slaves for their free ~ master by introducing emetic substances in his food and drink. tlO In fact, time. As well, the activities of the curts des nigres were severely circum· the administrators found it necessary in 1780 to issue an ordinance reinforc· ~ scribed in an attempt to minimize their direct contact with the slaves. 115 All ' ing half a dozen previous ones concerning restrictions on the sale of poisons affranch.U, whether black or mulatto, were forbidden to wear sword, saber, l: and other dangerous drugs in the colony. In addition, the 1780 ordinance " or manchette unless they were members of the marichau.ssee. 126 ' made it illegal for free persons of color, as well as slaves, to compose or In the end, the Makanda! affair was not simply an isolated episode in f' distribute a remedy of any sort and in any form, or to undertake the cure of the history of slave resistance. On the one hand. 1758 marked the climax sick persons. UJ The notoriously cruel Nicolas LeJeune related in 1788. just of slave resistance by means of poison, facilitated by marronage (especially three years before the massive slave revolt in the North Plain. that his father .-.: of the chief leaders) and reinforced by the powerful influences of colonial • had lost through poison over four hundred slaves in twenty·five years. and voodoo. But the use of poison as a weapon against slavery hardly began, ·'·~ fifty·two more in only six months. In less than two years, he himself had lost nor did it end, here. Throughout the eighteenth century, planters were peri forty·seven slaves and thirty mules. 132 odically plll{!;ued by the ravages of poison on their plantations, and if they During the 1770s and 1780s, however, at least in the Fort Dauphin re· believed they had rid themselves of the problem with the wave of executions gion in the North. more overtly violent forms of resistance seemed to replace ;, • -c-t. Slm-., R,•. the t'mert st'ht>mes of poison as a retaliator:· arm. Tht> uutri~htmurder and :=Ian• re~istilno:.. had ,;panned ~.. wral <·enturws .uul was e\pn~ssedor a: .1 tlolcn slaves. or even by indi\·i,Jual slaves. l'.ert" noted in 17';"6. 1779. tn kill the milStl"r. sui,·ide. mfanticide. \ anll 178 ... Here. in the cast'S of group-led assassinations, the slan~sleading it~lo11~ ,llld di\en;e histor.. all bure "itne"s 1o tlw ~lan·s'human ~pirit .. the plots occupied the higher ranks of slave soctety: a mi!ler and a coach .1111lcapacity to assert an indf'pendent "ill. If undereUITf'TLts of a con~;cious- man. a commandeur, sailors. and a quarteroon (no doubt a tlomesticl.u..l As "!"'" ness harhorin~the e\·entual destruction nf slan~rvand the master d the slave and the white communities. Perhaps unconsciously foreseeing the ,~- whites. New forces had burst open in the colony. Talk of "liberty, equality. black revolution that W!JUidbreak out among the masses eight years later, and fraternity" fell upon the receptive ears of domestic slaves. who inter M. de Rouvray, a colonial planter and brigadier in the royal anny. observed !- preted these slogans in their own way as they perfunctorily served their in 1783 that .. a slave colony is as a city threatened by attack; we are tread white masters. One colonist writes in 1789: "What preoccupies us the most ~:... 138 ing on powder kegs." Again. by 1786, some slaves were spreading the • at this time are the menaces of a revolt .... Our slaves have already held concepl of independence. assemblies in one part of the colony with threats of wanting to destroy all the '"· whites and to become masters of the colony. " 1"" Another lucidly observes: In the North, the mulatto JerOme. called Poteau. and his black compan· '1• ion. Telemaque, inspired by the contemporary vogue of mesmerism. were • .. Everyone has made a habit of anning himself and of grouping together to holding clandestine nightly assemblies that drew large crowds, usually num patrol the roads and the large savannas. These precautions seem to make ~. bering up to two hundred slaves from the plantations around Mannelade. The '·' an impression on the slaves. but the work is going badly, and it is easy to two leaders distributed iron bars and other cabalistic objects while preach· perceive that something is being conspired and will break out in mutiny on ing independence and instructing others in the same practice. 139 Jerome and one plantation: This will be the signal for all the others. ., 1-" Telemaque were arrested and sentenced to the galleys for life in December It was the French Revolution that provided the opportunity for that re\·olt. 1787. The presiding magistrate believed that this public punishment .. would prove once and for all the impotence of their practices ...and the empty powers of their talismans "to proted them from the punishments which justice must always deal out for brazen·faced charlatanism." 110 What this magistrate did not see, or did not want to see, wrote Cabon. was that these superstitious practices had gone beyond the limits of what the colonists deemed the nar row consciousness of the slaves. to attain the concept of an independence embracing perhaps even the entire race. 1~1 •;_ Tilt Cumm~r4 rl!f!' Black Rt-mlutwn \771 had elected their 01wndep~tles to France in the belief that the member.> of the Estates General. hecaust' of their unfamiliarity with the sper.ific needs .I of the colonies and general irmorance of colonial affairs, would accept them 3 as e,;perts and. >A'ithlittle debate. adopt whatever they proposed. They were themselves unaware. however. of attitudes prevalent among some of the The Coming of the Black Revolution more enlightened leaders of the revolutionary movement in France, who. in fluenced by the ideas of the philnsophes, depicted the slave-owning colonists as a .. breed of political leeches and violators of human dignity."' 1 The colonistS had not yet even obtained the right of representation. Since nee news of the convocation of the Estates General was announced ·'' their petitions for admission into the Estates General had already been re 0 in 1788, colonists in Saint Domingue.~aswell as absentee planters in • jected by the king and the royal bureaucracy, a_nd subsequently by the france, began rapidly organizing committees and clubs. thus establishing nobility, their last refuge was in the Third Est~te.which bv June had come a network of communication between these spontaneously fanned bodies to the forefront of the revolution in France. Assembled in the Tennis Court as they set out to determine how best to make their claims and grievances at Ve~ailles,the Third Estate had declared itself the nation. the true rep known to the national assembly that would convene the following year. .. resentatives of the people, and swore. as a body, never to disperse. Almost In Saint Domingue, the aristocratic planters of th!:" North were the first ~ all the colonial deputies had also participated in this oath, and in the gen to take the initiative, During 1788 a small party had coalesced around the ,'f·'• eral euphoria and enthusiasm that surrounded the event, the Third Estate issue of colonial representation in the Estates General and by August had recognized the principle of colonial representation. formed, illegally and with the utmOl>tsecrecy, a committee to propagate its Given the wealth and economic importance or Saint Domingue to France, -' views and rally support among the plante~of the outlying parishes. This '-!7 the provisional deputies brazenly requested twenty colonial representatives. I committee, along with the propaganda emanating from the Chamber of Agri . At this point Miraheau, a liberal bourgeois and member of the French abo <"ulture in le Cap, had sparked the creation of similar committees in the two '" litionist society, the Amis des Noirs, indignantly intervened and maintained other provinces. They were all actively engaged in preparing official lists '.,.., that the principles of proportional representation followed in France allowed of grievances. or cahUrs, as well as the eventual election of deputies who the colony only four deputies. Moreover, he continued, with biting irony: "·.• would present these claims and specific interests to the Estates General. ., .. You want representation in proportion to the number of inhabitants. But They wanted an end to what they called "ministerial despotism" and re ;.::" have the blacks and free persons of color competed in the elections? The served for themselves alone the right to legislate on the internal structure .t' free blacks are property owners and taxpayers. Yet they could no\ vote. and administration of the island. The governor and intendant were to become ' And, as to the slaves, either they are men or they are not; if the colonists mere figureheads representing the king and would fall under the infiuence } consider them to be men, let them free them and make them eligible for and control of colonial authority. They wanted an end to the prohibitive seats; if not, have we, in proportioning the number of deputies to the popu measures of the Exclusive and demanded the right of free trade and the lation of France, taken into account the_number of our horses and mules?"Z opening of colonial ports to merchant ships of other countries, especially for "". A compromise was reached, and the colony was allowed six deputies. the unrestricted importation of gTain and slaves. Land distribution. juris ' Colonial representation in a metropolilan assembly was an audacious ., prudence, finances, legislation-these were all matte~that for the colonists innovation. It was contrary to the established theory of mercantilism and could best be decided upon by themselves. By declaring that only the colony had never before been granted by a European power. In essence. the idea of could act in its own best interests. they saw themselves not as subjects of colonial representation embodied the general principle of "no taxation with the French Crown, but rather as a French province, distinctively different out representation" over which the North American colonies had already from the others by ;-irtue of climate, agriculture, the specific nature of its fought a war for independence. It was a victory for the Saint Domingue slave-based economy, and the particularity of its social and racial structure. ' deputies, but a precarious one for which they would in the end pay dearly. Their aim was to stabilize and to increase their colonial possessions and Without realizing it, the colonists had seriously compromised their future productivity. and for this they explicitly excluded the mulattoes and free and their fortunes by demanding representation in a parliamentary body in \ blacks from the primary electoral assemblies. By the- end of the year. they revolution. They were caught in the trap of theii- own a-:nbitions and would {781 Background/(} R.. mlutwn The Cumin!( 4thf Bf,u·k Rl'"ml!ttimr ]7'1 1 now have to find a way lo separate their own pri\·ate inten·~tsfrom those 1lelegating itself both legislati\'e and exeeutin• powen. in the narne ,,r the •>fFrance, from the principles guidin,2' the re\·olutiun and embract>d in the colony. Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. which pmdaim~that wall The gens de eottleur, as free persons and as propt'rl\' owners. r·ontinued men are born and remain free and equal in their rights.- to demnnd futl and equal ri~htsof citizenship with the whites. The_,. ..,.l'r!' At the same time as the white deputies from Saint Domingue were seeking richer. more numerous. and far TilOtemilitant than ebewhert" in thP French admis:sion to the Estates General. the mulattoes residing in Paris had orga West Indies. In Saint Domingue. they outnumbered the whites in the South nized a parallel movement for representation under the leadership of Julien and constituted an equivalent force in the West. The planters. aware of the Raimond. Their cause was hopeless in the colony since they were excluded activities of the mulatto delegation in Paris, became increasingly fearful and from the electoral assemblies. In Paris, at least. they had allies, and with determined at all costs to undermine their movement. They kept the mulat~ the help of the Amis des Noirs, whose leading spokesman. Abbe Gregoire, toes under strict surveillance. issued curfews. and tried to intimidate them was a member of the Constituent Assembly, .they were allowed to present through arrogance and brutality. If they allowed the free persons of color to their case in October. The assembly was hard.pressed to make a decision, vote and hold office. it would. they believed. open the way to. and encour but remained ideologicaJly consistent with its own revolutionary principles age, insurrection among the slaves. It would-be the end of white supremacy and declared that no part of the nation would ever claim its rights in vain and of their fortunes. before the elected assembly of the French people. The mulattoes had also At le Cap, they had already e,;ecuted one mulatto. Lacombe. for having succeeded in obtaining a recommendation from the Credentials Committee. submitted a petition to the Provincial Assembly of the North requestinp;. of which Gregoire was a member, for two representalives:1 Their cause was political rights for free persons of color. In November. a white. Ferrand de filled with new hopes. Yet reaction and fear were now stronger than ever Baudihes, seneschal of Petit Grnive, had written a similar petition. He was among the white colonial forces. arrested at his residence, drll@:gedthrough the streets. and brutally killed The Massiac Club, a group of notable and influential colonists in Paris, by a furious mob of petiu blancs who cut off his head and paraded it through had already organized themselve$111 opposition to colonial representation. the town on a pike. At Aquin, Labadie. an elderly. respectable mulatto and They had foreseen the imminent dangers of the whole debate. Officially ' close friend of Raimond. was suspected of having in his possession a copy founded in August 1789, they had set themselves the task of coordinating a of the petition that prompted the death of de BaudiE-res. Shot down at his system of pressure to block the aspirations of the pro·representation party.4 home, he was then tied to a horse and left to be dragged to death. though his They strongly contested the powers of the six deputies who had already t·. life was spared by the intervention and aid of his slaves and some neighbors. been admitted provisionally, as the question of mulatto representation began A notary at Petite·Riviere nearly missed being killed for having drawn up taking on wider proportions. It was, incidentally, to the absentee planters of a petition claiming the political and civil rights of the mulanoes and free ~· ' blacks. 6 the Massiac Club that the mulattoes first addressed their petitions, seeking • at least some support from their allies in property .. By intrigue and intimi· ''!'! By February 1790 the planters began organizing elections for the new dation, the members of the club, now in alliance with the colonial deputies, colonial assembly. Rejecting the instructions of the minister La Luzerne, attempted at every opportunity lo suspend all discussion of colonial affairs '~' they decided upon Saint Marc as the site of the assembly and, in a spe and prevent the reemergence of the mulatto question in the National Assem~ cial ordinance issued by the provincial assemblies, explicitly excluded the bly. 5 Thus, Gregoire's recommendations were never heard. mulattoes and free blacks from the primary electoral commiUees. By the By now, events in Saint Domingue had taken their own course. News from end of March, the deputies from the three provinces met in Saint Marc France was slow in coming, and the colonists had already taken the initiative and on 14 April. avoiding any reference to their colonial status. declarer:\ of electing district and provincial assemblies months before the arrival of the ' themselves the General Assembly of Saint Domingue. convocation oniers promised by the minister of the marine. The Provincial While all this was going on in the colony, the National Assembly in France Assembly of the North accused Peynier. the governor, of hiding the orders. had not yet detennined the official constitutional status of the colonies. The and began stealing ministerial mail. Peynier was forced to act and finally Saint Domingue deputies realized they could not introduce measures con decided to issue the orders of convocation. The general colonial assembly --cerning the colony without reopenin~the debate on the mulauo question. was to be located at leogane. This only infuriated the provincial assembly Conscious of the precarious position in which they now found themselves. a further. as it meant to retain control of the revolution in the North and began deputy from Martinique, de Curt, proposed in November l789 the creation ·:-: ! Htl! Bnckgromui w Rt>rnlutwn Th Hf a "P"•·ial Colonial Committee in nrd~rto remon• .tll t·olonial questions bly, still needed the approval of the latter and the perfun.::to~sanction uf the from tilt" Hoor of the a!!sembly. where tlebate 1\ould mt-relv focus troublesome king. 1(1The Colonial Assembly was free to propose modifications of the com anent ion and publicity upon the racial interests of the planters. mercial relations between the colonv and France and. in ~hort..... ould hold The <·ommitlee was to be composed of an etJUa! number of l'Olonists and virtual sovereignty over its internal regime. But the instructions remained "'ealthy 1>ort merchants, whose role would he. amon!l: others. to present a ambiguous on the explosive question of the polftical rights of mulattoes and plan for a constitution of the colonies. Strong opposition came at this point free blacks. Article 4 merely stated that the right to vote and hold office from Abbe Gregoire. In his speech o.r.3 December. he maintained that the .. be accorded to all per.:;ons twenty-five years of age who owned property or question of a constitution for the colonies could not be considered so long as paid the requisite amount of taxes, and who fulfilled a two-year residence 7 the question of the rights of the free persons of color had not been settled. ·~ requirement. ' It was an issue that had plagued the colonial deputies from the very moment Virulent opposition came both from the colonia1 depulies and from the -.•. they had begun agitating for representation i~,Paris. In spite of Gregoire's pro-mulatto forces led by Gregoire. Were not the mulattoes and free blacks efforts to settle the mulatto question first. and In view of the recent events in ~{ persons? Did they not own property and pay taxes? Gregoire demanded a the colony, the proposal for a colonial committee was accepted on 2 March clarification of Article 4. He understood the ....,.;i-dper50TU to mean mulattoes 1790. Although only two colonists and two port merchants were named to and free blacks, as well, and insisted that they be expressly included in the committee, the other eight, including Bamave, who was chosen to head the wording. The colonial deputies wanted Article 4 suppressed altogether, the committee, were solid supporter.'; and allies of the colonists. as of the or else rewritten to specifically exclude mulattoes and free blacks. The as merchant bourgeoisie, and susceptible to the influence and manipulation of sembly refused to face the issue, closed the debate, and dispatched the 1 the Massiac Club. "<'· instructions, along with their inherent ambiguity, to the colony. < The committee had less than one week to come up with a constitutional '• The news of the 8 March decree and the instructions of the twenty-eighth plan for the colonies. Drawing from work that had already been under way did not ani.ve until the end of May. In the meantime, the assembly at Saint in the Massiac Club, Bamave submitted his report to the National Assembly ·~ Marc had already assumed supreme legislative authority in the colony, de ., clared itself pennanent, and had begun a thorough reorganization of the on 8 March. The report officially recognized the already-existing assemblies -:: in Saint Domingue, authorized each colony to submit its own proposals fbr colony's administrative structure. On 28 May, it issued a decree serving as a constitution, and finally, aiming at the Amis des Noirs, declared guilty of the constitutional basis of the colony. The deCree declared that if urgency crime against the nation anyone attempting to undennine or to incite agi dictated, its laws, as those of the National Assembly in France, were subject tation against the interests of the colonists.9 Not a word was mentioned on only to the sanction of the kinS..Moreover. any law passed by the National the burning question of mulatto rights. By sanctioning the already-elected Assembly on affairs of common interest between the colony and France were -~ assemblies, which excluded the mulattoes, the decision as to who was and subject to colonial veto. Henceforth, Saint Domingue was to be a federative ·~: who was not a citizen was left entirely to the prejudices and dispositions of ally rather than a 'Subject of the French government. it By the same decree, \ the white planters. it suspended all functions of the colonial deputies in the National Assembly, The report quelled the fears of the colonists as it gave nearly complete who were now to be no more than commissioners charged with presenting ~ local autonomy to the colonies, reassured the maritime bourgeoisie by post its decrees for official sanction.12 ln July. it passed a law contravening the poning revisions of the Exclusive, thus avoiding any mention whatsoever ·~' Exclusive to open up the ports for the unrestricted importation of certain foodstuffs. of the slave trade, and left only a glimm~rof hope for the mulaltoes. The L assembly received Bamave's proposa1s, incomplete as they were. with an In the face of this insurrectiona~activity, which had gone far beyond overwhelming ovation, raucously subverting all discussion. The vote was 1 the moderate intentions of the 8 March decree, and which seemed to be taken and the report of 8 March approved by what was. for the liberal driving the colony tov.-ard virtual independence, the governor issued a proc opposition, an extortionate majority. + lamation denouncing the General Assembly as a traitor to the nation and ~ instructions that followed, outlining the application of the 8 March . amassed his troops to dissolve it by force. Saint Domingue was now divided ' decre~-gavefull legislative powers to the Colonial Assembly, which by now into two distinct camps. On the right were the pompom blartel, the royal was acting in the colony as a miniature Constituent Assembly, but whose ists, and all those who had occupied mHitary or administrative posts in the \ laws, in spite of its declared intentions to circumvent the National Assem- colony. The Provincial .-\ssembly of the ;">lorth, dominated by the wealthy ' (82( Background tn Remlutiun The Curmnll of rh.- Bt.u-k Re1-u/utiun pn] aristocratic planters and commercial bouqreoi~ie.hdieved the ~aint.\1arc When the planters nf the ~aint~lure ussembl~- had rece1n:ll news of tht' assembly had gone too far for its own good and for the good of the colony. 'larch decrees. along with the equinwal provisions of .\rticle -1-.they VO\\t>d They recalled their deputies. si(led for the time ht-ing with the ro~·alists.and that they would ne\·er accord politieal rights to a -bastard and dt>generatt> aimed to regain control of the revolution. On the left were the patriots. or race- and e:\pre: 8 March decree to obtain a clarification of their rights implied in Arti -;,' __ population without incident. Oge then dispatched letters to the governor, cle 4. but with no success. De Joly, a lawyer and member of the Amis des to de Vincent, and to the Provincia] Assembly of the North. In the letters, Noirs, intervened on their behalf to solicit an explanation from the Colonial " he demanded the just application of the March decrees, stated that they Committee, which remained noncommittal. The National Assembly had ef would proceed to elect their own representatives and, if thwarted in their .r--: 16 fectively washed its hands of the whole problem by delegating to the Colonial )-;-- endeavors, would meet force with force. The Provincial Assembly immedi Assembly the sole initiative for its constitution and its laws governing the ·i!_ ately countered their demands by sending its forces to defeat the insurgents. status of persons. \·,>< Vastly outnumbered and overpowered. they were forced to disband. Oge and It was clear that the aspirations of the mulattoes were now a lost cause in a number of his companions Red to Spanish territory, whence they were soon France. Vincent Oge, a close friend and colleague of Raimond, understood extradited. :>:.< this. He had a1ready made it known to Bamave and the Colonia1 Commit "·A The trial did not take place until February 1791, when, on the twenty tee that if the whites persisted in refusing to recognize persons of color as fifth, Oge and Chavannes were both sentenced to a merciless death. They free citizens, he would force them, by arms if necessary. to recognize their were led by the executioner to the parish church where. with a cord around rights. The activities and agitation of the mulattoes in Paris had caused the their necks and on bended knee, they were to repent their .. crimes.~after colonists' fears to reach an unprecedented stage. The Massiac Club issued which their bodies were tied to a wheel and broken on a scaffold where directives to all the major ports, advising ship captains to refuse passage to they died-opposite the execution place for whites. As a reminder of the any person of color leaving for Saint Domingue. In spite of these measures, written and unwritten laws of white supremacy for all to see. their heads Oge managed to escape. He went first to England. where he was secretly were cut off and exposed on stakes. Oge·s on the road leading to Oondon, received and aided by the abolitionist leader Thomas Clarkson. With an ad and Chavanne's on the one leading to Grande-Riviere. Two days later Oge·s vance of thirty pounds, he left for the United States. purchased some arms. brother, along with ~metwenty-one other.~,were also condemned to death, and arrived in Saint Domingue Oll 21 October. 13 and thirteen more sentenced the following month to the galleys for life. Such p-t-l-] Budit;rmmd to Ret·olution Thf' Conung of thf' Black Rf'mlution [8.3J '"~n·tilt- eonst-querwe,; of the amhi~uuus.\larch decret"s designed to leave to Gregoire took th~stand to demand an adjournment: the opposition called th .. <·olonists ''the merit and option ,,f e)(ercising an act of generosity toward ' for an immediate vote but was tlefeated. When the debates resumed on th~ rnulanoes and free blacks. an o.~ctwhich would inspire in them sentiments eleventh. it was Robespi~rrewho laid the issue squarely before the member.:; of affeclion and grJ.titude and establish the most perfect harmony among the of the assembly. The colonial supporters were undermining the very foun .-~'t '"17 j different classes composing the population. ._..., dation of those principles upon which their own rights and liberties were In France. the National Assembly listened to the patriotic protests of the .. founded. If the colonies were to be preserved at the price of submitting to deputies who had arrived the previous September from Saint Marc. They ···t colonial threats by adopting legislation contrary to the most basic principles to of humanity, then they should perish: "We will sacrifice to the colonial depu claimed be a democratically elected body and the legitimate representa '~·., ·> tives of the entire colony, but they constituted only a minority of the original -J •. ties neither the nation nor the colonies nor the whole of humanity .... I ask 212 members. As an assembly. they had lost all credibility. The Massiac the Assembly to declare that the free persons of color be allowed to enjoy ·~( Club remained neutral. as did the colonial deputies, whose powers they • the rights of voting citizens." 18 The question was settled on 15 May. Politi ·~ themselves had stripped. while the Nationa! Assembly turned a deaf ear. cal rights were granted only to those persons of color hom of free parents. Its decree of 20 September 1790 made it illegal for the eighty-five to leave '• The existing colonial assemblies, which excluded mulattoes and free blacks, France until further notice. On 12 October, it declared the dissolution of ···~ were to remain: those persons of color born of free parents and possessing the Saint Marc assembly, promised future elections. and. at the same time. ',::' the requisite qualifications could be admitted to all future assemblies. It was reaffirmed the exclusive right of the'colonies to initiate legislation on the . in fact a conservative measure that enfranchised only a small minority of the state of free persons of color. For the moment all did not seem lost, at least ~ mulattoes and free blacks in Saint Domingue. :i• for the colonists. The colonists were infuriated. The deputies, the members o£ the Colonial ·-~~ However, by November, news had arrived of similar unrest in Marti .. Committee. the Massiac Club-all forgot their former differences and joined •'- nique, while in Saint Domingue, OJ¢ and his companions had organized .. forces to organize a united front to subvert the application of the 15 May and led the mulattoes into open revolt. Determined to reassert its authority .. decree. By July, the legislative powers of the colony were reinstated. Most of over the colonies and to reestablish order. the National Assembly voted on J, the colonists in France had by now returned to Saint Domingue, where they the twenty-ninth to send additional troops to the colonies, to be accompa were fortified by the planters in a common front of white solidarity and white nied by civil commissioners, and suspended, as it did for Saint Domingue t supremacy. The governor, Blanchelande, managed to postpone the arrival in October, those assemblies in rebellion against French authority. These \ of the civil commissioners, and elections were held that summer for the new ..,. resolutions, however, were definitively adopted only in February li9l. The .i, colonial assembly without the participation of those newly enfranchised by National Assembly had already rescinded its right to legislate on the politi ;.:_ the 15 May law. Nearly all of the eighty-five deputies of the fanner Saint :.r cal status of the mulattoes by its decrees of March and October 1790, and . Marc legislature, pardoned in June by the National Assembly, had returned the promised instructions for the future Saint Domingue assembly were still 4).. to the colony and were reelected . unwritten as news arrived of oge·s martyrdom. But it was not the few hundred mulattoes and free blacks included in the Gregoire was bitterly attacked by the colonists who held him person 'It law that the planters feared. The entire social and economic structure of ally responsible for the revolt, and who wanted legal proceedings brought ;~• the colony, slavery itself, and the precious fortunes tied to it were at stake • against him. In March and April, the eighty·five members of the defunct To allow even a few mulattoes to vote would immediately open the whole colonial legislature were admitted before the National Assembly. where they ,.. , question of those mulattoes still in slavery or hom of only one free parent, i i repented their insubordination. declared they never sought independence, and from there the abolition of slavery would be but one step away. The new and affirmed their submission to the laws of France. The whole debate was :t colonial assembly opened at I..eogane on 1 August, and within a fortnight once again opened and thrown on the floor of the National Assembly. It was the black revolution had begun. now forced to deal with the issue that it had refused to confront a year earlier The slaves had depended neither upon France nor upon the success or by adopting the contradictory decrees of March. failure of the mulatto struggle. They were organizing for something that did The report of the Colonial Committee was presented on 7 \lay. but it not figure in any of the political debates. either in France or in the colony. contained nothing new, and merely reasserted under another form colonial But for the past three years they had witnessed the events. the agitation. the jurisdiction over the mulatto question. In the heated debate that ensued, revolutionary and counterrevolutionary ferment that was ~hrowingthe colony (H6] Background lo R~:olu.tion Th~Coming of th~Black Re·volution !H7J into disarrav. When news of the French Revolution reacheO the c-olonv, deserted en masse during the night to assemble in the woods .. \t the same slaves heard talk of liberty and equality, and they interpreted these ideals ume. groups of slaves from five nearby plantations. numbering roughly fifty in their own way. Domestics listened to their masters argue over indepen· in all. and this time including a commandeur, in addition to the entire ale dence. while thev perfunctorily served them their meals and Orinks. Some {,er.~of two other plantations. were reported maroon. The following day. as had even traveled to France with masters who could not do without their the mrmkhaussfk arrived, accompanied by neighboring planters to break servants. They were exposed to new ideas. to the principles upon which up the meetings, the slaves resisted with unrestrained courage and determi· that revolution was being built. and they carried this experience back with nation. Thirteen were captured and a number of others mortally wounded. them. In the ports, newly arrived French soldiers brought news of the recent Some sixty of them, armed with riAes and machetes, had retreated to the events in France and spoke of them with great enthusiasm. Sailors aboard coast but were pursued by the marichawsie, who took one of their leaders the merchant ships did the same as they worked side by side with the slaves, and killed a seeond. Eight other leaders had been exeeuted, as well: two of loading and unloading cargo in the harbocs. 19 them were broken aliVe on a scaffold, and six were hanged. News had arrived in the fall of 1789 ~faslave uprising in Martinique. The planters and the authorities believed that an example such as this At the end of that year, plantations everywhere in Saint Domingue were one would bring the rest of the slaves, who had dispersed. back to the mas afflicted by a devastating drought; the hardest hit by the famine were the ters from whom they would presumably seek pardon and thereby avoid the slaves, left largely to shift for themselves to find food. Marronage seemed tragic fate of their leaders. But, as one colonist wrote, ,.We have not yet seen to be increasing, beeoming potentially more dangerous, and slaves far more any of them come forward." 22 audacious. 20 On some plantations (as we have seen in Chapter 2), an entire •Z The planters were forced to increase their surveillance O\'er the slaves. aulier had deserted along with its commandeur, himself a slave. In Octo. organize nightly patrols, and search the slave cabins for arms. In spite of -if.·· her of that year, one plantation manager wrote the owner that his slaves ."(; these measures, slaves managed to communicate and consort with those of were beginning to let things go to their heads: "The sight of the cockade is other plantations in the districts. The domestic slaves, largely outside the ~:.. giving them ideas, and even more, the news from France which is flaunted plantation itself, were in continual contact with whites and consequently '. in to indiscreetly." Another observer wrote: '"Many [slaves] imagine that the king ' the best position receive and disseminate information. At the market has granted their freedom and that it is their master who does not want to ;.., place, in the port towns, at the crossroads, they spoke with one another, consent to it. Your plantation {in Jean·Rahel] has subjeets who can only be y,. exchanged ideas and information, overheard the discussions and arguments restrained by fear of punishments.... One must lend a deaf ear and pretend ·¥ of the whites, and communicated what they knew, either directly or through not to hear what they are saying to avoid a general uprising. " 21 They saw ,.. ,_ contacts, to their black compatriots in the fields. the whites lynch and torture mulattoes, free blacks, and white sympathizers ~!>;· The whole structure of colonial Saint Domingue was rapidly being trans· alike, for daring to advocate the civil rights of free persons of color. When .·~ formed. The traditional antagonisms and hostilities between the planters and ;S;, Oge and his followers had taken up arms to secure those rights, many slaves the bureaucracy had reached their peak and were now fought out in the ·l.~.. had come spontaneously to offer their aid. They witnessed once again the ,;:.. open. The planters, as a class, were recklessly divided amongst themselves .~~ merciless justice of the white authorities. ..~.' in the early days of 1788. They wanted certain reforms. but were uncertain During the months of June and July, just preceding the massive outbreak . as to how they should proceed. It was a small minority of the planters of of violence in the North, the slaves of several plantations in the Cul.de-Sac w the North that took the lead and pushed for representation in France. and it plain near Port·au·Prince left the fields and began holding frequent gather - was the same planters whose troops joined the counterrevolutionary royalist ings in the woods. Those of the Fortin·Bellantien plantation near Croix-des· forces a year later to smash the patriot legislature at Saint Marc. The .. small" ·,~·, Bouquets had assassinated their commandeur, whom they consi.dered overly -· whites had deserted their former allies of convenience. the royal bureau ,, loyal to the whites and therefore dangerously untrustworthy. As was so often .,. crats. and now sided with the planters to lynch and kill mulattoes and free the case, the predispositions of the commandeur toward rebellion on the one blacks. whose aspirations and energies were unleashed by a revolution the \:.t hand. or loyalty on the other, proved central in the launching of a conspiracy. planters themselves had begun and could no longer control. And if he could not be trusted in the eyes of the conspirators, he would have '\-. The colony had never been in such a state of social and administrative to be eliminated, lest he tum other slaves against them. So once the Fortin· chaos. Not;only was the old colonial regime shattered to pieces, the governor Bellantien conspirators had rid themselves of their dangerous superior, they and the bureaucracy stripped of their former Powers. the prerogatives o£ the ~ i ::a 1 Background to Rt•mlutia" nwrr·ilant lmurgeoisie dismantled with the opening of the ports. but the new re;!:ime had no centralized power. Authority shifted re~ionallyback and forth hetween the Provincial Assembly of the North and tile Colonial Assembly in PART TWO th~West. each attempting to concentrate control in its own hands and in its ·Vi c own interests. ~/~ Revolts of 1791 Planters were far too preoccupied with these problems to worry much --~~ about the effects their words and actions might have upon their sla.ves. They had come to Saint Domingue to make a fortune out of slavery, and they saw 'F·}~ no reason for thiqgs to change. Ahhough a few might have foreseen the dan ·~ -~·+.,. gers that lay ahead. most generally assumed that slavery was as inviolable '""~ as it was enduring. It had lasted for over tWo hundred years. Slave rebellions ·-~ ,.·A~• had occurred in the past, and marronage had been a constant plague. But 'S' the revolts were always isolated affairs, and maroon bands were invariably -'1- defeated along with their leaders. For the planters, there was no rea.wn to believe that slave activity was any different from what it had been in the '"t .-•.~ past. .. They would soon learn, but only by the raging flames that within hours ··f;(" reduced their magnificent plantations to ashes, how wrong they were. j,, ~ ~.. <;.:.H·'" :i'-.W :s-'· ~··. ~f i;t·-· '?"1· :~ . .,.· . it .:t' ·/}: . . c -~~~ ,;.· ~:~.. I "' ,":.. •' }:" ';i' :i;: 4 ;~, ~.f ' Slaves in the North ,&~. '·T r' ii he insurrection that broke out in August 1791 was by no means a spon T taneous or unroediated event. The slaves in the North had been con sciously preparing and organizing themselves for weeks before that fateful < ,,., night of 22 August, which marked the .beginning of the end of one of the * greatest wealth-producing slave colonies the world had ever known-the "j pearl of the Antilles, as it was extravagantly called. l.' On Sundays, slave representatives from the major plan!ations would meet ·<' clandestinely to lay the plans for the-general insurrection, but it was on ~; ~ the night of the fourteenth, one week before the actual outbreak, that the final scheme was drawn up and the instructions given out. Numbering some 1 two hundred in all, consisting of .. two delegates each from all the plant.a " tions of Port-Margot, Limbe, Acul, Petite-Anse. Limonade, Plaine du Nord, ··.~ .'·· Quartier-Morin, Mome--Rouge, etc., etc." covering the entire central region of the North Province, they were assembled to fi:-tthe dat-e for the revolt .•., that had been in the planning for some time. 1 They met at the Lenonnand ' .. de Mezy plantation in Mome-Rouge, and all of the delegates were upper strata slaves in whom the masters had placed their confidence, most of .,,~ them commantkurs whose influence and authoritv over the field slaves were '· undoubtedly considemble. Upon a given signal. the plantations would be systematically set aflame, and a generalized sla,-e insurrection set afoot. To dissipate any hesitation or equivocation the assembled conspirators may have had, a statement was read by an unknown mulatto or quarteroon to the effect that the king and the National Assemblv in France had decreed three free days per week for every slave. as well as the abolition of the whip ( as a fonn of punishment. They were told that it was the white masters and the colonial authorities who refused to consent and that royalist troops were on their way from France to execute the decree by force. The news was of course false, but it represented the nearest thing to freedom the slaves had ever known, and it served as a rallying point around which to galvanize the .... aspirations of the slaves, to solidify and channel these into open rebellion. Although the majority of the delegates agreed in principle that they should await th~?arrival of these royalist troops, the slave representatives from some I of the plantations in Limbe and Acui insisted upon instigating the war against I !":!! RnV!It.i of 1791 Slat'f'-' in the N11rth {93\ r tlw "hilt>><.11 whate\'t."T cost. with or without the troop~.. In the t'!ld .. they Once the conspirators had reached agreement on the date .. set for the --~'~· 1warl~-.tf!:rt"t>llto begin the revoh that w·r:vnight .. but then Wt'nt bal"k on this ,_,, t\\enty-,;econd, the accord was solemnized by a voodv"' ceremony held in det·i~ion .. as thev considered it inopportune to carry nut on the ~puLa gen ···~ .1 thickly wooded area known as Bois-Caiman. not far from the Lenonnand v~_:· tn~urrco:liun r•r;t\ for which the plans had been finalized only that evening.. plantation ..~ According to most accounts, the ceremony was offictated by .!!)} Thl" maJurit~·of the slaves had thus decided to wait .. and the Jate was fixed .···•·· ,.,.:· 1\uukman and a voodoo high priestess .. an old African woman "'with strange fur the twenty-second .. ,., 7 ,·n~sand bristly hair." just as terrifying as her counterpart .. Amidst rag :.-j~.· The early leaders forming the core of this movement were Boukman Dutty, inl!: streaks of lightning and violent bursts of thunder. as the account goes .. Jeannol Bullet.. Jean-Fram;ois. and Georges Biassou .. The first two .. accord .tccompanied by high winds and the torrential rains of the stonn that had ,.~~~ inp: to one source, were to take charge of the initial stages of the movement, ·:}F broken out that night, the high priestess raised her knife to kill a sacrificial while Jean-Fran~oisand Biassou were to take over first and second com ..,;t;,... ptg, the blood of which was passed round for all to partake .. As she began .. mand of the insu~tiononce under way To_ussaint Louverture, who would ·,·~''"to invoke the deities, Bou~manrose to deliver an impassioned oration to the emerge as supreme leader of the revolution years later, served, inauspi -;':;. assembled slaves .. It was, in essence, a call to anns: ,.. ciously at this point, as the link between these leaders and the system, The Good Lord who created the sun which gives us light from above. who rouses 2 {,· r.:arefully dissimulating his actual participation .. Although he remained on the sea and makes the thunder roar-listen well. all of you-this god, hidden .' ~~ the Breda plantation, where he served as coachman for the manager, Bayon -i.&;· in the clouds .. watches us. He sees all that the white man does. The god of the ' de Libertas, he had by now already been a free black, or affranchi, for well ,i_::l,- white man calls him to commit crimes; our god asks only good works of us .. But 3 over a decade .. With a pass signed by the governor, Toussaint was thus per --r~~-·this god who is so good orders revenge! He will direct our hands; he will aid us .. mitted to circulate freely and to frequent other plantations; but he was also ·.·-~~~ Throw away the image of the god of the whitell who thints for our lean and listen ·. ~... ~.. to the voice of liberty which speaks in the hearts of all of us ..8 in communication with inHuential elements of the royalist faction who hoped ~.:!~r·· to profit from, and who even helped stimulate, the brewing slave insurrec ,:;;,..-·~' Coute la Iiberti li pale nan coeur noUJ toUJ:.. Listen to the voice of liberty tion by invoking a common cause-the defense of the king, who had, they -=5Y which speaks in the hearts of all of us .." It was a refrain that would later .,,_,;;;~ rumored, granted the slaves three tree days per week .. Once they had used recur under Bookman's leadership during the early days of the insurrection ··W 9 the slave insurrection to defeat the rival palriot factloif, once power was re as he would exhort the insurgent slaves under his command to attack.. stored in royalist hands and the king securely on the throne of France, the ~~'lfl1!,·' The story of this ceremony has long since passed into legend. rendering blacks, they no doubt believed, could then be persuaded by their leaders to ~: all the more difficult the separation of actual fact from the elaborated my ..·''t :.i 1 return to the plantations and be duped back into slavery. Undeniably, links thology that later developed around the event .. ° Contemporary evidence is ·:--.~·"''\.~,}• between the slave leaders and certain royalists in the early stages were im '",l!.\ sparse; in fact, there is no mention of it at all in the archival documents that portant, but for the latter to have assumed that the slave insurrection would, recount the conspiracy and are based largely on the testimony of a few slaves. in the end, amount to little more than a traditional jacquerie was, in the -y'·!.i"": But then, given the imperative of utmost secrecy in voodoo ceremonies, it . <,·.· unmitigated context of impending revolution and imperial wars. to make a is hardly surprising that no detailed contemporaneous accounts exist .. This 4 ''" profoundly grave mistake .. hardly justifies, on the other hand, dismissing the various accounts that do ··~"'·i Of the leaders. it was Boukman who was to giveth(" signal for the revolt .. <:.~ exist as pure historical fabrication .. In fact .. certain nineteenth-century Hai ''-:. He had been a commandeur and later a coachman on the Clement planta . tian family papers clearly identify one of the participants in the Bois-Ca-iman tion. among the hrst to go up in Aames once the revolt began .. While his ·:]', ceremony as Cecile Fatiman (that family member's own grandmother), a experience as commandettr provided him with certain organizational and green-eyed mula.tto woman with long silken black hair .. the daughter of a leaden~hipqualities, the post as coachman no doubt enabled him to fol -·~·! Con~icanprince and an African woman. She was herself a mambo, a voodoo ~;~ 11 low the ongoing political developments in the colony .. as well as to facilitate high priestess .. communication links and establish contacts among the slaves of different ,, But in the absence of additional detailed documentation. many questions plantations .. Reputedly, Boukman was also a voodoo priest and, as such. :;j,. may still be raised concerning this event .. Did all of the Mome-Rouge slave exercised an undisputed influence and command over his followers, who delegates participate in the Bois-Caiman ritual ceremony? Or conversely, '·.': knew him as "Zamba" Boukman. His authority was only enhanced by the were the participants in the Bois-Ca'iman ceremony the same individuals overpowering impression projected by his gigantic size ..:; as those whose political views were expressed at the Mome-Rouge assem- :·.~- ['ll[ R~1"Its •!( 1 191 Slar·el in rht>.\'orth \ % I hly ,.arlier that evenin~·~Certain[~· Boukman. as nne of the ch1ef leadeMJ .-tc. etc.," attendance at the meetings would ha,·e necessitated some :<;or1 of the revolt and the orator who Jdivf"reJ the Bois-Caiman speech. would of fairly regular petd marronage. unless of eourse each and every onf' uf 15 ha\·e been present .u both. Here then. the often-assumed antipathy of elite them had a Sunrby pass. Even so. passes were notoriously for~edby even Crt"ole slaves toward voodoo, .111dtoward African-hom slaves practicing it, minimally literate slaves. may be brought into question as well. All or nearly all of the slave delegates On the other hand. it is known that Toussaint was in close communica were from the upper ranks of slave society usually filled by creole slaves. tion with Jean-Franc;ois, Biassou, and Boukman even as he remained on Cecile Fatiman, though a creole mulattress. was nonetheless a mambo. But his plantation and did not officially join the ranks until nearly three months was she actually the officiating priestess described quite dissimilarly in the later. We also have the statement (referred to below) of the Desgrieux slave one account as "an old negress with strange eyes and bristly hair.,? As to commanckur revealing that coachmen. domestics, anrl other trusted slaves so many questions pertaining to clandestine slave practices and activities of the surrounding plantations, in addition to the commandeurs, were in in Saint Domingue before and during the revolution, where hard scientific volved in the conspiracy: 16 Or, the statement of an old Gallifet slave, Ignace, evidence is intrinsically lacking, the answe~will necessarily remain conjec who was .. distinguished from the other slaves by his exemption from any sort tural ones. What we can safely say, however, is first, that the Bois-Cai'man of work, .. who held the secret of the conspiracy for a long time and who had cerenmny did historically occur following the Marne-Rouge assembly; sec received instructions from a free black. one of those sentenced in absentia ond, that the oration delivered was authentically Boukman's and that the in the Oge affair. 17 ln fact, another of the core ringleaders was Jean-Baptiste 111 ceremony was, after aJI. a voodoo event. Cap, a free black said to be possessed of substantial income and property. Even more important, though, is the historical significance of the 14 An incredibly vast network had been set afoot and facilitated by the August assemblies, and this can be viewed on both an ideological and a interaction of several elements. These were African, as well as creole, and political level. First, the Mome-Rouge gathering was a thoroughly orga included the dynamics of marronage, as well as the subversive activities of nized affair and constituted in every sense a revolutionary political assembly, commandeurs and of house slaves, and even a restricted segment of the free where issues were discussed, points of view and differing strategies pre blacks (Toussaint was himself a free black), whose mobility and closer rela sented, where a final agreement was reached, and a call to anns issued. That tionship to white society afforded them access to news and information on the agreement was then confirmed and solemnized during the ritual ceremony political situation. To separate any one element from the others, as if they at Bois-Caiman by a blood pact (and the symbolic drinking of the blood is are by nature mutually exclusive, will invariably leave the vital questions mentioned in the one contemporary account of Dalmas) that committed the about the revolutionary organization and capacities of these black masses participants to utmost secrecy, solidarity, and a vow of revenge.12 In this perpetually unanswered. sense, voodoo provided a medium for the political organization of the slaves, The 14 August conspiracy was an ingenious plan, and it would have as weU as an ideologica1 force, both of which contributed directly to the been perfect were it not for the premature activities of a few sluves in the success of what became a virtual blitzkrieg attack on the plantations across Limbe district, who either misunderstood the final instructions or who im the province. patiently insisted, in spite of the accord, upon beginning the revolt before Equally as controversial in relation to the general framework and early the designated date. On 16 August. two days after the Marne-Rouge affair, stages of the conspiracy is the role of marronage. Whether the August re some slaves were caught setting fire to one of the buildings on the Chabaud volt was actually planned and organized in marronage. _or_rather by slaves . estate, in which the bagasse, or straw residue of the sugar cane, was stored. in privileged positions within the plantation system_,:.will no doubt remain a 1 One of them. armed with a saber, was the comrnandeur from the Desgrieux maner of dispute. What is probably closer to the'"truth is that the two ele plantation. A physical battle ensued, and. though wounded. the slave was ments worked hand in hand. Some evidence suggests that jean-Franc;ois was ;P, arrested, put into irons, and interrogated. Upon· questioning, he revealed a maroon at the outset of the revolt and that Boukman was chronically ma that the commandeun, coachmen, domestics, and other slaves whom the 13 .j, roon. The report of the civil commissioner Roume states that .. for several ..• masters trusted from the neighboring plantations had formed a conspiracy to weeks slave delegations had assembled on Sundays to work out together the c- bum the plantations down and kill off all the whites. He named as leaders a plans for this destructive project." 14 As these slave delegations all came from certain number of slaves from the Oesgrieux plantation, four from the Fla different plantations throughout the North, from .. Port-Margot, Limbe, Acul. ville plantation in Acul. and Paul. a commandew on the Blin plantation in Petite-Anse, Limonade, Plaine du Nord, Quartier-Morin, Marne-Rouge. Limbe. 19 !961 Rf'Wlt.5 of 1791 Slaf!e!l in tlu! North [97] Upon conftnning the declaration of the Desgrieul\ Cffmrrw.mleur, the mu twenty-third, toward the immediately adjacent Limbe district, augmenting nicipal authorities of Lim he is~uetia warning uf the impending danger to the their forces, by now close to two thousand,:!.' as they moved from plantation planters of the di~trktand sup;f!:csted to the manager of the Flaville "'"tate that to plantation and establishe-d military camps on each one as they tvok it he apprehend those of his slaves who were denouncenied any truth to the comftUlndt-ur'~ of ~lavesin the district where the premature beginnings of this insurrec statement, as did Paul Blin, who was also questioned and who also replied tion had been seen a week earlier. Within these few hours, the finest sugar that the accusation brought against him was ~falseand slanderous," that, plantations of Saint Domingue were literally devoured by Hames. A resident filled with gratitude for the eontinual benevolence of his mas\Pr, one would merrhant of le Cap remarked how, ~likethe effect of epidemical disea._~;--- never see him involved in plots hatchf'd again!\! the whites or their property. the example set by slaves on one plantation communicated itself throughout A few days later \on the twentieth) another conspirator. a mulatto slave, the quarter of Limbe, !l:nd ~ina few hours that immensely rich and flourish 27 Fram;ois, from the Chapotin est!lte was !irrt'lllt'd and put to questioning for in~country exhibited one vast scene of honvr and d.-vastation. " Nor was his part as accomplice to the arson eommilled at the Ch11haud plantation. ther" much tolerance in these crucial hours for slaves, and especially com It was he who final\~·revealf'd the details of the Mornc-Rou~assembly on rrw.ndeurs, who hesitated or who offered opposition, for ~whereverthey have 20 the fourtePnth. The following day the cook from the Desgrieux pl11ntation committed their rava~~."the writer notes, ~lthepractice wasjto seduce or was also to be arresteO a!\ one of the named conspirator,:;, whereupon he ohlige the Negroes on different plantations to join their party. . . ThO!Ie managed to escape and went off to warn Paul Blin; together the)' joined the who discovered 11reluctance or [whoJ refused to follow and assist in their other ringleaders to pro:'parf' "the iron and the tnreh ~ for the e11ecutinn of designs [if they could not escape) were cut to pieces. "2!1 their dreadful projects. The general insurr.. r-tion broke out on the follnwing Continuing wt"'lward, the slaves attacked Port-Margot in the early evening 11 night as ~eheduled.-· oflhe twenty-fourth, hitting at least four pl!intations, and by the twenty-fifth -At ten o'cl c\_~I!Jen\Plantation, when· they joined Boukman and combined their force~ throughout the first week"' of the revolution, nut only the cane fields, but ~--i"ihthe rest of the slaves there. Their numbers reinforced, they immediately al"'o the manufacturing installations. sugar mills, tools and other fann equip set out to the Tremes ,estate; havin{!:.narrowly mis~dthe residentyarpenter ment. storagt' bins, and slave quarters; in short, every material manifestation with their buli~ts,thev tooK him prisoner and proceeded to the-N~plan of their e:>~istenceunder slavery and its means of exploitation. Insufficiently tation, where a dozen. or so of the!\e "laves had killed the renner and his armed and totally unprepared, the planters could do little to oppose the apprentice. as wdl as the manager. The only whites spared were the doc rebel,., and nothing to stop the fires that lasted for thrt"C days. The residents lor and his y,·ife, whose service~they deemed miJ!;ht prove to he of great of Port-Margot had believed for a long time that their slaves had had no value to them. 22 By midnight the entire plantation was aRame, and the revolt part in the revolt, "but almost all the atdiers in the lower quarter ended up 29 had ._..ffectivcly begun. 2-< The trCHlpS, by now runo;i~tinJ!;of the ~lavesfrom participating in it." Coordinating their forces with insurgent slaves of the the Turpin-Flavi\le, Clement, and No<; plantations, returned with the three plantations situated in the hills and mountainous region bordering on Limbe prisoners to th._..Clement estate. methodically assas!\inatf'd M. Clf-ment and and Plaisance, they completed their near-total destruction of the pari,.h, his refiner, and left the priMJners there under guard. i\nned with torches, leaVing only the central area intact.'"' • gun~.sabers, and whatever makeshift weapons th .. y were ahle to contrive, As these slave" attempted to penetrate Plaisance on the twenty-fifth, they thev continued their devastation a." they carried the revolt to the surrounding _ with anned re!\istance, the first they had encountered, from a group of pla~tations,H)· six o'clock the next mominj!;, both the Molines and Flaville ~;inhabitantswho mana!!;ed to drive them back into the Limhe plain, where plantations were totally destroyed. along with all of the while personnel; of they divided up anti returned by two different routes the fOllowing all the plantations in the Arul district, only on two did some of th'-" !>.laves Having teiTOtized the inhabitants upon their reentry, having pillaged refrain for the time heinJ!; from partidpating in the revolt. 24 then burned tim:ens of plantations, they took possession of the Ravine From Acul, th<"~t'~lave«proc.-ed ...d wt>slward that same morning, the where they set up milit!ll)' outposts and fortified their troops. !99\ :'lar<'S 111 tit<' \'orth I <:l8l R~:oltsof/191 !!UIIII'I.mtatilln. l'ame to inH•!'tt~tt".The .-omm11ndeur. Blaise. who was the Here, they held out for over three weeks while the planters. disorganized and.~:~ ut~t;_:,1tnruf the as~a!'sinati . ~-. Blanchelande to solicit military aid from the United States prepared to sail. presented by Dalmas, otTers a small glimpse at some of the logistical diffi '+:~~- ..the village ofPetite-Anse had {already] been destro'Yed, and the light of the culties involved in actually carrying through and strategically coordinating ,,..._ 19 flames was visible in the night in the town." each part of the revolt. Particular circumstances over which the slaves had ~~L Earlier that day, while the insurgents had begun to penetrate Quartier ' no control, such as the presence of key white personnel on the specified day, ':1:.i. '· Morin, a battalion of citi:ren·volunteers set out around noon to contain them. or other factors, like the degree of accord or dissidence between the com ~1' :~ While Dalmas claimed, on the one hand, that the slaves of Quartier-Morin manckur and the slaves. or the role of the domestics, or simply the degree ·:·~,;-';; .. displayed as much disdain and horror toward the rebels as they did zeal of impatience among the slaves, varied from one plantation to another. ,, and attachment for their masters" and pushed them back, to a participant in For a reason that is unclear, the slaves at La Cossette had decided to the volunteer battalion provides quite a different picture. He writes. on the begin before those in Limbe and Acul. and some twenty of them (no doubt > some of the same who had deserted in protest in 1789) attempted to kill > twenty-fourth: the manager during the night of his return from le Cap on the twentieth or Having arrived at the Quartier-Morin, which had yet received no injury. we saw twenty-first. It was also on the twentieth and twenty-first that two of the key --;:· the fire upon the plantation Choiseuil{the other one being in Petite-Anse]. which conspimtors, the slave Fram;ois and the Desgriew: cook, were arrested in is at the foot of Morin. We tan on towards the place. at the rate of three \eague5 in two hours. We were made to perform bad manoeuvres: our commander gQI Limbe, and while the latter got away, Fmm;ois was taken tole Cap, put to drunk, and 5 or 600 negroes who were there got clear bv flight. Arrived at the question, and revealed a major conspiracy afoot. The La Cossette slaves, i£ · plantation we found the oveneer killed. his body ntan~Z.ied.and marks of teeth they had gotten word of the arrests, may have deemed it unsafe to wait any on several parts. A few negroes remained with about 40 negro women: we killed longer. Whatever the case, their attempt on M. Mossut's life was unsuccess 8 or 10 of the number and the remaindf'r got off. 1L ful. and the procureur, M. Odeluc, along with several other whites from the JlOO I Rer.1J/u ·~(1191 The following Jay. the twentv-flfth. he writes that all. l)r nearly all. was 1 J.hlaze in the parish.~On four plantations (perhaps those to which Dalmas referred) the slaves to take their mea1s. Everything, all the other buildings, all my furniture, as ~-- ., well, were tolally consumed by flames." And once they had achieved their ·".. I destruction. they set up a military camp. having spared their own quarters :-~-- • for the purpose.-" ! What appears to emerge from these accounts, then, is a brilliantly orga '¥ :,~_, nized and strategically maneuvered plan of revolt that. had it succeeded ',,j •• l in its entirety, conceivably would have enabled the slaves to very rapidly :·• " take possession of the entire North Province. For within three days, by ·" the twenty-fifth, once ali of the major parishes concentrated in the upper ' North Plain region had been hit and communication links between them '•' severed.~a junction was to take place between insurgent bands from these ' •r"'""' ~,...... ,,n;,, 1,. rnn 11nrl fPllnw rPhPl!" in th~rapital. IS,.~Map 2.) ~-. I 1021 Remits of 1791 Slm·~sin !he ,\'orrh \IOJJ , ., ." F, Tlw \1'!"\' lir-;t nunors of .l plan to bum the capital were uncovered·on the n-pdletl~d.in ,;pile of their rage to mhanet> on the 1·it~·.wt' are eertain t"entv-"'<:"coml. immediate!~prior to the outbreak of violence in :\cui and their attempts will be in \·ain as it is guarded by the ('amp at Haul du Cap. Limb,;.. \\'ritin!!= to the mmlster ,,f the marine a little O\·er a week after the "hich is the only point through which the Tf':bel,;!"an penetrate the ··itv.-' 1 msurrection be~an.B\am:helande relates that. ha\"ing been inviter! by the \e1:ording to another rt>port. aftt>r the ,;lave~had re\·olted on the Chabaud '<, -..~,. Pro\·incial :\ssembly of the 'lorth on the twent~·-secondto hear the decla .,, ... plantation in Limbe. -they advanced towan-1\e Cap. and mo,;t of tht: ,;laves rations of various persons .trrested the day before. -1 was eonvinced that a ,m the plantations along the way joined them .... The rebels marchThen, referring to that ·'on the 25th. the band from Limbe advanced into this neighborhood."'-! ·~~·:. the sequence of events as they did in part unfold. Blanchelande goes on :\nother writes on 26 August: "Since the 23rd every entrance to the city and ,. ;'~ to say, "There was some talk of setting fire, l?.n the night of that day [the nery part of the neighborhQI?d has been guarded with the greatest care. For twenty-second], to the plantations neighboring around le Cap; fire would ''-'1;,- these two days past. a camp of 300 men has been formed in the upper part then break out in this city and would serve as the signal to assassinate the olf the city. The negroes are at a distance of one"league, and frequently ap ·!~ whites." n .\s the revolt in Acul grew awesome in dimensions. as at elien ,,' proach in numbers to bid defiance. Many of them are killed by our cannon. from one plantation to another joined the revolt in succession. fear for the Tl1ey, notwithstanding, come up unarmed."'-' ..:,·., defense of le Cap, whose inhabitants included some eight to ten thousand ;' Finally, confirmation that the conspiracy against le Cap icoordinated with male slaves, caused Blanchelande to recall the detachment he had sent out ,; the revolt in the plains) had been scheduled for the twenty-fifth wa» ob early on the twenty-third to aid the planters of Acul. .\11 Le Cap was now the '·ii tained, when, because of concentrated security around le Cap, an allempt seat of colonial government and already sheltered a good number of whites . ->'"!~ was made at the end of the month, on the thirtieth and thirty-first, to take who had managed to escape the vengeance and fury of their slaves. Fears of '~ the upper part of the city._;; An anonymous observer, having kept a journal a conspiracy were confirmed as, wrote Blanchelande, .. we had successively '{: account of the disturbances, relates: .. Yesterday [on the thirtieth! some in .q.. discovered and continue daily to discover plots that prove that the revolt is dications of a conspiracy had been discovered; several negroes have been combined between the slaves of the city and those of the plains; we have ''~. taken and confined. some executed. It appears that the plot is to set fire to .'("", therefore established permanent surveillance to prevent the first sign of fire -Iii' the city in 400 houses at once, to butcher the whites, and to take the city l; here in the city which would soon develop into a general conflagration. "~9 in the night by escalade. It appears thai the revolted negroes have chiefs in ·r' Other indications Lhat the burning of le Cap was an integral part of the town and who correspond with those in the plains . ., >;6 Referring to this dis ·j.'. original strategy are revealed in various letters of colonists and other resi covery on 30-31 August of the renewed plot against le Cap. another writes 'Ji dents writing at the moment the events were occurring. Mme. de Rouvray, .,t· that .. thousands of these scoundrels are going to fall under the iron hand of ,, 5 whose husband, the marquis de Rouvray, had commanded a part of the justice. "~One of them, sentenced to be broken on the wheel. was the free military operations against the rebels, wrote to their son-in-law of the insur ""< black Jean-Baptiste Cap. an organizer and key leader of the insurrection. rection that had just burst open. She relates that it was because of the impa ~, In fact, as it was the practice of the insurgents to elect titular heads, a king ·I!:~,. tience of the Desgrieux atelier, "more ferocious than the others," and which :.o• and queen whom .. they treated with great respect" in each quarter that they began to revolt several days before the intended date. that the measures occupied, Jean-Baptiste Cap had been chosen as "King of Limbe and Port conceived by the others "to bum le Cap, the plantations. and to massacre Margot."58 It was as he incited the slaves on one plantation immediately the whites all at the same time," were broken. The impetuous and premature ' outside the city ofle Cap to revolt that he was denounced by its commandeur. activities of the Desgrieux slaves had apparently given the planters of the seized. and interrogated, no doubt under severe physical duress.w From him surrounding parishes enough time to become infonned of the revolt, and, the authorities learned that "in the night ofthe 25th [August] all the negroes though some of Lhem managed to escape the carnage. nothing could save " in the plain were to attack the city in different parts; to be seconded by the 60 their plantations from the rebel torches. ;o negroes in the city, who were to set fire to it in several parts at once." He From another resident we learn that, after the first plantations had been further declared that "in every workshop in the city there were negroes con set ablaze on the twenty-fourth and a score of whites assassinated, "the cerned in the plot."~1For logistical reasons and tightened securitv around \ rebels dispeBed and then came up to set fire to the city. They have been the capital. it s~emsthe plan had been postponed to. the end of August. [IIH I Rl'm/l!; of 1791 Slm·,., m th<' Sorth (\OS) It was 011 this occasion, the first of three unsuccf'ssful attempts to cap th••n1selves of their ensla\·ers. the incantation certainly mt,st have taken on a ture It> Cap,<>:lthat Boukman was 1:ited leading the band of insurgents, by urt' specific. a more political if still fetishistic. meaning. for the individual 111 now dose to lifteen thousand. that had come to lay siege to the capitaJ.61 rt"lw-1would need now, more than 1:ver before. a great deal of protection Tlu~citing of Boukman is referred to in an aceuunt PompileJ from leuen .uul, perhaps even more. luck in the annihilatiwo· endeavors that lay ahead. Mitten by the nuns of the Communaute des Religieuses Filles de Notre.. ~imilarly,Boukman'f; B•Jis·Ca'iman omtion-by no means a voodoo incan· Dame du Cap-Fran10ais (an educational order for young girls in the colony) t.Htuo in its strictest sense-may nonetheless have been an exhortation for as they witnessed, from the window of their convent. the events that were till' ~lavesto rely on the governing forces of the Supreme Being found within occurring. M They spoke of a former pupil, a mulattress later known as the .-arly all African animistic religions, as oppMed to the "false" Christian 11 princess Amethyste, head of a company of Amazons; she had been initiated ,_. Cml of the whites. In other words, they must draw from within themsf'lves, into the voodoo cult and had inveigled a good number of her companions to . "! :~~:.from their own beliefs, and their belief in themseh·es, for success. follow.tr.sThey would leave the convent at night to participate in ritual dances .,,.~)".-Though the colonists managed to spare le Cap from destruction by the ~ --~ ;_.::.• to the African chant, the words of which, inexplicable to the whites, were · r.-hel annies. there was nothing they could do t~save the plantations. One .. (as we saw earlier) an invocation to the rainbow serpent, Mbumba, for pro. · '·.'i:·:: 1:olonist wrote from le Cap: "We had learned .... that a large attack was tection against the evil powers of the ..white man," the "slavetraders," and \:' .1foot~b~how could we ever have knowri that there reigned among these 66 the "witches." The sehoolmistresses noticed a certain agitation among the .-~Y men, So numerous and formerly so passive, such a concerted accord that ·:' 69 Negresses that increased particularly after they sang this round, adopted to .,-.;·. ~\·erythingwas carried out exactly as was declared?" Another wrote that ' the exclusion of all others. The reason for this agitation, as Adolphe Cahon ·j: "the revolt had been too sudden, too vast and too well-planned for it to seem remarks in his comments on the narrative, became clear when "at the end of ;;,,;.-. possible to stop it or even to moderate its ravages ... 70 The several frantic dis August 1791, le Cap faced the uprising of Boukman, the fires on the plan- -~ patches that were sent off to Jamaica, Cuba, Santo Domingo, and the United ,.L lations at the edge of the city, and the devastation of the plain. From the . ~ States for military aid were, with the single exception of a plea for assistance ' 11 convent, the nuns saw the insurgents at the gates of le Cap, heard their death · ~"? from a few American ships and crew at harbor, to no avail. Finally, they cries, witnessed their dances; they felt the terror that had struck the soul of ___ere).., ~ertedthe offer of a body of mulattoes and free blacks in le Cap to take the whites upon hearing of the massacres and destruction that were carried > up arms and assist the whites in fighting the slaves. Within eight days, the out in the countryside. """The narrator of the account relates that the king of ·~;·.·slaves had devastate~seven parishes and completely destroyed 184 sugar the voodoo cult had just declared war on the colonists: they were marching plantations throughout"the northern province: in less than one month, the >.r'i"\1 to on to to le • --= the assault the cities and had come lay siege Cap: "Amidst ,}, count rose to over 200, to which would be added nearly 1.200 coffee plan the rebels was Zamba Boukman inciting them to attack the barracks and the .... tations.72 An early estimate placed the loss in productive value for the sugar convent, which lodged a good number of young girls and other colonists." ~."·"' .:t:· plantations alone at nearly forty million livres. ;:~By September, all of the Then, in what amounts to a paraphrase of Bookman's Bois-Caiman oration, ''·'iii'.,, plantations within fifty miles either side of le Cap had been reduced to ashes the writer notes how Boukman, "in his poetic improvisations, reminded the + and smoke; twentY.:tRree of ihe twenty-seven parishes were in ruins. and the insurgents that the whites were damned by GOObecause they were the op 74 ""'"'-·-i :~ other four would fall in a matter of days. pressors of the slaves, whom they crushed without pity. and [how J he ended ·,t'· If during the first few days of the revolt the slaves were roughly ten to each refrain with these words: 'Couse Ia liberte li pale coeur rwu.stow.' .,fiB fifteen hundred strong, perhaps even two thousand by one account dated 23 1ne relationship between voodoo and the insurrection, or the spirit of -.'{' August, their numbers continued to swell with astonishing rapidity as they insurrection. is certainly not a gratuitous one. nor is it, on the other hand, were joined by masses of slaves that deserted or were otherwise swept from 1 Mbumba~ entirely intangible. The "Eh! eh! voodoo invocation dated back ·.. ~·, their plantations, one aftl'!r another, throughout the countryside. !> On 24- to at least the mid-eighteenth century in colonial Saint Domingue. when, 25 August. by the time de Touzard. commander of the local militia. arrived as part of the initiation ceremony for a neophyte, it was a call for protection at the Dufour and Latour plantations in Acul, where the slaves appeared to I against the dreaded forces of those who had enslaved them and, as such, a have concentrated a part of their forces just two days after the revolt began. form of cultural and spiritual protest against the horrors of their New World their numbers here had already reached three to four thousand. 06 Indeed. by environment. On the eve of the slave insurrection, however, in the midst of a report of the twenty-seventh, "they are now reckoned ten thousand strong, I what would be a difficuh and dangerous liberation struf[gle to actually rid divided into three armies, of whom seven or eight hundred are on horse· : :.I' ! 1071 I i IOh! Rt!t'f)/u of 17'91 5/m-rJ ;,, tit~.\'<>rtlt h;!t'L .md tolerably well armed; the remainder are almost without arms."a !unl<•ned. anne-d rebel. lif!!htin~for fre-ec-lom. is one that U{'<'Hrn-'rl.n<> • loulllt \nd thou!!h atlirst their losses were heavy by comentional standards. Mtheir 1u -.u;oinj!: de~rt"t>S.within the con,;ciuusness of each indi,·irhml ~l;t\1':hut , !en. tins tr.msfurmation was accelerated by collel'live rei>dlinn in a <'tJ!lll:'\t numb .. rs.~wrote one colonist. ~unfortunatelyincrease one hundred fold in i ' .• 1 prnpnrtiun. -c~In less than two weeks. the original core of ten to fifteen hun. .--. ,1 wmlutiunarv social and political upheaval. The t>Xample nf some sJa,·es on the Vaudreuil plantation i11the Pbine du dretl had increased over tenfold to fifteen. some claimed twenty, thousand, -'.', nne-third uf them fully equipped with riA.~and ammunition pilfered from \unl parish. just prior to the outbreak. may provide a small glimpse into the plantations. the rest armed with sabers, knives, farm implements. and -·..o-· tlwse very elusive circumstances. Situated at Morne-Rouge. it was very near the Lenormand plantation where the 14 August conspiratorial gathering had a whole host of other contrivances that served them as weapons. Fear and ·-'"·' •• tir.;t taken place.lil2 Around the twentieth. at about the same time as a few of panic among the whites spread almost as rapidly as the insurrection itself, . ~:•, the Limbe conspirators were being arrested and interrogate-d. and just be· causing some to believe that there were. at this point. as many as forty or ·~ lifty thousand slaves in revolt, a number the rebels did, however. achieve ·.::-, fore the revolt prematurely broke out at Gallifet's estates. the comm still are by their unsuspecting masters). become, by the ve~·nature of the plantations-troublesome, lo be sure, but not enough to threaten the foun· •..' dations and institutional viability of slavery-had now fallen into a million <'ucumstances, insurrectionaries. brigands. and rebels. They had in fact pieces and reposed, literally, on little more than a pile of ashes...... _ embarked on a collective struggle never before waged in such a manner. or In this whole process, caught up in the web of events that were taking . on such a scale, by colonial slaves anywhere. and their activities were now place. many slaves became maroons by deserting their plantations. perhaps inscribed within an irreversible revolutionary situation. The real si~nilicance having killed the master, the overseer. or even their own commandeur, per· of their movement. in the early days as well tiS throughout the revolution. haps having set fire to a cane field or a shed. Once maroon. they then found was the profound impact of !'elf.mobilization. of the popular or~anization themselves in an irreversible position with little choice but to defend their dnd the obtrusive intervention of these slaves-on a massive scale-nn a lives with arms. The transformation of the fugitive :;\ave or deserter into a revolutionary process already several years in motion. I !HBI Rl'mll!<>f/791 Slm~Jin the Sorth [ 109\ \)urul!! tlios<:>hr.-t weeks of revolution. the slaH!S {lestroye•l the white'S ··•·s.-;of the re\·o[t.»» The remarkable Sl:'nse of humanity on the part ,,f Blin. .mti tht•tr pmpt·rtv with much the same ruthlessness .md •:rudty that they o·om·eved in the Edwards account, may also be' 1lue to the inlluem:e. per had ~utf,•n·dfor sn mauy years at the hanJs of their masters. The scenes ·Uasion. and solicitations of his wife who. as a woman. led him to confront ,[ humlr ;mJ blomh;hed on the plantations. as whites hopelessly tried to thl! struggle within hims-elf-the inner struggle of any individual engaged in dt•fend themseh-es or. at best. to llee from the unleashed termr and rage of , 1olent revolution-bet.,.,een his devotion and responsibility to the cause he tlwir former sl.J,·es. were only too reminiscent of the brutal it~that tht> slaves l1ad undertaken (especially as a high-ranking chief in Limbe\ and his senti themselves had endured under the plantation regime. Yet as atrocious as ments toward those near him. but who were unavoidably part of the enemy they "'ere. these acts of vengeance were surprisingly moderate, in the opin dass. 69 ion of one of the best-known historians of that revolution, compared with the The uncontrolled explosions of vengeance and suppressed hatred that told-blooded, grotesque savagery and sadistically calculated torture com marked the beginning of the revolution constituted. however, only a tem 84 mitted bv their oppressors throughout the past. These were impassioned porary stage. Once expiated, t~esedestructive energies were progressively acts of ~venge,of retribution. and were relativ~iyshort-lived.ll5 channeled into military strategy, tactical maneuvers, and political alliances Amidst the violence and fury of the August days, there were some slaves as the slaves gained territory and began to stabilize "their positions. They had whose sense of decency and range of human understanding nevertheless no experience in the use of military weaponry, and though their losses in stood apart from the all-consuming force of collective vengeance. A fre the early engagements were heavy,90 they teamed quickly enough. Ale Cap quently cited example is that of a slave who was himself implicated in the resident who participated in the militia observed how... in the beginning of revolt but who risked, and later lost, his own life to save those of two colo the insurrection. the negroes made their attacks with much irregularity and nists, M. and Mme. Baillon, and their family. The slave was Paul Blin; he confusion, and their weapons were mostly their instruments of labor, but ... was. as we know, a commandeu.r and one of the original conspirators. He ;'( they now come on in regular bodies, and a considerable part of them are well had also become one of the leading generals.llf> According to one account armed with muskets, swords, etc., which they have taken and purchased."91 -,.-_' presented in the 30 November address to the National Assembly, the black They would ransack the plantations for money, precious metals, furniture, nurse of M. and Mme. Baillon. who resided with their daughter and son clothing, sacks of coffee, sugar. and indigo, for any article of value they '"' in-law on their plantation, warned them that there was not a minute to lose could place their hands on, in order to equip their army or to trade with the and offered to accompany them in their flight. This nurse was Paul Blin's Spaniards for additional guns and ammunition. In this respect, as well as wife, and it was she who secured the food for her master and mistress. Pau~ in discipline. in the opinion of the militia recruit, they were growing more for his part, had promised to find them a canoe, but when they came to the .;;' fonnidable.92 When they repelled an attack by the whites on one of their -..i spot where it was to be, it turned out to be nothing more than a dilapidated -~ outposts, they would make off with cannons and other equipment left behind ,, to skiff whh neither oars nor mast, and no one navigate it. As Paul's wife ' with which to wage their struggle. reproached him for the manner in which he fulfilled his promises, he an~ t During these first months, the blacks continued to defend their positions swered that he merely provided this means of escape as a death preferable ' across the province through tactical guerilla warfare. They retreated into to to that which the rebels had prepared for these unfortunates. and that it was .~ the hills when it was their advantage, organized their forces for counter ; the best he could do. attacks, and often continued to bum and ravage the nearby plantations in A somewhat different version of the account, related by Bryan Edwards, " reprisal. Previous to Governor 8\anchelande's attack on one of their fortified has it that the slave, Paul, after leading the Baillon couple safely into the ·~,. .. encampments at the Gallifet and d'Agoult estates, they were a full six thou· woods, left to join the revolt and made frequent trips between the rebel camp ' sand, two-thirds of-whom had secretly retreated during the night before his and the white fugitives, providing them with food. a canoe, then a boat. two columns had even arrived. Though Blanchelande reported to the minis He came back once again to lead them through the woods to Port~Margot ter of the marine that he had taken possession of the two plantations within ·~ where, after nineteen 4ays of various hardships, they would finally be able .;,· an hour's time and with only one wounded. the report of a militia volunteer to make their way to le Cap, and then took leave of them forever. 80 In all "r·· revealed othenrise: .. 1t began at five in the morning and they gained posses probability Paul Biin was present at the Mome-Rouge assembly and, had sion at nine." The free mulattoes and Negroes, most of them mounted. had he participated in the Bois·Calman ceremony, as well, no doubt would have entered first, and as orders had been given to take no prisoners. a horrible committed himself to the sacred vow of vengeance so essential to the sue- carnage ensued. The slaughter finished at two:n Of the one hundred or so 11101 Rt>mltJ uf l 191 5/aVI".!in tfv North t Ill 1 that Blanchelande claimed were killed in the encounter, however. no dis : tie,; with whites during the old plantation days in a plea for pardon. as 1"· tinction was made between the women, children, aml the aged, who were .ilolone ~lavewho claimed to be the loving godson of his assailant\; mother. ali indiscriminately butchered. and those insurgents actually bearing arms. ··:::.:- r.,l..<'n I)IT-guard by these sentiments. the pursuer dismounted as the sian~. In fact. the vast majority of the two thousand rebels who remained had. in _,,,,, ouL·anwhile. recharged his gun. shot. and narrowly misse1l his oppnnt'nl. their turn. also taken !light through the cane and thicket. The pillaging then :~·3.: EH'n then. he claimed he had not seen correctly and loved his gotlmother"s • ., too to by began. and Blanchelande "found it impossible to continue my expedition .'t·ij;!:,_ 11 much kill him. But when contradicted witnesses who had seen to turn it to any greater advantage."?o' Though white troops often had the .:;:§1· th~·entire incident, he admitted: .. Master, I know that is true. It is the Devil military advantage, they generally ""thought it imprudent, in small bodies." .j~· "hn gets inside of this body of mine." Though his fate was sealed as he was in the words of one observer, "to pursue their advantage," once the insur- ··:~.;:bound to a tree to be shot, he furiously reviled his captors through laughter . gents had dispersed in their retreat.95 From the Galiifet camp, the rebels ... .ung. and joke, and jeered at them in mockery. He gave the signal for his .•V .• ." had rejoined a body of eight to ten thousand enCi~mpedat Mome-Rouge just own execution with neither fe~rnor complaint. In the end. the contents of 96 outside le Cap. ' his pockets revealed more about the mentality, the beliefs. the unarticulated ~~~1i-' One general described their tactics and sense of military organization in i~leals.and fighting spirit of the slaves than any grandiloquent declaration ,"!'~- this way: '~':" 1heir leaders might make to the colonial whites about emancipation and 'It:· •AA They established themselves nearly everywhere on the lower cliffs and on the ""liberty or death. "In one of his pockets, the slave's captor relates, "we found ~: slopes of high mountains to be within better range of their incursions into the pamphlets printed in France [claiming] the Rights of Man; in his vest pocket -k~· . ~~oas plains, and to keep the rear well protected. For this, the~·always had behind a large packet of tinder and phosphate of lime. On his chest he had a ...:··~·. them nearly inaccessible summits or go~sthat they were perfectly familiar little sack fuU of hair, herbs, bits of bone, which they call a fetish ... and with. 1bey established communication links between their positions in such a it was, no doubt, because of this amulet, that our man had the intrepidity '~ way that they were able mutually to come to each other's aid whenever we par ·.,,•. which the philosophers call Stoicism." 101 tially attaeked them. They have surveillance po5ts and designated rendezvous " ' The slaves were OT{!;anizedin bands, as European armies were organized positions. 97 t-~. .-,:0,7l in regiments, and although interband rivalry and divisions were not uncom These wer:e maroon tactics, and they were utilized and refined in much the ·.~· mon. the internal discipline of each band or camp was maintained with an ··;~ same way by maroons in other Caribbean colonies where resistance had :~ iron hand by the individual leaders. In the camps. the least sign of insub turned to actual warlare. ·.~. ordination or slightest evidence of uncertainty was often met with unimag ·\!> What the slaves lacked in military hardware they compensated for with inably harsh treatment and. on occasion, even death. IO'Z In the first weeks. ""'i~; ruse and ingenuity. They camouftaged traps, fabricated poisoned arrows, :··. their main camps were concentrated westwardly in Limbe, Marne-Rouge, feigned cease-fires to lure the enemy into ambush, disguised tree trunks as ,._. and at Gallifet in Petite-Anse. Following the Gallifet defeat in September• cannons, and threw obstructions of one kind or another into the roads to .. major strongholds had already fonned, by October. in the eastwanl districts ., - hamper advancing troops; in short, any means they could invent to psycho i of Grande-Riviere and Dondon;ICBby November, Fort-Dauphin and Ouina· logically disorient, frighten, demoralize, or otherwise generally confuse the ·t minthe at the eastern extremity of the province near the Spanish border, European units in order to defend their own positions.98 On their Rag was where participation of the free cOloreds was particularly evident, were under ~._,. ' inscribed a molto calling for death to all whites. They marched to African -~. rebel control. 1M It was under the military command of Jean-Baptiste Marc, martial music and would begin an engagement with considerable order and ~c- a free black, seconded by Char, a recently emancipated free black, that • they gained control of Ouinaminthe. Jean-Baptiste Marc, in particular. was firmness, crying out victory. But they would retreat in what whites could only ~ understand as "confused precipitation."'» To disperse a prodigious body of } described as one who ruled with the air of an army general land who was slaves advancing on le Cap, Blanchelande 's troops had "'fired three times, also well known in Fort-Dauphin {or thievery). 105 Through intrigue, skillful ~f but without the least effect," as each man had devised for himself a kind of '.?-. duplicity. and brilliant maneuvering, they had feigned desertion from the light mattress stuffed with cotton as a vest to prevent the bullets from pene ...~. rebels and allied themselves with government forces under de Touzard. who trating, "and-thus stood the fire without shewing any signs of fear.~as one ., graciously supplied them with as much military armament as they needed observer noted. too or requested. allowing them to hold complete control for over three months. When caught by their pursuers, they could convincingly invoke past affec- De Touzard had nothing but praise for cezar. whom he credited with having ---- 1 I! 111:.! I RetY•it.• uf 1791 Slaues in rh~.\'orth ( 113] ~a\o·dtht• entire district from the .. brigands.~and he promi:s,.,l to IHite the ,utwardly pompous and unabashedly Aaunted his ego by decoratin~;his uni Culunial Asst-mbly to recommend that he recei\'e a harul~ornerecompen.'>l! f,mn with an abundant assortment of medals and other impressive militat:· t<1rhis ~t'rvices.Cezar absconded to Dondon. ha\·ing tirst taken the prf'cau. trinkets. not the least among them being the Cross of Saint-Louis. Yet he tion of hid in~three of the best cannons in the cane lield~.Within two days, wa:; a man of exceptional intelligence for one who had spent the greater part ht- w<.~shack fighting with his black comrades in the attack on \lannelade. 11lf> "f his life as a slave: he was highly respected and especially well liked by ~hortlythereafter, Jean-Baptiste Marc, having obtained replenished muni the mulattoes and free blacks under his command. as well as by the ~better 1 tions to light a few brigands. turned on the garrison and converged with rebel ~ubjects" e" among the slaves. ll Biassou was of a far more fiery disposition. e forces who took control of the district. ro; Be was, according to Madiou. a fervent voodoo adept and kept himself sur -~- For the time being. the blacks had allied with the counterrevolutionary rounded by lwungans, from whom he frequently sought advice. 1H He was •.:·; rovafi~t~:a segment of the clergy. and to some extent with the mulattoes, impulsive and forever ready, at the first sign of personal insuh or political but in none of these cases were they directed or controlled by their allies deception on the part of his white enemies, to take revenge on the prisoners of cunvenience. 1011 In the rebel camps in the east, where the free colored in his camp. He would have killed them all were it not for the judicious i I 109 population of the North was concentrated, ~lattoesnearly always occu interventions of Jean-Fran~ where he had resided. Bia.ssou issued orders on 2.3 December to have him -~on.ancl Paul B\n was the victim. Knowing that he had helped some white 111 killed. If the royalists, for their part. tacitly supported and supplied the masters to-eScape, Jeannot had him burned alive on the nefarious pretext black forces, they believed they could use the slave insurrection to desta· that he had removed the bullets from their cartridges. us bilize the colony to their advantage, defeat the patriot faction, and restore By November. the political situation in the colony had changed with the the Ancien Regime. And when it was all over, the slaves would passively go arrival of the civil commissioners from France. Negotiations would soon be hack to their plantations as before. What they did not see was that the black under way between the rebel leaders and the French representatives. Upon insurrection had leaders and a raison d'etre of its own. being informed of Jeannot's excesses, Jean-Fran~ois,a man of humanity in The revolution had, in fact, produced hundreds of local leaders, for the spite of his arrogance, and possessing a sense of common decency. was re· most part obscure ones, slaves as well as free blacks like Jean-Baptiste Marc volted by such atrocities. He also realized that this executioner was a danger or Cezar, who held military posts on the plantations, organized raids, and and a liability to their revolution; more than that, his uncontrolled barba maneuvered with France's enemies, with royalists and Spaniards, for am rism could seriously jeopardize their imminent negotiations with the white ~;.r. munition, military supplies, and protection. Certainly the most revered of authorities. The black general had Jeannot tried and gave him a military the early leaders, however, was Boukman. In November, during an attack execution at about the same time that the whites. who had killed Boukman by the Cap regiment in the Acul plain, he was killed. the first of the original in battle, cut his head off and garishly exposed it on a stake at the public leaders to fall, while defending a rebel post at Fond Bleu. 11Z Upon his death, square in \e Cap with the inscription: '"'The head of Boukman, leader o£ the 119 it was Jean-Fran~oisand Biassou who would coordinate the activities and rebels." assume the direction of the New World's first colonial liberation struggle of News of Boukman's death had in fact produced a profound effect in the its kind. Jean-Fran~isnow officially assumed the rank and responsibility rebel camps. There the slave leaders went into mourning and ordered solemn of general, while Biassou. as lieutenant-general, was second in command, services to be held in honor of their deeply revered comrade. 1l0 But within and Jeannot in charge of the black troops in the east. the ranks of the slaves, the immediate reaction was quite different: their As a political leader, Jean-Fran~ tlu•ir h•adt!r's death. Final\v, the~·turned tht> e-vent to th!"'ir """ advantage. In -ipite of hi~personal rt'"'P"''\ fur (,r ,·:..tuii.. J their abilities and ,;uccesses un the batt\didd. derided the whites to the enemv. \lor~on•r.he ktww lw ""u[,] ··wntua\ly ha\t' to JllS\H'r to for their cowardice, and celebrated with a l·alenda last in~tlm•e days. 1~1 the Frem:h JUthoritie, liJr the trenwnduus 1le astation ul propert\ and lh-es :\ far more serious differentiation bt>tween the nwnt ~la\·erebels and that of their chief leaders. however. evidenced itsdf during the une plausible alternati\e rna~ha\e lwen lu blamt> it all un the ro\'alists. the period of negotiations that had brought about a temp•Hary cease-lire. as '\hile pulling liH·ward a reasnnubh- limited St'l ,,f O!"'mands for themselves. ,;il . .. well as a set of demands formulated by Jean-Fram;ois and Biassou. It was ' Linder the ctreumstance~.the best Jean-Franc;uis could do was to demand. "!ij under these circumstances that the first signs of division appeared between hy dispatching a formal address to the Colonial Assembly with de Touzard '!• the aims of those who had become the official leaders of the revolution. and as mediator. an unconditional amnestv for all sla,·es who had participated ' ' the aspirations of the black masses. Together they had practically annihi in the revolt, freedom for fifty of the leaders and several hundred of their I,.' f lated an entire province; that they were fighting to free themselves can hardly " officers, as well as an amelioration of conditions for the slaves t the abolition be denied. But neither Jean-Fram;ois nor BiasSOu, nor even Toussaint for of the whip and the cadwt as forms of punishmenU. ln exchange for this, he ··~ that matter, knew what to do at this point. While Toussaint mediated and promised to use his influence over the slaves to !"'ncourage them to return to il kept the peace within their camp. the difficult and unfortunate responsibility their respective plantations and agreed to deliver the remaining prisoners, •' of officially representing the revolutionary slave masses in negotiation with on the condition that his wife, who was held prisoner by the whites in le Cap, ' French authorities feU to Jean-Fram;ois. also be released. Although personally opposed to these limited demands. :1! ' . The whole scope of the revolution, only three months under way but Biassou finally agreed to subscribe to them. hut demanded. as well. the ' rapidly taking on wider and graver proportions, had gone far beyond his release of his own family. To charge Jean-Fran~toiswith the deliberate and capacities as the political leader of a people engaged in revolutionary strug ff.;. cold-blooded betrayal of his people at this stage in the revolution, however, gle. To negotiate the outright abolition of slavery would be absurd; no ruling may perhaps be too premature a judgment. The events of a revolution barely class ever negotiates away the economic foundation of its own power. Jean three months under way, but with rapidly broadening dimensions. hardly Fram;ois knew this as well as anyone. When asked about the real causes afforded him the political experience and fortitude of character necessary of the insurrection by one of his white prisoners-it was M. Gros, a le Cap to see his way through at this point. Yet someone had to do something, and 125 lawyer who had served as the general's personal secretary-Jean-Fram;ois Jean-Fran~toiswas the only one in a position to decide. eventually answered, after brushing earlier questions aside, .. that they have Among the prominent leaders, it was now Biassou, the fiery and impas not taken up arms to obtilin a liberty which, even if the whites chose to grant sioned voodoo adept who, in his more impulsive moments, best incarnated it, would be for them nothing more than a fatal and venimous gift, but at the aspirations and mentality of the insurgent.<>la,·es. The black masses had least they hoped for an amelioration of their condition." 122 furiously bumed and ransacked the plantations for money and other nec Gros published an account of his captivity shortly thereafter. in which he essary goods, thrusting the whites aside, retorting that "they did not give relates somewhat differently that, while refusing to explain himself categori a damn about the manager or any other white, that they would take what 26 cally, lean·franc;ois neverthdess gave as his reply to this question: ···: they pleased, that they were not Oge ... t When they learned of the death of to It is not I who have installed myself as general over the slaves. Those who had Boukman, they, like Biassou. had been enraged the point of threatening 127 the power 1o do so have invested me with this title: in taking up anns. I never to massacre all the white prisoners. In the camps. the black troops and clai~to be fighting for general emancipation which I know to be an illusory local officers, already irritated by the long delay in the Colonial Assembly's dre;!!l~as much in tenns of France's need for the Tolonies a.'\ the danger involved response to the address their leaders had sent, by now over two weeks past. in procuring for these uncivilized hordes a right that would become infinitely were detennined to continue the war when they learned that de Touzard. dangerous for them. and that would indubitably lead to the annihilation of the commander of the white troops at Fort·Dauphin. had broken the temporary colony. [Moreoverj, if the ownen had all stayed on their plantations. pl"'rhaps the cease-fire to attack several of their camps. But they were under strict orders re\·olution may never have occurred. 123 1 to refrain from all hostilities. 111 They became increasingly suspicious of the following this statement. the slave leader unleashed his animositv toward frequent contactslean-Fram;ois and Riassou were having with various whites the procureurs and t5corwmes. and wanted included as a fundament;u article and swore they would exterminate all the whites. and even their own leaders. 1 1 of theirdemands that these men should no longer exist in Saint Domin~e.124 if these men dared to come to terms with the 01uthorities. .!'1 Having golten ~ •n lllhl «•·mils ·~r·lI'll :5/un•,t the ,Y,rrh ! 1171 ' '' nuwllt're with the Colonial Assembly, the ~laveleaders had now turned to ,[etiding in ~ovemberto join with Biassou and Jean-;."ram;uis. Once the the newly arrived ci,·il commis~ionersto he heard. The hlack troops soon .t.!!reement was reathed to surrender their prisoners. frut•ssaint accompanied !.. arned uf the impending negotiations and. near one camp. had .tssembled the prisoners as escort to the bar of the Colonial .-hsemi.Jiy. tlwmselves and .. appeared ready to bn>ak by force am· negoti.tti•m that would But for the ma~sof armed slaws. this al~umeant their return to the plan comluce tl1eir return to the plantations.~mOf thes,. sla\·es. Gros remarked tations. They were now violently opposed to any settlement whatsoever with that -it is useful to point out to those who .:.re so J=:OOdnature•l as to belie\'e the whites, and. at the Tannerie C;}.mpalong the way to the site designated their slaves are being forcibly detained and that their [real! dispositions are fur the exchange of prisoners. they besie~edthe delegation with sabers and I pt'aceful ones, that, out of a hundred of these. generally speaking, if there threats of sending all their heads otf to \e Cap. swearing vehemently a~ainst are four whose intentions are good. it would he a lot: all of them. rather, peace and against their own generalsY~.. We were convinced this time of breathe forth nothing but the total destruction of the whites." 1·11 a great truth." wrote Gros, "that the slave would never return to his duties At the Gallifet camp in Grande-Riviere, the slave troops and especially but by constraint and by his partial destruction." 138 It was the uninstructed their commander. Jean-Baptiste Godard, openly affirmed that the civil com mass of slaves, and not their leaders, who saw so clearly what was at stake, missioners were representatives Without any power and without a mandate, regardless of the cost. And if the price they were ready to pay was high, it that it was not the king who had sent them. and that if they proposed peace, wa~no greater than the human suffering they had already endured. it was to trick them into submission before killing them all off. 132 It was not The Colonial Assembly disdainfully refused to accede to any one of their the whole truth. but it was not too far from it. Some of them even began leaders' demands (except for a nominal agreement on the release of Jean murmuring that it was all because of the mulattoes that their leaders had Fram;ois's wife), even after the number of requested emancipations was 133 entered into relations with the whites of le Cap. If a few of the white pris reduced by Tous~inthimself from four hundred to si:dy.m He returned to oners tried to convince the;e slaves that their revolt was pure folly, that the their camp and told the slaves what they already knew. There was nothing king had never granted them three free days per week, and that only the to be gained, neither from the civil commissioners nor from the Assem Colonial Assembly could legislate on such matters. they pretended not to bly. Jean-Fran-;ois convoked his council, and it was unanimously decided to listen and said that the government would give them what they wanted or continue the war, to finish the destruction of what they had begun. no they would continue the war to the bitter end. Abbe de Ia Porte tried to The slaves in Jean-Fran~ois'sband began on 15 January by attacking frighten them by describing the might and power of the combined forces of and recapturing the district of Ouinaminthe. On 22-23 January, the slaves France, Spain, and Britain. and all the other kingdoms of Europe that would under Biassou attacked le Cap to secure ammunition and to replenish their unite to extenninate them if they did not give up their arms and go back to diminished resources. It would be another two years. however. before Tous the plantations, but his words, as he said, went in at one ear and out at the saint would emerge as the one to give clear, vigorous, and decisive direction 134 other. to the profoundly felt aspiration~of these slave masses who had killed their The proclamation of 28 September 1791, decreed by the National As masters and burned the plantation~to be free. sembly of France and sanctioned by the king, granted amnesty to all free persons in Saint Domingue charged with "acts of revolution." Biassou re ceived a copy of it and had it read to his troops, who could not have cared less. They wanted war and "bout a blancs"-an end to the whites. Most of all, they wanted their three free days per week, ami as for the other three days, they would see about those in due course. mAt this point Tous saint rose, demanded that the proclamation be reread. and delivered such a moving speech in creole that the slaves' attitudes suddenly changed to the point where they were willing to go back to their various plantations if that was what their leaders wanted. 136 Already Toussaint's qualities of leadership were beginning to take shape, and he knew more than anyone else what they really wanted. He had been discreetly involved in the 14 August affair from the very beginning and carefully observed all that went on before finally Till" 11ulul/oP.j llnri rh.. r,.... IJ/nck.s 111'.!1 LIS planned. elected without 01 single mulatto •H free-hlm·k \Ok. Tlw 'lhite-. had e:'l.tolled the dan.eers of e."'l.lendinl! full til!hts uf <"itiz:enshtp to tlw muLti toes and free blacks bv claimin!! that. -;in("e eivil eqwdit' ''"u](] n•mmt> tlw 5 •inalterable~and .. insunnountable- harrier ,,f color sepawtm~them fr he slaves in the West and the ~uthat this time had not, like their com free blacks in the West and South, using the same justification of containing T patriots in the North, yet emerged as a collective force, independently slave rebellion. argued that only if they obtained their full rights peaceably organized by their own leaders and with self-defined goals and perspectives. eould the slaves in thes~two provinces be kept tranquil and the mainte The political situation in these two provinc~~was dominated, on the one nance of slavery guaranteaP So. although both the free coloreds and whites hand. by the activities of the mulattoes and free blacks to obtain the civil and claimed the same motive for fighting each other-to avoid slave rebellion political rights guaranteed them by the 15 May decree and. on the other. by the foundations of slavery, either way. reposed on thin ice. the attendant intensification of divisions and hostilities between the contend In August, the mulattoes and free blacks held a mass political assembly ing factions within the white ruling class. It was, ironically, in the absence in Mirebalais, where they elected as their president and leading spokesman of such massive slave revolt as overwhelmed the North and threatened to Pierre Pinchinat, a man of outstanding political talent and finesse who. like destroy that province's economy and social foundations, that the struggles of many others of his caste, had been fonnally educated in F ranee. 1 A council the various parties in the West and South became increasingly acute. rapidly of forty delegates was also created with full powers to represent their claims. turning to violence and then, inevitably, to open warfare. 1 For the slaves, either by fonnal address or by direct delegation, before the National Assem neither the stakes nor the alternatives were nearly as clear as they were bly in france, the king, the colonial assemblies. the governor-general and. in the North, where insurgent blacks had taken the lead and remained in upon their arrival, the civil commissioners. Moreover. they swore upon the the forefront of the revolution. where the free mulaUoes were comparatively last drop of their blood to protect the elected representatives against any few, and where some free blacks actually supported and helped organize attack or harassment while exercising their functions. 1 the provincewide insurrectionary movement. In the West and South, it was Upon hearing of this assembly and the position it had taken. some of a three-way war in which the whites. divided in opposing camps between the local whites tried to incite opposition among the free persons of color the:-patriOt autonomists and the wealthy, counterrevolutionary, conservative not included in the May decree. When this failed, they resorted to their planters, were literally destroying themselves, and in which the free coloreds habitual tactics o£ intimidation and lynching to block the execution of the were fighting for political equality and legal ratification of their rights. None law. On 11 August, the council of forty sent to Blanchelande a copy of their of these groups represented the interests of the slaves. but they would each constituted aims, along with a judicious and respectful letter recognizing in tum use slave unrest to further their own aims by enrolling the slaves. him as the sole legal authority in the colony. reminding him of the harsh under various pretenses and promises of freedom. Out of this confusion and injustices they had already suffered. and requesting. for the pence and pros conflict, in which slaves participated in arms (doubtless with notions of their perity of the colony, that he execute the 15 May law in its entirety. On the own), but in which they were also fighting and killing one another. they twenty-second, as the slaves in the i'lorth began to set their torches to the would learn soon enough that their emancipation depended ultimately upon plantations and to massacre their masters. Blanchelande sent his reply to their own efforts and the capabilities oftheir own leaders. the mulattoes in the West. In the letter. he made clear his disapproval of Since July, the free coloreds had been organizing meetings and assem their conduct and especially of their "illicit"' assembly and delibemtions. blies in an effort to break the intransigence of the government and to secure His reply further ordered them to dissolve. to return to their homes and wait their right to participate in the elections of that summer. The white planters, peacefully and patiently. In due time. their white benefactors would decide with Blanchelande on their side. had done everything in their power to sabo upon their future condition." tage the application of the May decree. and the new Colonial Assembly was. The anger .and frustration of the mulattoes were further exacerbated by I l :!o I R.. m/u o(l;-9/ The .\lulmtoe5 and thf' frf't 8/ad,;s \1211 th" .~dditionalne"s uf violent 'bS \'"re bein~commilled bv the whites J.!!:ilinst their <'Uil!patriots in Port-au free blacks. and Suisses neared Croix-ties-Bouquets. the~-were attacked by PrinL·e . .-\ gen~::ralas~;;emblv was imme France, where he spent his early years as a colll'!gian.; He returned to the ' now dominatei:l PQI1-au·Prince1 hoped to use the support and capabilities of colony to teach until the revolution. during the course of which he served the mulattoes to defeat a common enemy and then reestablish the Ancien the cause of his people with a steadfast and impeccable character.~Rigaud, Regime. The confederates wanted neither a retu!-n to the old regime nor born in les Cayes in the South and educated at Bordeaux. was the most the continuation of the present one as it stood. Bauvais and Pinchinat had prominent of the mulatto leaders. He had learned the trade of goldsmith in repeatedly sworn an unyielding respect for France and her laws in all their France and practiced it in the colony, but his real vocation was military. He dealings with the colonial authorities: however. their one political impera was a trained and experienced soldier. who had already proven his military tive was to conquer their rights, and to do this they needed troops. anns. capabilities as a volunteer in the French army under the Comte d'Estaing and allies, even if these were royalist. during the North American war for independence. Like Bauvais, he had On 7 September, a concordat was signed between the confederates and fought at Savannah.9 Now, as commander of the mulatlo forces in the South, the two municipalities of Croix-des-Bouquets and Mirebalais. Both sides he joined with Bauvais and Pinchinat. agreed to abide by the duly·sanctioned laws and decrees of the French Lambert, a free black born in Martinique, was placed second in com National Assembly: the antipatriot whites therefore accepted uncondition. / mand of the army in the West. In addition. there were nearly three hundred ally the execution of the 15 May legislation. 14 The municipality of Port-au slaves from the Cul-de-Sac plain known as the Su.i.ue.!, or auxiliaries, who Prince. having already suffered two crushing defeats by the mulatto anny were incorporated into their ranks. Among these were the Fortin-Bellantien and a third with the signing of this concordat-became even more alanned and other slaves who, in their own interests. had deserted their planta by reports of mounting insubordination among the slaves on the plantations. tions earlier in July to form independent gatherings in the woods. Having Several plantations around the city had already been burned. and rumors remained in marronage after they were attacked, they now joined the mu were spreading of a slave conspiracy to hum the city itsel£. 15 Under these lattoes who anned them and promised them their freedom, which was their circumstances, the municipality sent a commission to Croix-des-Bouquets evident motive for rising in July. 10 Also among the SuU5es were a number of to negotiate with the mulattoes. black and mulatto domestic slaves recently anned by their masters to fight On 11 September, a second concordat was signed between the confeder· the affranchi.s; they also had deserted to join the confederates. 11 ates and Port-au-Prince which, in addition to confirming the earlier accord. In the meantime, the white patriots in Port-au·Prince were amassing their went even further h~guaranteeing political equality for all free persons of forces in armed opposition to the mulattoes. They had already launched one color. regardless of the status of their parents. So the 15 May decree would attack against them,17 hut were severely defeated and quickly dispersed. be executed in advance of its arrival in the colony. Primary electoral assem Now, a group of sailors, adventurers. mercenaries. and other declasse ele blies would be held in confonnity with Article 4 of the March li90 law. The ments, organized under the name ofjlibwtiers, combined with a contingent concordat also guaranteed their right to elect deputies to the Colonial As of the national guard in Port-au.Prince and set out on 2 September with can sembly. recognized the illegality of the municipal and provincial assemblies. non and other artillery to crush the mulatto army in the Charhonniere moun annulled all prohibitions and sentences rendered against them. and guar tains.13 Earlier, the mulattoes had received word of the military pressures anteed freedom of the press. The confederates would remain armed until being mounted against them at Port-au-Prince and decided to move their thesf' articles were e:\ecuted, hut both sides would proceed to an immediate Tlw \lll{illlt!<'S ftp~H/.wb I !~:!1 Rnolls o{ !;'9/ amlthP \1~:\1 1 o·'l.dt ~il!rwda similar accord with the rnulattoes Jnd li·t•t' blad.,. t'rates.19 Although the mass Y~tno :;ooner were the ll September Jl!re.-ments ~i~rwdth•lll c.-rtam as a collective. autonomous foree. they n.,nethel!"ss rt•maint>d 111,J •·nnsiJnt fad ions within the patriot party began to subvert them. LJwd.-u_'l.. •·ornm;m• ~tateof ap:itation and unrest. The fwe euloreJs l•ot'Te h\· no l!leans ahnh dcr nfthe national guard in the West. the Provmciai :\ssembly. and diverse tionist. anJ it was not their a\·owed intention tu f ~..--on:lat.The Colonial Assembly, the municipality of Port-;~u-Prince.as well ,_,- <~rgumentthat the whites' treatment of Oge and the whole question uf politi as the Provincial Assembly of the West, had already sent requests to Jamaica o.:alequality for mulauoes and free blacks had contributed to the slave revolt for military aid; shipment of the food supplies stipulated in the concordat in the North, now seemed to be more singularly ominous here in the West and destined for the confederates at Croix-des-Bouquets was also blocked. and the South. :ZfJ Already, a contingent of the national guard had been sent to _.,'. Caradeux demanded as a condition for negotiatiq~with the mulattoes and Leogane in anticipation of a possible slave uprising. Some twenty-f1ve slaves ..,., free blacks that they support his project for independence. h was an obvious accused of stirring up the plantations around the area had been arrested and trap. and the mulattoes refused. thrown into prison. The slav~from the various pla~tationsorganized to de B\anchelande, whose weak and malleable personality in ]}t)litics was in mand their release. The municipality refused and, with the protec-tion of the deed among his most outstanding features as governor. fell prey to the national guard, _proceeded to execute the arrested s\aves.21Toward the end pressures and manipulations of the patriots and refused to sanction the ll of September, the Port-au-Prince authorities arbitrarily arrested and hanged September concordat. In the wake of the slave revolt sweeping the North, a few slaves nearly e,·ery day. n the Colonial Assembly had originally revoked its unconditional refusal to The whites had no alternative now but to come to tenns with the mulat accept mulatto rights. Now, infonned of what was happening in the West, toes on a provincewide basis. While the patriot factions in Port-au-Prince the assembly declared it would openly oppose the 15 May decree upon its were still maneuvering to subvert the September concordat. a commission arrival. Blanchelande issued a proclamation ordering all persons of color from Croix.des-Bouquets arrived to convince the municipality of the impor who had taken up anns to disperse, return to thier respective districts. and tance of respecting the agreement it had signed. The envoys brought back help defend the common cause by putting down insurgent slaves. He ended only a vicious and bloodthirsty reply. Caradeux. who had been violently op by reminding them of the respect and obedience they owed to the militia, the ,, posed to the concordat from the beginning, made another unsuccessful bid national guard, and other all-white law enfon:ing bodies. Jumecourt publicly to the mulattoes-acceptance of their demands in exchange for acceptance protested the proclamation, and Blanchelande, persuaded in the end that ,_,.. of independence. When the mulattoes sent a delegation to Port-au-Prince the maintenance of a colored armed corps may be a more effective means of requesting the food supplies promised them in the concordat. the soldiers. preventing generalized slave insurrection, later retracted the proclamation.17 ·-:.··- the "small" whites, and other city rabble, always ready to lynch and harass But the entire administration of the colony was now in shambles and its gov· ;,_ the mulattoes, rose up in the streets against them. They proposed that the emment politically bankrupt, making one inept decision after another. The ".:;· municipality hang them and send the others bullets in place of bread.:U The 'J~ civil commissioners, whose job was to restore order and a proper respect city was in a state of near-total anarchy . <>t..,, , for the laws of France, had not yet arrived. At this point power belonged to ·.-, Finally. on 17 October a meeting of the commune assembly was held at any group or party strong enough to seize it or, more pertinently, to obtain it '~ Port·au-Prince, and delegates were chosen to meet with the mulattoes to through political deceit and manipulation. •• work out a new agreement. On the nineteenth. representatives of the prov ~ By now the confederate army was nearly four thousand strong., not count· ince's fourteen parishes met with the confederates on the Damien plantation ing the white royalists and the several hundred Sui3.,es, whose tremendous near Croix-des-Bouquets. and after three days of ne!!otiations. both parties coumge in battle proved to be a precious mainstay of the rebel forces. 18 '!!f. signed a new treaty. All of the provisions of the ll September concordat '}' Already several parishes in the South had signed similar concordats with ,, were renewed. The local all-white police fon:es were to be dissolved im· - mediately, and a new militia fonned, irrespective of racial origins. Although the insurgent mulattoes of that province. The authorities in the West were all ' the more frightened as they received reports of the progress and devastation ,, new municipal elections would not be held until the following month. the of the slave revolt in the North that continued to spread at an alanning pace. ',' mulauoes and free blacks could send delegates to these bodies immediately, In the West, the slaves were becoming dangerously rebellious. Some had ;_:' and anned with full powers. The Provincial Assembly was to be dissolved ~. ,,'l • .I: . i ' I~\' !f,,.,ft.< 11,-J-;- •.i!t.ti•••n- .,J· ·h·· 11atuma\ ~uard.,·ornpt~~•·d •mk ol p•·r~•ms nf ,-.,Joi. l.,_.n• tht> 5ui.u.-s 'wre lmnalh· nturdne ''' :,,. t•nlllo·d: tm.tlh. tlte llliLtualh ~i:zned.tj!n•emenh W \,,\l ,[a,. 1\w "hit<'>'. mulattoe-s. free bl.Ieks. ;md the .Sw.,ws ,,[] ['.,rl-. •J fate. Instead of taking the Sui-Sses to Guatemala. when('e tbe mulattoes rould 1 that of armed resistance. ~At the same time, the situation in Port-au-Prince ' 'j J, possiblv have rescued them. the captain of the ship. under the pretext of had taken another turn. The date for the ratificatio11 of the concordat by I • bad weather. sailed to Jamaica. where he dumped them alon~the shore. this municipality had been set for 21 November. On that day the vote was ' The Jamaican govemment, wishing to unburden itself of a\1 rf'spnnsibility for taken. and by noon three of the four municipal sections had voted almost this unwonted human cargo. sent the .S!ti.sws back tole Cap. When thev ar unanimously in favor of ratification. This meant nl.'ar-total min for the patriot riverl. the auth()rities in Port-au-Prinr-e prupo~edto have them all sentf'nced faction. which sought only to subvert the concordat b\· whatever means or to death. Finally. the Colonial Assembly had them put m chains and left pretext it could find ..cl • l I:::(>I /(pr·olt.< 'CI J-;<1/ n,,. l/ulartur< '"',j tho• Fn·~/U,,, h I "'I On.-.· the 101~"'1s kno1.r1. a '\lW.ITd hrokP nut 111the ~trt>PI~bt•l"t't'n .1T ! nt1lnnw. th.- mubllu.-s h;u-{a• t•·d "ith considL·ruh\P •nod•·r,lllo" .twl,-,._ blad• mernb<:"r o! the conft"der 'iattvtJ.t! l;uurd "iw hatl jomed the <"•mfedt>T To iH kind .• md the qwtrrd rapid\~-tumeJ mto a ~tree\brawl. The mHrhlttw.Her• tlw l.) \lav decrPt• 1,ith that nf :.n ;:;,.ptemlwr to plat·<' l<';:':l.~btl\t"jnns .Hnved <}I] the ~pol.U!Tf'S\t>d :),·apin. ant\ look him dired\y to the munici '1<\11•IV•·r the puliticJl ~talu~ pal autfwrities. ,1[\ of this in <:ut\lravention of the treah- the <'itv had JUS\ .l~,..,·,nhlit~s.If tht' Sepkmber decree wa..; \11 fme~tallnv1\ di,.,,mler 111 the ratilied. \-t The mulatto representatives ~igoronslvprott·sterl tlwse urbitrarv ,·,.lull~b~-clm.m!!. nlf or post pun in!': the liberalization nf rii!ht~!in rnulal\oe,; and illegal procedures and provided proHf th.lt th.e black was. in fact. a free .1nd free blaek~llin1ilt'd .IS the l.S .\Ia\' decree wasl. it in faet produced the citizen. only to learn that he had already been tried summarilv by the mili "PPu~itedfen. In lhe presenl context. with the hard-wotl cune•mlat hro\..en tary and hanged from a lamp-po~1.·~'The mulattoes were furious_ and their .md the l5 \lav deeree removed. mulattoe~and free blacks .,.,.en• completely indignation read1ed the breaking point when they saw another of Praluto"s •lespniled of any legal protection over their civil right~;as to their own phy~l n1en approach the town hall in front of which theY were still gathered. They o:.Il security, the\' would have "to depend entirely upon them,;e\w,;. from this demanded of him an explanation !Or the travesty of justice that had just p<>int nn. it wa,; <~penwarfare. At Croix-des-Bouquets. where th.-v had re occurred: \:e lashed back with an arrogant, menacing reply and was shot tr<-'J.ted to reorganize their forces. one of their leaders. Chanbtte. is~ueda down ...\I> This was all the patriots needed to declare the concordat null and v<~llto arms. The tune was violent. f1lled with vengeance and ragf'. :\nvone void and to reopen armed aggre"sion against the mulattoes. Carndeux and "hu wavered or hf'"sitated to march in the defense of the1r calls<' was dee\J.red Praloto lost no time in advancing their troops toward the mulatto headquar ~,J,.,pectand guilty of treason. The proclamation called upon .11\compatriots ters. where they opened fire. The mulattoes were considerably outnumbered of color to gather arms. war munitions. and provisions. to unite and ral\v as most of them had already returned to the country~idefollowing tht· Octo under a common banner, and to annihilate the upholders of prejudice and ' 1 ber celebrations. Taken by surprise and overpowered by the whites. they i1wquality. who for ~olong had caused them so much suffering. " The-~·were !-:: were forced back into their quarters after two hours uf sustained but un to prepare for the siege of Port-au·Prince. I,," successful defense and made their retreat through the mountains toward FfJl!owing the shock of the 22 November incidents in Porh.tu-Prinee. the ' ' Croix-des-Bouquets that night. mulattoes and free blacks of Jacrnel. who had remained oil )!Ood terms with Next morning. however. fire broke out in several parts of the city .'iimuha tlw whites since the concordat. nuw began organizing them~elvesin ,umed II neously. and particularly in the affluent commercial districts. Within a few .],.fense. as well. whereupon the whites attacked and drove them uut of the ! " hours. the whole of Port-au-Prince was in a state of total chaos. Praloto and •:ity. In Leogane. the mulattoes and their royalist allies had already taken his gang of profiteers plundered and ransacked the homes of rich whites as ,,\·er control of the city"s government when Rigaud marched through from prete;~:l tlu~South to join with Bauvais and Pinchinat at Croix-des-Bouqu .. ts. the panic-stricken occupants hurriedly fled for their lives. On the ,' that the blacks might be accessory to the conflagration. they began indis Parallel to and simultaneous with these movements was that of Homaine i· criminately to murder black and mulatto women and children. and the few Riviere. a free black or griffe (offspring of a mulatto and a blaekl of Span aged or infirm who still remained in the cityY As the fire spread swiftly from ish' origin.ll He had orgamzed in armed rebellion a considerable number of one section of the city to another. a crowd of over eighty mulatto women ~lavesfrom the area surrounding Leogane and Jacmel. where insurrection I and children fled toward the shore, seeking shelter aboard the boats in the ·•'!· currents had already emerged on several plantations. It was. aceordin?: harbor. Praloto opened fire on them with cannons. and all would h~1veper hi nne l"Oil\emporar;.· account. on his own plantation Jt Trou Cofk in n ished were it not for the timely aid of a charitable intiividual who directed m•arly inac!·essiLie mountain retreat near lkog:me. that they Pstahlished \ them along another route.:lB Port-au-Prince had become one huge ;:.cene of th~umilitar:-· camp.u He appeared to hf" a shaman. His cult. however. wa,; horror and devastation. The fires lasted nearly forty-eight hours. and within ,\S dubious ;~sitwas bizarre. Having set up quarter.> in an abandonetl ehurch. the first twentv-four. all but four of the lucrative merchant houses along the h"' preached mass before a't inverted cross and. saber in hand. in,;tructed bay. rue des Capitaines. were consumed by flames. When it was over. two the slaves that God was blacli: and that the whites all had to lw killed.H thirds of the city had been completely destro~·edand the value in cbmaj!;eS He promised them their freedom. indeed. told them the king had alreadv and financial losses estimated at some 500 million livres. l'l fr,.ed them. hut that the masters refused to ; o"<'rt'-lill \1('\ lt'<'\t' Homam,..·lu-propht;lesse. ,·!aimed to lw in~pm·dh\' Ihe !luly :-:j)irit and ir1 o·otmp that he t·stablisbell near Jaemel."' ''' din~et•·ununumL·•rliun With tlw \'ir~m\lar\'. hi~!!:odnmther. who Jtbwered l'nder cover of the treaty. Homaine .md hr,; troops in faet cnntinuetlthetr Ill,. ,;.olicitatiun~in writ in,!!." 1-1 .. was. n•metlwlt>ss. married tu a rnu!attress ,!1\wersiv~activities \·irtuallv unopposed. ~rreadin!!msurredion throu~hiJUt .tnd wa~a .. Te'Spt>rtahle~father of two d11ldren. tilt' t·ount~·sidefrom one plantation to the next. They would ~ainprose .-\ sdf-st~le•lprophet who also pr•••--'lieed herh medi1·ine. he no doubt was lvtes by liht>rating those slaves detained in prison or condemned by their ~eenm the eyes uf many a ~laveto be endov.etl witlt somf' sort of super master» to chains, and bv threatening to kill. and sometimes even killing, natural power. Yet Ll1 all t)f the documentation surroundin~these events. those slaves who would remain loyal to their masters.'"' The white resi )!:enuiile African voodoo practices. unl~shis w.~re in some way peculiar to the raids on the plantations, the rebels had seized horses. mules. cows. and r:uhs in the Spanish colo111es. It is pos:sible that he adopted a shamani~tic whatever other work animals they could lay their ~andson. while sabotaging pretense to reinforr:e his intluence and augment his numbers. This. m any ~ugarmills and plantation equipment. Production had ceased: all commu 16 event, was the opinion of the ..:ivil commissioner Saint-Lt!ger. :\ml it is n~eationand transportation routes were blocked ofT. and the port do<:.ed. true. as a leader of slave resistance. his influence over his following was as In addition, the whites were required to send munitions, dothing. an(l food undisputed as that of any voodoo leader using the rallying powers of religion ~uppliesto Camp Bizoton, near Port-au-Prince. where Riguad and his army for political ends. As a free black. an homme de cou.leur fibre. however, he \\ere stationed. The city was helpless. and famine now began to take its tolL r:ertainly represented a far left-wing fringe that would eventually jeopardize The civil commissioners having flnally arrived at the end of November. the the credibility of his fellow confederates of Leogane and Jacmel, who had e1tizens ofi..eogane. despite the blacks. did manage to get a petition throu~h i formed an alliance with him, causing them later to break ofT their ties with to Saint-Leger with a desperate plea for aid. He transmitted the petition to ' ~·· ! Romaine. Whatever his personal moti~·es.the overall 1mpad of Romaine's the Provincial Assembly. which replied. adding derision to its habitual con I movement resulted in a total de.;tabilization of the slave population in this descension, that surely the commissioner's wisdom would provide him with region and. worse. in the arming and enrolling of slan•s in a war against the means which the Assembly lacked! 51 I their masters. ' Such was the Saint Domingue to which the civil commissioners, the offi l •' Since September, he and his band had terrorized the planters of the cial representatives of France and the National Assembly. were to restore ,, entire region between Leogane and Jacmel. Periodically descending from ~ornesemblance of order and tranquility. Stripped of all effective authorit~· their 'well-situated mountain retreat at Trou Coif!~they raided. pillaged, lly the colonial and provincial assemblies whieh jealouslv concentrated •,'· !.:. and ransacked the nearby plantations for additional provisions and recruits, power in their own hands. the commissioners were reduced to little more 1,.. 1,1 killed off the masters and other white·personnel, reminded the slaves on than titular ambassadors from the mother country. By the time they arrived, 1 the plantations that the king had freed them, and incited them, bv anned not only had insurgent slaves destroyed and taken control of most of the :!~ frJrce if necessary. to join their band, rapidly approaching several thousand )lorth. the concordats had been broken, Port-au-Prince reduced to ashes. in number.'' A number of devastating attacks we~launt"hed against the and the struggle of the mulattoes and free blacks for political equality pushed city of Jacmel itself, one of these reportedly involvmg some thirteen thou fnrward into open warfare, in which slaves in the West and South were now sand. as Romau1e and his army of slaves joined forces with the mulattoes partinpating, as well. And so with no effectual opposition, Romaine and his 1 \ "ho had heen driven out of there by force earlier in November. H Homaine allit>s maintameO control of Leogane and the surrounding region until the I and his trwps. continually increasing in numbers and now allil"d. as well. following ~pring,during which time the slaves eontinued to desert in alann with the mulatto and free-!Jlaek confederates of Leo~ane.seized control of ing numbers. By February, not a single white was left on the plantations in I t this city and the outlying areas under its jurisdiction. Villars. a m!;"mher of the <~rl"a.\~ the royalist faction. was named mavor. and on ;31 December a peace treaty ' was signed with the whites who. having already suffered tremt>ndous losses. In the South. the struggle of the oml {'Ould no longer sustain even minimal re~istance.Bv virtue •1f thrs treatv. nrdinated and integrallv linked with I hat of their eotnpatriots in the rest of \\Tole nne L~ogam•resident. ~Wt.>have recogni;r:ed \Romaine] J~cmnmander the cohmv from the vrrv !";trly lw)!innim:s. m \788-89. of the mo\·em,.nt : 1, • til~ \ t:H \ !Uilj R"1vh~of I ?91 Tlw liHiuttoe.< f/f\d Frr•p Hinch ,., ,lllt-1 ,·our~e.\Yith the news of the first concordat at Croi~-des-Bouquels .\,LH' purticipation 111 ib<~wvolt. Howe\·er. if the tranquility of t\w ~bvp-. 111 :::epternher. the mulattoes and free blacks of le'! Ca~esand Tl)rbeck. in ill the ~outhand \\'t·,;t dcrwnded upon the peaceable acct__•,;o:ion tn pnlitical I he :3outh. demanded of the municipal authorities a similar trcatv to imple ,·qn,dih· of the mulattne" ;mel free blacks. it was only to the e.,tent that. mt:n\ ;md >"afeguard the nghts accorded them bv the 15 ,\lav decree: in the -hnu\d they not ,,btain cJvil <"qualitv through negotiation. the <"volution "f event of a refusal thev threatened to provoke a ,general slave insurrection.""l dw .;\ru,!!~lcsrna~well turn mto open warfare. This would then provi,\e tht> Fe:.~ringa repetition of the troubles that beset the West. the two nmnici ,·umlitions that were lacking for the slaves in the 'South and \\'est to prn palities acquiesced, and a number of others followed :mit. By November, llwtc lhetr own aims. And in this sense. the mulattoes were mistaken {as the Pro\·incial Assembly of the ~outhhad accepted a provincewide concor ,.\·t·nts eventually proved) if they believed they could ultimately manipulate dat modeled on the one in the West. a concordat which for the whites was the ,;\ave-, as marionettes in an increasingly complex wt:b of power stnJg:gles. merely a temporary agreement signed out 0f fear, and one that they had Earlier 10 1790. the mulattoes had feared that slave enrnl\ment durin)!; few intentions of keeping.u They needed a mere pretext to break it, and the Oge rebellion would jeopardize their movement for civil rights and per when. as m the West, a quarrel broke out between a white and a mulatto in haps even permit white colonists to cast emmicipationist aspersions upon les Cayes. the whites recummenced their traditional hostilities and aggres t\wm; thus they~_fu::;edslave support. Now. however. with rampant slave sion against the mulattoes. forcing them to leave the city. They retreated en Ln,..urrection ravaging the :"'orth and their own struggle pushed incessantlv masse to the Prou plantation, owned by a free mulatto. where they formed Inward civil warfare. thev actively engaged rebellious slaves into tht>ir own a camp in the mountainous region behind the Plaine-du-Fond. From there ranks. But if these slaves fought alongside the mulattoes and free blacks. it they marched on to Saint Louis, joined with the mulattoes and free blacks 1,·as in many cases with hopes and unarticulated aims of their own. Romaine of Cavaillon and Saint Louis d'Aquin. disarmed the whites, and took over Riviere notwithstanding. no indigenous sla,·e leaders had yet emerged from the city Of Saint Louis. ;s Here they learned of the November events at Port the masses to coordinate and organize, as they did in the North. their in ~: au-Prince and of the massacres committed by Praloto and his party against dependent struggle for emancipation. In the West, slave participation had their somrades of colo~.At Aquin. Rigaud's brother issued a caH to arms. begun with the incorpation of the,'-----Cr_oix-des-Bouquetsmaroons. who had Like the proclamation of Chanlatte in the West, it called for vengeance. In •umed themselves and deserted their plantations in July just prior to the spite of the recent concordat. there was no security to be founrl anywhere. outbreak of slave insurrection in the North. ln August. they wert" joined The proclamation urged mulattoes and free blacks to leave the cities and, at by a group of slaves who had deserted the white planters. by whom they the least sign of aggression, to ann and organize themselves. to kill. pillage, ' had been armed to tight the mulattoes. These slaves, collectivelv known as and bum if need be. They must fl.y in aid to the cause of their slaughtered the Suisse.~and numbering a few hundred. were the first to have joined the brothers.,.., confederate ranks and. with goals of their own in mind. to fight a common If anything, hostilities between the free coloreds and the whites in the adversary. In general. however, throughout the summer and early faiL most South tended to assume a degree of rapacity that was at least partially of the slaves in the West and the South, although agitated, restless. and att:enuat~riin the West by the counterbalancing inAuence of wealthy conser often dangerously insubordinate. did not flock in great numbers to join the vative whites, allied in convenience with the free coloreds against patriot mulauoes and free blacks. but we~reticem.3.nd chose. for the monwnt. to machinations. In the South, as Robert Stein has shown, the relative absence remain on the plantations. And given i~treatment meted out to the Suisses. of a large class of wealthy white planters precluded the possibility of an their reticence wa.; well placed. However, the November events in Port-au~ ~ffranchi-royalistalliance as had been helpful in the West in bringing about Prince had dramatically accelerated the mulatto and free-black movement the concordats. Lacking this "'moderating"" grand blanc element. then. the in both the West and the South. and had pushed the situation into openly South witnessed the struggles between two relatively equal groups in which declared warfare. It was under these circumstances that slaves increasingly massacres. lynchings, and acts •tuarters anJ ~le;.t\the•rhdong1n~s. or ~~~ize and cut to pie('t'o; the whip of ltllilattoes and free blacks. they repnrte1lh· herded score~of mulattoes onto 1 the commamleur. who was to convince the other ~lun:sthey must follow. If \waL<;mfe,;tc.l with ~mal\pox.under the nefarious pretext of sheltering them tht.> commandeur refused. he was shot.~These tact•es were nut necessarily .1~ainstthese armed slaves who would otherwise massacre them because of ~ystemal•c.nor were they necessarily prarticed hy al! mulattoes and free t\w atrocities tlw mulattoes had commilted. (,() blacks in every parish. But there is ample evidence of these uccurences in The decision of the whites to arm their slaves was a perilous one that the correspo11dence and vfficia\ reports, as well as in declarations made by they would '~omt.>to regret. In colonia) times. the institution of slavery was slaves themselves. to conclude that they were far from uncommon. reinforced by the rule of white supremacy and the existence of an intermedi- The reactions of the ,;laves witnessing these events were mixe1l. In the .ny caste of mulattoes and free blacks who. because of their racial origins. first place. these men were not their own leader'!';. but they were promis "·ere to remain inferit)r in ~latusand serve as an immutable barrier between ing them their freedom, and many a slave no doubt genuinely seized the the slave and the white master. Now. in the midst of revolution, that bar opportunity to join the ranks of the confederate army where. as equals in rier had rapidly and ,•iolently broken down. One colonist. writing from les arms. they took as an accomplished fact the freedom they were promised. Cayes earlier in July 1791. bad foreseen this eventuality: .. his feared that For other slaves. as in the case of Andre, commandeur on one of the Laborde the slaves. seeing that the mulattoes and free blacks will have gained [their estates near les Cayes in the South, attachment to the master cost them their rights} by insurrection will themselves come to regard insurrection not only lives. Andre belonged to the third and most recently established of the three as the means by which to be freed of slavery, but as the most sacred of their Laborde plantations. He was forty, a creole slave. and second commandeur duties.""' Here the argument of averting slave insurrection was expressed on this plantation. formed in 1775 when the owner purchased the creolized again, this time bv a white colonist apprehending the dangers of acquiesc· 9 atelier from the Champigny estate to which Andre belonged.:. As was so ing in the free coloreds" demands for equality, especially as those demands often the case. one of the inRuential factors determining whether the slaves were lakin~the fmm of open rebellion. By now. the white planters of the would rebel or remain loyal seems, here again. to have hinged on the pivotal South had little choi~:e.and to fight the mulattoes and free blacks they had role of the commandeur and his relalionship to the slaves in his charge.w only their slaves. On 25 December, a free day for the slaves and one on In this case, however, the scales were tipped toward the side of the master. which marronage habitually plagued the masters, the Provincial Assembly When a brigade of mulattoes and free blacks came and threatened to kill the approved a decree from the towns of Torbeck and les Caves to arm one Laborde commandeur if he did not unite with them to tum the slaves to re tenth of their slaves to defend the whites and fight the mulattoes and free volt, he told them they were all vile brigands and that he would never follow blacks.f>R Also to be fought were rebel slaves who bad already deserted their them: nothing could shake the loyalty he felt toward the whites. Moreover. plantations to join the mulalto camps in the mountains when the November he had a master and, even though he did not know him. would nevertheless truce was broken in I he South. By the end of December. the slaves on the remain faithful. Finally, he told them they need not bother killing him. then plantations between the Grande and the Sa\ee rivers had risen. and in less removed a revolver from under his vest, placed it to his head. and shot him than two months. slave participation throughout that province became a gen 61 !:>elf. The manager. Delelocque, wrote of Andre in a leiter to Laborde in eralized occurence. From Cavaillon, across the Plaine-du-Fond. to Tiburon January: "'This slave is generally regretted. and you have lost a \"ery va-luable and Cap Dame-Marie at the western extremity of the province. as well as subject. The province wants to free his family. "1>2 Following these 1m~idents. around Jetemie and Petit Trou. slaves were abandoning the plantation to join slaves from all three of Laborde's plantations offered to join the whites to mulattoes and free b\a('ks in anns against a common enemy."" 63 fight the mulattoes. So slaves in the South were now fighting each other in enemy camps. and Horrible atrocities were committed on both sides. The whites cut off the at the same time were ac'luiring valuable military skills and political expen heads of their mulatto prisoners and sent them to the Provincial Assembly; ence. Here was a situation in which slaves were f'ither freed or promised mulattoes caught with arms in hand were tortured and even burned alive ... ' their freedom by others to ht..-lpwage an armerl -,.truggle that. in either case. The mulattoes reta1iated in kind."·; The Provincial As!:>emhly and the mu. ' i I 1:\-.1-\ R~voillofii91 \ ,-!i,[ nut .lim at their own liberation.. hut rather more ~i.!!.niticantlveaust> 'iO kill ··ach other. It was •mly a matter of time hdOr~·they \\flt;ltl break ...,.ith l10oth sale~to lead an independent struggle. or~;mizt'din tl1t:ir own inlere,;ts. "'l the1r uwn terms. anJ directed bv their nwn popular leadt•t-s. In this. the PART THREE ~I;Jn•,;uf the P\aine-du-F'ond in the area around les Cavt•s and Torb~ckhad t~tkenthe lead. The South J m by hor«es. making them eat their own excrt>ments lt was not until 1784. and again in 1785. one centur;• later. that the num and drink their urine. Those slaws who dared to nm away faced ha1·ing •t