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Books on the Caribbean
Hubert Cole. Christophe: King of Haiti. New
York: The Viking Press, 1967.
C.L.R. James.
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
(1938)
Edourad Gissant.
Caribbean Doscourse (2004)
/ Barbara Harlow.
Resistance Literature (1987)
Josaphat B. Kubayanda.
The Poet's Africa: Africanness in the Poetry of Nicolas Guillen and Aime
Cesaire
(1990)
Paul Laraque and Jack Hirschman.
Open
Gate An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry
(2001)
David P. Geggus, ed.
The Impact of the
Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World.
University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
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The
Paradoxes of Liberation
Toussaint’s Isle
of Hispaniola
By J. Brown, M.D. Upon the occasion of Toussaint’s
elevation to the government for life many promotions were made
by his order of those who had been his favorite officers or his
warmest partisans. The
chief of brigade, Henry Christophe, whose advancement from the
ranks had been the consequence of merit alone, and whose modesty
at this time was such that he suffered himself to be solicited
by his friends to accept the grade of a general officer, was
made commander of the North, and sent to take the command at
Cape Francois.
The pure blacks were those most favored
with promotion in the army, and after them came the class of
mulattoes, while the place of acting as secretaries and business
agents to the different black chiefs was an object within the
attainment of the whites.
The seat of government was alternately at
Port au prince and cape Francois, according as either of those
towns happened to afford a temporary sojourn to Toussaint, whose
palaces in these places were fitted up in a style of the utmost
sumptuousness.
The army was divided into three divisions.
The first was called that of the North, and placed under the
command of Gen. Moyse, who held his head quarters at cape
Francois: the second was commanded by Dessalines, and was in
occupation of the South; and the third was stationed in the
eastern or Spanish part of the island, and was commanded by the
mulatto general Clervaux, who had served in the war against
Rigaud, and whom Toussaint treated with an outward appearance of
confidence, but inwardly distrusted.
Toussaint’s two favorite officers were
Moyse and Dessalines, whom he had appointed inspectors general
of agriculture within the respective districts under their
command. These two chiefs, of an ardent and hasty temperament by
nature, were in their intercourse and conduct tyrannical and
cruel in the extreme..
Dessalines in particular possessed the
temper of a sullen and ferocious savage, and he did by physical
violence what Toussaint effected by moral influence alone. He
was severe and inexorable to his soldiers, and in his rounds of
duty upon the plantations he was lavish of chastisements, which
he inflicted by the blows of a cane upon the heads of the
Negroes. If the chief laborer among a gang of Negroes excused
himself to Dessalines for the neglected condition of the field
which had been placed under his care, by ascribing it to the
general idleness of those under his control, he was immediately
ordered to designate one of the Negroes, to be hung as an
example to the rest.
But if any one was particularized as
mutinous, or habitually idle, he was condemned by this unfeeling
chieftain to be buried alive, and all his fellow laborers were
commanded to be present, in order to witness the sufferings of
the victim. “One can easily conceive,” says Lacroix, “that
by means like these ten of the new citizens who were nominally
free, but subjected to such inexorable authority as that of Gen.
Dessalines, might be made to do more work, and add more to
agriculture than twenty of the same individuals when slaves, as
in former times.”
Toussaint, whose minutest measures were
directed to his own aggrandizement, and who knew how to make
even the violence and ferocity of those under his command to
contribute to the success of his administration, made a grant to
Dessalines of thirty-two sugar plantations, to be held on a
yearly rent; and in the hands of this tyrannical chief they were
forced forward so as to produce a yearly income of a hundred
thousands francs each. Notwithstanding their immense
expenditures in building for themselves residences, and in
purchasing appointments and equipage on a scale of the utmost
sumptuousness, these black chiefs, who were engaged as farmers
general, needed but two or three years to become the richest
private individuals in the world.
Moyse Defies Toussaint
Whether Gen. Moyse was less cruel than
Dessalines, or the blacks of the north were less submissive to
labor than those of the other parts of the island, the produce
of that region was much less under his authority than that of
the South under the stern rule of his associate chief. Toussaint
saw this unproductiveness in the most fertile territory of his
government, and he reproached his nephew Gen Moyse, for his
negligence in agriculture.
The reply of Gen. Moyse manifests his
character and wishes: “Whatever my aged uncle may do, I cannot
yet resolve to become the executioner of my race. It is always
in the name of France that your reprimands are given, but to
labor for France is to labor the interests of whites, and I
shall never love them until they give me back the eye I have
lost in battle.”
A company of merchants at this time offered
Moyse twenty thousand dollars a month as a rent for the
plantation which he had at his disposal. Toussaint, dissatisfied
to see these speculators about to deprive his nephew of such an
immense source of wealth, threatened him with his displeasure if
he persevered. Moyse, grown presumptuous from long prosperity,
and feeling himself safe, from his alliance in blood and color
with the general-in-chief, did not suspend his negotiations for
this menace of his uncle, and he drew upon himself a feeling of
indignant suspicion in consequence.
While this distrust and irritation were
rankling in the bosom of Toussaint, the Negroes of the North,
whom long license had given a hatred of labor, began to manifest
an appearance of insubordination. They collected in numbers at
Limbé, and took possession of the country, cutting the throats
of the overseers who had been appointed to superintend their
labors, and of other whites who were so unfortunate as to fall
into their power.
The insurrection soon spread to Cape
Francois, and was followed by the murder of three hundred whites
who were inhabitants of that town: but as the revolt was not
extensive, and had arisen rather from mere lawlessness and
dislike to labor than from causes that were more general in
their agency, it was readily checked by the presence of
Toussaint, at whose approach the rebels fled in terror to their
different employments.
They excused themselves for their crime, by
declaring that they had taken arms to save themselves from
slavery to the whites, to whom their chiefs, Christophe and
Dessalines, had delivered them against the wishes of Gen. Moyse,
who had cooperated with them in their enterprise. Toussaint was
easy to believe in the existence among his race at this time of
a spirit of distrust directed toward the whites, when rumors
were spreading from Europe that the peace then existing in that
quarter was about to be expended in an attempt to subdue the
blacks of St. Domingo.
But he had already become estranged from
the nephew, and he was not averse to listen to complaints
against him; particularly when he was charged with a design to
disturb the tranquility of the island by putting himself at the
head of a movement thought to have an ambitious tendency, though
it was but an effort to escape from labor and engage in scenes
of disorder and pillage. Gen. Moyse was delivered over to a
court martial, and he was almost immediately condemned to be
shot for negligence of his duty.
Toussaint thought by sacrifice of his
relative to prove to France the inflexibility of his mind, and
his solicitude to protect its interests in the island from all
disorders incident to its new condition. For this end, as well
as to make a display of his power over the blacks, he went from
place to place to hold solemn trials of those accused of
participation in the late disorder. All these were conducted in
such a way as to give publicity to his justice, and make
terrible examples of punishment, to overawe the survivors.
At the towns of Cape Francois, Fort
Dauphin, and Limbé he assembled the whole population, and the
troops in garrison were ordered under arms. Those who had been
agents or accomplices in the late transaction were already known
to him, and he ordered out one by one those who had been
selected as objects of his justice, and commanded that they
should be shot in his presence.
The victims he had designated did not
hazard a murmur. After bowing submissively to their dreaded
chief, they joined hands and marched out with contrition and
sadness to meet the death that was prepared for them. Those very
Negroes who had so lately dared every resistance from their
enemies, and whose fierceness was so incontrollable when aroused
in their work of insurrection, now submitted themselves to be
decimated and delivered over to summary death by a single man
who stood there before them unarmed.
A being of this tremendous moral energy was
not to be subjected to the interests of France by the mere
employment of a succession of commissioners and government
agents, designed to hold his usurpations in salutary control. He
knew better than others how far his real authority extended, and
he was not to be driven from the absolute and despotic command
of two hundred thousand blacks by labored proclamations, and the
machinery of a policy the greatest weapon of which was the pen.
Bonaparte’s Humiliation of Toussaint
Bonaparte had never condescended to answer
any of Toussaint’s letters to him, one of which bore for its
superscription, “the first of black to the first of whites.”
This stubborn silence of the First Consul affected him deeply.
He was humiliated at the neglect, as well as fearful that this
prolonged silence was ominous of evil consequences to himself.
He has even been known to shed tears when
discoursing upon a subject so near his heart. “Bonaparte is
wrong,” he would exclaim, “not to write to me. He must have
listened to my enemies, for unless he had he would not thus
refuse me his consideration—me who have rendered more service
to France than any other general. The Spanish and English
governments treat with more respect those generals who have
distinguished themselves by services of the first order.”
The self-estimation of Toussaint had
increased with his greatness, and this circumstance augmented
his vexation whenever he was treated without due consideration
by those whose official standing he valued. He was now less
attentive to the mere drudgery of cabinet labor, and he often
passed to his secretaries documents of a public character which
he had received, saying to them, “it is not worth my
trouble—read it yourselves.”
In the midst of one of his drawing room
circles at port au prince, when he recognized upon a letter
which was brought to him the seal of the minister of marine, he
cast it aside without reading it, saying in a sarcastic tone to
those with whom he was engaged in conversation, “go on—that
is nothing—minister—valet!”
While his pretensions were thus exalted he
watched with a feverish anxiety the political horizon of Europe,
and he found little in the aspect of things calculated to soothe
him into peace. His fears had been awakened for the permanence
of his power by the occurrence of the [P]eace of Amiens, which
had given tranquility to France, and allowed leisure to the
powerful genius who then guided her destiny to turn his thoughts
to the possessions of France in the West Indies.
Public discussions upon colonial interests
came next to disquiet him; and among the rest the report of the
counselor of state, Thibaudeau, which recommended the
maintenance of slavery in Martinique and Guadeloupe, and
asserted, to the terror of Toussaint, that the adoption of
strong measures would subdue every thing to France in St.
Domingo.
Toussaint had sufficient forecast to
perceive the approach of that storm which was slowly and
secretly gathering to overwhelm him, and he was not idle in
commencing his preparations to save himself from its fury. On
the 18th of December, 1800, a proclamation was
issued, apparently to calm the public mind and to recommend
submission in all things to whatever might be the will of
France; bit it contained a closing paragraph which seemed to
breather another spirit, in an appeal to the soldiers under his
command, which manifested that if war should be decided on by
the mother country to subdue the colony, the indomitable soul of
Toussaint would do everything to make it perpetual.
“A well taught child,” argues this
subtle casuist,” will always preserve submission and obedience
toward his parent; but in case that parent becomes so unnatural
as to meditate the destruction of the child, the latter should
place its vengeance in the dispensations of heaven. If I am to
die I will die as a brave soldier as a man of honor. I fear
nobody.”
In order to sustain his conscious
usurpations against the attempts of France, whose government he
had so often insulted and even braved in defiance, Toussaint had
for some time been engaged in seeking the support of some other
power to sustain him in those exigencies which his political
sagacity taught him were threatening in the future. He had
already signed a treaty with Gen. Nugent, the governor of
Jamaica, which was an alliance offensive and defensive, for the
support of Toussaint’s government against all attacks made
against it, either by foreign or domestic enemies; and these
stipulations were compensated to the English governor by the
grant of superior privileges to the commerce of Great Britain
over all other nations.
But just as these negotiations were about
to be closed, and a powerful neighbor about to be secured as an
ally of the black chief, the tidings of the [P]eace of Amiens
came to annihilate all the hopes of the latter, so far as
regarded the support of the English. The English governor
requested Toussaint’s emissaries, who had been residing in
Jamaica for two months, to quit that island as soon as possible,
and on his part he was equally expeditious in recalling his
agent who had been at cape Francois.
Toussaint was enraged at this sudden change
of humor on the part of his late ally, and he accused the
English governor of violating his word, and perfidiously
betraying him to his enemies in France. Besides this, his regret
was as great as his indignation at the unsuccessful termination
of an overture which had still farther compromised his fidelity
to the French republic.
An Interview with Toussaint
A distinguished Creole, who had an
interview with him at this time to procure a passport to France,
has given an account of the manner in which his request was
received by Toussaint. He ran immediately to all the doors of
the apartment, to make sure that no listener could be within
reach of his voice, and then returning and fixing his eyes in a
long and anxious gaze upon the Frenchman he at length addressed
him, and drew forth the following colloquy: “Wherefore do you
wish to depart? I love and respect you.
“Because,” was the reply, “I am a
white man, and I witnessed last night the inauspicious
irritability of a black chief, who has all power in his hands,
and because for some time past you have been no longer the
protector of whites, as you have already ordered the
transportation of many of them solely for rejoicing at the
expected arrival of European forces at St. Domingo.”
Toussaint answered quickly—“Yes, but
they were imprudent—they were foolish to rejoice at such a
prospect, when it is every where known that this expedition is
intended to destroy me—to destroy the whites of the
island—to destroy the colony itself. They accuse me in France
of seeking to become independent, and they are taking arms
against me—against me, who rejected the propositions of Gen.
Maitland, the officer who promised to secure my independence by
the powerful protection of Great Britain; and besides this, I
ever refused to listen to those suggestions which Sonthonax
continued without ceasing to make to me.
“Since you wish to go to France you have
my consent, but let your voyage be made useful to the colony. I
will send letters by you to the First Consul. And pray him to
listen to your advice. Let him understand Toussaint; tell him of
the prosperous condition of the colony, and of my labors in its
restoration; by which I wished to be judged. Twenty times have I
written to Bonaparte to request him to send civil commissioners
to investigate the condition of the colony, and concert with me
measures to secure its future prosperity.
“I have besought him to send out the
ancient planters and all the whites of the island who are now
abroad, in order that the ancient order of things may be fully
restored and a new administration constructed. All this is I
have written, and he has never deigned to answer me. All at once
he profits by a moment of peace—of the occurrence of which he
has not condescended to inform me, but for the tidings of which
I am indebted to the English channels—to direct against me a
formidable expedition, the ranks of which are crowded with my
personal enemies—those dangerous men of whom I have purged the
colony.
“More than this—he refuses me my
children, and seems desirous to make them hostages, as if I had
not already given instances enough of my fidelity to France.
“Prepare yourself to set out immediately,
for time presses. Return to me within twenty-four hours, and my
dispatches will be prepared; you shall read them in my presence,
and they will serve you instead of instructions. I fervently
hope that both you and these dispatches may arrive in time to
change the determinations of the First Consul, and make him
comprehend that in losing me he will lose the obedience of all
the blacks—that he will not only lose St. Domingo but all the
West India colonies: for if Bonaparte is the first man in
France, Toussaint Louverture is the first man in the Archipelago
of the Antilles.”
After a moment’s pause he continued, in a
tone of firmness, “I am about entering into an arrangement
with the American and English merchants to procure for myself a
force of twenty thousand blacks from Africa; but I have no other
end in the measure than to make them soldiers of France. I know
the perfidy of the English, and I feel no gratitude toward them
for the information they have sent me of the intended expedition
against St. Domingo. I never believe them—never will I arm
myself in league with them.
“I keep myself armed for the single
purpose of preserving the liberty of my race—a liberty which
France has already recognized and she has no longer the right to
make us slaves again. Our liberty no longer rests with her—it
is our—sand we will defend it or perish.” Having received
his dispatches the Frenchman hastened to depart; but he was
shipwrecked and all his papers lost, and his mission availed
nothing in allaying the storm of war that was now gathering
thick and menacing, to overwhelm the exorbitant power of
Toussaint.
From the moment when the [T]reaty of Amiens
had given peace to France, and thrown upon the hands of the
First Consul all the armies of the republic, so unfitted by a
long course of conquest and military disorder for the restraints
of civil society, the ports and dockyards of France became
filled with bustle and activity, in making preparations for an
armament, the destination of which was far from being doubtful.
Bonaparte Makes Preparations
Not to mention the distrustful estimation
in which Bonaparte held the troops of Moreau, whose removal out
of the way of his ambition he deemed so necessary to the safety
of his power, the First Consul, every where successful in his
operations for the aggrandizement of France among her neighbors
of Europe, looked upon the rich colony of St. Domingo, under the
supreme rule of a revolted slave, as a blemish upon the fair
picture of his greatness which was to be removed at every cost.
That he felt jealous of Toussaint is
contradicted by every proud quality of his nature, as well as by
every evidence of his own power and greatness found in such
abundance around him. He regarded St. Domingo as a valuable
heritage of France, wrestled for a time from her possession by a
successful rebellion, but an appendage of her dominions which it
was his duty as well as glory to restore to its ancient
condition.
So far from dreading the utmost efforts
which Toussaint could put forth against him, he committed the
error in policy of undervaluing the genius and resources of this
Negro chieftain. He calculated his arrangements from assumptions
which he derived from the stores of his own energy and adapted
them rather to the resources of his own genius than to the more
mediocre talents of those to whose conduct he was about to
entrust the expedition.
He superintended the details of every
preparation; and working in his cabinet with the former
functionaries of St. Domingo, he arranged every thing that was
deemed necessary to give success to the enterprise. He
prescribed the minutest movements of the expedition with the
bold confidence of a general accustomed to command the elements
and master fortune. The experienced admiral who was then
minister of marine was not even consulted to give directions
upon the nautical details of the expedition—and it was only
required of him to copy the instructions which had already
received the signature of the First Consul.
All those who were interested in the colony
were filled with exultation at the measure; their enthusiasm
being founded upon a misguided knowledge of the difficulties in
the way of final success. All thought the black such at that
moment as they had been when a horde of insurgent slaves,
without reflecting that ten years of revolution had been to them
ten centuries of civil existence. It was not in vain that the
chief who now ruled their destiny had been engaged for years in
the labors of public policy—that he had matured his natural
cunning by long study in the school of worldly experience; for
he fully understood his peculiar situation, and knew that he had
more to dread the consequences of peace than the chances of war.
In calculating upon an easy conquest of the
island the French calculated aright, for the resources of
Toussaint were not sufficient to withstand so formidable an
armament; but when they thought their conquest would be durable,
and that Negroes who had roamed so long in wildness and
unchecked license could be made to return in easy subjection to
their former labors, they committed an error that was fatal.
The negotiations carried on between the
cabinet of St. Cloud and the other powers of Europe had already
noised abroad the object of the expedition, the preparations for
which were filling so many ports of France with bustle and
activity; and this intelligence produced a lively sensation in
the ranks of the amis des noirs, whose opinions, though
less active than formerly, were still in existence and
controlling the conduct of many; and this had its agency in
animating the hopes of Toussaint, who still hoped to avert by
some unknown means the disasters that were now threatening his
government.
Leclerc’s Fleet Sails for St. Domingo
When every thing was in readiness the
fleets, proceeding from the ports of Brest, L’Orient, and
Rochefort made their rendezvous in the Gulf of Gascony, and the
vessels of the expedition were found to consist of twenty-six
ships of war and more than the same number of transports. The
land forces amounted to twenty-five thousand men, all well
furnished for the service upon which they were about to embark,
and terrible for their numbers alone, but still more terrible in
the eyes of their enemies from their being the same legions who
had returned in triumph from the Rhine, the Alps, and the Nile.
Gen Leclerc, the brother-in-law of the
First Consul, had been appointed commander-in-chief, and he was
assisted in the duties of his command by a host of generals
whose bravery, military science or experiences within the
tropics were expected to give effectiveness to the expedition.
One division of the army was under the orders of Gen. Rochambeau,
a wealthy proprietor of St. Domingo, whose acquaintance with the
country and long military service in the West Indies it was
deemed would furnish an immensity of resources in the military
operations of the armament.
The fleet was placed under the orders of
Adm. Villaret Joyeuse, who had served in the armies of the king
before the epoch of the revolution. In order to participate in
the triumphs which were to follow, Madame Leclerc was urged
aboard the vessel of her husband, and dispatched with the
forces.
This formidable armament sailed from France
on the 14th of December, 1801, and arrived at the Bay
of Samana, in the eastern extremity of St. Domingo on the 28th
of the following month. Toussaint was soon informed by his
lookouts of its arrival, and he came at full speed to
reconnoiter it from the heights around the shore.
He had never before seen so vast a fleet,
and he was overwhelmed with anxiety and consternation at the
tremendous preparations which France had made to avenge herself
for his daring assumptions of power against her will. In his
momentary discouragement he abandoned himself to despair, and
exclaimed to those around him, “We must perish—all France
has come to St. Domingo. They have been deceived, and they come
here for vengeance, and to reduce us to servitude.”
He did not, however, abandon all hope in
his terror and calmly await the blow which was to crush him at
once; but such a vast disproportion as that which he saw between
his own feeble resources and the immense armament and veteran
troops of his enemies, depressed his energies and threw into his
movements an uncertainty and irresolution which was evident to
all. He temporized and held himself in long suspense before his
usual decisiveness of character returned to him.
His forces during this time, instead of
being concentrated on those points which were most exposed, were
left scattered over the island in their various posts, and his
generals received no instructions from their chief to prepare
themselves for an open and simultaneous resistance. The
expedition of Leclerc had been fitted out with such a profusion
of means of warfare that nothing which Toussaint could array
against it seemed capable of resisting it for a moment.
The black army of St. Domingo consisted of
twenty thousand men, among whom there was a feeble remnant of
two hundred and fifty whites—the sole survivors of numerous
armies of their countrymen—and Toussaint had kept them
organized in his ranks as if the climate upon European troops.
Source: J.
Brown, M.D. The History and
Present Condition of St. Domingo. Philadelphia: Marshall and Co.,
1837.
Vol. I and
Vol. 2 |
