Read Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution Online
Authors: Laurent Dubois
a plan, which he had put forth to the Colonial Ministry in the 1780s, by
which rights would be granted only to “quadroons” who were born of legit-
imate parents and could claim at least two generations of freedom behind
them. In a separate meeting Ogé presented a bolder plan both for the
granting of rights to free-coloreds and for the gradual abolition of slavery, declaring that it was the only way to prevent a revolt among the slaves.
Having received nothing concrete from the Club Massiac, Raimond and
Ogé joined a group of free-colored activists called the Société des Colons
Américains. The name was significant, emphasizing that the free people
of color were American colonists, just as the whites were. They eventu-
ally allied themselves with the abolitionists of the Société des Amis des
Noirs. Within a few months Brissot and Grégoire had joined this new bat-
tle over the meaning and universality of citizenship. The alliance gave new
energy to the abolitionists and helped to radicalize the demands of the
free-coloreds. The
cahier des doléances
presented to the National Assembly by the Société des Colons Américains demanded “equality for all non-
whites and freedom for mulatto slaves.”44
The planter-merchant lobby, united on the question of slavery, was less
so when it came to the rights of free people of color. A minority of planters, such as the marquis de Rouvray, believed that they should be granted political rights; in fact he had earlier proposed that they be admitted to as-
semblies in Saint-Domingue through white proxies. Another planter noted
that the demand of the free people of color was clearly based on reason
and humanity and should not be refused. “Let us avoid the arrogance and
rigidity that destroyed the French aristocracy,” he warned, which had “re-
fused to give up its coat” and consequently lost everything. Many among
the merchants, “who cared above all about the color of sugar,” were sympa-
thetic to the demands emanating from a group of plantation owners who
contributed to the commerce that enriched French ports. Free-coloreds in
Bordeaux organized demonstrations in September 1789 in favor of the de-
mand for political rights, and were received well by many in the town. A
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club of merchants and planters formed in La Rochelle, which had tight
links with the Club Massiac, wrote in November 1789 that it seemed wise
to accept the “natural right” of free-coloreds to political representation.45
Such support, and the positive response to the free people of color in
the National Assembly, gave Raimond and Ogé hope. Many in Paris were
receptive to their demands, which were a clear application of the univer-
salism that had found expression in the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Although there were many limits placed on citizenship during the early
years of the Revolution (women, servants, and many poorer men could
not vote), the justification for such exclusions—that only those who were
financially independent could be politically independent as voters and rep-
resentatives—could not be applied to the educated and wealthy free men
of color petitioning in Paris. The only justification for excluding them
was race. For many thinkers influenced by Enlightenment universalism
and revolutionary egalitarianism, the “aristocracy of the skin” that the
planters were defending was a clear violation of everything the Revolution
stood for.
But here, as in the earlier antislavery campaign, initial advances were
followed by defeat. The Club Massiac, most of whose members were com-
mitted to refusing any concessions to the free people of color, counterat-
tacked and managed to isolate the reformers in the National Assembly. Al-
though Grégoire forced a request for free-colored representation through
the credentials committee, which he chaired, opponents shouted down at-
tempts to put their recommendation to a vote. Planters and their allies
published pamphlets that argued against the granting of rights to free-
coloreds, and for strict limits on metropolitan intervention in the colonies.
Drawing on the arguments developed during the previous decades by legal
thinkers such as Moreau, they went on the offensive with an argument that
would remain the foundation for the political activism of the next decade:
the colonies, they insisted, needed “particular laws.” The great boons of
the Revolution had to be adapted to colonies whose societies, climates,
and economies differed from one another and from that of the mother
country. Colonial policy should be shaped not by Paris but by those famil-
iar with the Caribbean, who understood slavery and slaves from experi-
ence. At the center of the argument was a stubborn defense of slavery. As
the planter Tanguy de la Boissière argued in a 1789 pamphlet published
in the colony, the “pivot” of the “constitution, legislation, and regime of
Saint-Domingue” must be “everything for the planter.” “There can be in
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Saint-Domingue only slaves and masters,” he declared, the former serving
only as “instruments of cultivation.” Such views gained official recognition
in an October 1789 memo by the Colonial Ministry and were strongly sup-
ported by colonial representatives, notably Moreau, who by then was sit-
ting in the National Assembly as a representative for Martinique.46
As Raimond, Grégoire, and others understood all too well, abandoning
colonial policy to the planters meant condemning free-coloreds to political
exclusion and unchecked discrimination. How, they demanded, could the
National Assembly allow one group of France’s citizens to so flagrantly op-
press another group in this way? How could the planters who had so long
oppressed the free people of color be allowed to decide whether they
could exercise their natural rights? The response from Moreau was that
masters had in fact shown great benevolence and humanity to the free peo-
ple of color. It was, after all, the generosity of white masters that created the class in the first place, and the free-coloreds demanding rights were little more than ingrates supported by uncomprehending zealots. Segrega-
tion, Moreau argued, was inevitable and beneficial. The “color” of individ-
uals of African descent would separate them from whites, and free people
of color had gathered in their own segregated neighborhoods because they
accepted this difference. Integration was impossible, and free-coloreds
should put their faith in the benevolence of those who had given freedom
to them or to their ancestors.47
Raimond and Grégoire insisted that free people of color were the only
ones capable of containing the slaves, and argued that granting them rights
was in fact the best way to preserve slavery. But planters doubted their sin-
cerity. Grégoire gave them reason to be suspicious. He demanded that
slave owners look to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and taunted
them to “get themselves out of it if they could”; he caused an uproar in the
National Assembly when he attacked planters for their cruelty both to free-
coloreds and to their slaves; and he regularly invoked the possibility of
slave revolt, reminding readers that all people had the right to insurrection against their oppressors. Planters took advantage of such statements—and
of fragmentary and exaggerated reports about slave unrest in the colonies,
particularly the 1789 revolt in Martinique—to paint Grégoire and his allies
as advocates, and even instigators, of slave revolt. One newspaper article
proclaimed that Brissot would not stop “intriguing” until there were “five
or six children of the Congo sitting in the French National Assembly.”48
Drawing on an established tradition, the prominent planters in Paris ar-
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gued that the only way to preserve slavery was to maintain a racial hierar-
chy among the free. One writer worried that even if slavery were pre-
served, granting rights to free people of African descent would make them
the “kings of the colonies,” as they would transform themselves into a ma-
jority by emancipating their own slaves and liberating those owned by
whites. Moreau insisted that any intervention by the National Assembly
into the status of free-coloreds would undermine the power of masters
over their slaves. “If our slaves suspect that there is a power that can influence their condition, independently of the will of their masters,” wrote
Moreau, they would see that they were no longer in a state of “absolute de-
pendence” on the whites. Once this had happened, it would be impossible
for “France to preserve its colonies.” The representatives in the National
Assembly had only one choice: to leave the power of masters intact by al-
lowing them complete legal autonomy. If they did otherwise, they would
not only have the blood of colonial whites on their hands; they would also
be sounding the death knell of a system that millions of French people de-
pended on for their livelihood.49
These scare tactics worked. In March 1790 the National Assembly ap-
proved the formation of a specialized Colonial Committee. There were
no abolitionists on the committee, and among the twelve were four plant-
ers and two merchants who owned property in Saint-Domingue. It was
headed by Antoine Barnave, who had ties to the port towns and was sym-
pathetic to their interests. Within a few days the committee proposed a law
on colonial governance that reassured colonial representatives. The consti-
tution of France would not be applied to the colonies. Instead, each colony
would elect its own assembly, which would propose a constitution regard-
ing the “internal” regimes of the colonies—notably the administration of
slavery and the laws regarding free-coloreds—which would be reviewed
and ratified in Paris. The colonies would be governed by particular laws
developed by their populations, laws unconstrained by the constitution
of France or, presumably, the Declaration of the Rights of Man. These
provisions granted planters the freedom they had long demanded to gov-
ern their colonies internally. But the decree also protected the interests
of French merchants. There were to be “no innovations” in “any of the
branches of commerce between France and the colonies,” the law prom-
ised. Final decisions on trade policies would, as before, be made in Paris.
Slavery and the slave trade were safe, and so were the regulations that
forced the colonies to export their products to the mother country. After
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the law was presented the comte de Mirabeau rose to speak, but was
shouted down from all sides as he denounced those who surrounded him
as cowards. The law was rushed to a vote with no discussion, and it passed.
The colonies were safe from the dangers of universalism. Indeed, the
decree took aim at the abolitionists by declaring that “all those who worked
to incite uprisings against the planters will be declared guilty of crimes
against the nation.”50
Although the law seemed to grant the whites of Saint-Domingue
complete control over their domestic policies, it contained an ambiguous
phrase that provided an opening for the free-coloreds. The law declared
that the colonial assemblies would be elected by “citizens,” but failed to
specify who would be granted this status. During the next weeks, as
Barnave drafted a report that was to accompany the March 8 decree to
the colonies, the National Assembly received several entreaties from free-
coloreds asking to be given the right to vote. Negotiations in the Colonial
Committee led to a revision declaring that “all people” who were prop-
erty owners over twenty-five would be able to participate in the elections.
In the assembly, Grégoire complained that the phraseology was still too
vague, and requested that free-coloreds be explicitly included; but ulti-
mately no alterations were made to the instructions.51
The Colonial Committee had avoided a fight in the National Assembly
by not providing clear instructions on the matter of the free-coloreds. It
hoped that the planters would “take advantage of the imprecision” of the
instructions to refuse the demands of the free people of color, demands
that they “did not dare refuse themselves.” It was a cynical and cowardly
political compromise, and in it were embedded the seeds of a brutal con-
flict. The National Assembly had abandoned the free people of color, leav-
ing them “facing their enemies” in the colonies. “It was in Saint-Domingue
that everything would be decided.”52
Across the Atlantic the Saint-Marc assembly had been busily reshaping
the colony on its own terms, bypassing the governor’s authority, passing
decrees and applying them without consultation. When the Provincial As-
sembly of the north attacked this disregard for France’s representative
in the colony, the Saint-Marc assembly drew up a document called the
“Bases constitutionelles”—“Constitutional Principles.” It was a bold char-
ter for political and economic autonomy, granting the assembly sweeping