Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (19 page)

powers to control not only the internal laws of the colony but also the “ex-

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85

ternal regime” of commerce. Even Bryan Edwards, a British writer sympa-

thetic to the planters, admitted that “some of the articles are irreconcilable to every just principle of colonial subordination,” and that the provision

granting the assembly control of trade policies was “an extravagant as-

sumption of imperial authority, in a subordinate part of the French empire,

as I believe is without precedent.” It was also much too radical for the

more established planters and administrators of the Provincial Assembly of

the north.53

When it received the National Assembly’s March 8 decree the Saint-

Marc assembly decided to obey the new law only to the extent that it did

not contradict its “Constitutional Principles.” They invited voters to recon-

firm the sitting representatives in an election carried out according to its

old suffrage regulations, and declared flatly they would never share politi-

cal power with a “bastard and degenerate race”—the free-coloreds. The

campaign led to the “confirmation” of the delegates at Saint-Marc, who,

riding high, opened all the ports of Saint-Domingue to foreign trade. A

clear violation of the new laws passed by the National Assembly, this was

too much for both the governor and the more conservative Provincial As-

sembly of the north. In Port-au-Prince an officer mobilized white troops

and invited veterans of the free-colored militia to join him in crushing the

seditious assembly. Troops were also sent from Le Cap, and the two armies

converged on Saint-Marc. Many of the more cautious representatives at

Saint-Marc, disagreeing with the radical course the group had taken, had

already resigned. Others slipped back to their homes in the face of the at-

tack. But eighty-five representatives took advantage of a sailors’ revolt on a ship anchored at Saint-Marc, the
Léopard,
and leapt on board, heading for Paris to present their case and argue that they had been victimized by a tyrannical colonial government.54

The
Léopardins,
as the refugee representatives were called, presented a challenge to the compromise between planter and merchant interests embodied in the March 8 decree. Merchants, as well as the conservative

planters of the Club Massiac, greeted the
Léopardins
coolly, and on October 12 Barnave and the Colonial Committee condemned the actions of the

Saint-Marc assembly as a violation of constitutional law and “public tran-

quility.” But the presence of the
Léopardins
in France publicized the political chaos in Saint-Domingue and gave the Paris planters a new opportu-

nity to attack Grégoire and his allies. Even the Provincial Assembly of the

Northern Province, despite its metropolitan leanings, blamed the disor-

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ders in Saint-Domingue on the worries of planters about the presence of

the members of the Société des Amis des Noirs, notably Grégoire, in the

National Assembly. It was crucial, the Provincial Assembly argued, for the

government in Paris to put an end to sedition in the colonies by reassuring

them that these dangerous abolitionists would not have their way. And it

was necessary that the free people of color know that it was only from the

planter-dominated colonial assemblies that they could “expect benefits,

and that they are to obtain these benefits only by wise behavior and re-

spectful bearing.” Barnave decided to clarify his earlier instructions, and in the same law that attacked the Saint-Marc assembly he included a stipulation promising that “no law upon the status of persons shall ever be made

for the colonies except upon the precise and formal demand of the colonial

assemblies.” Protests by Grégoire and Mirabeau were again shouted down,

and the National Assembly passed the law. Grégoire warned that the de-

cree, in addition to being an insult to justice and humanity, was impolitic.

Who could assure, he asked, that this “degraded caste” would not use force

in the pursuit of justice, and join with the slaves or with groups of rebel-

lious whites in the colony?55

In July the free-colored leader Vincent Ogé had managed to leave France

despite attempts by the Club Massiac to prevent him from doing so. He

was, according to one contemporary chronicler, “tired of the uselessness”

of the entreaties they had made in Paris. He “resolved to return to his col-

ony, arms in hand, to demand the political rights of his caste.” He first

stopped in London, where he met with the famed abolitionist Thomas

Clarkson. Having purchased arms (perhaps in Le Havre before leaving, or

perhaps during a stop in the United States), he arrived in Saint-Domingue

undetected in October 1790, and traveled to his hometown of Dondon,

south of Le Cap. It was time, Ogé had decided, to back up free-colored de-

mands with something less easy to sidestep than petitions: guns. As he told

Clarkson in London, the free-coloreds were ready to take up arms to make

themselves “independent and respectable.”56

Ogé found enthusiastic support in Dondon, where he quickly mobilized

an army of several hundred supporters. He marched on nearby Grande-

Rivière and occupied the town, then sent letters to the Provincial Assem-

bly in Le Cap demanding that it apply the March 1790 decree granting all

free citizens, “without distinction,” political rights. If the members of the assembly refused, they would become prey to his “vengeance.” In a letter

to one administrator, Ogé compared the demands of the free people of

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color to those of the Third Estate in France. The planters might be “in-

sulted” by having to serve with free men of color, he noted. But were the

“nobles and the clergy” consulted in “redressing the thousand and one

abuses that existed in France”? He also warned that his troops were ready

to “respond to force with force.” Soon after some initial victories, however, Ogé’s uprising was crushed by troops sent from Le Cap. Groups of free

men of color who had gathered in other parts of the colony also dispersed,

sometimes after negotiating with white officers. Ogé fled to Spanish Santo

Domingo, but the Spanish extradited him to Le Cap. He asked for clem-

ency, but received torture and execution. He and his fellow conspirator

Jean-Baptiste Chavannes were condemned to be executed, broken on the

wheel, and their heads displayed on pikes to dissuade others. Nineteen

other participants were hung.57

The execution of Ogé transformed him into a “martyr for liberty” among

the free-coloreds and heightened the conflict between them and the

whites. Although “nature united them” through family, and they shared in-

terests as property owners, “hate and vengeance” had now “forever shat-

tered these connections.” In the next months, free men of color took up

arms throughout the colony to demand rights and to defend themselves

against continuing attacks by whites. Ogé had assiduously avoided mobiliz-

ing slaves to join him and had insisted in his letters that he was not against slavery. But others who fought with him, notably Chavannes, seem to have

been more tempted to turn to the slaves as allies. Before he was executed,

the desperate Ogé had apparently confessed that throughout the colony

there were men of color who were hoping to mobilize the slaves in support

of their revolution.58

Ogé also became a martyr for many in Paris, where news of his brutal

execution helped stir an ever-growing hostility against the “aristocrats of

the skin,” notably among the increasingly powerful Jacobins. Planters,

meanwhile, continued to use the specter of slave revolt to parry the attacks

of the abolitionists. In May 1791 Moreau proposed a decree assuring that

“no law on the state of slaves in the colonies of the Americas” would be

passed except in response to the “formal and spontaneous demand of

the colonial assemblies.” This move drew the wrath of the formidable

Maximilien Robespierre, who retorted famously: “Perish the colonies rather

than a principle!” Although planters (as well as later fans of Robespierre)

would tirelessly use these words as proof of the radical Jacobins’ commit-

ment to the destruction of the colonies, the principle in question was in

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fact primarily a rhetorical one: Robespierre worried about the “domestic

impact” of passing a decree that in accepting slavery in the colonies could

help justify tyranny in continental France. Once the term “slave” was re-

placed with the euphemism “unfree person” the decree was passed. After

two years, all attempts to end the slave trade and slavery in the National

Assembly had failed. Had it not been for the revolt that soon erupted in

Saint-Domingue, the French Revolution would probably have run its

course, like the American Revolution, without destroying the massive vio-

lation of human rights at the heart of the nation’s existence.59

Still, the planters were already beginning to lose their complete grip on

colonial policy. Although they had successfully convinced many in Paris

that any intervention into the question of free-coloreds would undermine

slavery in the colonies, they also found themselves increasingly struggling

against the current of radical republicanism that was coming to dominate

the Revolution. Julien Raimond and Grégoire had convinced many that it

would be a travesty for the Revolution to allow the oppression of free peo-

ple of color by colonial whites. The two sides wrangled behind the scenes

in the National Assembly, and eventually a compromise was brought to the

people’s representatives: political rights would be given to free people of

color who had been born to two free parents. The free people of color

Raimond had always put forward as the representatives of his class—those,

like him, who owned property and slaves—were to be enfranchised. But

those who had been recently freed, and who were assumed to have danger-

ous solidarities with those who were still enslaved, would be excluded from

political power. It was a timid granting of rights, and furthermore did not

revoke the discriminatory laws in place in Saint-Domingue. Nevertheless,

a significant step had been taken: the color line had been crossed.60

How many free people of color were given rights by this decree? The

question is difficult to answer. Many historians have asserted that only a

few hundred met the stipulations of the decree. But Julien Raimond, in-

vested as he was in presenting the free-coloreds as primarily a landowning

class, asserted at the time that the vast majority of people of African de-

scent in the colony had in fact been born free of free parents. Such details, though, were ultimately irrelevant, for the Saint-Domingue whites reacted

with an enraged refusal to comply with the decree. In Paris the colonial

delegates had walked out in protest when the vote was passed, and when

news of the decision reached Saint-Domingue later that summer, planters

vociferously criticized the National Assembly, and the governor wrote that

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89

he could not enforce the decree. Many whites openly proposed that the so-

lution was to “cut the throats” of the free-coloreds, “desert” France, and

“call in the English.”61

The wife of the marquis de Rouvray wrote with disgust about what she

called the “Messieurs de France,” the “stupid” and “inept” individuals who,

having given the colonies the right to make their own laws, had then

turned around and taken this right away. Like many planters, she saw the

decision as proof that the National Assembly was committed to destroying

their lives as masters, and believed that secession from France might be

necessary. Saint-Domingue, she argued, should send deputies “to all the

powers that have slave colonies” in order to “ask for help in case the As-

sembly ends up pronouncing the abolition of slavery, which it certainly will

do.” The slave owners of the Americas, she hoped, would band together to

stop the “contagion of liberty.” Her husband, having taken part in the for-

mation of the National Assembly a few years before, was now back in the

colony, and he was sure that Saint-Domingue would soon be under the

power of the British. Although he supported the demands of the free peo-

ple of color, he saw an irreversible danger in the direction the National As-

sembly was taking. In the midst of all these troubles, Madame de Rouvray

took solace in “high hopes” for the crops of cane and coffee that were

growing around her, still worked by obedient slaves. “The cane is mag-

nificent,” she wrote in July 1791, and the weather was perfect. The storms

had been coming in almost every day.62

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