Slave rebellions had taken place before. This time, the rebels became revolutionaries.
At the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution, the enslaved people of Haiti rose up and fought for their freedom. Together, they demanded full equality for all people, regardless of race. They defeated the forces of the world’s mightiest colonial empires. And then, on April 7, 1803, the leader of the Haitian Revolution was murdered by medical neglect in Fort de Joux, France.
“Toussaint L’Ouverture was a coachman in Hayti until he was well over forty. About 1790, when about fifty years of age, he joined the Haytian army as a physician and rose rapidly to high command. But Toussaint had one passionate aim — the liberation of blacks from slavery. He joined the Spaniards of San Domingo and swept the French before him. When the French, however, ratified the freedom of the slaves, Toussaint, ever faithful to the cause he had at heart, joined the French again and ‘in a campaign scarcely equalled for its vigour in all military history,’ he broke the power of his former allies. The English under Maitland he defeated in pitched battles until they were glad enough to fly to Jamaica. A rebellion of the French soldiers against their general was crushed by Toussaint, and the French, the proudest military nation in Europe, appointed the ex-coachman Commander-in-Chief. Toussaint set to work, and from the dregs of humanity into which the slaves had been turned by centuries of unparalleled cruelty, he formed an army. By 1800 he was master of the whole country. ‘No one before him had succeeded in uniting both the Spanish and French settlements and the all but impassable mountain ranges under a single ruler. Never in the history of the world has as barren a human field yielded in a little time so marvellous a flowering of greatness.’ (All of my quotations are from white historians.) Toussaint devoted himself to government. Let the letter written to Napoleon by Colonel Vincent, who was at one time Toussaint’s private secretary, speak. ‘Sire,’ wrote the Colonel, ‘leave the country alone; it is the happiest spot in your dominions. God raised this man to govern; races melt under his hand...’ Toussaint (this was in 1800, mind you) introduced Free Trade, he introduced full religious toleration. He wiped out all old disputes and called on Frenchmen of Hayti, and Spaniards of San Domingo, to come home. ‘The negro only sought that liberty which God gave him,’ he said. But Napoleon’s ambition would not let the island rest. He sent his brother-in-law and one of his finest armies to peaceful and prosperous Hayti. Toussaint, Henri Christophe, and Dessalines waged a guerrilla warfare with masterly skill. The French, unable to pin them down, proposed a treaty, promising freedom to the blacks. That was all Toussaint was fighting for and he signed. A few weeks after the French invited him for dinner. The moment he entered the room the officers drew their swords and told him he was a prisoner. They could have paid him no greater compliment than this treachery. Such in bare outlines is the story of Toussaint, whose latest biographer (1931) entitles his book The Black Napoleon, and whose personal quality, apart from his achievements, was such that he could dictate to three secretaries at once. His whole marvellous career barely covers ten years.”
— C. L. R. James (1931)
