Haitian Revolution

Toussaint Louvature

Born into slavery. His parents slaves. Slavery sustained sugar production under harsh conditions, including the unhealthy climate of the Caribbean, where diseases such as malaria (brought from Africa) and yellow fever caused high mortality. The death rate from yellow fever was such that at least 50% of the slaves from Africa died within a year of arriving, so the white planters preferred to work their slaves as hard as possible while providing with them with the barest minimum of food and shelter. They calculated that it was better to get the most work out of their slaves with the lowest expense possible, since they were probably going to die of yellow fever anyway. In 1789, Saint-Domingue produced 60% of the world's coffee and 40% of the sugar imported by France and Britain.

Louverture was educated by his godfather Pierre Baptiste, a free man. His extant letters demonstrate a command of French and Creole, and he reveals familiarity with Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher who had lived as a slave. His public speeches and life's work show a familiarity with Machiavelli.

He was freed in 1776 at the age of 33.

He appeared to have an important role on the Bréda plantation, presumably as a salaried employee who contributed to the daily functions of the plantation. His responsibilities most likely included acting as coachman to the overseer, charged with organizing the workforce. As a free man, Louverture began to accumulate wealth and property. Surviving legal documents show him renting a small coffee plantation that was worked by a dozen of his own slaves.

The Situation

Trouble was brewing in Saint Domingue. Saint-Domingue was the most profitable French colony in the world, indeed one of the most profitable of all the European colonies in the 18th century. They hoped to make more and more money and so they shipped in more and more slaves.

White Nobility (Grand Blancs) who owned the majority of the plantations.

The colonial representatives requested a number of seats in the Estates General in proportion to the colony’s entire population, but in late June and early July 1789 this request was criticized, most resolutely by the leading revolutionary Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau. ‘Do the colonies claim that they regard their negroes and people of colour as belonging to the category of men or to that of beasts of burden?’ he asked. He went on to point out that the ‘free people of colour are proprietors and tax-payers’, implying that they were entitled to full citizenship rights, ‘yet they have not been allowed to vote’. Mirabeau insisted that if ‘the colonists mean to consider the Negroes and the people of colour as men, let them free the former; let them give them the right to vote and to be elected’. Carrying the colonists’ reasoning to the absurd, Mirabeau concluded by reminding them that ‘in setting the number of deputies in proportion to the population of France, we have not taken into consideration the number of our horses or our mules’."

Free Blacks - Many were children of white planters and enslaved mothers. They often received education or artisan training, and sometimes inherited freedom or property from their fathers. Many purchased and owned their own slaves. Many educated in France and exposed to enlightenment thinking. They had more rights in France than their own native colony. The free blacks initially petitioned for the rich whites to give them rights and together they could preserve slavery but when the rich whites refused, the free blacks found they had more in common with the slaves.

White Peasants (Petite Blancs)

Slaves (who outnumbered everyone 10 to 1.)

Slaves had short life expectancy. Due to disease and the dangerous work they did. It was very common for slaves to lose an arm in the machinery and get burnt by boiling sugar. Instead of investing in better working conditions or sanitation, it was cheaper to just buy a new slave. So that’s what they did.

"Whites, mulattos and blacks loathed each other. The poor whites couldn't stand the rich whites, the rich whites despised the poor whites, the middle-class whites were jealous of the aristocratic whites, the whites born in France looked down upon the locally born whites, mulattoes envied the whites, despised the blacks and were despised by the whites; free Negroes brutalized those who were still slaves, Haitian born blacks regarded those from Africa as savages. Everyone—quite rightly—lived in terror of everyone else. ...Haiti was hell, but Haiti was rich"

Onset of the Rebellion

The French Revolution was in full swing. Lafayette and Jefferson had drafted the “Rights of Man and Citizenship.” Word of this document was spread from slaves in France to slaves in San Domingue. Free Blacks who were the first of their generation to go to school in France came back with Enlightened ideas of Equality and Freedom. Although most whites attempted to keep talk of abolition away from black slaves, many slaves were used to carry news and often overheard their master’s conversations at the dinner table. Word spread.

The French revolutionary government to grant citizenship to wealthy free people of color in May 1791. The white planters refused to comply with this decision and refused to give free blacks equal rights. They feared that if the free blacks were treated as equal to white men, soon the black slaves would have to be treated as equal to white men.

While the common man was petitioning for equality and representation in France, where common men were 99% of the population but had the same representation of the 1%. The slaves of the colonies saw this as a plain contradiction. Free Blacks were equal to or above many petite blancs who did have the vote. If they had greater power than some whites, why would those whites have more influence? Meanwhile, if Free Blacks could have representation, why can’t the black slaves?

At a midnight Voodoo ceremony, the free blacks conspired to rebel against the racist and unfair grande blancs. The leaders blew into conch shell trumpets. They attacked their master’s plantations in the night, burning the crops and destroying machinery. The mob also killed many of the rich white land owners. Masters who had been violent and unfair were cornered and murdered in payback. Sometimes a master would be deemed ‘a good man’ and someone in the mob would stand up and vouch for them so that they were left unharmed.

In the morning, when the smoke rose and the charred remains of plantations seen, the islands plantation owners paid the poor whites to form a counter militia. Nobody could believe the slaves had organized themselves to such a level. The Big Whites blamed the Free Blacks for encouraging them. The Little Whites thought the big whites had provoked it with all their enlightenment thinking. The Free Blacks thought the whites had allowed it to happen to make black people look uncivilized.

Toussaint Louverture joins the Cause

Eventually, wielding knowledge of African and Creole medicinal techniques, he entered the war as a physician. But he quickly distinguished himself as a canny tactician and a strategic, charismatic leader.

“Brothers and friends, I am Toussaint Louverture; perhaps my name has made itself known to you. I have undertaken vengeance. I want Liberty and Equality to reign in St. Domingue. I am working to make that happen. Unite yourselves to us, brothers and fight with us for the same cause.”

In 1791, Louverture was involved in negotiations between rebel leaders and the French Governor for the release of their white prisoners and a return to work, in exchange for a ban on the use of whips, an extra non-working day per week, and the freedom of imprisoned leaders. When the offer was rejected, he was instrumental in preventing the massacre of the white prisoners. The prisoners were released after further negotiations.

Blacks dominated the countryside but the big whites owned the cities. Whites wanted independence and not to take orders from France. Free blacks wanted rights. Little whites wanted white supremacy and slaves wanted freedom.

France invades

In 1792, France was in a dicey situation. It had recently become a republic, stoking the ire of European monarchies. Furthermore, Saint-Domingue’s sustained slave rebellion had put France’s wealthiest colony in the Americas at risk of falling under the control of its enemies, England and Spain. So that same year, French commissioners arrived in Saint-Domingue in the apparent spirit of compromise. Rebel leaders, including Toussaint, refused the overture, choosing to do battle instead with the 6,000-man fleet France had also sent.

Tossaint Joins Spanish

Feigning outrage at the execution of King Louis XVI in 1793, he made an alliance with neighboring Santo Domingo, taking command of a Spanish auxiliary force to reclaim a swath of Saint-Domingue territory. French army 6k showed up to keep san Domingue under their rule. 3k died of disease. French government, eager to keep their biggest cash cow, offered full citizenship to any slave who fought for them.

Toussaint rejoins the French

Toussaint then rejoined the French forces, beat back the Spanish and began his sustained campaign against the British, who had their own designs on Saint-Domingue. His army ousted British forces in 1798, causing them to lose more than 15,000 men and 10 million pounds in the process. Nonetheless, Toussaint continued to dangle the prospect of British influence in Saint-Domingue as a check against French complacency and to spur trade with Britain’s neighboring colony of Jamaica. Toussaint entered into a secret agreement with the British army that eased their naval blockade of imported goods.

1799-1800 – War of Knives

With all this switching of sides, Toussaint and his generals ended up disagreeing on who their allies really were. They broke into a civil war. Both sides claimed that the other intended to betray the Rights of Man propagated by the French Revolution and reinstate slavery. As a result, historians argue that the conflict "was not driven by differences in racial identity... it was a conflict over territorial and political power." Both Toussaint and his rivals had an economic interest in maintaining the colony's plantation system and cultivating economic ties with British and American merchants. The question that remained was whether it would be Toussaint or his rival who controlled this renewed system.

Toussaint responded rapidly to crush the uprisings in the North. Toussaint's troops orchestrated widespread executions of suspected conspirators. Meanwhile, in August 1799, Toussaint wrote to U.S. president convincing the U.S. navy to blockade ports controlled by the opposition. To the United States, the oppositions ties to France represented a threat to American commerce, which had been harassed by French privateers for the last two years as part of the Quasi-War.

Toussaint's general became infamous during this period for carrying out brutal reprisals and massacres against Rigaud's supporters. Some historians have asserted that Toussaint himself ordered massacres, but delegated the killing to his generals to avoid culpability.

1802 – Napoloen Invades

In 1801, Louverture issued a constitution for Saint-Domingue that decreed he would be governor-for-life and called for black autonomy and a sovereign black state. In response, Napoleon Bonaparte dispatched a large expeditionary force of French soldiers and warships to the island, led by Bonaparte's brother-in-law Charles Leclerc, to restore French rule. They were under secret instructions to restore slavery, at least in the formerly Spanish-held part of the island. Bonaparte ordered that Toussaint was to be treated with respect until the French forces were established; once that was done, Toussaint was to be summoned to Le Cap and arrested; if he failed to show, Leclerc was to wage "a war to the death" with no mercy and all of Toussaint's followers to be shot when captured. Once that was completed, slavery would be ultimately restored.

The French arrived on 2 February 1802 at Le Cap with the Haitian commander Henri Christophe being ordered by Leclerc to turn over the city to the French. When Christophe refused, the French assaulted Le Cap and the Haitians set the city afire rather than surrender it. Leclerc issued a proclamation on 17 February 1802: "General Toussaint and General Christophe are outlawed; all citizens are ordered to hunt them down, and treat them as rebels against the French Republic".

Toussaint outlined his plans for defeating the French: "Do not forget, while waiting for the rainy reason which will rid us of our foes, that we have no other resource than destruction and fire. Bear in mind that the soil bathed with our sweat must not furnish our enemies with the smallest sustenance. Tear up the roads with shot; throw corpses and horses into all the foundations, burn and annihilate everything in order that those who have come to reduce us to slavery may have before their eyes the image of the hell which they deserve".

Siege of Cete-a-Pierrot

The Haitians next tried to stop the French at a British-built fort up in the mountains called Crête-à-Pierrot, a battle that is remembered as a national epic in Haiti. The first of the French columns to appear before the fort were harassed by skirmishers until they reached a deep ditch the Haitians had dug. As the French tried to cross the ditch, a tremendous volley of artillery and musket fire, inflicting heavy losses on the attackers. The general himself was wounded and as the French dead and wounded started to pile up in the ditch, the French retreated. The next French Unit, joined shortly afterwards by the column commanded by Leclerc. All of the French assaults ended in total failure, and after the failure of their last attack, the Haitians charged the French, cutting down any Frenchmen. Another General was killed, Leclerc was wounded and the French lost about 800 dead. The final French column arrived, they brought along heavy artillery that knocked out the Haitian artillery, though his attempt to storm the ditch also ended in failure with about 300 of his men killed. Over the following days, the French kept on bombarding and assaulting the fort, only to be repulsed every time while the Haitians defiantly sang songs of the French Revolution, celebrating the right of all men to be equal and free. The Haitian psychological warfare was successful with many French soldiers asking why they were fighting to enslave the Haitians, who were only asserting the rights promised by the Revolution to make all men free. Finally after twenty days of siege with food and ammunition running out, Toussaint ordered his men to abandon the fort on the night of 24 March 1802 and the Haitians slipped out of the fort to fight another day.

Capture of Toussaint

On 25 April 1802, the situation suddenly changed when Christophe defected, along with much of the Haitian Army, to the French. Louverture was promised his freedom if he agreed to integrate his remaining troops into the French army. Louverture agreed to this on 6 May 1802. Just what motivated Toussaint to give up the fight has been the subject of much debate with most probable explanation being that he was just tired after 11 years of war. Under the terms of surrender, Leclerc gave his solemn word that slavery would not be restored in Saint-Domingue, that blacks could be officers in the French Army, and that the Haitian Army would be allowed to integrate into the French Army. Toussaint was deceived, seized by the French and shipped to France. He died months later in prison at Fort-de-Joux in the Alps. However, the surrender of Christophe, Toussaint, and Dessalines did not mean the end of Haitian resistance. Throughout the countryside, guerrilla warfare continued and the French staged mass executions via firing squads, hanging, and drowning Haitians in bags.

Polish

For a few months, the island was quiet under Napoleonic rule. But when it became apparent that the French intended to re-establish slavery a rebellion soon rose up once more. Napoleon added a Polish legion of around 5,200 to the forces sent to Saint-Domingue to fight off the slave rebellion. However, the Poles were told that there was a revolt of prisoners in Saint-Domingue. Upon arrival and the first fights, the Polish platoon soon discovered that what was actually taking place in the colony was a rebellion of slaves fighting off their French masters for their freedom. During this time, there was a familiar situation going on back in their homeland as these Polish soldiers were fighting for their liberty from the occupying forces of Russia, Prussia and Austria that began in 1772. As a result, many Polish soldiers admired their opponents, to eventually turn on the French army and join the Haitian slaves. Polish soldiers participated in the Haitian revolution of 1804, contributing to the establishment of the world's first free black republic and the first independent Caribbean state. Haiti's first head of state Jean-Jacques Dessalines called Polish people "the White Negroes of Europe", which was then regarded a great honour, as it meant brotherhood between Poles and Haitians. After Haiti gained its independence, the Poles acquired Haitian citizenship for their loyalty and support in overthrowing the French colonialists.

Haiti beat France

The Haitians abandoned conventional warfare and reverted to guerrilla tactics, making the French hold over much of the countryside very tenuous. With March, the rainy season came to Saint-Domingue, and as stagnant water collected, the mosquitoes began to breed, leading to yet another outbreak of yellow fever. By the end of March, 5,000 French soldiers had died of yellow fever and another 5,000 were hospitalized with yellow fever, leading to a worried Leclerc to write in his diary: "The rainy season has arrived. My troops are exhausted with fatigue and sickness".

Napoleon had dreams of a North American Empire but when fighting in Europe became more intense and Haiti was a constant thorn in his side, he decided to give up on the Empire and consolidate his fight for dominance in Europe. He ordered his French troops to abandon the claim for Haiti and return to France. Napoleon had also lost interest in the French owned North American territory known as Louisiana. (Named after Louis 14^th)

Legacy

The revolution was the largest ever uprising since Roman times. They outlawed slavery, were the first Atlantic country to be ruled by non-whites. It challenged long-held European beliefs about alleged black inferiority and about slaves' ability to achieve and maintain their own freedom. The rebels' organizational capacity and tenacity under pressure inspired stories that shocked and frightened slave owners in the hemisphere.

 

The Haitian Revolution created the second independent country in the Americas after the United States became independent in 1783. U.S. political leaders, many of them slaveowners, reacted to the emergence of Haiti as a state borne out of a slave revolt with ambivalence, at times providing aid to put down the revolt. Due to these shifts in policy and domestic concerns, the United States would not officially recognize Haitian independence until 1862.

 

Toussaint extended generous restitution policies in the name of republican fraternity, going so far as to punish any acts of retribution against former slaveholders. After the success, they needed to gain control of the economy. They needed produce and workers. Many former slaves didn’t want to go back into the fields but without workers the new country would fail. Toussaint had men forced to work back in the fields. It’s important to note that this was not slavery. It was forced paid work. Nobody was selling their families and they did not get whipped.