The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation (63 page)

39.
Berlin,
Slaves Without Masters,
46–47, 136–37; Richard S. Dunn, “Black Society in the Chesapeake, 1776–1810,” in
Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution
, ed. Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 74–82. In Virginia the
proportion of blacks who were free reached 10 percent in 1840; in Louisiana the proportion declined from 18 percent in 1810 to 13.2 percent in 1820 and 5.3 percent in 1860. In Maryland the figure rose gradually to 49.1 percent in 1860, but there was a large difference between the northern and southern counties of the state. In Jamaica the proportion of blacks who were free rose from 3 percent in 1800 to something over 10 percent in 1834. In Barbados the comparable increase was from 3 percent to over 7 percent.

40.
Quarles,
Negro in the American Revolution,
39, 43–45; Sidney Kaplan,
The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, 1770–1800
(Greenwich, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973), 11–14, 26–27, 186–90; Arthur Zilversmit,
The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 101–02, 110–17; Winthrop D. Jordan,
White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 291; William Alan Muraskin,
Middle-Class Blacks in a White Society: Prince Hall Freemasonry in America
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 31–34; Floyd J. Miller,
The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787–1863
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 3–6; Sheldon H. Harris,
Paul Cuffe: Black America and the African Return
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), 159–61.

41.
Jordan,
White Over Black,
328–30, 409; Heuman,
Between Black and White,
23–24; Annals of Congress, 6th Cong., 1st Sess. (1800), 229–45. The debate took place on January 2 and 3, 1800. After much dispute over wording, the motion to refer the petition to a committee was passed but amended with the following sentence: “And that the parts of the said petition which invite Congress to legislate upon subjects from which the General Government is precluded by the Constitution, have a tendency to create disquiet and jealousy, and ought therefore to receive no encouragement or
countenance from this House.” George Thatcher argued that the petition contained no such propositions; he cast the only negative vote against the amendment.

42.
Geggus,
Slavery, War, and Revolution,
6; Robert I. Rotberg, with Christopher K. Clague,
Haiti: The Politics of Squalor
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 32.

43.
Debbasch,
Couleur et liberté,
53–59, 97–98, 118–22; Pierre de Vaissière,
Saint-Domingue: la société et la vie créoles sous l’ancien régime, 1629–1789
(Paris: Perrin, 1909), 221–24; C. L. R. James,
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), 36–42; Geggus,
Slavery, War, and Revolution,
20–22; John D. Garrigus,
Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in
French Saint-Domingue
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 40–41; Laurent Dubois,
Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
(Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 60–71.

44.
Davis,
Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution,
110–12; Gabriel Debien,
Les colons de Saint-Domingue et la révolution: essai sur le club Massiac, Août 1789-Août 1792
(Paris: Librarie Armand Colin, 1953), 63–78, 140–52; Debbasch,
Couleur et liberté,
134–50.

45.
Mitchell Bennett Garrett,
The French Colonial Question, 1789–1791
(Ann Arbor, Mich.: G. Wahr, 1918), 19–26; Debbasch,
Couleur et liberté,
123–24, 149–51. Dubois,
Avengers of the New World,
75–82.

46.
Ruth F. Necheles,
The Abbé Grégoire, 1787–1831: The Odyssey of an Egalitarian
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971), 53–66; Davis,
Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution,
111; Debbasch,
Couleur et liberté,
154–55.

47.
[Henri-Baptiste] Grégoire,
Mémoire en faveur des gens de couleur ou sang-mêlés de St.-Domingue, et des autres Isles françoises de l’Amérique, adressé à l’Assemblée Nationale
(Paris, 1789), 34–35. According to the abolitionists’ journal,
Patriote françois,
it was the freedmen’s enemies who constantly confused freedmen’s rights with slave emancipation; the freedmen sympathized with the plight of the slaves but fully understood the danger of innovative action.
Patriote françois,
no. 594 (March 25, 1791): 319–20.

48.
Clarkson told the
Plymleys that
Ogé had returned to Saint-Domingue to report the National Assembly’s actions “to his constituents,” that he had then been attacked by the whites and had been treacherously given up by the Spaniards after he had fled to the Spanish part of the island. Both Clarkson and Grégoire defended Ogé as a martyr who had fought for the freedmen’s legitimate rights.
Katherine Plymley Diaries, Feb. 9 to 24, 1792, book 5: 13–14;
Archives parlementaires
25 (May 11, 1791): 737–41. See also Thomas O. Ott,
The Haitian Revolution, 1789–1804
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973), 36–39. But, as
John Garrigus has shown, colonial whites had good reasons to think that the abolitionists had a hand, at least, in Ogé’s rebellion. For example, two ceramic (presumably
Wedgwood) medallions depicting a chained African were found in Ogé’s bags by colonial authorities, likely a gift from Clarkson, which seemed ample proof of premeditation and an abolitionist conspiracy. Garrigus argues, however, that Ogé’s preeminent revolutionary act was to bring the new Parisian idea of militiaman-as-citizen to Saint-Domingue, forcing the colonial authorities either to bring more regulars to replace the free coloreds, or to extend citizenship across the color line. John Garrigus, “ ‘Thy coming fame, Ogé! is sure’: New Evidence on Ogé’s Revolt (1790) and the Beginnings of the Haitian Revolution,” in
Assumed Identities: Race and Identity in the New World,
ed. John Garrigus and Christopher Morris (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010), 37–38.

49.
Davis,
Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution,
140–41; Debbasch,
Couleur et liberté,
172–82; Julien Raymond,
Réflexions sur les véritables causes des troubles et des désastres de nos colonies, notamment sur ceux de Saint-Domingue
(Paris, 1793), 33–35; James,
Black Jacobins,
72–75. For the rebellious, buccaneer spirit of Saint-Domingue’s whites, see Charles Frostin,
Les révoltes blanches à Saint-Domingue aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
(Paris: l’École, 1975).

50.
Popkin,
You Are All Free,
36–37.

51.
Davis,
Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution,
142–44; Debbasch,
Couleur et liberté,
61–62, 184–86; Theodore Lothrop Stoddard,
The French Revolution in San Domingo
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), 119–27; Debien,
Les colons de Saint-Domingue,
262–90.

52.
Geggus,
Slavery, War, and Revolution,
122. See also Genovese,
From Rebellion to Revolution,
87–88; and Ott,
Haitian Revolution,
47–52.

53.
J. P. Martin [Abraham Bishop],
American Museum
12 (Nov. 1792): 299–300; Davis,
Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution,
327; Tim [
sic
] Matthewson, “Abraham Bishop, ‘The Rights of Black Men,’ and the American Reaction to the Haitian Revolution,”
Journal of Negro History
67 (Summer 1982): 148–53. Matthewson prints the text of Bishop’s articles, which appeared originally in the Boston
Argus
in November and December 1791. White,
Encountering Revolution,
57.

54.
Timothy M. Matthewson, “George Washington’s Policy Toward the Haitian Revolution,”
Diplomatic History
3 (Summer 1979): 321–36; Donald R. Hickey, “America’s Response to the Slave Revolt in Haiti, 1791–1806,”
Journal of the Early Republic
2 (Winter 1982): 364–65; Hunt, “Influence of Haiti,” 27–30. Hamilton did object to subsidizing French radicalism with funds set aside to pay the American debt to France. The Washington administration would probably have given much more aid to the French planters if it had not had to deal with the intrigue of the French ministers, Jean-Baptiste de Ternant and Edmond Genêt. The American army, as Matthewson points out, was preoccupied with hostile Indians on the western frontier.

55.
Columbian Centinel,
Sept. 2, 1791, 10; Geggus, “British Opinion,” 124. Some antislavery papers attributed the revolt to the slave system and used it as an argument against the continuation of the slave trade.

56.
Davis,
Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution,
146–47; J. Saintoyant,
La colonisation française pendant la révolution, 1789–1799
, 2 vols. (Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1930), 2:115–36; Geggus,
Slavery, War, and Revolution,
42–65; James,
Black Jacobins,
126–29; Ott,
Haitian Revolution,
69–72; Popkin,
You Are All Free,
376.

57.
Geggus,
Slavery, War, and Revolution,
39–41, 68, 70, 105, 114, 126.

58.
Ibid., 84–85, 124–29; James,
Black Jacobins,
164–66.

59.
Geggus,
Slavery, War, and Revolution,
150–61, 182–84, 313–23, 388–90. Many of the blacks who joined the British evacuation were over sixty, under fifteen, or disabled.

60.
Gabriel Debien, Jean Fouchard, and Marie Antoinette Menier, “Toussaint Louverture avant 1789, légendes et réalités,”
Conjonction, Revue Franco-Haitienne
134 (June–July 1977), 67–77.

61.
Mats Lundahl, “Toussaint L’Ouverture and the War Economy of Saint-Domingue, 1796–1802,”
Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Comparative Studies
6 (Sept. 1985): 130.

62.
Constitution de la colonie française de Saint-Domingue, du 17 Aout 1801 (29 Thermidor an 9), reprinted in
La révolution française et l’abolition de l’esclavage
(Paris, n.d.), 11, no. 18. Though Toussaint had conquered Spanish Santo Domingo and won complete power over the island, he refrained from proclaiming independence from France, partly because of waning British and American support. Ott,
Haitian Revolution,
119–20.

63.
Ott,
Haitian Revolution,
139–61.
David Geggus estimates that the French sent a total of 44,000 troops to Saint-Domingue (private communication to author). Further work on estimating the numbers on both sides of the conflict has been done by
Phillipe Girard. Girard puts the number of French soldiers sent to Saint-Domingue at 43,800, but “only 7,000 made it to the pontoons of Jamaica.” The death toll topped 50,000, and even more if you add the people of color who fought for France. And these losses are staggering compared to the 10,000 French deaths early in the Haitian Revolution. Bonaparte, Girard notes, was utterly oblivious to loss of life and treasure in his attempt to restore the colony to absolute French control. As for the Haitians, the numbers are even more sobering. Girard notes that “there is good reason to believe that the country’s
population which had neared six hundred thousand in 1789, had dropped by half by 1804, and that the Leclerc expedition itself is responsible for the deaths of one hundred thousand Haitians. The rebellious slaves of 1791 had pledged to live free or die; in the end, they did both in roughly equal numbers.” Philippe R. Girard,
The Slaves Who Defeated Napoleon: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian War of Independence, 1801–1804
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011), 343–44.

64.
James,
Black Jacobins,
322–62; Stoddard,
The French Revolution in San Domingo,
303–46; Ott,
Haitian Revolution,
170–82.

65.
Quoted in Geggus, “British Opinion,” 136.

66.
One should note, however, that in 1816,
Alexandre Pétion furnished arms and supplies to
Simón Bolívar on the secret condition that Bolívar would promote the cause of slave emancipation in South America. Although Bolívar offered freedom to slaves willing to fight the royalists, at the
Congress of Panama in 1825, from which Haiti was excluded, he called for ruling-class unity in freeing Latin America from the fear of “this tremendous monster which has devoured the island of Santo Domingo.” Quoted in David Nicholls,
From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 63. Also, more recent scholarship has looked at the more expansive diplomatic vision of Dessalines, in particular, and his attempt to maintain links in diplomacy, labor, and capital across the Atlantic world. Philippe R. Girard, “
Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the Atlantic System: A Reappraisal,”
William and Mary Quarterly
69, no. 3 (July 1, 2012): 549–82.

67.
Geggus, “Enigma of Jamaica,” 282–84, 292–99.
David Geggus, “Slave
Rebellion During the Age of Revolution,” in
Curaçao and the French and Haitian Revolutions,
ed. Wim Klooster and Gert Oostindie (Leiden: KITLV, 2011). Geggus presents convincing evidence that British slaves were aware of the strength of colonial military garrisons during the prolonged period of warfare with France and that insurrections were most likely when the garrisons were reduced.

68.
Michael Craton,
Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 260–61; Hunt, “Influence of Haiti,” 39, 41–78, 114, 118, 123–29; Berlin,
Slaves Without Masters,
124–25.