Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (36 page)

had acquired his own slave, an African-born man named Jean-Baptiste,

whom he freed in 1777. Toussaint tried his hand at agriculture, renting a

small coffee plantation near the town. After two years, when he ended his

lease, he owed the owner the cost of two slaves, one women and one child,

who had died during his tenure.1

In the mid-nineteenth century one of his sons, Isaac Louverture, wrote

a brief account of his father’s early life. Toussaint’s father, he wrote, was an African prince, the second son of an Arada king, who had been captured

and sent to Saint-Domingue as a slave. In the colony the exiled prince

sometimes met other Aradas, the former subjects of his father. They “rec-

ognized him as their prince” and saluted him according to the “customs of

their homeland.” The sorrows of exile, wrote Isaac, were softened by the

kindness of his master, who gave Toussaint’s father a plot of land and “five

blacks” to cultivate it. The African prince converted to Catholicism, mar-

ried a woman of his “nation,” and had several sons. The oldest of them was

Toussaint. He learned the African language of his Arada parents and, after

their death, was also educated by his godfather Pierre Baptiste, a free black living in Le Cap, who had been educated by missionaries. He studied ge-ometry, French, and some Latin under his tutelage. Drawing on Isaac

Louverture’s description of his father Toussaint’s education, another nine-

teenth-century biographer claimed that the future revolutionary leader

had read the writings of the Abbé Raynal. This assertion inspired C. L. R.

James to pen a passage describing the slave Toussaint reading about the

prophesied “black Spartacus” and seeing in himself the answer to the ques-

tion “Where is he?”2

As with the Bois-Caïman ceremony, it is difficult—probably impossi-

ble—to separate reality from legend in the story of Toussaint, including

how he took on the name Louverture—“the opening.” Isaac Louverture

attributed the name to a comment by Etienne Polverel. After Louverture

conquered Dondon and Marmelade for the Spanish in late 1793, Isaac

wrote, the commissioner admiringly noted that his enemy could make “an

opening anywhere.” As another early biographer who repeated this story

put it, the “public” had given him his nickname to celebrate his successes,

and “history had left it to him.” Perhaps, though, rather than tracing its origin to the comment of a white administrator, it is safer to assume that the

man who ultimately made it famous chose it for himself and that, with “its

cryptic connotations of a new beginning,” it had a particular, still hidden,

meaning for him.3

“Judged according to the interests of the moment, through the prism

of passions,” wrote the French general Pamphile de Lacroix, “Toussaint

Louverture has been represented in turn as a ferocious brute, or as the

most surprising and the best of men, as often as an execrable monster as a

saintly martyr: he was none of these.” Louverture was a brilliant political

and military leader who, over the course of his career, gathered around

him individuals from all walks of life, from white planters and officers to

creole and African-born slaves. He “greatly impressed most who met him,”

and although whites sometimes privately made fun of him, “in his presence

no one laughed.” He had this effect even on some of the most powerful

personalities of the revolution; one contemporary wrote that Jean-Jacques

Dessalines “didn’t dare to look him straight in the face.” He was “a leader

of acute intelligence” who was “totally adept at confusing his opponents.”

He was “both ruthless and humane, capable of making barbarous threats

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but of sparing even those who had double-crossed him.” Throughout his

career he would regularly invoke the possibility of brutal punishment, both

human and divine, but also show a remarkable tendency to forgive, evok-

ing the teachings of Catholicism as his inspiration. He was a consummate

politician who cultivated personal loyalty and effectively used secrecy and

trickery as he sought and found openings in his rise to power. He was also a

great political thinker, not only the “first and greatest of West Indians,” as C. L. R. James put it, but also one of the towering figures in the political

history of the Atlantic world.4

Louverture’s extensive correspondence allows us to explore his actions

and ideals. These letters were not written by his hand. Indeed, Lacroix re-

called that he “spoke French poorly” and often turned to creole in commu-

nicating his ideas. “Nevertheless a divine instinct enlightened him about

the value of words” in French. He kept his secretaries working constantly,

with several of them writing different versions of a letter until they had

found “the turn of phrase that was the appropriate expression of his

thought.” He never stopped thinking: “Journeying across the colony on

horseback at lightning speed, seeing everything for himself, he prepared

his actions. He meditated as he galloped; he meditated as well when he

pretended piously to pray.” He had much to think about, for the challenge

he faced was enormous: channeling the only successful slave revolt in his-

tory, overseeing the first great transition from slavery to freedom in the

Americas, and redefining the political terms of empire.5

From the time he joined the French Republic in 1794, Louverture

took on the task of protecting, and defining, the liberty the slaves of Saint-Domingue had won. As he managed the daily details of military and civil

administration, he struggled to lay the foundation for a kind of order that

had never been seen or even really imagined. His problems were those

faced by subsequent generations of administrators overseeing the transi-

tion from slavery to freedom in the British Caribbean, the United States,

and Cuba. Though he differed from most of these later administrators

in one crucial way—he had himself experienced slavery—his post-

emancipation policies were similar to those of the administrators who fol-

lowed him. Intent on maintaining and rebuilding the production of sugar

and coffee, he sought to limit the liberty of the ex-slaves, responding to

their attempts to move freely, acquire land, and escape plantation labor by

constructing a coercive legal order. His administration marked the begin-

ning of a longer story of how emancipation ultimately failed to bring true

t h e o p e n i n g

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[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

“Toussaint Louverture.” There are numerous, and startlingly

diverse, images of Louverture from the period. This well-

known engraving was first published in Marcus Rainsford
, A

Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti
(1805).

Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

equality and independence to former slaves. Though his ultimate inability

to construct a multiracial, egalitarian, and democratic society in Saint-

Domingue might strike us as particularly tragic, given his origins, this was a failure he shared with the leaders of every other postemancipation society

in the Atlantic world.

The situation Louverture faced was particularly challenging. He came

to power in a colony devastated by insurrection and war, inhabited by

a fragmented and diverse population, and for much of his time in power

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[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Portrait of Toussaint Louverture on horseback, circa 1800.
Private

collection.

received little support, either material or political, from metropolitan

France. As a black officer committed to the participation of men of African

descent at the highest levels of administration, he confronted a lingering—

and eventually resurgent—racism within the French government. And as

he sought to assure the preservation of liberty in Saint-Domingue, he had

to navigate a complicated set of imperial conflicts and relationships that

placed constraints on his social and economic policies.

Toussaint Louverture was, as one novelist has suggested eloquently,

the “master of the crossroads” of the Haitian Revolution. Descendant of

West African royalty, but also raised Catholic and educated in European

t h e o p e n i n g

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arts and sciences, he emerged from the crossing of these two traditions,

though as a leader he would emphasize the virtues of Catholicism and re-

press the African traditions of his colony. But as he faced the political challenges of the postemancipation colony, the other part of his education was

perhaps more important. He had been in his life both a master and a slave.

He would draw on both experiences in governing the evolving colony of

Saint-Domingue.6

“I am Toussaint Louverture. My name is perhaps known to you. I have

undertaken vengeance. I want Liberty and Equality to reign in Saint-

Domingue. I work to bring them into existence. Unite yourselves to us,

brothers, and fight with us for the same cause.” With these words,

Louverture announced his emergence as an independent political force in

Saint-Domingue. He issued the proclamation on August 29, 1793, the very

day Léger Félicité Sonthonax abolished slavery throughout the Northern

Province. Although he was calling for liberty, he was not announcing his

alliance with the Republic. Instead, he was positioning himself against

Sonthonax as the true defender of liberty in Saint-Domingue. In a letter

written at the same time, he declared that he had been “the first to stand

up for” the cause of emancipation and had “always supported” it. Having

started the battle for it, he promised, he would finish it.7

The insurgent leader Bramante Lazzary, having just issued a call for the

“three colors” of Saint-Domingue to unite behind the Republic, wondered

why Louverture was still fighting for the wrong side. “Father Sonthonax,”

the “representative of the will of all of French,” had issued a decree of general liberty, which Lazzary had sent to Louverture. If Louverture sup-

ported freedom, why was he still fighting for the king of Spain, embracing

the “old regime” instead of joining the Republic? Lazzary addressed his

letter to “Citizen Toussaint Louverture,” but added sarcastically “supposed

General of the Armies of his Most Catholic Majesty today, yesterday sup-

posed General of the King . . . perturber of the order and the tranquility of our brothers.” He hoped, however, that they would soon be fighting side by

side for their “three colors.” In this, he was to be disappointed.8

Louverture’s actions and motives during this period and the months that

followed remain shrouded in mystery. Since his moderating participation

in the negotiations between the insurgents and administrators in late 1791,

he had become an increasingly important figure within the insurgent army.

During these negotiations—and again in 1792—he participated in and

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supported plans meant to end the insurrection by bringing the majority of

the insurgents, minus some leaders who would receive freedom, back to

the plantations. He did not sign the July 1792 letter in which Biassou and

Jean-François proposed an end to slavery in the colony. In June of 1793, a

few weeks after Jean-François and Biassou joined the Spanish, Louverture

followed them to serve as an “auxiliary.” He therefore agreed to the terms

initially presented by the Spanish: liberty, along with land and other re-

wards, for those men who fought against the French.9

Sometime in May or June 1793 Louverture made contact with the Re-

publican officer Etienne Laveaux in Le Cap. Unfortunately, there is only

one enigmatic trace of the communication that took place between the two

men. A year later Louverture reminded Laveaux that “before the disaster

at Le Cap”—that is, before its destruction in June 1793—he had pro-

posed “avenues of reconciliation” that had been “rejected.” The surviving

letter does not say what these were. One of Louverture’s early biographers

thought he knew, and when he reprinted Louverture’s 1794 letter, after the

words “avenues of reconciliation” he inserted the phrase “the recognition

of the liberty of the blacks and a full amnesty.” Historians from Victor

Schoelcher to C. L. R. James have taken these words as Louverture’s own.

In fact, however, there simply is no concrete trace of what he put forth in

1793. All we know is that there was, in 1793, no reconciliation. It would be

another year before Laveaux and Louverture would become allies instead

of enemies.10

Once Louverture issued his proclamation in favor of “liberty and equal-

ity” in August 1793, why did he keep fighting for Spain? Louverture had

good reasons to be suspicious of the solidity of the Republic and its policy

of emancipation. Sonthonax’s hold on the Northern Province was tenuous,

and, like many others in mid-1793, Louverture probably thought that the

French Republic was heading toward defeat in Europe as well. There was