Toussaint Louverture

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Hedouville sailed for France on October 22,1798. He had lasted for less than one year in Saint Domingue. As a parting shot, he transferred all his authority as representative of the French government to General Andre Rigaud. It remained to be seen whether this gesture would be as ineffectual as Sonthonax's similar appointment of Dieudonne a few years previously.

  Ignoring Hedouville's promotion of Rigaud, Toussaint invited Roume (who, since his experience began in the early 1790s, was probably the most seasoned French diplomat still in Saint Domingue) to return from the Spanish side of the island and replace Hedouville. Roume had been authorized by the home government to take over as agent if Hedouville died, and Toussaint now invoked this clause, despite a slight difference of circumstances. Leery of this proposition at first, Roume eventually accepted it, arriving at Port-au-Prince in January 1799. Perhaps he could serve as the sole European chief that Toussaint had been longing for. On his way into French Saint Domingue from the Spanish side of the island, Roume ran into several intimidating demonstrations by large mobs of blacks, whipped up by Toussaint to remind the Frenchman just how real power was balanced. A delegation met Roume at Croix des Bouquets just outside Port-au-Prince and warned him that his authority would be recognized only if he acted in concert with Toussaint—perhaps a deliberate echo of the similar promise Laveaux had made to the citizens of Le Cap when he appointed Toussaint lieutenant governor in 1796.

  Despite the color of French authority that Roume's presence could provide, recent developments, especially the imperfectly kept secret treaty with Maitland, gave rise to suspicion that Toussaint meant to make the colony independent, if he had not, for most practical purposes, already done so. There were leaks of the Toussaint-Maitland accord in the correspondence of English merchants and even American newspapers like the Baltimore Telegraph, where English agents were wont to plant propaganda stories from time to time. The Telegraph also reported that Toussaint expelled Hedouville because the agent was planning to invade the United States. In December 1798, a London newspaper put it in the plainest English: “With this treaty, the independence of this important island has, in fact, been recognized and guaranteed against any efforts the French might make to recover it.”45 Yet this sally might have been more a taunt of the French than a description of the actual situation in Saint Domingue.

  Toussaint, meanwhile, continued to make substantial gestures of loyalty to France. With a series of local proclamations, letters to Laveaux, and reports to French official entities like the Ministry of Marine, he built a case for Hedouville's misconduct, analogous (in his representation) to that of Sonthonax. The foundation of these arguments was the old, prerevolutionary competition which the home government had intentionally fostered between the military governor of the colony and the civil intendant (Thomas Maitland had known how to play on this built-in fissure). Thus the civil chief, Sonthonax, with right and the law on his side, had in 1793 emerged bloody but more or less victorious over the military governor, Galbaud. Toussaint, as military governor with right on his side, had righteously deported the civil chief Sonthonax in 1797. The abrupt departure of Hedouville was explained in a similar manner. In his letter to the Directory, Toussaint accused the agent's entourage of counterrevolutionary dress and demeanor coupled with “the most liberticide propositions, the same that Vaublanc proclaimed.”46 A work policy announced by the agent, which required field hands to engage themselves to their plantations for three years, smacked altogether too much of slavery, Toussaint claimed (though his own labor policy was not much different).

  In sum, Hedouville had come to introduce strife where Toussaint had carefully constructed peace. “According to his reputation as Pacificator of the Vendee,” Toussaint wrote to Laveaux, “that is to say, as a benefactor of humanity, I should have thought that General Hedouville would have at least preserved the good harmony which he found among us; well, either General Hedouville was carrying a different spirit during his mission to pacify the Vendee,* or his character changed enormously as soon as he set foot in the colony. For he showed himself every day to be suspicious, brusque, and carried away against everyone.” 47 Increasingly inclined to offer the honor of his victories to divine powers of one kind or another, Toussaint gave credit for the preservation of public order against the threat represented by Hedouville to the colony's “Tutelary Genie.” “Whatever may be the injustices of the agents of the government,” he assured Laveaux, “I shall be no less constant in my principles and no less obedient to the authorities of the Motherland, because I am a long way from dumping the blame for the misconduct of her agents on her. I only want to express my wish that the Directory, instructed by experience, shall henceforward send no more men to govern the most beautiful colony of the Antilles who, so far from advancing it toward prosperity, do nothing but slow it down—partisans who follow only their passions and for whom the destruction of the country is nothing, so long as they reach their goal.”48

  With Hedouville gone (and so long as no other vicious partisans like him should arrive), Toussaints peace would be just as fastidiously restored—all with the object of retaining the colony, and restoring its vast economic potential, for France. The credibility of this presentation was undercut by a couple of circumstances: Toussaint had made independent agreements with England, otherwise an enemy of France. Also, at the end of the 1790s, he began extremely discreet explorations (abet-ted by his new British allies) of the possibility of rescuing his older sons, Placide and Isaac, from the College de la Marche, where he had sent them as proof of his own loyalty and commitment to a future under the French republic. Soon after Hedouville's departure, Maitland reappeared in Jamaica and sent Colonel Harcourt to confer with Toussaint, a move that made some think that Maitland had influenced Toussaint to expel Hedouville. There were rumors that Saint Domingue would be turned over to the English and their emigre allies, but (though emigre refugees were returning in force from the United States) Toussaint did his best to quiet the whispering, and proclaimed his loyalty to the French republic as loudly at home as he did in his letters to Laveaux and the Directory.

  On November 15, 1798, Toussaint issued a proclamation requiring all the able-bodied blacks in the colony who were not attached to the army to return to work for wages on the plantations (generally the same plantations where they had formerly been slaves). The grand blancs planters were elated, and Toussaint had to struggle to stop them from exulting too loudly and telling the nouveaux libres, “You say that you are free, but here is a letter from the General in Chief that forces you to come back to work for me!”49

  Such remarks did nothing to sustain the idea that Toussaint still stood for general liberty first, last, and always. What troubled him now was the cost of freedom. As he saw it, the former slaves had no choice but to work productively, for the defense of the freedom they had won. Toussaint did his best to defuse the renewed hostility between former masters and former slaves by having the work policy enforced by the black military officers, rather than by the white planters. The edict was designed to help restore the export economy based on production of sugar and coffee, in cooperation with mulatto planters and returning grands blancs who had the requisite technical skills, and were now expected to manage their properties with freedmen's labor—the workers were free, but constrained by Toussaints edict, backed by military force. Toussaint was eager to establish trade relations with countries other than France, for diplomatic reasons and also to get revenue for the purchase of arms, in case diplomacy should fail.

  • • •

  The end of the Terror in France had brought about a conservative swing in the home government, one which had a stabilizing effect. By the end of 1795 the rebelliousness within French borders had all been subdued, and Napoleon was beginning his series of victories which drove the Austrians out of Italy. France's increased confidence in foreign affairs led to friction with the United States, then under the presidency of George Washington. The many French privateers operating out of Saint Domingue's por
ts often failed to distinguish between British and American targets, and in 1796 Washington was told (mistakenly but damagingly) that Sonthonax had authorized the taking of American prizes. France, on her side, was irked by recent accommodations the United States had made with Britain. In 1797, the Directory did license French privateers to capture American merchantmen—despite the fact that much French trade was carried on American boats—in order to discourage U.S. trade with Britain. When John Adams succeeded Washington as president, he made a new effort to rectify this situation, but his emissaries in Paris were rebuffed and even insulted.

  The United States had sent Jacob Mayer as consul to Cap Francais, mainly to see to the repatriation of American sailors stranded ashore in Saint Domingue after the capture of their ships. In the spring of 1798 Congress passed a law suspending all trade with France and areas under French authority for a period of nine months—the act was viewed as a prelude to a declaration of war. However, Jacob Mayer was advised by Secretary of State Timothy Pickering that the suspension was “limited to places under the acknowledged power of France. Consequently, if the inhabitants of Saint Domingue have ceased to acknowledge that power, there will not … be any bar to the prompt and extensive renewal of trade between the United States and the ports of that island.”50

  At the same time that Maitland was negotiating special British trade arrangements with Toussaint, Jacob Mayer was commissioned to let the black general know that the United States would also support such a step toward Saint Domingue's independence from France—and perhaps even an outright declaration. But these intimations came Toussaint's way just as Hedouville arrived in the colony, and under these circumstances, Toussaint was too canny and cautious to take the bait immediately or openly.

  As soon as Hedouville departed, though, Toussaint sent one of his French administrators, Joseph Bunel, on a mission to the United States, accompanied by Jacob Mayer. (Of Bunel, Colonel Vincent wrote, “I believe him to be the most dangerous advisor to Toussaint, whose confidence he has more than anyone; this man does infinite harm to France.”)51 These emissaries carried a letter from Toussaint to President Adams: “You can be assured, Mr. President,” Toussaint wrote, “that Americans will find protection and security in the ports of the Republic and St. Domingue, that the flag of the United States will be respected there, as that of a friendly power and ally of France.”52 The mission had provisions such as yams—which were more easily produced in quantity than sugar or molasses—to offer in trade, and could also offer to put a stop to the taking of American prizes in Saint Domingues waters if trade should be renewed.

  Bunel immediately fell foul of the French consul in Philadelphia, Philippe Andre Letombe, who wrote to Paris that Bunel had not even bothered to visit him, but instead was collaborating with Maitland and, aside from arranging exceptional trade agreements, was courting firm U.S. support for an independence bid in Saint Domingue. But in the currently awkward state of French-American relations, Bunel had better access to the Adams administration than Letombe, and the encouragement Toussaint was giving for the return to Saint Domingue of grand blanc refugees who were now scattered all over the U.S. Eastern Seaboard no doubt helped improve Bunel's position.

  The possibility of independence for Saint Domingue aroused violently mixed feelings in the American Congress, with the case against it most strongly stated by Albert Gallatin of Pennsylvania:

  Suppose that island, with its present population, under present circumstances, should become an independent state. What is this population? It is known to consist, almost entirely, of slaves just emancipated, of men who received their first education under the lash of the whip, and who have been initiated to liberty only by that series of rapine, pillage, and massacre that have laid waste to that island in blood. Of men, who, if left to themselves, if altogether independent, are by no means likely to apply themselves to peaceable cultivation of the country, but will try to continue to live, as heretofore, by plunder and depredations. No man wishes more than I do to see an abolition of slavery, when it can be properly effected, but no man would be more unwilling than I to constitute a whole nation of freed slaves, who had arrived to the age of thirty years, and thus to throw so many wild tigers on society.53

  To the anxiety that an independent Saint Domingue would spread slave rebellion across the Caribbean and into the southern United States was added the fear that such a state would become a base for pirates—like the pirates who threatened American shipping along the Barbary Coast (often with the covert encouragement of the British), but much, much closer to home. That French Saint Domingue had to all intents and purposes been founded by pirates had by no means been forgotten.

  However, the declared subject of the congressional debate was not Saint Domingue's independence but the possibility of renewing trade relations, which had been lucrative and important for American merchantmen for many years. The embargo against trade with France was to be renewed—but exceptions could be made “either with respect to the French Republic, so to any island, port, or place, belonging to the said Republic, with which a commercial intercourse may safely be renewed.'54 It was so well understood that Saint Domingue was the island in question that the rider was commonly called “Toussaint's Clause.” But free trade with Toussaint's Saint Domingue had its own set of risks, at least for the slaveholding south of the United States. Thomas Jefferson, marginalized in the Adams administration, fretted about that: “We may expect therefore black crews&supercargoes&missionaries thence into the southern states … If this combustion can be introduced among us under any veil whatsoever, we have to fear it.”55

  Despite all such reservations, the bill was passed, and soon after-ward the USS Constellation captured the French L'Insurgente in Caribbean waters. A naval war between the two countries was clearly under way, for all it had not been officially declared. In that context, Toussaints negotiations with the United States had to be interpreted by the French Directory as treating with the enemy, though the Directory said nothing about it for the moment (for fear that Toussaint would declare the colony independent). Bunel returned to Le Cap to report the success of his mission, accompanied by Jacob Mayer and a new American envoy, Edward Stevens—and a cargo of supplies to launch the new trade agreement. Idlinger, the French accountant called by cynics “Toussaints creature,'56 was there to receive them, and Maitland's emissary, Colonel Harcourt, sailed into Le Cap at the same time. Not long after, Maitland arrived in person to take part in the conference with Toussaint which confirmed all the terms of the deal.

  American ships were to be admitted only at Le Cap and Port-au-Prince; however, American consuls in those two towns could issue these ships passports to visit other ports on the Saint Domingue coast, as could the chief of the American consulate, Edward Stevens. British vessels were to be admitted at all ports without exception, though under false colors, normally the Spanish flag. The British would have their own representative installed in the colony, in a role analogous to that of Edward Stevens. Toussaint agreed to shut down all privateers and corsairs and prevent their operating out of Saint Domingue's ports, and he also agreed to keep his own citizens off the sea, which allayed the fears of southerners like Jefferson. The trade would be carried by American or British ships, Saint Domingue would not develop a merchant fleet, and crews of black ‘wild tigers” would not sail into Charleston or any other U.S. port. But Toussaint could operate transport vessels up and down his own coasts, under protection of the U.S. and British ships, which would also provide him with some local transportation services. Perhaps most significantly of all, Toussaint was to be furnished with whatever munitions of war he requested. Shipments of flour and gunpowder began right away.

  The rather complicated terms of this arrangement had been negotiated in stages. First Toussaint worked out the fundamentals in private meetings with Stevens at Le Cap (while Maitland's messenger, Harcourt, was kept waiting in the wings). Then Toussaint induced Roume to sign off on the deal with Stevens to permit U.S. shipping in Saint
Domingue's ports—not without difficulty, since Roume was more than a little reluctant to grant such privileges to ships of a nation currently in the midst of a naval war with France.

  The conference with Maitland took place later, at Arcahaie; Stevens was present for it, but Roume was not. In addition to the very tricky terms for admitting British ships to Saint Domingue's ports under false flags, Toussaint renewed his pledge not to interfere with Jamaica or other neighboring islands, and to halt the depredations of French privateers. Another secret rider on the deal committed Toussaint to refuse entry to any French warships armed outside the colony—a condition which would exclude practically any French naval vessel. This term was intended to further allay the concern shared by the British and the Americans that the French might use Saint Domingue as a base for expanding the French Revolution, and especially a black slave revolution, into their own slave states in North America (as indeed the French, or Toussaint and his army independently of the French, might well have done). When President Adams announced the trade deal in the United States, these secret terms, and especially the British participation, were carefully kept quiet.