Toussaint Louverture

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Unfortunately for Moyse's intentions, Henry Christophe also skipped Dessalines's wedding, and was in position to shut down the revolt inside the gates of Cap Francais before it was well begun. He arrested a ringleader named Trois Balles and soon extracted enough other names from him to make thirty arrests. Within twenty-four hours, he was able to reassure the American merchants and agents who had fled to their ships at the first signs of trouble that Le Cap had returned to good order.

  Next, Christophe subdued Limbe, Port Margot, and Acul, captur-ing Joseph Flaville in the process. General Vernet soon regained Plaisance. Dessalines, once recovered from his wedding night, was not far behind. On the plantations where white owners had been slain, he simply massacred the entire work gang.

  Toussaint himself was so enraged that when he passed through the rebel zone he ordered the mutineer regiments on parade and summoned certain men to step out of the ranks and blow their own brains out. None refused to obey this order. Christophe had brought Joseph Flaville as a prisoner to Le Cap; Toussaint ordered him and several other conspirators to be blown to bits by grapeshot in the Place d'Armes, before the cathedral there. In a similar scene at Fort Liberte, the rebel Captain Hillarion was bayoneted. In the hills above Le Cap, Toussaint slaughtered a hundred-odd cultivators who had joined the rebellion, and he conducted similar exemplary executions all across the Northern Plain. For years afterward, the residents of Trou du Nord pointed out an old caimite tree around whose trunk the rebels of that region had been massacred.

  In the case of Moyse himself, Toussaint—most uncharacteristically—seemed to hesitate. At Dondon, the revolt had been subdued by Moyse himself. At Marmelade, the next town west along the Cordon de l'Ouest, Toussaint received Moyse as if his nephew might possibly still be a loyal subordinate commander. “Everything leads me to believe that you are the author of this revolt,” he told Moyse. “Everywhere the rebels have been putting it out that they act in your name—your honor depends on your j ustifying yourself, and the first way to do it is to bring everything back into good order, because if you are guilty your general's rank will not save you—You are coming from Dondon—how many rebels have you punished there? None. How many have you had arrested?—No one. How can it be that you, commander of the Northern Department, come from a quarter where horrible assassinations have been committed and you have not had anyone arrested or punished! Go back to Dondon, have the guilty parties arrested, but don't have anyone shot—let them be brought to me alive and under sure guard.”25

  By the look of these orders, Toussaint was trying to give Moyse an out. If he was doing it for reasons of sentiment, it was a highly unusual move—never before or after did Toussaint leave anyone standing who had threatened him. Agent Roume, whose analysis of the Moyse affair has a distinctly paranoid flavor, suggests that Toussaint might have been behind the Moyse rebellion himself, and that he meant to leave Moyse free and in feigned rebellion against him, so that when a French military expedition arrived in Saint Domingue, Moyse could lead the white soldiers into fatal ambushes. Far-fetched, yes—but as Roume justly points out, it was unlike Toussaint to let Moyse go, and unlike Moyse to put himself back in Toussaint's power without a struggle.

  Returning to Dondon, Moyse obeyed Toussaint's orders, up to a point. He arrested twenty-four men, shot thirteen of them, and sent eleven back to Toussaint—but it was the dead men, presumably, who would have implicated him more certainly in the revolt. Nevertheless, Toussaint still left Moyse at large. But Dessalines appeared at Marme-lade to let Moyse know he had no business there. Now part of the Canton Louverture, the town was under Dessalines's command. Moyse passed briefly through Le Cap, without finding much of a welcome; when he returned to Dondon the inhabitants shuttered themselves in their houses.

  Toussaint may have hoped that Moyse would flee the colony; if so, Moyse was too stubborn to depart. During a conference at Hericourt Plantation, Christophe and Dessalines persuaded the general in chief that Moyse must be disposed of—Dessalines insisted that Toussaint must get rid of him altogether. Toussaint ordered Moyse's arrest and had him confined in the fort of Port de Paix. By that time all of his secretaries, aides, and junior officers had been executed for their part in the revolt—so Moyse was convicted on the testimony of these dead men. Brought before a firing squad, Moyse himself gave the order to fire.

  This episode caused the violent deaths of the two men to whom Toussaint had probably been closest: Moyse and Bayon de Libertat. It also left a dangerous fault line in the reconstructed social fabric of the colony. The violence of the repression silenced Moyse's sympathizers, but it did not make them disappear.

  Immediately after asserting control over Spanish Santo Domingo, when “from Cap Samana to Cap Tiburon the authority of the chief of the Blacks extended its sovereign power,” Toussaint had hastened to secure his position politically by creating a constitution for the colony. In March 1801 a constitutional assembly, composed of representatives elected from the departments of the colony, convened; curiously, this body included no nouveaux libres. Moyse was elected, but refused to serve—an early harbinger of his discontent with Toussaint's consolidation of power.

  Julien Raimond, experienced in diplomacy from his service on the various commissions and his long effort lobbying for rights for the gens de couleur, was a member of the assembly, along with two other colored men; the seven whites came from the grand blancs class, chief among them Bernard Borgella, the mayor of Port-au-Prince who had become part of Toussaint's inner circle. By May, the assembly had produced a succinct and lucid document of seventy-seven articles grouped in thirteen sections. The seventy-seventh article authorized Toussaint Louverture to put the constitution into practice right away, pending its approval by the French government.

  Article 1, defining the territory of the colony, declares that Saint Domingue is “part of the French empire, but submitted to special laws.”26 The last phrase (aside from its echo of the home government's most recent pronouncement) had a disagreeable resonance; “special laws” in the past had permitted slavery as an exception to the Rights of Man. But Article 3 puts it very plainly: “Slaves cannot exist on this territory; servitude is abolished forever. All men are born, live and die free and French.” The article goes on to outlaw racial discrimination of any kind, in terms of employment and under the law. Article 6 declared the “Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion” to be the only faith recognized in Saint Domingue.

  There follow several sections on morals and property rights, and a firm restatement of Toussaint's labor policy. Article 17 states, somewhat euphemistically: “The introduction of cultivators, indispensable to the reestablishment and growth of agriculture, will take place in Saint Domingue; the Constitution charges the governor to take appropriate measures to encourage and favor this augmentation of arms, to stipulate and balance the different interests, to assure and guarantee the respective engagements resulting from this introduction.”27 What “the introduction of cultivators” boiled down to was the importation of slaves. By the terms of Article 3, such arrivals would have to be freed as soon as they reached the colony, but the cloudy language about “engagements” suggests that some form of indentured servitude was being contemplated. Like the early rulers of Haiti who followed him, Toussaint was willing to participate in a one-way version of the slave trade in order to increase his workforce and his army. Perhaps he justified this dubious idea on the grounds that all slaves imported to Saint Domingue would, constitutionally, be freed there. Bunel was dispatched to Jamaica to purchase ten thousand slaves from the English (at the same time that he made sure that the constitution would not disturb To ussaint's arrangements with Maitland), and Corbett, the British agent at Port-au-Prince, was also discussing the importation of slaves with Toussaint.

  In Article 28: “The Constitution names as Governor the citizen Toussaint Louverture, General in Chief of the Army of Saint Domingue, and in consideration of the important service he has rendered to the colony in the most critical circumstanc
es of the Revolution, and by the wish of the grateful inhabitants, the reins of government are confided to him for the rest of his glorious life.”28 Article 29 says that future governors would be limited to a five-year term, renewable “by reason of his good administration,” but Article 30 awards Toussaint the right to name his successor—in a secret document to be unsealed only “at the unhappy event of his death.”29 This clause looked a lot like a recipe for the foundation of a dynasty, but (since Toussaint's legitimate sons were young and inexperienced, and the older two were hostages in France) it functioned more as an apple of discord among the black officer corps. Toussaint might have chosen Moyse or Maurepas or Charles Belair or Christophe or Dessalines to succeed him; the secrecy of the succession was probably not the stabilizing element it was meant to be. In Article 31, whoever succeeded Toussaint Louverture was required to take an oath to “remain attached to the French government.”30

  It is commonly held that the Constitutional Assembly was no more than a puppet body, and that the constitution of 1801 was a de facto declaration of independence. Yet it seems more likely that the composition of the assembly reflected Toussaint's desire to produce a document that ‘would be palatable not only to France but also to other powers closer by: the English colonies and the United States. Toussaint himself had no direct experience of the ‘world beyond the shores of Hispaniola, but he made sure that the Constitutional Assembly ‘was controlled by men ‘well seasoned in foreign affairs. Despite the frequent insistence on loyalty and subordination to France, the imperial tendency of the document ‘was unmistakable; the constitution gives Toussaint the dubious distinction of inventing the Haitian concept of rulership for life. And yet his counselors may have been sincere in advising him in that direction.

  The notion of leadership for life was not so out of tune ‘with the times as it might seem. In France, Napoleon was on a similar course, though he had not yet declared it. It was not so long since the United States had considered crowning George Washington its king. The American Federalist Alexander Hamilton suggested to Toussaint directly that he create “a life-long executive.”31 The civilized world had been deeply dismayed by the catastrophic instability of the various governments-by-committee spawned by the French Revolution; nostalgia for monarchy and/or military dictatorship was in the ‘wind.

  But proclaiming the constitution was an exceedingly dangerous move insofar as it concerned Toussaint's relations ‘with France. Colonel Vincent, described by Pamphile de Lacroix as “one of the small number of Frenchmen who, ‘while always faithful to the interests of the nation, had conserved the credibility and capacity to say everything to Toussaint Louverture,” tried mightily to dissuade him. “Toussaint Louverture admitted to him that he was not able to reduce the gigantic momentum that had taken him over. A tremendous force seemed to be dragging him, and that force was occult.’32

  Vincent argued that, despite its protestations of fealty to France, the constitution drained all practical authority over Saint Domingue out of the French government. “He replied that the government would send commissioners to confer with him.” At this, Vincent burst out, “Say rather that you want them to send you charges d'affaires and ambassadors, as the Americans, the Spanish and the English ‘will not fail to do.” But what truly horrified Vincent was the discovery that Toussaint had already ordered the constitution to be printed and promulgated (according to Article JJ)and evidently meant to present it to the French government as a fait accompli. “This conduct is terrible!” Vincent snapped33 —a bold thing to say to a man who, despite their long friendship, had had him very roughly arrested on occasion and once subjected him to a mock execution.

  Whatever spirit possessed Toussaint would not be gainsaid. He appointed Vincent as emissary to present his constitution to France— Vincent reluctantly accepted the mission. From the United States, where he stopped first, Vincent wrote a long letter to Toussaint, repeating several points from their earlier argument. Again he objected to “the proposed mode of government, which gives you for life an indefinite power—power which, contrary to all the principles most recognized by the French, is in some way hereditary in your hands. The choice of a government confided to the colony alone and to its Military officers, the nomination of all posts, civil and Military, given to the General-in-Chief, remain incomprehensible novelties which affect me most painfully; but when after careful study of every article of this astonishing production, I was able to convince myself that there exists for France no advantage over the other maritime nations.” Here Vincent came to the point of Toussaint's own dilemma—how to maintain his complex trade agreements with Britain and the United States without fatally offending France by making it appear that France no longer had its customary trade rights in the colony it had created. “So then, Citizen General, you may be able to conceive as a possible thing that the Colony of Saint Domingue will be nothing more today than a colonial market where all the nations, with equal advantage, would exchange the objects of their industry! So then, the Commerce of France, to which immense sums are owed, would see the guarantee of its debt carried off by the Foreigner.”

  Vincent still hoped to dissuade Toussaint from what he believed to be a suicidal course, and writing from Virginia, he could probably speak more freely than when in Toussaint's presence in Le Cap. “No, Citizen General, you cannot think this way: the abyss which opens in front of you must frighten you; the good and estimable Toussaint, whom I have always cited as such, and who I want still to believe to be so, could never stray so far. He will not make himself the most guilty and ungrateful of men … How great and how worthy you still appear to me, my dear General! How much you may still be able to add to your glory! Continue to love your country and to serve it well; you have so often told me that you have no other ambition; it is effectively the only ambition you should have: your country is France, and not the isolated colony of Saint Domingue.” In their last interview, Toussaint had reassured Vincent that independence was not his goal, but now Vincent had to warn him that he was making a very different impression in the United States: “They speak of nothing here but your declared independence. They call you, loudly, King of Saint Domingue.”

  Moreover, Vincent cautioned, the status Toussaint had given to British diplomats in the colony looked very bad from France, especially when Toussaint favored them over the French agent Roume (who at this time was confined in that Dondon chicken house): “Today the most terrible enemies of the Rights of Man and of France have their representatives, under the government of Toussaint, in the French colony where we have established liberty and equality for all men, principles against which they fight before your eyes, right next to you. Today the representative of France, the warmest friend of your rights, is disrespected under the government of Toussaint—what am I saying, ‘disrespected’—it's apparent to all that he is under arrest!” If Toussaint was not seeking independence, that point would be difficult to prove, for those who accused him of that ambition could “produce to their advantage the greater part of your proclamations, where France is almost always forgotten; they will produce the greater part of your deeds, which too often disregard the interests of France; finally they will produce this constitution which will have been distributed everywhere … before my arrival, and which will be the despair of all those who have loved and courageously defended the oppressed men of Saint Domingue.”34

  Despite all this fervent pleading, Toussaint was set on his course. Instead of countermanding the constitution, he sent a second envoy to France to reinforce it, in case Vincent gave it an unfavorable presenta-tion. If Vincent disliked Toussaint's drift toward military dictatorship, he probably didn't like the military dictatorship forming under Napoleon in France any better. Certainly it made an unfavorable climate for his mission—yet Vincent apparently did his best to put Toussaint's constitution in a positive light. Napoleon heard him out, then exiled him, though briefly to Elba.

  The constitution was a heavy weight to throw into the delicate balance of
Napoleon's decision about how to handle the situation in Saint Domingue. By 1801, it was obvious to everyone that Napoleon and Toussaint had become military dictators of their respective countries, and surely they recognized each other as such. If Toussaint hoped that recognition would bring endorsement and support, he was to be disappointed.

  Napoleon Bonaparte had come to power at the head of a conservative, though not explicitly royalist, backlash against the most radical extremes of the French Revolution. As a young officer, Napoleon was wont to absent himself without leave from the French army in order to participate in bootless rebellions in his native Corsica. In calmer times he might have been court-martialed and possibly shot for these derelictions, but revolutionary France, at war on practically all of its borders, was in desperate need of capable commanders, and Napoleon was certainly one of the best available. His ambition was also nakedly apparent: in 1791, War Commissioner Simon-Antoine Sucy commented, “I do not see him stopping short of either the throne or the scaffold.”35

  In 1791 the French throne was in serious jeopardy, though it had not yet been abolished. Louis XVI and his family, arrested in their attempt to flee France at Varennes, were now more or less prisoners of the National Assembly, and the cause of a constitutional monarchy was weakened. Napoleon Bonaparte threw his lot in with the republican side, with such fervor that people began to call him “the little Jacobin.” The controversy over the fate of the king finally ended with his execution on January 21, 1793; the following month France, already at war with royalist regimes in Austria and Prussia, went to war with England, Holland, and Spain. In Paris, meanwhile, the National Convention (the legislative body which succeeded the National Assembly in Sep-tember 1792) was in the final throes of a struggle between the comparatively moderate Girondins and the far left Montagnards. In June 1793 the Montagnards, under the leadership of Georges-Jacques Danton and Maximilien de Robespierre, purged the Girondins from the convention. Two months later the Reign of Terror was proclaimed, and the dread Committee of Public Safety, chaired by Robespierre, began sending a stream of suspect civilians to the guillotine.