Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (18 page)

a plan, which he had put forth to the Colonial Ministry in the 1780s, by

which rights would be granted only to “quadroons” who were born of legit-

imate parents and could claim at least two generations of freedom behind

them. In a separate meeting Ogé presented a bolder plan both for the

granting of rights to free-coloreds and for the gradual abolition of slavery, declaring that it was the only way to prevent a revolt among the slaves.

Having received nothing concrete from the Club Massiac, Raimond and

Ogé joined a group of free-colored activists called the Société des Colons

Américains. The name was significant, emphasizing that the free people

of color were American colonists, just as the whites were. They eventu-

ally allied themselves with the abolitionists of the Société des Amis des

Noirs. Within a few months Brissot and Grégoire had joined this new bat-

tle over the meaning and universality of citizenship. The alliance gave new

energy to the abolitionists and helped to radicalize the demands of the

free-coloreds. The
cahier des doléances
presented to the National Assembly by the Société des Colons Américains demanded “equality for all non-

whites and freedom for mulatto slaves.”44

The planter-merchant lobby, united on the question of slavery, was less

so when it came to the rights of free people of color. A minority of planters, such as the marquis de Rouvray, believed that they should be granted political rights; in fact he had earlier proposed that they be admitted to as-

semblies in Saint-Domingue through white proxies. Another planter noted

that the demand of the free people of color was clearly based on reason

and humanity and should not be refused. “Let us avoid the arrogance and

rigidity that destroyed the French aristocracy,” he warned, which had “re-

fused to give up its coat” and consequently lost everything. Many among

the merchants, “who cared above all about the color of sugar,” were sympa-

thetic to the demands emanating from a group of plantation owners who

contributed to the commerce that enriched French ports. Free-coloreds in

Bordeaux organized demonstrations in September 1789 in favor of the de-

mand for political rights, and were received well by many in the town. A

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club of merchants and planters formed in La Rochelle, which had tight

links with the Club Massiac, wrote in November 1789 that it seemed wise

to accept the “natural right” of free-coloreds to political representation.45

Such support, and the positive response to the free people of color in

the National Assembly, gave Raimond and Ogé hope. Many in Paris were

receptive to their demands, which were a clear application of the univer-

salism that had found expression in the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Although there were many limits placed on citizenship during the early

years of the Revolution (women, servants, and many poorer men could

not vote), the justification for such exclusions—that only those who were

financially independent could be politically independent as voters and rep-

resentatives—could not be applied to the educated and wealthy free men

of color petitioning in Paris. The only justification for excluding them

was race. For many thinkers influenced by Enlightenment universalism

and revolutionary egalitarianism, the “aristocracy of the skin” that the

planters were defending was a clear violation of everything the Revolution

stood for.

But here, as in the earlier antislavery campaign, initial advances were

followed by defeat. The Club Massiac, most of whose members were com-

mitted to refusing any concessions to the free people of color, counterat-

tacked and managed to isolate the reformers in the National Assembly. Al-

though Grégoire forced a request for free-colored representation through

the credentials committee, which he chaired, opponents shouted down at-

tempts to put their recommendation to a vote. Planters and their allies

published pamphlets that argued against the granting of rights to free-

coloreds, and for strict limits on metropolitan intervention in the colonies.

Drawing on the arguments developed during the previous decades by legal

thinkers such as Moreau, they went on the offensive with an argument that

would remain the foundation for the political activism of the next decade:

the colonies, they insisted, needed “particular laws.” The great boons of

the Revolution had to be adapted to colonies whose societies, climates,

and economies differed from one another and from that of the mother

country. Colonial policy should be shaped not by Paris but by those famil-

iar with the Caribbean, who understood slavery and slaves from experi-

ence. At the center of the argument was a stubborn defense of slavery. As

the planter Tanguy de la Boissière argued in a 1789 pamphlet published

in the colony, the “pivot” of the “constitution, legislation, and regime of

Saint-Domingue” must be “everything for the planter.” “There can be in

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Saint-Domingue only slaves and masters,” he declared, the former serving

only as “instruments of cultivation.” Such views gained official recognition

in an October 1789 memo by the Colonial Ministry and were strongly sup-

ported by colonial representatives, notably Moreau, who by then was sit-

ting in the National Assembly as a representative for Martinique.46

As Raimond, Grégoire, and others understood all too well, abandoning

colonial policy to the planters meant condemning free-coloreds to political

exclusion and unchecked discrimination. How, they demanded, could the

National Assembly allow one group of France’s citizens to so flagrantly op-

press another group in this way? How could the planters who had so long

oppressed the free people of color be allowed to decide whether they

could exercise their natural rights? The response from Moreau was that

masters had in fact shown great benevolence and humanity to the free peo-

ple of color. It was, after all, the generosity of white masters that created the class in the first place, and the free-coloreds demanding rights were little more than ingrates supported by uncomprehending zealots. Segrega-

tion, Moreau argued, was inevitable and beneficial. The “color” of individ-

uals of African descent would separate them from whites, and free people

of color had gathered in their own segregated neighborhoods because they

accepted this difference. Integration was impossible, and free-coloreds

should put their faith in the benevolence of those who had given freedom

to them or to their ancestors.47

Raimond and Grégoire insisted that free people of color were the only

ones capable of containing the slaves, and argued that granting them rights

was in fact the best way to preserve slavery. But planters doubted their sin-

cerity. Grégoire gave them reason to be suspicious. He demanded that

slave owners look to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and taunted

them to “get themselves out of it if they could”; he caused an uproar in the

National Assembly when he attacked planters for their cruelty both to free-

coloreds and to their slaves; and he regularly invoked the possibility of

slave revolt, reminding readers that all people had the right to insurrection against their oppressors. Planters took advantage of such statements—and

of fragmentary and exaggerated reports about slave unrest in the colonies,

particularly the 1789 revolt in Martinique—to paint Grégoire and his allies

as advocates, and even instigators, of slave revolt. One newspaper article

proclaimed that Brissot would not stop “intriguing” until there were “five

or six children of the Congo sitting in the French National Assembly.”48

Drawing on an established tradition, the prominent planters in Paris ar-

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gued that the only way to preserve slavery was to maintain a racial hierar-

chy among the free. One writer worried that even if slavery were pre-

served, granting rights to free people of African descent would make them

the “kings of the colonies,” as they would transform themselves into a ma-

jority by emancipating their own slaves and liberating those owned by

whites. Moreau insisted that any intervention by the National Assembly

into the status of free-coloreds would undermine the power of masters

over their slaves. “If our slaves suspect that there is a power that can influence their condition, independently of the will of their masters,” wrote

Moreau, they would see that they were no longer in a state of “absolute de-

pendence” on the whites. Once this had happened, it would be impossible

for “France to preserve its colonies.” The representatives in the National

Assembly had only one choice: to leave the power of masters intact by al-

lowing them complete legal autonomy. If they did otherwise, they would

not only have the blood of colonial whites on their hands; they would also

be sounding the death knell of a system that millions of French people de-

pended on for their livelihood.49

These scare tactics worked. In March 1790 the National Assembly ap-

proved the formation of a specialized Colonial Committee. There were

no abolitionists on the committee, and among the twelve were four plant-

ers and two merchants who owned property in Saint-Domingue. It was

headed by Antoine Barnave, who had ties to the port towns and was sym-

pathetic to their interests. Within a few days the committee proposed a law

on colonial governance that reassured colonial representatives. The consti-

tution of France would not be applied to the colonies. Instead, each colony

would elect its own assembly, which would propose a constitution regard-

ing the “internal” regimes of the colonies—notably the administration of

slavery and the laws regarding free-coloreds—which would be reviewed

and ratified in Paris. The colonies would be governed by particular laws

developed by their populations, laws unconstrained by the constitution

of France or, presumably, the Declaration of the Rights of Man. These

provisions granted planters the freedom they had long demanded to gov-

ern their colonies internally. But the decree also protected the interests

of French merchants. There were to be “no innovations” in “any of the

branches of commerce between France and the colonies,” the law prom-

ised. Final decisions on trade policies would, as before, be made in Paris.

Slavery and the slave trade were safe, and so were the regulations that

forced the colonies to export their products to the mother country. After

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the law was presented the comte de Mirabeau rose to speak, but was

shouted down from all sides as he denounced those who surrounded him

as cowards. The law was rushed to a vote with no discussion, and it passed.

The colonies were safe from the dangers of universalism. Indeed, the

decree took aim at the abolitionists by declaring that “all those who worked

to incite uprisings against the planters will be declared guilty of crimes

against the nation.”50

Although the law seemed to grant the whites of Saint-Domingue

complete control over their domestic policies, it contained an ambiguous

phrase that provided an opening for the free-coloreds. The law declared

that the colonial assemblies would be elected by “citizens,” but failed to

specify who would be granted this status. During the next weeks, as

Barnave drafted a report that was to accompany the March 8 decree to

the colonies, the National Assembly received several entreaties from free-

coloreds asking to be given the right to vote. Negotiations in the Colonial

Committee led to a revision declaring that “all people” who were prop-

erty owners over twenty-five would be able to participate in the elections.

In the assembly, Grégoire complained that the phraseology was still too

vague, and requested that free-coloreds be explicitly included; but ulti-

mately no alterations were made to the instructions.51

The Colonial Committee had avoided a fight in the National Assembly

by not providing clear instructions on the matter of the free-coloreds. It

hoped that the planters would “take advantage of the imprecision” of the

instructions to refuse the demands of the free people of color, demands

that they “did not dare refuse themselves.” It was a cynical and cowardly

political compromise, and in it were embedded the seeds of a brutal con-

flict. The National Assembly had abandoned the free people of color, leav-

ing them “facing their enemies” in the colonies. “It was in Saint-Domingue

that everything would be decided.”52

Across the Atlantic the Saint-Marc assembly had been busily reshaping

the colony on its own terms, bypassing the governor’s authority, passing

decrees and applying them without consultation. When the Provincial As-

sembly of the north attacked this disregard for France’s representative

in the colony, the Saint-Marc assembly drew up a document called the

“Bases constitutionelles”—“Constitutional Principles.” It was a bold char-

ter for political and economic autonomy, granting the assembly sweeping