Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (22 page)

erty—helped propel a new set of religious developments in the colony.

Slave insurgents who had drawn on their religious traditions in seeking so-

lace and strength became part of new communities in which religious prac-

tices were reconfigured and strengthened.

Before the insurrection of 1791 there may in fact have been two cere-

monies: one in which a cow was sacrificed, perhaps to serve the deity

Ogou, who is still served in this way; and the other, at Bois-Caïman, in

which a pig was sacrificed. These were perhaps early versions of two tradi-

tions of worship that were later brought together in Haitian Vodou—the

“Rada” and “Petro.” The Rada rites have their roots in West Africa, while

the Petro seem to have evolved from Kongolese traditions. The Petro

lwa
—Vodou gods—are more unpredictable, temperamental, and at times

violent than the Rada, and carry the marks of both slavery and resis-

tance. One 1950s ethnographer described Petro ceremonies dominated by

the “crack of the slave-whip sounding constantly, a never-to-be-forgotten

ghost” that recalled the “raging revolt of the slaves against the Napoleonic

forces” and “the delirium of triumph” of the Haitian Revolution. The his-

tory of the revolution, then, became part of the religion, some of whose

practitioners see the Boïs-Caïman ceremony as the founding moment of

their religion, a charter both for the gathering of different African nations and for the unification of African-born and creole slaves in pursuit of liberation. Thus Bois-Caïman remains a symbol of the achievement of the slave

insurgents of Saint-Domingue, a symbol not of a specific event whose de-

tails we can pin down, but rather of the creative spiritual and political epic that both prompted and emerged from the 1791 insurrection.22

A few weeks after the insurrection began, an insurgent was captured by a

troop of white soldiers. He tried to escape by pleading his innocence, but,

according to one soldier, when he “saw that his fate was sealed,” he began

to “laugh, sing, and joke” and “jeered at us in mockery.” Finally, they exe-

cuted him. “He gave the signal himself and met death without fear or com-

plaint.” When they searched his body, they found “in one of his pockets

pamphlets printed in France, filled with commonplaces about the Rights

of Man and the Sacred Revolution; in his vest pocket was a large packet of

tinder and phosphate and lime. On his chest he had a little sack full of hair, herbs, and bits of bone, which they call a fetish.” The law of liberty, ingre-102

av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d

dients for firing a gun, and a powerful amulet to call on the help of the

gods: clearly, a potent combination.23

Many planters believed the ideals of the French Revolution, spread

by uncomprehending and overenthusiastic whites, were responsible for

bringing fire and carnage to the colonies. In early September the colony’s

assembly passed a “provisional decree, prohibiting the sale, impression, or

distribution of any pieces relative to the politics and revolution of France.”

Pierre Mossut, writing to Gallifet in Paris, blamed the insurrection on “the

various writings published in your capital in favor of the Negroes,” which

had circulated in the colonies and were known to the slaves. The planter

Madame de Rouvray wrote that the insurrection was the direct result of

the actions taken in metropolitan France by abolitionists. “The
scelerats

[villains] swore they would have us slaughtered by our slaves!” she ex-

claimed, perhaps thinking of the famous passage prophesying insurrection

in the Abbé Raynal’s
Histoire philosophique.
Madame de Rouvray found further proof of her assertion in reports claiming that there were whites

leading the slave insurgents in battle. Along with the 150 slave insurgents

her husband had killed just the day before, she wrote in September, was

one white man who was
carbonisé
—covered in carbon as a kind of black-

face. Another account claimed, similarly, that there were whites leading

the insurgents “with blackened faces,” and who “were discovered by their

hair.” One priest captured among the rebels confessed, probably prodded

by the fear that he would be executed (as he indeed soon was), that he had

been “sent over with four more from France” in order to “teach negroes

to revolt.” An even more extreme version of this paranoia was expressed

in a September letter claiming that “fifty
new
emissaries were coming” to the colony “to raise insurrections among the slaves.” It accused Julien

Raimond of “making numerous levies of rogues and ragamuffins in the

streets of Paris,” and attacked Robespierre and Condorcet, “members of

the National Assembly,” as “dangerous enemies to the colonies.” The letter

was taken quite seriously. A decree was passed in response, ordering that

“every emigrant from France should be sent back to the mother country, at

the expense of the colony,” unless they possessed property on the island or

were related to someone who did.24

There was a long-lived chorus of writers who blamed the revolt on the

spread of egalitarian ideals within Saint-Domingue, as if these ideals all by themselves had the power to set the colony on fire. The front page of the

f i r e i n t h e c a n e

103

inaugural issue of the
Moniteur Général
of Saint-Domingue, a vehicle for the colony’s planter-dominated assembly, was a poem titled “Philanthropy.”

It identified a “ferocious and blood mania” called “philosophy” as the “in-

visible and perfidious arm” that was driving “one hundred thousand rebel

slaves.” Antoine Dalmas, our source on the Bois-Caïman ceremony, pro-

vided a list of the accused that included the entire Enlightenment. It

began with the Société des Amis des Noirs, “who had as their avowed goal

the loss of the colonies,” but continued with “those numerous sects” who

called themselves “economists, Encyclopedists, etc.,” and who formed “a

kind of Republic” that, to their great misfortune, had influenced the rulers

of France. Those like Dalmas who made such claims implicitly viewed the

slaves as capable of interpreting and transforming Enlightenment ideals,

and of applying them to their own ends.25

Dalmas, meanwhile, scoffed at those who offered a mirror image of this

theory, claiming that the king and the aristocrats were behind the revolt.

But some took this allegation quite seriously. A lawyer named Gros, who

was a prisoner of the insurgents, claimed that they all believed that the

king had been imprisoned, and that they had been given orders “to arm

themselves and give him back his liberty.” He concluded that “the revolt of

the slaves is a counterrevolution.” The marquis de Rouvray found cre-

dence in both theories. In December 1791 he wrote to his daughter that

“the Amis des Noirs were probably the initial cause of our misfortunes,”

having sent emissaries to the colony, two of which had been hung for “hav-

ing preached their dogma among our slaves.” But he added that it was

also “very certain” that “the partisans of counterrevolution” had played a

major role in inciting the slave revolt in the hope that the loss of Saint-

Domingue would help stir up the coastal provinces of France and turn

their inhabitants against the revolution. The idea that white counterrevolu-

tionary planters were behind the revolt would have a long life. In 1793

the Republican commissioners in the colony would arrest some planters,

accusing them of having “advised, encouraged, excited, or protected” slave

revolt, as well as of having supplied insurgents with ammunition and provi-

sions. In a proclamation on slavery issued in May of that year, they an-

nounced that it was not “among the slaves” that the “causes of their

insurrections” would be found. It was neither “for themselves” nor “from

themselves” that they had revolted, but rather the result of external “im-

pulsions” by men who had no “African blood.”26

But of course the insurgents had their own ideologies, their own histo-

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av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d

ries, and their own hopes for the future. While the actions of royalist and

Republican whites helped set the stage for the insurrection and contrib-

uted to its development, the slave insurgents were the true force behind it.

As Jean-Philippe Garran-Coulon, author of a long official report on the

“troubles” of the colonies published in the late 1790s, argued, the slaves of Saint-Domingue (like those who followed Spartacus in Rome) had been

moved to action not by the actions of instigators but rather by the “genius

of liberty,” which had incited them to “break their chains.” If they had been encouraged by the talk of liberty in the colony, and by the “unthinking”

statements of some whites, the slaves had no “instigator” other than “the

love of liberty and hatred for their oppressors.” “Slaves are in a permanent

state of war with their masters and the government that maintains slavery.

They have the right to demand liberty by any means, even violence,” he

wrote. Taken up in a violent and no doubt at times exhilarating process of

revolution, they drew on a variety of ideals as they struggled to find their

place in a rapidly changing world. Their voices, for the most part screened

out of the voluminous accounts of the insurrection of 1791, nevertheless

bleed through in ways that can help us understand the complicated process

of political invention that took shape during the Haitian Revolution.27

Early in the insurrection, one group presented a clear set of demands.

They approached a French officer and told him that they would surren-

der if “all the slaves should be made free.” But they were “determined

to die, arms in hand, rather than to submit without a promise of liberty.”

The whites and free-coloreds who were sent with the official French re-

sponse—which rejected emancipation but offered an amnesty to all insur-

gents who would return to the plantation and denounce their leaders—

were attacked, and six of the nine were killed by the disgusted insurgents.28

In a few cases, slave insurgents explicitly phrased their demands in the

language of Republican rights. When a group of slaves were questioned

about the meetings they had attended just before the insurrection began,

they declared that “they wanted to enjoy the liberty they are entitled to by

the Rights of Man.” The next day several “leaders of those mobs” were

“taken and interrogated,” and their answer “was like the first received.”

Another account of the 1791 insurrection described how “an innumerable

troop of negroes presented themselves almost underneath the batteries

of Le Cap, asking for the rights of man.” The pamphlet of the “Rights of

Man” found on one executed insurgent also suggests the important role

of this document in inspiring certain slaves.29

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105

But insurgent leaders more commonly called on the authority of the

king of France himself. This was the case of a remarkable free-colored

man who took on the name Romaine la Rivière (also known as Romaine-la-

prophetesse), who emerged as a leader in the Southern Province of Saint-

Domingue in late 1791. Having established himself in an abandoned

church, he conducted mass before an upside-down cross and claimed to

be “inspired by the Holy Spirit and in direct communication with the Vir-

gin Mary, his godmother, who answered his solicitations in writing.” He

repeatedly told slaves that the king had already freed them, but that their

masters were refusing the decision, using this assertion to encourage

them to join his armed band. Romaine la Rivière was remarkable for the

strength of the claims he made on both the earthly and heavenly powers,

but he was not unique. When Boukman was killed in mid-November, in-

surgents lamented that he had been “killed for the most just of causes, the

defense of his king.” The insurgent leader Jean-François, “the supreme

chief of the African army,” wore a gray and yellow uniform decorated with

a “cross of Saint-Louis,” an aristocratic military order. His guards’ uniforms were decorated with the royal fleur-de-lis. He and the leaders he fought

with called themselves generals and officers of the “army of the king.”

Some insurgents spared some white sailors they had captured because

“they were in the king’s service.” Garran-Coulon concluded: “It is certain

that the
nègres
armed themselves in the name of the king; that they had a flag soiled by the fleur-de-lis, and by the motto ‘Long live Louis XVI’; that they constantly invoked his authority, and called themselves
gens du roi.
”30

The insurgents had complex motivations for evoking the king of France,

whom many saw as a potential ally and liberator because of the rumors that

had circulated about his actions in their favor. Many probably recalled the

royal decrees of the 1780s which were meant to improve the lot of the

slaves, and which had incited such hostility among their masters. When in

December 1791 the insurgent leaders Jean-François and Georges Biassou

were negotiating with colonial officials, they explained that their followers were prey to “false principles,” notably the idea that “the king has given