Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (46 page)

as Hédouville. Louverture saw his actions as vital to the preservation and

consolidation of liberty. But, increasingly, he was alienating not only metropolitan emissaries but also some who had fought the battle for equality

with him.32

Before his departure Hédouville had accused Louverture of being

“against liberty” and in favor of “independence.” “Who must love liberty

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more,” retorted Louverture: a former aristocrat like Hédouville, or the

onetime “slave from Bréda”? “Does Hédouville think he scares me?”

Louverture wondered. “I’ve been fighting for a long time, and if I must

continue, I can. I have had to deal with three nations, and I defeated all

three.” The French had already lost 22,000 men in “our country,” he noted,

and those that it sent in the future would probably suffer the same fate. “I

don’t want to go to war with France,” Louverture proclaimed. “I have pre-

served this country for her until now, but if she attacks me, I will defend

myself.” He called up once again the image of the maroons of Jamaica as

proof of what blacks could accomplish. “I am black like them, I know how

to fight, and, what is more, I have advantages that they did not have, for I

can count on support and protection.” Louverture was talking not only of

the support of French friends of emancipation like Laveaux, but of other

allies as well.33

Louverture had kept control over the negotiations with the British for a

very specific reason. He wanted them to withdraw from Saint-Domingue,

but he also wanted their help in rebuilding the colony’s economy. Even as

he negotiated the withdrawal of the British with Maitland, therefore, he

signed a secret treaty with the British general. Louverture promised not to

attack or encourage sedition in Jamaica, and in return Maitland agreed to

end the British blockade of the island. It was a bold step. France and Brit-

ain were still at war, and yet with this agreement—along with a second he

signed in 1799 expanding its provisions—he was promising peace between

French Saint-Domingue and British Jamaica. And he was agreeing to—in-

deed encouraging—trade between British merchants and the French Ca-

ribbean’s major colony. Louverture was making sure that he would have a

mechanism to export the coffee and sugar it produced and a source for

what it needed to survive. But he was also doing more. He was preparing

for the possibility of open conflict with the French government.34

Having negotiated an independent agreement between Saint-Domingue

and Great Britain, Louverture continued his diplomacy, developing an au-

tonomous foreign policy based on the interests of the colony and not those

of France. In June 1798 the U.S. Congress, responding to continuing at-

tacks by privateers against its merchant ships, suspended commercial rela-

tions with France. The “Quasi-War” between the two nations would con-

tinue for two years, and had an immediate impact on Saint-Domingue: the

U.S. merchants who provided the colony an important an outlet for coffee

and sugar and a source of provisions and other goods were suddenly out-

e n e m i e s o f l i b e r t y

223

lawed from visiting its ports. Louverture wrote to John Adams complain-

ing that American ships had “abandoned” Saint-Domingue, and expressed

hope that commercial relations would be reestablished. He would, he de-

clared, welcome U.S. ships as those of an ally and protect them from at-

tack. Eager to maintain the lucrative trade with Saint-Domingue, Ameri-

can officials quickly found a way to get around the congressional decree

that outlawed trade with any region under the control of France. Secretary

of State Thomas Pickering argued that if the people of Saint-Domingue no

longer acknowledged the power of the French government over them,

then there were no obstacles to trading with them. In early 1799 the U.S.

Congress passed an act specifically allowing the president to reopen trade

with Saint-Domingue. Pickering announced to Louverture that American

ships would be allowed back into the ports of the colony if he stopped all

French privateering in the area. Soon a new U.S. consul general, Edward

Stevens, was on his way to Saint-Domingue to finalize the terms of a trade

agreement.35

Louverture drafted a public document allowing U.S. merchant ships to

come to Saint-Domingue. Stevens asked him to go further, agreeing not

to let any French vessels that had been armed outside the colony to enter

its ports. Publicly accepting such a provision would have been a provoca-

tion to the French government, for it was essentially a declaration of inde-

pendence: even as armed U.S. and British ships would be entering the

ports, French ships arriving from elsewhere would be turned back. But, as

Stevens assured Secretary of State Pickering in May 1799, Louverture

“privately” agreed to this demand. During the next year, of the nearly 1,800

ships that came in and out of Saint-Domingue for trade, only 15 were

French, while most of the rest were British and North American. The

trade with the United States was particularly important to Louverture be-

cause, unlike the British, whose merchants were primarily supplying provi-

sions, the merchants from the north were a source of guns and ammuni-

tion. During the next years merchants came regularly from the United

States—one day in July 1801, 32 were counted in Le Cap’s port—playing

a central role in sustaining Louverture’s military might. Early in 1802

General Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc complained that the United States had

brought “guns, cannon, and powder” to the colony, convinced that it was

the intention of the Americans to encourage the independence not only of

Saint-Domingue but of all the Caribbean, so that they could control all the

trade in the region.36

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In fact the U.S. perspective on the revolution in Saint-Domingue

was more complex. Working with and supporting Louverture was a deli-

cate matter. He was, after all, the embodiment of a slave revolution that

horrified many whites, and the leader of a daunting army of ex-slaves.

The commercial opportunities available on the island attracted many mer-

chants, especially from the northern states, but for the south Saint-

Domingue was first and foremost a dangerous example for local slaves.

Pulling back from Adams’ outright support for Louverture after his elec-

tion in 1800, Thomas Jefferson would ultimately move toward a policy

of containment. With his eyes on Louisiana, he was clearly interested in

limiting French power in the area, but he was also concerned about limit-

ing the impact of the revolution on North America. In a conversation with

a French ambassador in Washington in 1801, Jefferson wondered whether

it would be possible to declare the island independent but keep it “under

the protection” of France, the United States, and Britain. The three pow-

ers, he noted, could work together to “confine this disease to its island.”

“As long as we don’t allow the blacks to possess a ship we can allow them to

exist and even maintain very lucrative commercial contacts with them.”37

Louverture proved his willingness to prevent the export of revolution

in 1799, when he betrayed a conspiracy to incite a slave uprising in Ja-

maica. The plan—a “diabolical attempt to extend the destructive influ-

ence of French principles,” in Edward Stevens’ words—was for the revolt

to pave the way for an invasion from Saint-Domingue. The Directory

regime supported the idea, though Hédouville was unable to carry it out

before he was expelled. In late 1799, however, a man named Sasportas—a

Jew involved in contraband trade in the region—entered Jamaica secretly

along with another conspirator with the intention of mobilizing slaves

there. Louverture let the British know, and the two were soon captured.

Sasportas was hung in Kingston, a casualty of Louverture’s adroit diplo-

macy.38

The rapprochement with the British and the Americans had its costs for

Louverture, however. Although he sought to keep his dealings with these

enemy powers secret, news of the 1798 agreement with Maitland circu-

lated widely. In December of that year a London newspaper announced:

“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.” The fact that a “black government has been consti-

tuted and organized in the West Indies,” the article continued, was a great

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225

step forward for the “cause of humanity.” Once published in Britain, of

course, the news rapidly spread to France, where officials took quite a dif-

ferent view of the matter. Laveaux wrote to Louverture from Paris in Sep-

tember 1799 to warn him that the “villains who abhorred him” in Paris

were denouncing him for planning to make the colony independent. He

pleaded with Louverture to prove they were wrong by demonstrating his

submission to the mother country.39

But Louverture was no longer willing to submit to French authorities.

After expelling Hédouville, he brought the French agent Roume, who was

stationed in Santo Domingo, to Le Cap. Roume was, in principle, serving

as the metropolitan representative overseeing Louverture’s actions, but in

fact the French official was “no more than a dignified prisoner at Le Cap”

who possessed only the “semblance of power.”40

Nevertheless, Louverture never articulated a plan for independence of

the kind attributed to him by some British and U.S. observers. In strength-

ening the autonomy of his regime, Louverture was preparing not to break

with France, but to renegotiate its relationship with the colony. Ironically, his regime represented the fulfillment of some of the dreams of autonomy

enunciated by the planters of Saint-Marc years before. Like these earlier

planter activists, Louverture wanted free trade, control over economic

policy within the colony, and political autonomy. Unlike them, he had suc-

cessfully forced such a regime on the metropolitan officials in the colony.

Like the planters, he envisioned a thriving plantation economy. But unlike

them, he sought to construct an order without slavery. In a curious reversal

of the situation in 1793 and 1794, when the planters sought autonomy to

save slavery, Louverture sought it in order to save emancipation.

In 1798 the French naturalist Michel Etienne Descourtilz arrived in Saint-

Domingue. He was not alone: many planters were returning to the colony

“like bees,” hoping to recover their lost fortunes. It was a time of optimism for many whites: the blacks were, because of the “orders of Toussaint

Louverture,” more “politically submissive” than they had been before—

and would be later. Louverture had been actively welcoming white plant-

ers back into the colony from the beginning of his service to the Republic,

but the victory over the British and the expulsion of Hédouville allowed

him to consolidate and expand this policy.41

Hédouville had ordered Louverture not to extend the Republic’s am-

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nesty to émigrés, but even before the British withdrew he was dismayed to

see a “quantity of émigrés flooding into our ports.” They clearly trusted,

rightly as it turned out, that it was Louverture, and not Hédouville, who

would determine their fate in the colony. In Port-au-Prince in mid-August

1798, after a “solemn mass,” Louverture declared that, following the teach-

ings of Catholicism, he was willing to pardon those who had sinned by sup-

porting the British occupation. In early September Louverture called on

émigrés in the United States to return to Saint-Domingue, where, like the

“prodigal son” returning to their father, they would be pardoned. Among

those who responded was a wealthy planter named Bernard Borgella, who

had been the mayor of Port-au-Prince during the turbulent early years of

the Revolution. The returned planter, a longtime proponent of political

and economic autonomy from France, would help shape the black gen-

eral’s policies.42

As planters returned to Saint-Domingue, they often found themselves

in competition with new groups of elites, often ex-slaves, who controlled

their properties. Given the economic possibilities opening up during this

period, these new managers were not sanguine about handing over planta-

tions to their old owners. The many military officers who were renting

abandoned plantations could call on their loyal service to the nation—

which contrasted sharply with the treasonous actions of the returning

white planters—in laying claim to the land. They were also tightly con-

nected with, and indeed often controlled, the local administrations that

were given the responsibility of overseeing the transfer of property back

to their original owners. Not surprisingly, then, planters found that it was

often difficult to get their former plantations back, despite Louverture’s