Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (50 page)

Read Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution Online

Authors: Laurent Dubois

were in command. Instead of waiting for Bonaparte to send his own laws,

he decided to make his own.25

In early March, representatives from each of Saint-Domingue’s depart-

ments were selected by local assemblies to seats on Louverture’s Constitu-

ent Assembly. Among those chosen was Julien Raimond, whom Bonaparte

had sent back to the colony in late 1799, and whose contribution to

Louverture’s constitution would be his last political act; in mid-October

1801, he died in Le Cap. Along with Raimond and two other men of color

served seven whites, including Bernard Borgella, the returned planter who

had become an important adviser to Louverture during the previous year.

There were no ex-slaves on the committee—although Moïse had been

elected, he refused to take up the post—and most of those on it had once

owned slaves. Members of the old elite of Saint-Domingue, those who

thanks to their wealth had the luxury of education, were being formed into

a new political elite, gathered around the figure of Toussaint Louverture.

They were not the only ones giving him advice: Alexander Hamilton sent a

letter to Louverture recommending “a lifelong executive and the enroll-

ment of all males in the militia.”26

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[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

An 1822 engraving, part of a series on the history of the Revo-

lution published in Haiti, shows Toussaint Louverture pro-

claiming his 1801 constitution under God’s approving eyes.
Pri-

vate collection.

In early May the Assembly completed its constitution, which was signed

by Louverture and promulgated in July 1801. It decreed the colony—com-

prising the entirety of Hispaniola and its coastal islands—a “part of the

French empire” governed by a set of “particular laws.” “In this territory,

slaves cannot exist; servitude is permanently abolished,” the constitution

declared. “All men within it are born, live, and die free and French.” All

residents, “no matter their color,” could pursue any employment, and the

only acceptable distinctions would be those based on “virtues and talents.”

These initial articles, rephrasings of Bonaparte’s constitution, the Declara-

tion of the Rights of Man, and the 1794 abolition of slavery, laid the foun-

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dation for an egalitarian society based on the permanent rejection of slav-

ery and racial hierarchy.27

The constitution also established a specific religious order for Saint-

Domingue. In early January 1800 Louverture had issued a decree outlaw-

ing “nocturnal assemblies and dances.” Men with “bad intentions,” he

noted, had been taking “peaceful cultivators” away from their labor by

drawing them to such dances, “principally those of Vaudoux.” Through

these practices, they spread principles that were “absolutely contrary” to

those of “friends to their country,” and would be subject to physical pun-

ishment and imprisonment if they continued their subversive activities.

The 1801 constitution built on this earlier decree by declaring that the only

“publicly professed” religion was to be Catholicism. The constitution, as

Louverture declared, supported “the reign of good habits and the divine

religion of Jesus Christ in our climates.” Louverture, however, kept direct

control over the “extent” of each priest’s “spiritual administration.” The

constitution also declared that those who participated in “civil and religious marriage,” which encouraged “purity of habits,” would be singled out and

protected by the government. Divorce was outlawed. The status and the

rights of children were to be defined by laws that aimed at “spreading and

maintaining” the “social virtues” and cementing “family ties.”28

Residents of Saint-Domingue were invited to take part in another kind

of family, one not defined by blood. “Every plantation is a factory that re-

quires the union of cultivators and workers; it is the tranquil refuge of an

active and loyal family, whose father is necessarily the owner of the soil or his representative.” Each “cultivator,” the constitution continued, was a

“member of this family,” and therefore had a right to a part of the planta-

tion’s revenues. But since the movement of cultivators from one plantation

to another would cause the “ruin of cultivation”—and since the colony was

“essentially agricultural” and could not “suffer even the slightest interrup-

tion in the work of cultivation”—the regulations set down in Louverture’s

October 1800 decree were maintained. Cultivators, like children, could

not leave the homes of their “fathers,” the property owners. Indeed, they

were to be joined by new brothers and sisters. “The introduction of cultiva-

tors,” the constitution proclaimed, was “indispensable for the reestablish-

ment and growth of cultivation.” The government would take “appropri-

ate measures” to “encourage” an increase in the number of “arms” in the

colony. Louverture was considering working with merchants to bring men

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and women from Africa as cultivators to work the plantations of Saint-

Domingue.29

Louverture’s constitution represented, as one scholar has argued, the

articulation of a “social contract” for Saint-Domingue, one that would have

a profound impact on the structuring of postindependence Haitian society.

(It is indeed celebrated today as the “precursor” to the nation’s first constitution; in 2001 President Jean-Bertrand Aristide dedicated a monument in

Port-au-Prince that recalls Louverture’s political achievement by repro-

ducing some of the constitution’s articles.) It rested on the idea that “all citizens owe their services to the land which feeds them and in which they

were born, to the maintenance of liberty and equality, of property, when-

ever the law calls on them to defend it.” As Louverture put it in his speech

proclaiming the constitution, the law was the “compass for all citizens,”

and all should “bend before it.” In a sense, the constitution was simply ar-

ticulating a political classic claim, drawing on the previous policies of Re-

publican France and Republican Saint-Domingue, about the responsibility

of citizens to support and sustain their nation. Such claims, which placed

the power to define these responsibilities in the hands of a potentially abu-

sive state, always entailed contradictions between liberties and duties. But

Saint-Domingue’s constitution carried within it particularly powerful con-

tradictions. On the one hand, the project that all the people of Saint-

Domingue were called on to support was a project of emancipation, of

freedom from racial hierarchy, of liberty for all in a land once dominated

by slavery. At the same time, ex-slaves were given very particular responsi-

bilities that were defined by their old status: those who had once worked as

slaves were now free, but they were required to work as cultivators. To de-

fend freedom, they had to surrender their freedom to the new state.30

This state was literally embodied in one person, Toussaint Louverture,

who was declared governor of Saint-Domingue for “the rest of his glorious

life.” Louverture was even given the right to choose his successor, but the

latter’s term of office was limited to five years. Although the assembly that had written the constitution was maintained as a consultative body, and

municipal administrations and tribunals were established throughout the

colony, Governor Louverture would sign and promulgate all laws, control

all administrative and military appointments, and oversee enforcement of

labor policies and trade. He had the right to censure any publications and

to suppress any writings arriving from outside that might bring “disorder”

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or “corrupt” its residents. Residents were granted few political rights be-

yond the ability to present petitions to the administration, particularly to

the governor, and were warned that “seditious gatherings” would be dis-

persed, by force if necessary. Louverture’s power was based, as it had been

since 1794, on the military. In his speech proclaiming the constitution he

called on his soldiers to “observe discipline and subordination, activate cultivation, obey your chiefs, and defend and support the Constitution against

the internal and external enemies who seek to attack it.” The army, accord-

ing to the constitution, was to be “essentially obedient,” could “never deliberate,” and was “at the disposition of the Governor.”31

The French officer Charles Humbert Marie Vincent, who had worked

closely with Louverture since 1794, was given the delicate task of carrying

the new constitution across the Atlantic to present it to Bonaparte. Vincent

warned Louverture that the consul and his Colonial Ministry would proba-

bly view it as nothing less than a declaration of independence. “He listened

to me attentively,” the French officer later wrote, “when I asked him what

the French government was to do now, given that according the terms of

the constitution they would have no need to name or send representatives

to the colony.” Louverture explained that he expected the government to

send him commissioners to “speak to him.” “Why not say,” Vincent re-

torted, “that you wish them to send you chargés d’affaires, ambassadors, as

the Americans, the Spanish, and even the British will certainly do?” “You

owe all your rights to France,” the French officer later scolded Louverture,

“and you dare to invade her right to govern her colony!” Louverture was

unmoved by the officer’s appeals. Vincent, however, turned out to be right.

An armada would soon be sailing from France with his regime firmly in its

sights. But Louverture also had other enemies closer to home.32

“The French in this land are no good, and they are the only ones in

our way,” General Moïse had explained to his white secretary in the wake

of Hédouville’s expulsion in 1798. “If it were in my power, I would soon be

rid of them,” he continued, adding that “you have to finish what you start.”

“If France sends forces here, what will they do? Nothing.” They would ul-

timately only strengthen the black army of Saint-Domingue. “I hope they

send three, four, five thousand men; there would be so many more guns

and so much more ammunition for our brothers who are unarmed.”

“When we began fighting for our liberty,” Moïse added, “we had only one

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rifle, then two, then three, and in the end we had all those of the French

who had come here.”33

Moïse had been one of Louverture’s strongest partisans for nearly a dec-

ade, since the days when both had served the Spanish, and had become his

adopted nephew. By 1801 he was the general of the division of the North-

ern Province. He also occupied the position of “agricultural inspector” in

the region, like Dessalines in the south and west, and was therefore in

charge of overseeing and enforcing Louverture’s labor regulations. He had

the reputation, however, of being “less barbarous” than Dessalines, accord-

ing to one contemporary; and Louverture criticized him because produc-

tion levels were lower in the north than elsewhere in the colony. The

youthful Moïse responded by declaring that, despite his uncle’s orders, he

could not “resolve himself” to be the “executioner of my color.” “It is al-

ways in the name of the interests of the metropole that he scolds me,” he

explained, “but his interests are those of the whites, and I will love the

whites only when they have given me back the eye they took from me in

battle.” In addition to rejecting the use of violence against cultivators,

Moïse was assiduous in his payment of them. He also advocated selling

small plots of land to subaltern officers and even to soldiers, going against Louverture’s stated aim of preventing the division of plantations. Moïse

was further alarmed by the 1801 constitution, particularly by its provision

for the importation of Africans as cultivators.34

In late October 1801 there was a series of uprisings in the plantation re-

gions of the northern plain. Several hundred whites in the region were

killed. Louverture responded swiftly, sending in Dessalines, who sup-

pressed the revolt with brutal efficiency. Christophe, commander of Le

Cap, unearthed and crushed a parallel conspiracy in the town. In the wake

of the uprising, Louverture summoned Moïse and accused him of being

its “soul and leader.” “You took up arms because you thought the whites

were once again becoming your masters,” Louverture apparently told his

nephew, adding: “Could I, a former slave, work toward the reestablishment

of servitude?” Moïse insisted that he had not organized the revolt, though