I am Toussaint Louverture. My name is perhaps known to you. He was called the Black George Washington. He fought off three empires and enraged Napoleon. The prospect of a black republic is equally disturbing to the Spanish, the English, and the Americans.
He championed liberty and égalité for all to Saint-Louverture and the Haitian Revolution. This program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. Haiti is always described as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. But during its height at Saint-Domingue, it was the richest place in the Americas.
The thing about it though is that this richness was all rooted in slaves. Its wealth was based on human capital, on owning that human capital. All day, as long as the sun is shining, the men are bending over and swaying a machete at the foot of the sugar cane. The world as you know it disappears.
Therefore you become an animal and you expect to live like an animal. The dominion of the master had to be absolute. But that absoluteness itself made the master into something other than human as well.
Liberty, equality, fraternity. That was new for the world. Toussaint Louverture is the epitome of humanity.
He realized early on that the condition he was in was totally insufferable. Toussaint Louverture recruited about 3,000 to 4,000 people, trained them, and they fought the French, the British, and the Spanish army for 12 years. They burned the mechanisms of their production.
They're burning the plantation fields, burning down the houses. It was a wholesale massacre on a really, really enormous scale. It was a big, big major payback time. The Haitian Revolution is probably the most profound revolution ever realized by human beings.
The only place where slaves created a nation. But nobody wants to talk about it. In the summer of 1789, when Haiti was still the dormant colony of Saint-Domingue, it was France that grabbed the world's attention. Parisian mobs rioted against the French king and against their own desperate poverty.
Chanting slogans for liberty, equality and brotherhood, they sparked a revolution that would fill history books for centuries to come. The trick about the French Revolution was that it meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. In the streets of Paris, the French Revolution meant an end to the appalling privileges of wealth. And France's brand new Congress, called the National Assembly, it meant the ideas of Europe's most radical thinkers could be realized. Nobody knows exactly what's going to come out of it, but just the idea of having rights, right, the idea that all people have rights, that those rights are inherent.
This was something that obviously philosophers had written about before, but during the course of the French Revolution, it was written down in a text called the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It's a dangerous idea because the society is based on inequality. That's what makes it work. Because it was not supposed to work for everybody. It was supposed to work for a minority.
What was a dangerous idea in France was even more dangerous in its slaveholding colonies. off the coast of Florida, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and an island known as the Pearl of the Antilles. Today, the western half is Haiti.
Then, it was the French colony of Saint-Domingue. One thing that's fascinating about that time, people think things were very far away. They were not.
News traveled very, very fast. We have to remember that the ocean was like a highway in the 18th century. I mean, the ships were constantly bringing news back and forth. Everyone was obsessed with news. Sailors would come off the ships, the first people they would talk to, the people they would work with as they were unloading the ships, were enslaved people.
So there are reports who are describing the events that have been going on in Paris to the enslaved that are working alongside of them. Few intended colonial slaves should take democratic ideas to heart. Far too much was at stake.
Sugar greased the wheels of the 18th century economy, and Saint-Domingue was the sugar capital of the world. It was easy, even for France's political radicals, to ignore the agony that made it all possible. The leaves of the sugar cane are just like...
miniscule saw. If they caught you, you may not even see it. But when you perspire, the sweat gets in it and it burns.
In the roots, there are ants. They bite. And when they bite you, you will scratch yourself for half a day.
If the worker refused to work, well, there is a law which you just shoot him. That's all. The whole concept of slavery itself is a totally savage one. The French, they brought it down to science. A slave coming from Africa would not last three years, the way the system was organized.
They had it down to that kind of statistics. They did it very systematically and it was very successful. Slavery in Saint-Domingue succeeded too on a foundation of relentless terror.
Slave owner Stanislas St.Fourage explained it as rational management. Slow punishments make a greater impression than quick or violent ones. Other than 50 lashes administered in five minutes, 25 lashes of the whip administered in a quarter of an hour.
This is far more likely to make an impression. The accounts about the tortures inflicted on slaves are often horrifying. Legs cut off or arms cut off, amputations for runaways, rubbing hot powder or pepper and so forth into the wounds. Slaves actually hung and left to die. You can kind of imagine that this kind of world in which essentially human life was given so little value that these tortures were kind of refined to this incredible cruel effect.
Despite the brutal tools of control, some blacks managed to escape slavery. Many had been born free, fathered by white planters. Others had gained freedom through their own wits or talents. One such man was Toussaint Louverture.
I was born a slave, but nature gave me the soul of a free man. Toussaint Louverture was a very determined man. He was a very ambitious man.
And in my opinion, he was a genius. Toussaint is, I think, one of the most incredible figures that I know about in many ways. He's born on a plantation in Saint-Domingue.
He grows up on that plantation. That plantation was owned by a man who was tolerant for the times. Toussaint was taught to read and write as a child. He eventually occupies a somewhat privileged role, you can say that on a plantation, as a coachman and has a kind of relationship with the managers and masters in some ways. He becomes free in the 1770s, so he's somebody who kind of occupied different roles in society.
And I think that's the key for understanding Toussaint, is that he saw possibilities where other people didn't. He had businesses, had contacts in the US and elsewhere, bank accounts, managed his affairs pretty well. The man was endless in organizational capacity. I mean, he would have been a fantastic CEO today.
Toussaint didn't record his first reactions to the revolution in France, but his fellow free Saint-Domingans, the white colonials, and the mixed-race population were transfixed. In 1789, there were about 40,000 white people and about 30,000 colored people who were of course their sons and cousins and so on and so forth, who were landowners themselves, many of them slave owners themselves, many of them very effective businessmen, many of them involved romantically with the white master class. One of the things that's important to remember about Haiti and race is it wasn't simply black and white. Instead, you had numerous gradations of color.
One historian went so far as to give 110 categories of color from absolute black to absolute white and to each combination he gave a name Mulatto, Quadroon, Mameluke and what he was accounting for was the drops of black blood. White hoped for more control over the colonies'governance. But the colonies'mixed-race population hoped for more fundamental changes.
They had been born free, but not equal. They had to show physical respect for the white. Stand up when they are in presence of a white.
Call them mister or whatever title they wanted to have. It was not easy for them and that's exactly why they were the first one, before the blacks, they were the first one to ask for equality. The mixed-race population of Saint-Domingue decided their chance had come in 1791. They sent a petition to France's new government asking for the rights of citizenship.
This is a powerful message to have been taking place in a society that was explicitly organized on inequality. It's like dynamite. The petition asked for civil protections and it enraged the island's white population. Working class colonists began a full-scale intimidation campaign. They threatened, beat and murdered mixed-race residents in the capital.
But the petition met a different reception back in Paris. The new breed of delegates in the National Assembly issued a landmark decree. They extended equal rights to the small population of mixed-race people born of two free parents.
Despite the reforms limited extent, the governor of Saint-Domingue refused to obey. Colonial whites felt profoundly betrayed. Some, such as a planter's wife named Madame de Ouvray, began discussing radical thoughts of their own.
The National Assembly is committed to destroying our lives as masters, so much so that secession from France might be necessary. The slave owners of America, I hope, will band together to stop this contagion of liberty. The good Lord who created the sun which gives us light from above, who rouses the sea and makes the thunder roar, watches us.
Bhukmandati was a slave and a voodoo priest. Throw away the image of the God of the whites who thirsts for our tears and listen to the voice of liberty which speaks in the hearts of all of us. In August 1791, as Saint-Domingue's white and mixed-race population squared off for a showdown, Bukman called together slaves from neighboring plantations. They'd been kidnapped from different parts of Africa, and the voodoo religion was their common culture.
Vodou is the spirit of our ancestors, it is a religion. It is the way of life of the Haitian. It is more than a religion, it is our way of life. It is our strength.
Vodou is liberating, it is dignity, it is wisdom. And Vodou is our tradition. Bookman had called them to an area called Bwa Kaima.
First on the agenda was strategy. That ceremony of Bwa Kaima is the first Haitian congress, the beginning of the revolution. It's in this meeting where the African decides to no longer be a slave, to be free, already there in the head, to break this chain in the head, to say, from this ceremony, we take... of Saint-Domingue planned that night to revolt.
They timed their uprising to start on multiple plantations in two weeks'time. And they swore each other to secrecy. They even said that they killed a pig and they drank the blood. This is what we call a communion.
Communion that to keep what you have heard, what you have said to themselves. The God of the white man calls him to commit crimes. Our God orders revenge. He will direct our hands.
He will aid us. On the night of August 22nd, 1791, a thousand enslaved Africans attacked their masters. The slaves were poisoned.
The slaves were bitten. The slaves were killed. The slaves wanted their happiness.
For them to be free, they have to have the same amount of violence that you exerted on them. That's why the revolution was very brutal. This is that hatred in the first day that came out.
The rebel numbers grew from 1,000 to 20,000 as newly liberated slaves burned cane fields and refineries in order to destroy the system that had enslaved them. Within three days the most profitable plantations in the Americas had been laid waste. 184 sugar plantations and a thousand coffee farms.
Whites and mixed race people fled to the capital city for mutual protection. From there, they watched firestorms on all horizons. You've got a fiery cataclysm of enormous scale.
I mean, the people on ships in the harbor supposedly could read their mail by the light of these fires that were, you know, 10, 15, 20 miles away to give you some faint idea of what this would have been like if you were there. The eruption of violence put Toussaint Louverture in a difficult position. His own fortunes were tied to the plantation system and he had straddled the white and black worlds for some 15 years.
Toussaint was no longer a slave. He didn't have the mentality of a slave. He was the owner of two or three plantations.
He was not of the same class anymore. His interests were different from the interests of the masses. But Toussaint's first reaction to the raging violence was based neither on money nor race.
It was personal. He went back to the plantation where he had been born to protect his former owners. It's true that Toussaint Leverture did return to the plantation in the early days of the insurrection and kind of maintained order there. And there's always the question of why, why would he do that? I think Toussaint was somebody who understood the value of humanity in many ways, right?
And I think he probably had gained that precisely from being on the receiving end of slavery. Back in the capital city, as Toussaint helped his former master flee the violence, Saint-Domingue's whites repelled assault after assault. They soon regrouped and launched their own offensive. The bloodletting continued day after day, week after soul-numbing week.
French colonist, Pamphile Delacroix. The country is filled with dead bodies which lie unburied. The Negroes have left the whites with stakes driven through them into the ground. And the white troops, who take no prisoners, leave Negroes dead upon the field.
After the revolution started, the voodoo priest, Bukman Dati, was killed in battle. White soldiers decapitated him and burned his body and view of the rebel camp. In the words of one observer, the conflict in Sendomang had become an exterminating war.
In the autumn of 1791, Toussaint Louverture could no longer sit on the sidelines. Despite a wife and children, despite the chance even of losing his own freedom, Toussaint didn't hesitate long. He left everything, he dropped everything, and he went to the mountain.
It was an act of extraordinary risk. The island's 500,000 slaves outnumbered whites by 12 to 1. But their ultimate prospects were poor. Few had experience in military service. strategy and they had no unifying history or long-term vision. The fact is a lot of people didn't really know what freedom was supposed to look like.
Nobody had really even theorized or imagined this before. Toussaint, on the other hand, had a unique window on the world. He was schooled in African and European culture alike and had read some of France's most radical thinkers. Toussaint had certainly read a text by La Bayrenau, which predicted that out of the colonial slave system, with its frightening imbalance of numbers and horrible suffering and all of that, there would emerge a leader, a revolutionary leader.
I believe Raynal referred to him as a black Spartacus. Toussaint is a literate person. There's no way he would have missed this.
As rebel leaders struggled to forge a disciplined fighting force, Toussaint's talents and intellect set him apart. Then, in December 1791, some four months after the rebellion began, black enthusiasm began to crumble. The new French government in Paris sent more than 10,000 military reinforcements to help the colonists reestablish white rule.
Supplies were scarce in the mountains and winter brought famine to the rebel lines. Thousands began to surrender. not somebody who liked violence, really.
He was good at it if he had to do it, but he preferred to use negotiation, diplomacy, guile, trickery, anything, but, and if that didn't work, he'd kill you, no problem, but he'd try anything else first. Toussaint Louverture was asked to write up a settlement offer. In exchange for the freedom of 200 slave leaders and better working conditions on the plantations, the proposal offered to send most of the rebels back to the plantation.
It was a stark recognition of 18th century realities. Sometimes it's easy to look back at this and suggest that they were willing to sell out their followers. While the terms, I think it's true, are troubling in some ways, they were also trying to seek some change. And I think the key here is that it was really difficult to imagine that you would actually eliminate slavery.
New French commissioners had just arrived from Paris to restore order. More liberal than the planters, they urged Sinemeng's whites to accept the rebels'offer, and they called slave leaders to the capital of Le Cap. for negotiations.
Trust was minimal. Some slave rebels wanted to kill their white prisoners, but Toussaint Louverture argued against it. He wanted the whites returned to look up as a gesture of goodwill. So Toussaint is sent to negotiate with the planters with the idea that in a sense a settlement can be reached. The settlement is not only for the freedom of some of the insurgent leaders, but also for some reforms on the plantation.
Small reforms, but reforms that, at least in the letters they describe, their followers really want. Whether this small group of leaders actually would have had the power to say to all of these people that they'd taken out, OK, we're going back to work now, here's your change. I don't know. As it happened, the white people were so short-sighted that they didn't even give them the opportunity to try.
The whites said no. They said no. Because at that time, they were the ones who wanted revenge.
They forget about what they have done for three centuries, and they think that they were the victims in that thing. So they have to avenge themselves. So they're not going to forgive or forget anything. They refused.
Of course he's taken up arms against them, but at the same time he's made a lot of concessions, and he's struggled against his own followers to say, look, we're going to treat the prisoners well, we're going to trade with them, we're willing to make a deal. And to have that refused by the planter class, I think certainly must have had a radicalizing effect. Toussaint's support for a settlement abruptly ended, and with it, the best deal the whites would ever see. Back in France, the democratic revolution had turned to terror.
France's revolutionary army was at war with neighboring countries. Its radical leaders sought to purge themselves of enemies from within. They executed thousands. In an early 1793, they did the unthinkable. The revolutionary government beheaded the king.
Events in France were moving faster than anyone had ever intended. I mean, this was volcanic upheaval, a true class revolution that turned everything completely upside down. And each ripple that came out would strike the shores of Saint-Domingue. One of the biggest ripples from France that washed into Saint-Domingue's shores was a commissioner named Léger-Félicien. ...de Saint-Onax.
He was a French revolutionary with radical ideas about life in the colony. Saint-Onax arrives in Saint-Domingue having already had bad words said about him. There are people who have actually written from France to the colonists in Saint-Domingue saying, watch out for this guy. He's an abolitionist. He wants to abolish slavery.
Saint-Domingue's mixed-race population had so far retained its fragile alignment with the whites. To ensure that continued, Saint-Onax created a representational council on the island and invited mixed-race citizens to serve. He even brought mixed-race men into the colonial government.
And a lot of white planters are really, really upset about that and see him as, that is a really destructive... The white planters had cause for worry. Less than two years after joining the rebellion, Toussaint Louverture had risen to the top of the rebel army. I am Toussaint Louverture. My name is perhaps known to you.
In 1793, he wrote an open letter to the islands disenfranchised. I have undertaken vengeance. I want to be free.
liberty and equality to reign in Saint-Domingue. I work to bring them into existence. Unite yourselves to us, brothers, and fight with us for the same cause.
With his letter, He announces two things. He announces, first of all, his commitment to the process, to the project of emancipation. And he announces his presence as a leader, maybe even the leader. He has gained great respect from his followers. And with this proclamation, he's essentially saying, you want freedom, and I'm the one who's going to bring you that freedom.
So I'm the person to follow in this regard. But Toussaint at this time was addressing the wider world too. He was particularly focused on Spain.
The Spanish wanted to wrestle the colony away from France for two reasons. First, the colony was very, very prosperous in spite of the war. And second, that prosperity was used by the French Revolution to combat them in Europe.
Spain controlled Saint-Omeng's neighboring colony. So in June of 1793, Toussaint struck a deal. Spanish garrisons just over the border provided guns and ammunition to the slave army and tipped the balance their way. Toussaint's forces captured three cities within eight months.
Saint-Domingue's white planters were desperate. Many hated the new order in France. In a treasonous move, they invited the British to help put down the slave rebellion. Now, the empires of France, Spain and England, along with a vast army of former slaves, were fighting for control of the small island colony. Then, in early 1794, events in Paris caused another explosion in the colony.
A multiracial delegation from Saint-Domingue had appeared in France's National Assembly. They had been sent by Commissioner Saint-Onax with a dramatic message. He had pledged freedom to Saint-Domingue's slaves for fighting the armies of Britain and Spain. The emissaries made a compelling argument. These are the principles and the ideas of France, and we fully represent them, and we wish to continue to represent them on our island.
And so we've come to present our arguments about why we are, in fact, truly committed to those ideas and principles and how we epitomize these principles of the French Revolution. I think it was very powerful for the representatives of France to hear, essentially, that what had happened in the Caribbean is that the white slave owners had deserted France. They had gone over to the British, they had fought against the Republic, and the true people, the true Republicans in Saint-Domingue were these enslaved people who just wanted their freedom.
The French National Assembly endorsed the emancipation of Saint-Dominguean slaves. But that was not all. The delegates freed slaves throughout the entire empire too.
And there's rejoicing and celebration. There's an older woman, a free woman of color, who's traditionally gone to the debates, who sort of sheds tears and is brought down and celebrated as part of this moment. And there are speeches in Paris, celebrations of this event throughout France. It's really seen as a kind of triumph for the French Revolution, for the ideals of the French Revolution.
That this worst form of hierarchy, enslavement and oppression has been abolished in the Caribbean. It was utterly unprecedented. In a stroke, nearly a million black slaves had become French citizens.
Word that the French Revolutionary Government had freed its slaves reached Saint-Domingue quickly. It was one of history's great watersheds and due largely to the extraordinary military accomplishments. of Toussaint's army. But the credit did not rest with Toussaint alone.
He had several able commanders working under him, men like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who shared his soldiers'life experiences more closely than Toussaint. Desalines had been mistreated in slavery, considerably whipped a lot. He had tremendous whip scars on his back that he liked to display on occasion.
He had deep reserves of anger and violence, but also a very Very intelligent man. For Desalines and Toussaint, emancipation changed everything. They quickly trimmed their sails to the new order.
Toussaint realized that... Spain had a king, England had a king, and France was talking about liberty, equality, fraternity. All men equal. So he realized that...
Although the revolt started by fighting the French, the French right now could be the best help they could receive. So he rejoined the French. After three years in opposition, Toussaint de Gertrude was once again a loyal French citizen. So were his followers.
It tipped the balance. Before long, Toussaint de Salines and the army of ex-slaves pushed the Spanish out of Saint-Domingue. The British soon followed.
Word of... Toussaint's astonishing string of victories against white armies was spreading across the European world. They didn't like it.
They didn't like it at all that there was a black general beating white armies. They didn't like it. Slaveholders everywhere were stunned and worried. In the United States, for instance, and in Cuba, they didn't want even white Frenchmen to come because they would tell the story.
Why are you running away from Saint-Domingue? They would answer. And no matter what they answer, it would be known that there was a black revolt. We confronted dangers in order to gain our liberty.
And we will be able to confront death in order to keep it. Slaves. Slaves had once accepted their chain because they had not experienced a state happier than slavery. But those days are over. The people of Saint-Domingue would rather be buried in the ruin of their country than suffer the return of slavery.
Toussaint's ringing language showed his profound attachment to democratic ideals. But there was another side to Toussaint too. Anybody who looked like they threatened Toussaint either ended up dead or deported.
Toussaint had already been appointed Brigadier General and then Governor of Saint-Domingue. No black man had ever risen so far in the colonies. But Toussaint had a rival. The beloved French civil commissioner, Félicité Saint-Onax. Saint-Onax was extremely popular because he was the one to say, OK, slavery is abolished.
He was very popular. And the blacks used to call him Papa Saint-Onax. That didn't go well with Toussaint.
Toussaint is very friendly with Sotonac as long as Sotonac can serve his purposes. And nothing personal about it. When Sotonac becomes useless, he will send him back over there. That's as simple as that. And in 1797, Toussaint, in fact, no longer needed Saint-Onax.
In a series of political maneuvers, he isolated the civil commissioner. Then in August, he forced Saint-Onax off the island. Toussaint Louverture had triumphed again. In 1798, as Toussaint Louverture was evicting the last of the British from his island, another French general battled British interests halfway around the world in Egypt.
His name was Napoléon Bonaparte. Well, Toussaint and Napoleon in many ways are similar. Both were a little bit from the margins of French society.
They succeeded through military brilliance. They were both incredible military leaders. And they became political leaders as a result of their military experience. But Napoleon's victories would put Toussaint's at risk. Just months after conquering Egypt, Napoleon marched into Paris.
A coup d'état toppled the revolutionary government, and Napoleon took the reins of power. The revolution is over, he declared. I am the revolution.
As Napoleon is rising to power in France, Toussaint is watching closely about what's going on. He knows several things. He knows, first of all, that there are very powerful pro-slavery voices in France who are agitating against him, attacking him, and proposing... that slavery actually be recreated in some form in Saint-Domingue. Toussaint believed Saint-Domingue's survival and the survival of freedom itself depended on his ability to mobilize people to rebuild the devastated economy.
And in Toussaint's mind, that meant one thing. His black followers should return to the cane fields. There were some compelling reasons for this. I mean, mainly in Toussaint's situation, he was really in a bind at that point, in the sense that his hope for peace was restoring productivity on the plantations, recreation.
the sugar trade in particularly. But nobody wanted to go back to that kind of work, so he pretty well had to force them. And then the people began to think, hmm, this is a lot like slavery. He was strong, maybe a little too strong with the blacks in several occasions, but he had to do it. He had to do it.
To be a leader, you got to know where to lay back, and you have to know when to say, OK, guys, go ahead, let's do it. If you don't do it, hell, whatever the consequences, you'll pay for it. Most newly freed slaves didn't see it that way. They wanted to work for themselves, growing crops for food rather than export. Toussaint's luster began to tarnish.
Napoleon, on the other hand, was riding high. He restructured the government and proclaimed a new constitution for France. Far from enshrining black emancipation, it opened the door for France to reinstitute slavery and its colonies. When Louverture heard that, he really understood that something was changing. And more ominously, he understood that he didn't have any way to influence Napoleon.
And so what he did, in a kind of typical Toussaint fashion, is he responded by saying, OK, San Domingo's going to have its own laws. Well, here they are. I'm in charge here. I might as well write the Constitution. Toussaint's Constitution decreed slavery would never exist in Saint-Domingue again, and it was the first in history to prohibit discrimination based on skin color, a milestone that U.S. law would not guarantee for another 150 years.
The Constitution had troubling elements too. It made Toussaint governor for life, with sole authority to designate his successor. Toussaint was a great hero to me, but this was not a good idea.
I mean, he basically, with that gesture, installed permanent military dictatorship, which has remained a problem in Haiti for two centuries. He could have done what he needed to do without that, I think. I'm not quite sure why he did it. But that was enough to send Napoleon over the edge. Napoleon Bonaparte had had enough of revolution.
And according to Napoleon, the U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson, ...and shared his view. The prospect of a black republic is equally disturbing to the Spanish, the English, and the Americans.
Jefferson has promised that at the instant the French army has arrived, all measures will be taken to starve Toussaint. Rid us of these gilded Negroes, and we will have nothing more to wish for. Toussaint tried urgently to show Napoleon that military logic, if nothing else, proved the merit of black ambitions. Toussaint was writing Napoleon.
He wanted so much to be... recognized as saving this land for France. His efforts failed. In 1802, Toussaint was stunned to see the largest French expeditionary force ever assembled entering Saint-Domingue's harbor.
Its mission was simple. Napoleon wanted to turn back the clock. My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in Saint-Domingue is not so much based on consideration of commerce and money as on the need to block forever the march of the blacks in the world. Toussaint Louverture fought the invading French army for three grueling months, but the island's black population, now disenchanted with his leadership, offered lackluster support. On May 6, 1802, Toussaint Louverture surrendered.
At first, he was allowed to retire from the army with full honors. But a month later, he was called to a meeting with the French. commander. If I wanted to count all the services that I have rendered to the French government, I will need several volumes and still I wouldn't finish it all. Toussaint was arrested.
arrested on charges of conspiracy. He wrote some stuff that's very eloquent, saying, I rather suspect that it's because of my color that you're treating me like a common criminal, although I prefer not to believe this. And to compensate me for all the services, they arrested me arbitrarily in Saint-Domingue. They choked me and dragged me like a criminal without any decorum or concern for my rank. Is that the recompense?
do my work? Normally, a mutinous French officer would have been brought before a military tribunal, so he comports himself as if he's going to have a military trial. Toussaint's sons had been educated in France. They had even met Napoleon, hoping again that Napoleon would understand his thinking. Toussaint peacefully boarded a ship for France.
Saint-Domingue remained mostly calm and Toussaint's wake. Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the other Black officers continued cooperating with French General Victor Leclerc. But then, news arrived from the nearby colony of Guadeloupe.
Napoleon had reinstated slavery. Leclerc reported that he had Dessalines in his pocket and controlled him and had mastered his spirit. Well, ha ha, he was extremely wrong about that.
Saint-Domingue erupted in anger and fear. Dessalines quickly broke from France. One more time, the former slaves of Saint-Domingue took to the field against European armies.
De Céline is a no-holds-barred, no-compromising leader and figure who is going to... eradicate anything that stands in the way of what the people have been mobilizing towards. It's generally reported that Desiligne killed all the white people, massacre of all white people, race war.
No, not really. There's one report by a survivor who managed to get out to escape by masquerading as an American because Desiligne was not killing Americans or English, just French. One fleeing white, Pierre Chazotte, paused on a mountaintop to observe the devastation. No less than ten square leagues of country burning like volcanoes. The rapidity of the conflagration was such as to make the beholder believe that large...
And thick trains of gunpowder had previously been laid down. The war becomes this extreme scorched earth kind of campaign in which Dessalines and others burn the towns in order to basically leave the French with no choice but to depart. Dessalines scorched earth tactics worked. In 1803, the French army was finally driven out. 50,000 French soldiers had died.
And Saint-Domingue hated the French. became the world's first black republic. This is a powerful story. It wasn't just an anti-colonial revolution, but it was also an anti-slavery. slavery revolution in that it said your economy and your privilege, which is based on forced labor, cannot stand, it will not stand.
It's a message that translates through time. Independence is the strongest feeling of human being. I think we all in some ways have inherited something from this revolution because it's really the first place that people insisted absolutely that human rights were for all people.
It's something that everybody should know about it, to know exactly what our species, not black people, but our species can realize. But Toussaint Louverture never lived to see victory. By the time Haiti attained the goal he fought so hard to achieve, the imprisoned revolutionary had died in a freezing cell in the mountains of France. And overthrowing me, Louverture wrote as he left for France, you have only cut down the trunk of the liberty tree of the blacks and Saint-Domingue.
It will spring back from the roots, for they are numerous and deep. Egalité for All, Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution is available on DVD. The companion book is also available.
To order, visit shoppbs.org or call us at 1-800-PLAY-PBS. This program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.