All Souls' Rising (61 page)

Chronology of Historical Events

Before the revolution, the colony of Saint Domingue was divided into three sections: The North, the West, and the South. Cap Français, commonly called Le Cap, was the principal commercial city of the entire colony. In the West, Port-au-Prince was the principal town. Towns in the South were smaller; among these, Jacmel and Les Cayes were significant. The eastern half of the island, separated by mountain ranges from the French colony, was a Spanish possession, with a much smaller population, few slaves, and no significant plantation economy.

1757

A plot to poison all the whites in Saint Domingue is discovered and aborted at Le Cap. The plot was organized by Macandal, a runaway slave who became a leader among the large communities of runaways, or maroons, inhabiting the mountains of the colony.

1758

Macandal is captured at a dance at Dufresne plantation near Le Cap. In March of this year, Macandal is publicly burned.

1787

In France, Louis XVI promises to call the Estates-General.

1788

February:
In France, the society of
Les Amis des Noirs
is founded, complementary to an abolitionist organization founded in London in 1787.

April—May:
News of the activities of
Les Amis des Noirs
reaches Saint Domingue via articles in
Mercure de France
, causing much consternation.

July:
The Colonial Committee, composed of absentee planters, is founded in France. There also exists in France another profoundly conservative alliance of absentee planters called the
Club Massiac
, divided from the Colonial Committee on some issues but united in opposition to
Les Amis des Noirs
.

1789

January:
Les gens de couleur
, the mulatto people of the colony, petition for full rights in Saint Domingue.

May 5:
In France, the Estates-General opens.

June 20:
The Tennis Court Oath is taken in France. The Colonial Committee joins the Third Estate.

July 7:
The French National Assembly votes admission of six deputies from Saint Domingue. The colonial deputies begin to sense that it will no longer be possible to keep Saint Domingue out of the revolution, as the conservatives had always designed.

July 14:
Bastille Day. When news of the storming of the Bastille reaches Saint Domingue, the
petit blancs
flock to the French revolutionary tricolor and lynch those who oppose them. Wearing the
pompon rouge
as a badge of Revolutionary allegiance, they march from Le Cap to Port-au-Prince.

August 26:
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen causes utter panic among all colonists in France. The Colonial Committtee and
Club Massiac
now band together.

September 27:
The French National Assembly grants a Colonial Assembly to Saint Domingue, in response to petitions from the Colonial Committee and the
Club Massiac
. This Colonial Assembly, assured of
grand blanc
planter control by property qualifications, has power over internal affairs and reports directly to the king, rather than to the French National Assembly.

October 5:
The Paris mob brings king and National Assembly to Paris from Versailles. The power of the radical minority becomes more apparent.

October 14:
A royal officer at Fort Dauphin in Saint Domingue reports unrest among the slaves in his district, who are responding to news of the Revolution leaking in. There follows an increase in nocturnal slave gatherings and in the activity of the slave-policing
maréchaussée
.

October 22:
Les Amis des Noirs
collaborate with the wealthy mulatto community of Paris, organized as the society of
Colons Americains
. Mulattoes claim Rights of Man before the National Assembly. Abbé Grégoire and others support them. Deputies from French commercial towns trading with the colony oppose them.

November 1:
A new Provincial Assembly of the northern section of Saint Domingue, dominated by a revolutionary group of
petit blancs
called Patriots, meets in Le Cap. The
petit blancs
seize control of the administration from the royalist governor.

Persecution of mulattoes in Saint Domingue intensifies. Some mulattoes begin to make public addresses demanding political rights. The response is lynching of the speakers. More atrocities follow (including, in the western section, pogroms by whites against mulattoes where colored infants are impaled and displayed on spears). Class hatred breaks out, stimulated by fear and by
petit blanc
jealousy of the wealthy mulattoes. In the absence of royal authority, these resentments are more freely acted out.

December 3:
The French National Assembly rejects the demands of mulattoes presented on October 22.

1790

March 8:
A decree of the French National Assembly declares the colonies to have control over their own internal affairs, and that the constitution of the mother country will not govern the colonies in all respects. Among other things, the decree turns the mulatto-rights issue over to the Colonial Assembly.

In Saint Domingue, a mulatto rising in the Artibonite fails to attract any support and is suppressed by the militia and the
maréchaussée
. In the aftermath, new configurations emerge. The mulattoes, traditionally protected by the royal government, become increasingly royalist. Conservatives move to abate persecution of the mulattoes. But the possibility of stabilization is sunk by the arrival of the March decrees from France.

March 25:
In Saint Marc, three Patriot-controlled assemblies convene to form a new Colonial Assembly, responding to modified instructions from France which arrived in January.

June:
The Chevalier de Mauduit, a royalist officer, arrives in Port-au-Prince to become colonel of the Royal Infantry Regiment there, and begins to win leadership of the conservative faction. By August, Mauduit and his royalist supporters control the western department from Port-au-Prince, but Mauduit’s repressive measures against the
petit blancs
increase tension there.

October 12:
The French government dissolves the Colonial Assembly officially. By the decree of October 12, the National Assembly reaffirms the concept “that no laws concerning the status of persons should be decreed for the colonies except upon the precise and formal demand of their Assemblies.”

October 28:
The mulatto leader Ogé, who has reached Saint Domingue from Paris by way of England, aided by the British abolitionist society, raises a rebellion in the northern mountains near the border, with a force of three hundred men, assisted by another mulatto, Chavannes. Several days later an expedition from Le Cap defeats him and he is taken prisoner along with other leaders inside Spanish territory. This rising is answered by parallel insurgencies in the west, which are quickly put down by Mauduit. The ease of putting down the rebellion convinces the colonists that it is safe to pursue their internal dissensions…Ogé and Chavannes are tortured to death in a public square at Le Cap.

November:
News of the National Assembly’s dissolution of the Colonial Assembly reaches Saint Domingue. The Patriots refuse to submit.

During the winter of 1790—91, the Vicomte de Blanchelande is appointed governor of the entire colony.

1791

March 2:
Military reinforcements from France sail into Port-au-Prince, mutiny, and join the Patriots.

March 4:
The royalist forces of the Regiment Port-au-Prince change sides and Blanchelande flees the town. Mauduit is killed, castrated by a woman among the
Pompons Rouges
, his mutilated body paraded through the streets. In the following days, the royalists are overthrown all over the west, and the
Pompons Blancs
are disarmed. Blanchelande and the remnants of the government establish new headquarters in Le Cap and a new standoff begins on this basis. The Maltese ruffian Praloto controls a new democratic goverment at Port-au-Prince. The remains of the local royalist opposition, mostly country planters unable to flee their habitations, establish a center at Croix Les Bouquets, the main town of the Cul de Sac plain in the western section.

April:
News of Ogé’s execution turns French national sentiments against the colonists. Ogé is made a hero in the theater, a martyr to liberty. Planters living in Paris are endangered, often attacked on the streets.

May 11:
A passionate debate begins on the colonial question in the French National Assembly.

May 15:
The French National Assembly grants full political rights to mulattoes born of free parents, in an amendment accepted as a compromise by the exhausted legislators.

May 16:
Outraged over the May 15 decree, colonial deputies withdraw from the National Assembly.

June 30:
News of the May 15 decree reaches Le Cap. Although only four hundred mulattoes meet the description set forth in this legislation, the symbolism of the decree is inflammatory. Furthermore, the documentation of the decree causes the colonists to fear that the mother country may not maintain slavery.
Re
Article 4 of the March 28 decree, the French National Assembly says that it originally meant to declare the political equality of free-born mulattoes, because the “rights of citizens are anterior to society, of which they form the necessary base. The Assembly has, therefore, been able merely to discover and define them; it finds itself in happy impotence to infringe them.”

The colonists rise against this news. Governor Blanchelande is alarmed by rumors of colonial receptivity to an English intervention.

July 3:
Blanchelande writes to warn the minister of marine that he has no power to enforce the May 15 decree. His letter tells of the presence of an English fleet and hints that factions of the colony may seek English intervention. The general colonial mood has swung completely toward secession at this point.

Throughout the north and the west, unrest among the slaves is observed. News of the French Revolution in some form or other is being circulated through the vodoun congregations. Small armed rebellions pop up in the west and are put down by the
maréchaussée
.

August 9:
A new Colonial Assembly forms at Leogane to oppose the May 15 decree, and sets a meeting for August 25.

August 11:
A slave rising at Limbé is put down by the
maréchaussée
.

August 14:
A large meeting of slaves occurs at the Lenormand Plantation (where Macandal had been a slave) at Morne Rouge on the edge of the Bois Caiman forest. A plan for a colonywide insurrection is laid. The
hûngan
Boukman emerges as the major slave leader at this point. The meeting at Bois Caiman is attended by slaves from each plantation at Limbé, Port-Margot, Acul, Petite Anse, Limonade, Plaine du Nord, Quartier Morin, Morne Rouge, and others. The presence of Toussaint Bréda is asserted by some accounts and denied by others.

In the following days, black prisoners taken after the Limbé uprising give news of the meeting at Bois Caiman, but will not reveal the name of any delegate even under torture.

August 21:
Blancheland arrests slave suspects in a conspiracy against Le Cap and takes precautions to secure the city against rebellion.

August 22:
The great slave rising in the north begins, led by Boukman and Jeannot. Whites are killed with all sorts of rape and atrocity; the standard of an infant impaled on a bayonet is raised. The entire Plaine du Nord is set on fire. By the account of the Englishman Edwards, the ruins were still smoking by September 26. The mulattoes of the plain also rise, under the leadership of Candi.

August 23:
Fugitives from the Plaine du Nord begin to reach Le Cap. That morning an expeditionary force of regulars and militia sets out under command of Thouzard and is turned back by the rebel slaves. For the next while no further expeditions are attempted by the whites.