Jameson Franklin - The Present State of Hayti (Saint Domingo) with Remarks on its Agriculture, Commerce, Laws, Religion, Finances, and Population

At the period of this narrative to which we have now arrived, the effects of the Revolution in France had made a very sensible impression on the whites, as well as on the people of colour; and it has been a matter of no little astonishment, that during the disputes which so unhappily existed, and whilst the adherents of one party were committing acts of hostility against the other, the slave population should have remained passive observers of the contest between their respective masters, and in no instance, I believe, did they fly to their succour and support. The proprietors and planters of all denominations had arrived at a very high state of affluence, their plantations were extensive, in a high state of cultivation; thus possessing a soil rich and productive in a climate particularly favourable for cultivation, their wealth scarcely knew any limits. But unfortunately their manners and habits became relaxed and depraved in proportion as they advanced in affluence and prosperity. Proud, austere, and voluptuous, they often committed acts which humanity must condemn; and in the season of agitation and disappointment, when the contending factions at home and abroad were endeavouring to undermine them, they perhaps were led to the infliction of excessive punishments, and to practise an unusual degree of severity in exacting labour from their slaves. Sensual pleasures had also, at this time, become so prevalent as to excite very general disgust.

The mass of society had become so depraved, that vice in every shape was gloried in, whilst virtue was scarcely known; it cannot therefore be a matter of much surprise, that the rude, untaught, and unlettered slave, just emerging from his savage customs, should be led by example to imbibe the vicious habits, and indulge the loose and ungovernable propensities which characterized his master. Upon the creole slave example made an instant impression, whilst the newly imported African, slow to observe, was only led into excesses by the craft and persuasion of his creole fellow bondsman. Example, therefore, most unquestionably suggested the extraordinary cruelties which in the spirit of revenge were inflicted by these infuriated people, instigated by the mulattoes in the first instance for the more certain enforcing of their claims to the privileges which the decree of the 15th of May, 1791, conferred upon them. In all these disputes the females of the colony also bore a conspicuous part; entering into all the views and feelings of their male companions, they displayed an unparalleled degree of enthusiasm for the cause in which their husbands, fathers and brothers had respectively engaged: forgetting their sex, and lost to the softer feelings of female nature, they furiously flew to the standards of their party, and by gesture and menace shewed that they were ready to meet the fate which seemed likely to fall on their friends.

I cannot better illustrate the characters of the planters and the slave population at this period, than by the description given of them by Rainsford in his History of St. Domingo, who must have been conversant with them from having been a sojourner in the colony under circumstances of great danger, and whose experience, arising from general intercourse, must enable him to be a very competent judge. He says of them: “Flushed with opulence and dissipation, the majority of the planters in St. Domingo had arrived at a state of sentiment the most vitiated, and manners equally depraved; while injured by an example so contagious, the slaves had become more dissolute than those of any British island. If the master was proud, voluptuous, and crafty, the slave was equally vicious, and often riotous; the punishment of one was but the consequent of his own excesses, but that of the other was often cruel and unnatural. The proprietor would bear no rival in his parish, and would not bend even to the ordinances of justice. The creole slaves looked upon the newly imported Africans with scorn, and sustained in turn that of the mulattoes, whose complexion was browner, while all were kept at a distance from an intercourse with the whites; nor did the boundaries of sex, it is painful to observe, keep their wonted distinction from the stern impulses which affect men. The European ladies too often participated in the austerity and arrogance of their male kindred, while the jet black beauty among slaves, though scarcely a native of the island, refused all commerce with those who could not boast the same distinction with herself.”

In the preceding chapter I have sought to discover if the first cause of the revolt of the slaves in Hayti proceeded from any hatred towards their proprietors, or if it were excited by the intrigues of the contending parties, who were each attempting to gain over that class in favour of their cause; and I find that the result of my investigation of the subject is in favour of the latter supposition. From facts that appear to me undeniable I have come to the conclusion, that unless the national assembly of France had made an attempt to destroy that principle of governing the colony which had previously been adopted, and which before the Revolution had been sanctioned by every person connected with it, the slave population would have remained until this day peaceable and tranquil observers of passing events, unmindful of their being in bondage, because under that bondage they had no wants, and in that state, whatever may be the opinion of mankind, they had no care beyond that of their daily labour, to which they felt it was no hardship to submit; for there does not appear an instance in which it exceeded the ordinary work of any labourer within the tropics.

The revolt of the slaves, therefore, I take leave to say, did not proceed from any severity or great oppression on the part of their proprietors, but from the proceedings of the parties who at different periods were striving for a preponderating power in the colony: – of the whites who aimed at the preservation of their privileges, and resisted all innovation; and of the people of colour, who made every possible effort to be admitted into the same sphere, and to the enjoyment of those rights which Gregoire and his revolutionary colleagues were willing to concede to them. To these causes, and to these alone, as it will appear to every unbiassed reader, are to be attributed all those lamentable scenes which subsequently ensued, and to which the human mind cannot turn its attention without experiencing those painful sensations which are excited by the ravages of civil warfare and rebellion.

The first act of open rebellion among the slaves appears to have occurred in the vicinity of the Cape on or about the 23d of August 1791, on the plantation Noé, situated in the parish of Acul. The principal ringleaders murdered the white inhabitants, whilst the other slaves finished the work of devastation, by demolishing the works and setting fire to the dwellings, huts, and other places contiguous to them.

They were joined by the negroes from other estates in the neighbourhood, upon all of which similar tragedies were performed, and desolation seemed likely to spread through the whole plains of the north. The barbarity which marked their progress exceeded description; an indiscriminate slaughter of the whites ensued, except in instances where some of the females were reserved for a more wretched doom, being made to submit to the brutal lusts of the most sanguinary wretches that ever disgraced humanity. Cases are upon record, where the most amiable of the female sex were first brought forth to see their parents inhumanly butchered, and were afterwards compelled to submit to the embraces of the very villain who acted as their executioner. The distinction of age had no effect on these ruthless savages, for even girls of twelve and fourteen years were made the objects of satiating their lust and revenge. Nothing could exceed the consternation of the white people; and the lamentations of the unhappy women struck every one with horror. Such a scene of massacre has scarcely been heard of, as that which accompanied the commencement of the rebellion in the north.