"Restored to our primitive dignity, we have asserted[4] our rights; we swear never to yield them to any power on earth."
These were the words of war-worn veterans with swords still unsheathed.
| [4] | "Asserting their liberties as men, he (Toussaint L'Ouverture) and his fellow slaves rose against their masters and a servile War insued." Sloan, ibid. |
They have proclaimed independence, they must now take up the task of government. For this work their training hitherto had been the worst possible, while their anthropological and sociological condition was most unfavorable. Among them were represented fourteen different African tribes,—coming from widely separated territory in their native land and differing in customs and language.[5] Besides these diversities there was also a positive and assertive element of mulattos, some of whom had been slaveholders, and, what was worse still, the country had but recently emerged from a war of caste, a war between blacks and mulattos, more cruel than the war between the Lancastrians and Yorkists in England, and much more pernicious in the hates it bequeathed.
| [5] | "C'étaient des hommes tirés de régiones fort différentes de l'Afrique équatoriale ou équinoxiale. En partant du nord du continent noir, des Sénégalais, des Yolofs, des Foulahs, des Bambaras, des Mandingoes, des Bissagots, des Sofas se rencontraient, pêle mêle, dans les marchés à esclaves de la colonie. Au sud de Sierra-Leone, on embarquait pour Saint-Domingue des négres de la Côte d'Or, dont les Aradas, les Socos, les Fantins, les Caplaous, les Mines et les Agoñés. De la Côte des Esclaves on a tiré les Cotocolis, les Popos, les Fidas ou Fœdas. Viennet ensuite les Haousas, les Ibos, les Nagos; les Congos tirés de la côte du Congo ou d'Angola, partagés en sous-divisions de Congos-May youmbés, Congos-Moussombés et Mondongues. De l'Afrique orientale ont été tirés les négres de la côte de Mosambique, dont les Mosambiques proprement dits, les Quiriams et les Quilos, Quilos et les Montifiats." "M. Roosevelt, président des états-Unis et la République d'Haïti," par A. Firmin, published 1905, p. 232-233. "Here in Haiti, there are recognizable traces of fourteen different African tribes." Bishop Holly. "Haitian Revolution," T. A. Steward, p. 282. |
The government set up could but be a military oligarchy. It is well known that there can be no such thing as personal liberty unless there is what may be termed a sovereignty apart from, behind and above the government.[6] With us that power behind the government, that sovereignty, is the people; but in Haiti in 1804 and for many years thereafter there was no such thing as people in a political sense. There were population, army, government, but not people. Their condition was like that of the Europeans generally during the Middle ages. In Europe there were populations, subjects, governments, vassals, tenants, serfs, slaves, soldiers, knights and lords, but not people. By people politically, we mean a body held together by some internal bond, by a spiritual consensus. Perhaps to this extent the Haitian population of 1804 might be vaguely called a people. But the idea of people politically includes also that this body must have a common consciousness of fundamental right, and a common sense of necessary duty; and then possess force of character adequate to the attainment of these rights and the fulfilment of this duty. Rights precede duty; and not vice versa. When complete the idea of people is that body which holds in its hands the sovereignty. Governments are divine, but are created by evolution, coming to us as comes our daily bread, through divinely appointed processes. Rights like the ground, are a natural endowment; government like bread is a production. It is no reflection upon Haiti to state the historic fact that in 1804 and for many years thereafter there was no such thing on her soil as people, in a political sense. The idea and the love of liberty were there and the frequent revolutions that have beset her pathway during the century of her existence attest the continued presence of that spirit. The problem of reconciling government with liberty is still unsolved. Even our own country which in this respect is in advance of all others is at this moment, according to Professor Burgess, stumbling in this process.
| [6] | "The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty" by John Burgess, 1915. The whole volume, Especially pp. 148-149. |
The Haitian "people," then, employing the word in the popular sense were but recently from barbarism, and the little education they had received politically had been obtained through war; an excellent school perhaps for the training of leaders in the mere matters of preservation and order, but of almost no benefit in the development of the common people; although it is related by St. Remy, that Rigaud established schools in his army to have his soldiers taught to read and write. This ex-slave population of half a million souls, had been replaced during the later period of its existence as slaves, about every twenty years with fresh arrivals from Africa.[7]
| [7] | "Roosevelt et Haiti." A. Firmin p. 245. |
No one expected the self-liberated people of Haiti to set up and maintain a stable government. All history was against such a phenomenon. If it required for England, the most fortunately situated of all the modern nations a period of nearly ten centuries to reach stable government, how could Haiti with its population of ex-barbarians and ex-slaves be expected to perform at once so brilliant a feat? Is Haiti, because it is black, expected to do the impossible? Firmin says at the time of which we speak, there was scarcely a person who did not ridicule the idea that Dessalines and his associates should even think they could create a country and govern it independent of foreign control. The statesmen of France were so sure that these people would fail, simply because of racial weakness, that they confidently expected the colony to return to France. They had not given up this hope ten years later; for in 1814 when the island was divided in government, these statesmen proposed to both Christophe who governed in the North, and to Petion who governed in the West that they should return the island to the mother country. They offered to these two colored rulers the highest grades in the French army and large sums of money; but neither Christophe nor Petion could be bought.[8] In this connection, I may remark on the authority of Professor Sloan (his standard work—Life of Napoleon) that it was the heroic resistance of Toussaint L'Ouverture and his compatriots that defeated Bonaparte's plan for the Western Hemisphere and gave us Louisiana. In a letter written by Robert G. Harper in March 1799,[9] which has just reached my hands through the American Historical Society, I find the following: "Last summer, while Mr. Gerry was still in Paris, and the Directory was employing every artifice to keep him there, Hedouville was preparing to invade the southern states from St. Domingo, with an army of blacks; which was to be landed with a large supply of officers, arms and ammunition, to excite an insurrection among the Negroes by means of missionaries previously sent, and first to subjugate the country by their assistance, then plunder and lay it waste. For the execution of this scheme, he waited only till the English should evacuate a certain port in the island which lay most convenient for the expedition; but he was interrupted by a black general of the name of Toussaint, who drove him from the island, compelled him to embark for France and took the whole authority into his own hands."