Jean Audubon's release from captivity in New York, in June, 1780, probably marks the period of his first intimate acquaintance with the United States. We know only that he did not return immediately to either Santo Domingo or France, but became an enthusiast for the American cause, and sought the earliest opportunity to avenge his wrongs at the hands of the British. He did not have long to wait, for through the exertions of the Ambassador de la Luzerne, he was placed in command of the corvette Queen Charlotte. With her, in October, 1781, he joined the fleet of the Count de Grasse before Yorktown,[24] where he soon witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis and the humiliation of his enemies. After this turning point of the war Captain Audubon remained in the United States, and in April, 1782, commanded a merchantman called L'Annette,[25] in which he was also personally interested, and delivered a cargo of Virginia tobacco at the port of Nantes. Shortly after his return to America in the same year he was placed in command of an American armed vessel The Queen and sent on another mission to France. Near the Chaussée des Saints he was attacked by a British privateer, but after a stubborn fight at close quarters he sank his enemy and entered the port of Brest. Nothing is said of the taking of prisoners on such occasions, and there were doubtless few survivors among the defeated crew. This command Jean Audubon held until peace was concluded between Great Britain and her former colonies in America, probably until the close of 1783. The hostile army was disbanded in the spring of that year, the treaty of peace was made definitive in September, and on November 25, 1783, the last British troopers left the city of New York.
CHAPTER III
JEAN AUDUBON AS SANTO DOMINGO PLANTER AND MERCHANT
Captain Audubon at Les Cayes—As planter, sugar refiner, general merchant and slave dealer, amasses a fortune—His return to France with his children—History of the Santo Domingo revolt—Baron de Wimpffen's experience—Revolution of the whites—Opposition of the abolitionists—Effect of the Declaration of Rights on the mulattoes—The General Assembly drafts a new constitution—First blood drawn between revolutionists and loyalists at Port-au-Prince—Ogé's futile attempt to liberate the mulattoes—Les Cayes first touched by revolution in 1790, four years after the death of Audubon's mother—Emancipation of the mulattoes—Resistance of the whites—General revolt of blacks against whites and the ruin of the colony.
After the American struggle for liberty had been finally won, Captain Audubon resigned his commission held in the United States and returned to his home at Nantes, but town or country could not hold him long. Lured by the prospects of great wealth which Santo Domingo offered to the merchant of those days, and having learned by long experience in her ports the devious methods by which fortunes were attained, he decided to give up the sea and embark in colonial trade. For six years, from 1783 to 1789, he lived almost continuously in the West Indies, and as merchant, planter, and dealer in slaves amassed a large fortune. Meanwhile his wife, who had seen little of him since their marriage in 1772, remained at Nantes.
Captain Audubon traveled through the United States early in 1789, and again late in that year when on his way to France, probably in the first instance returning to Santo Domingo by way of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Symptoms of unrest were already prevalent in the northern provinces of the island but had caused no serious alarm in the south. Jean Audubon's aim seems to have been to collect debts due him in the United States and to leave the capital invested there. At all events it was on this occasion that he purchased the farm of "Mill Grove," near Philadelphia, the history of which will be given a little later (see [Chapter VII]). He had no intention, however, of living in Pennsylvania, for he immediately leased this estate to its former owner and hurried away.
July 14, 1789, found the elder Audubon enlisted as a soldier in the National Guards at Les Cayes. These colonial troops, which were originally militia organizations modeled after similar bodies in France, were reorganized at this time to meet any possible emergencies. Affairs in the southern provinces of Santo Domingo had followed, up to this moment, their normal course, and Jean Audubon, who could have learned nothing of what had transpired at home, decided to entrust his various interests to the hands of agents and return to France. This was probably in late August or early September, 1789, as we know that he first returned to the United States and visited Richmond, Virginia, at the close of that year.[26] Strangely enough, on the twentieth day of the former month the National Assembly at Paris had voted the celebrated Declaration of Rights, which was destined to upturn the whole social system of Santo Domingo and to convert that island into a purgatory of the direst anarchy, strife, and bloodshed which the world had ever known, or at least remembered; but fully six weeks must have elapsed before news of this grave decision could have reached the colony.
At this time Jean Audubon was no doubt regarded as a very rich man, and though he happened to leave Les Cayes at a critical moment, little could he have dreamed of the disaster that awaited him there as well as in his beloved France. His personal affairs during this eventful period, involving as they necessarily do the early life of his distinguished son, have hitherto been shrouded in the dark and sinister history of that ever smiling but ever turbulent island. Now, however, the veil of mist that has settled over the page can be penetrated at the most important points. In this and subsequent chapters we shall follow the life of father and son through the course of events which has been thus briefly summarized.
To return to the earlier threads of our narrative, at about the close of 1783, Captain Audubon was engaged by the Coirond brothers, colonial merchants at Nantes, to take charge of their foreign trade, which centered chiefly at Les Cayes,[27] Santo Domingo, then a most thriving and populous town, as it is today the largest seaport on the southern coast of the Republic of Haiti. Their ships brought sugar, coffee, cotton and other West Indian products to France, and laden with fabrics, wines and every luxury known to the colonists of that day, returned to Les Cayes, as well as to Saint Louis, an important port a little farther to the east, where these merchants also possessed warehouses and stores.
In a short time Jean Audubon had acquired an independent business of his own, both as a planter and merchant. He made his home at Les Cayes, but extended his enterprises to Saint Louis and possibly to other points. From this time onward he commonly described himself as négotiant,[28] or merchant, and his son, when writing to his father from America, addressed him in this way. His business letters and other documents of the period refer to his house at Les Cayes, his plantations of cane and his sugar refinery, his exportation of colonial wares, his purchases of French goods, particularly at Nantes, and to his trade in black slaves which eventually assumed large proportions. How important his sugar plantations may have been is not known, but a tax-receipt shows that at one time he possessed forty-two slaves.[29] The naturalist said that his father acquired a plantation on the Ile à Vaches, an island of considerable importance at the southern bound of the roadstead of Les Cayes and nine miles from the town, but we have found no other reference to it.