The wars of Saint Domingo were conducted in a most barbarous spirit before the time of Toussaint’s acquisition of power, and after his abduction. During the interval, the whole weight of his influence was given to curb the ferocity of both parties. He pardoned his personal enemies (as in the instance of the mulattoes in the church), and he punished in his followers, as the most unpardonable offence they could commit, any infringement of his rule of “No Retaliation.”
When it is considered that the cruelties perpetrated in the rising of 1791, and renewed after the fall of Toussaint, were invented by the whites, and copied by the negroes (who were wont to imitate their masters in all they did), it is no small evidence of L’Ouverture’s magnanimity that he conceived, illustrated, and enforced, in such times, such a principle as that of No Retaliation.
All the accounts of him agree that, from his earliest childhood, he was distinguished by a tenderness of nature which would not let him hurt a fly. He attached to himself the cattle and horses which were under his charge when a boy, to a degree which made him famous in a region where cruelty to animals at the hands of slaves was almost universal. A man who lived till fifty, remarkable for a singular gentleness and placability, ought not to be believed sanguinary from that time forward, on the strength of the unsupported charges of his disappointed enemies.
Piety was also his undisputed early characteristic. A slave bringing to the subject of religion the aptitude of the negro nature, early treated with kindness by a priest, evincing the spirit of piety from his infant years, finding in it the consolations required by a life of slavery, and guided by it in a course of the strictest domestic morality, while surrounded by licentiousness, may well be supposed sincere in his religion, under a change of circumstances occurring after he was fifty years of age. The imputation of hypocrisy is not, however, much to be wondered at when it is considered that, at the time when the first notices of Toussaint were written at Paris, it was the fashion there to believe that no wise man could be sincerely religions.
As for the charge of general and habitual dissimulation, it can only be said that while no proof of the assertion is offered, there is evidence, in all the anecdotes preserved of him, of absolute frankness and simplicity. I rather think that it was the incredible extent of his simplicity which gave rise to the belief that it was assumed, in order to hide cunning. The Quarterly Review quotes an anecdote thoroughly characteristic of the man, which is not introduced into my story, because, in the abundance of my materials, I found it necessary to avoid altogether the history of the English transactions in Saint Domingo. It was only by confining my narrative to the relations between Toussaint and France that I could keep my tale within limits, and preserve the clearness of the representation. There are circumstances, however, in his intercourse with the British, as honourable to Toussaint’s character as any that I have related; and among them is the following, which I quote from the Quarterly Review.
“General Maitland, previous to the disembarkation of the troops, returned the visit at Toussaint’s camp; and such was his confidence in the integrity of his character, that he proceeded through a considerable extent of country, full of armed negroes, with only three attendants. Roume, the French Commissary, wrote a letter to Toussaint, on this occasion, advising him to seize his guest, as an act of duty to the republic: on the route, General Maitland was secretly informed of Bourne’s treachery; but, in full reliance on the honour of Toussaint, he determined to proceed. On arriving at head-quarters, he was desired to wait. It was some time before Toussaint made his appearance; at length, however, he entered the room with two open letters in his hand. ‘There, General,’ said he, ‘before we talk together, read these. One is a letter from the French Commissary—the other is my answer. I could not see you till I had written my reply, that you might be satisfied how safe you were with me, and how incapable I am of baseness.’”—Quarterly Review, volume twenty-one, page 442.
The charge of personal ambition is, above all, contradicted by facts. If anything is clear in Toussaint’s history, it is that his ruin was owing to his loyalty to France, his misplaced trust in Napoleon, and his want of personal ambition. He did not, as he might have done, make himself a sovereign when France was wholly occupied with European warfare. He did not, as he might have done, prepare his people to resist the power of the mother-country, when she should at length be at liberty to reclaim the colony. He sent away the French commissaries only when, by their ignorance and incompetency, they imperilled the peace and safety of the colony. He cherished the love of the mother-country in the hearts of the negroes, to the very last moment—till the armament which came to re-establish slavery appeared on the shores—till it was too late to offer that resistance which would have made him a king. Christophe’s view of this part of his conduct is given in a manifesto, dated in the eleventh year of the Independence of Hayti:—
“Toussaint L’Ouverture, under his paternal administration, had reinstated, in full force, law, morals, religion, education, and industry. Agriculture and commerce were flourishing. He favoured the white colonists, particularly the planters. Indeed, his attentions and partialities had been carried to such a length, that he was loudly blamed for entertaining more affection for them than for those of his own colour. Nor was this reproach without foundation; for, a few months before the arrival of the French, he sacrificed his own nephew, General Moyse, who had disregarded the orders he had given for the protection of the colonists. That act of the Governor, added to the great confidence he had placed in the French authorities, was the principal cause of the feeble resistance the French encountered in Hayti. Indeed, his confidence in these authorities was such, that he had discharged the greater part of the regular troops, and sent them back to the tillage of the soil.”—Haytian papers, page 158.
Such conduct is a sufficient answer to the allegation that Toussaint was actuated by a selfish ambition, cunning in its aims, and cruel in its use of means.
Some light is thrown upon the character of his mind by the record of the books he studied while yet a slave. Rainsford gives a list, which does not pretend to be complete, but which is valuable as far as it goes. It appears that in his years of comparative leisure he was completely engrossed by one book at a time, reading it at all spare moments, meditating its contents while in the field, and quoting it in conversation for weeks together. One of the first authors whose works thus entirely possessed him was Raynal: afterwards, Epictetus, in a French translation; then others, as follows:—