The mulattoes, notwithstanding their oppression and degradation, it should have been observed, were permitted to enjoy property, including slaves, to any amount, and many of them had actually acquired considerable estates. By these means the most wealthy had sent their children to France for education, just as many are now sent to Oberlin, in which place they supported them in no small degree of grandeur.
It happened about this time that a considerable number of these mulattoes were in Paris, among whom was Vincent Ogé. This young man entered into the political questions relative to the people of color, which were then violently agitated, and became influenced with a conflict of passions at the wrongs which he and his degraded countrymen were apparently destined to endure. His reputed father was a white planter, of some degree of eminence and respectability, but he had been dead for years. Ogé was about 30 years of age; his abilities were far from being contemptible, but they were not equal to his ambition, nor sufficient to conduct him through that enterprise in which he soon after engaged. Supported in Paris in a state of affluence, he found no difficulty in associating with La Fayette, Gregorie, and Brissot, from whom he learned the prevailing notion of equality, and into the spirit of which he incautiously entered with all the enthusiasm and ardor natural to the youthful mind when irritated by unmerited injuries; and he determined to avenge his wrongs.
Induced to believe that all the mulattoes of Hayti were actuated by the same high-minded principle, he sacrificed his fortune, prepared for hostilities, and sailed to join his brethren in Hayti.
What was Ogé’s disappointment when, after evading the vigilance of the police and secretly succeeding in reaching these shores, he found no party prepared to receive him, or willing to take up arms in their own defence! It probably might have been said of him also, “His heart is seared.”
About two hundred were at length prevailed upon to rally around his standard; and with this inadequate force he proceeded to declare his intentions, and actually dispatched a note to the governor to that effect.
In his military arrangements his two brothers were to act under him, with one Mark Chavine, as lieutenants. Ogé and his brothers were humane in their dispositions, and averse to the shedding of blood; but with Chavine the case was totally different.
Ferocious, sanguinary, and courageous, he began his career with acts of violence which it was impossible for Ogé to prevent.
Finally the brothers of Ogé joined Chavine in his petty depredations. White men were murdered as accident threw them in their way. The mulattoes, when they could not be induced to join them, were treated with every species of indignity; and one man in particular, who excused himself from joining them on account of his family, was murdered, together with his wife and six children.
The inhabitants of Cape François, alarmed at these outrages which they imagined to be committed by a far more formidable body of revolters than really existed, immediately took measures for their suppression.
A detachment of regular troops invested the mulatto camp, which, after making an ineffectual resistance in which many were killed, was entirely broken up. The whole troop dispersed. Ogé and his officers took refuge in the Spanish part of the island. The principal part of their ammunition and military stores immediately fell into the hands of the victors.