"Properly speaking, this was not a slave insurrection, although it assumed that form after the island was thrown into a revolutionary state.
"The island of St. Domingo, in 1791, contained about seven hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, about fifty thousand of whom were whites, more than double that number of mulattoes and of mixed blood, and the balance were negroes.
"The French and Spanish planters had introduced a general system of concubinage, and the consequence was a numerous progeny of mulattoes, many of whom associated with the whites nearly on terms of equality, were educated at home or sent to Europe to be educated, and many of them were wealthy, having been freed by their parents and their property left to them. These things had lowered, the character of the white proprietors, gradually bringing them down to the level of the mulattoes, and lessening the distance between them and the blacks; and in addition to this, there were a number of the white population who were poor and enervated, and rendered vicious by the low state of social morals and influence of the climate.
"In this state of affairs, when the French Revolution broke out, the wild spirit of liberty caught to the island and infected the mulattoes and the lower class of white population, and they sought to equalize themselves with the large proprietors. The foundations of society were broken up by this intermediate class, and in the course of the struggle they called in the blacks, and the two united, exceeding the whites in the proportion of twelve to one, expelled them from the island. Since that time a continual struggle has been going on between the mulattoes and the negroes, the latter having numbers and brute force, and the former sustaining themselves by superior intelligence.
"There never has been a formidable slave insurrection, considered purely as such; and a comparison of our situation with slavery as it has existed elsewhere ought to relieve the minds of the most timid from any apprehension of danger from our negroes, under any circumstances, in peace or war."
This generally truthful statement, which needs but little modification, shows that San Domingo was helping to destroy the Union at the South while it was trying to save it at the North. The words of the Secessionist were prophetic, and Slavery will continue to be the great unimpaired war power of Southern institutions, till some color-bearer, white or black, in the name of law and order, shakes the stars of America over her inland fields.
AUGUST 22, 1791.
When the French vessels, bringing news of the developing Revolution, touched the wharves of Cap Français, a spark seemed to leap forth into the colony, to run through all ranks and classes of men, setting the Creole hearts afire, till it fell dead against the gros peau and the peau fin[27] of the black man. Three colonial parties vibrated with expectations that were radically discordant when the cannon of the people thundered against the Bastille. First in rank and assumption were the old planters and proprietors, two-thirds of whom were at the time absentees in France. They were, excepting a small minority, devoted royalists, but desired colonial independence in order to enjoy a perfect slaveholding authority. They were embittered by commercial restrictions, and longed to be set free from the mother-country, that San Domingo might be erected into a feudal kingdom with a court and gradation of nobility, whose parchments, indeed, would have been black and engrossed all over with despotism. They wanted the freedom of the seas and all the ports of the world, not from a generous motive, nor from a policy that looked beyond the single object of nourishing slavery at the cheapest rates, to carry its products to the best markets in exchange for flour, cloths, salted provisions, and all the necessaries of a plantation. The revolutionary spirit of Prance was hailed by them, because it seemed to give an opportunity to establish a government without a custom of Paris, to check enfranchisements and crush out the dangerous familiarity of the mulatto, to block with sugar-hogsheads the formidable movements in France and England against the slave-trade. These men sometimes spoke as republicans from their desire to act as despots; they succeeded in getting their delegates admitted to seats in the National Assembly to mix their intrigues with the current of events. Their "Club Massiac" in Paris, so named from the proprietor at whose residence its meetings were held, was composed of wealthy, adroit, and unscrupulous men, who often showed what a subtle style of diplomacy a single interest will create. It must be hard for bugs of a cosmopolitan mind to circumvent the formica leo, whose sole object in lying still at the bottom of its slippery tunnel is to catch its daily meal.
If this great party of slave-owners had preserved unity upon all the questions which the Revolution excited, their descendants might to-day be the most troublesome enemies of our blockade. But history will not admit an If. The unity which is natural to the slaveholding American was impossible in San Domingo, owing to the existence of the mulattoes and the little whites.
A few intelligent proprietors had foreseen, many years previous to the Revolution, that the continuance of their privileges depended upon the good-will of the mulattoes and the restriction of enfranchisement. The class of mixed blood was becoming large and formidable: of mulattoes and free negroes there were nearly forty thousand. They were nominally free, and had all the rights of property. A number of them were wealthy owners of slaves. But they still bore upon their brows the shadow cast by servitude, from which many of the mixed blood had not yet emerged. The whites of all classes despised these men who reminded them of the color and condition of their mothers. If a mulatto struck or insulted a white man, he was subjected to severe penalties; no offices were open to him, no doors of society, no career except that of trade or agriculture. This was not well endured by a class which had inherited the fire and vanity of their French fathers, with intellectual qualities that caught passion and mobility from the drops of negro blood. Great numbers of them had been carefully educated in France, whither they sent their own children, if they could afford it, to catch the port and habits of free citizens. They were very proud, high-strung, and restless, sombre in the presence of contempt, lowering with some expectation. Frequent attempts had been made by them to extend the area of their rights, but they met with nothing but arrogant repulse. The guilty problem of the island was not destined to be relieved or modified by common sense. The planters should have lifted this social and political ostracism from the mulatto, who loved to make money and to own slaves, and whose passion for livid mistresses was as great as any Frenchman's. They were the natural allies of the proprietors, and should have been erected into an intermediate class, bound to the whites by intelligence and selfish interest, and drawn upon the mother's side to soften the condition of the slave. This policy was often pressed by French writers, and discussed with every essential detail; but the descendants of the buccaneers were bent upon playing out the island's tragedy.