The Rising Son; or, the Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race

by William Wells Brown

The splendor of its valleys, the picturesqueness of its mountains, the tropical luxuriance of its plains, and the unsurpassed salubrity of its climate, confirms the high opinion of the great Spaniard. Columbus found on the Island more than a million of people of the Caribbean race. The warlike appearance of the Spaniards caused the natives to withdraw into the interior. However, the seductive genius of Columbus soon induced the Caribbeans to return to their towns, and they extended their hospitality to the illustrious stranger.

After the great discoverer had been recalled home and left the Island, Dovadillo, his successor, began a system of unmitigated oppression towards the Caribbeans, and eventually reduced the whole of the inhabitants to slavery; and thus commenced that hateful sin in the New World. As fresh adventurers arrived in the Island, the Spanish power became more consolidated and more oppressive. The natives were made to toil in the gold-mines without compensation, and in many instances without any regard whatever to the preservation of human life; so much so, that in 1507, the number of natives had, by hunger, toil, and the sword, been reduced from a million to sixty thousand. Thus, in the short space of fifteen years, more than nine hundred thousand perished under the iron hand of slavery in the island of St. Domingo.

The Island suffered much from the loss of its original inhabitants; and the want of laborers to till the soil and to work in the mines, first suggested the idea of importing slaves from the coast of Africa. The slave-trade was soon commenced and carried on with great rapidity. Before the Africans were shipped, the name of the owner and the plantation on which they were to toil was stamped on their shoulders with a burning iron. For a number of years St. Domingo opened its markets annually to more than twenty thousand newly-imported slaves. With the advance of commerce and agriculture, opulence spread in every direction. The great tide of immigration from France and Spain, and the vast number of Africans imported every year, so increased the population that at the commencement of the French Revolution, in 1789, there were nine hundred thousand souls on the Island. Of these, seven hundred thousand were Africans, sixty thousand mixed blood, and the remainder were whites and Caribbeans. Like the involuntary servitude in our own Southern States, slavery in St. Domingo kept morality at a low stand. Owing to the amalgamation between masters and slaves, there arose the mulatto population, which eventually proved to be the worst enemies of their fathers.

Many of the planters sent their mulatto sons to France to be educated. When these young men returned to the Island, they were greatly dissatisfied at the proscription which met them wherever they appeared. White enough to make them hopeful and aspiring, many of the mulattoes possessed wealth enough to make them influential. Aware, by their education, of the principles of freedom that were being advocated in Europe and the United States, they were ever on the watch to seize opportunities to better their social and political condition. In the French part of the Island alone, twenty thousand whites lived in the midst of thirty thousand free mulattoes and five hundred thousand slaves. In the Spanish portion, the odds were still greater in favor of the slaves. Thus the advantage of numbers and physical strength was on the side of the oppressed. Right is the most dangerous of weapons—woe to him who leaves it to his enemies!

The efforts of Wilberforce, Sharp, Buxton, and Clarkson, to abolish the African slave-trade, and their advocacy of the equality of the races, were well understood by the men of color. They had also learned their own strength in the Island, and that they had the sympathy of all Europe with them. The news of the oath of the Tennis Court, and the taking of the Bastile at Paris, was received with the wildest enthusiasm by the people of St. Domingo.

The announcement of these events was hailed with delight by both the white planters and the mulattoes; the former, because they hoped the revolution in the Mother Country would secure to them the independence of the colony; the latter, because they viewed it as a movement that would give them equal rights with the whites; and even the slaves regarded it as a precursor to their own emancipation. But the excitement which the outbreak at Paris had created amongst the free men of color and the slaves, at once convinced the planters that a separation from France would be the death-knell of slavery in St. Domingo.

Although emancipated by law from the dominion of individuals, the mulattoes had no rights; shut out from society by their color, deprived of religious and political privileges, they felt their degradation even more keenly than the bond slaves. The mulatto son was not allowed to dine at his father’s table, kneel with him in his devotions, bear his name, inherit his property, nor even to lie in his father’s graveyard. Laboring as they were under the sense of their personal social wrongs, the mulattoes tolerated, if they did not encourage, low and vindictive passions. They were haughty and disdainful to the blacks, whom they scorned, and jealous and turbulent to the whites, whom they hated and feared.

The mulattoes at once despatched one of their number to Paris, to lay before the Constitutional Assembly their claim to equal rights with the whites. Vincent Oge, their deputy, was well received at Paris by Lafayette, Brisot, Barnave, and Gregoire, and was admitted to a seat in the Assembly, where he eloquently portrayed the wrongs of his race. In urging his claims, he said if equality was withheld from the mulattoes, they would appeal to force. This was seconded by Lafayette and Barnave, who said: “Perish the Colonies, rather than a principle.”

The Assembly passed a decree, granting the demands of the men of color, and Oge was made bearer of the news to his brethren. The planters armed themselves, met the young deputy on his return to the Island, and a battle ensued. The free colored men rallied around Oge, but they were defeated and taken, with their brave leader; were first tortured, and then broken alive on the wheel.