The summer of 1791 saw the first colonial revolt inspired by the American Revolution. Slaves in the French colony of Haiti rose up and overthrew their masters, demanding liberty and equality. This week, we look at the beginning of the Haitian Revolution and the American reaction.
San Domingue Colony
I want to start by giving a little background. Haiti was not called Haiti at the time. That was the name used by the indigenous people before colonization. The Spanish under Christopher Columbus arrived there in 1492 and named it Hispaniola, which essentially means “Spanish Island.” A few years later, the Spanish created a settlement called Santo Domingo. Although the Spanish claimed the island, they didn’t make much use of it. More than 100 years later, French pirates began using the western coast of the island as a base of operations. Spanish officials pulled back Spanish colonists to the east for their safety. This withdrawal essentially handed the western part of the island to the French pirates in the early 1600s. Because the pirates to took over that area were French, the French government claimed possession of the western part of the island by the late 1600s.
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| Slave uprising in Haiti |
That level of production took a great deal of work. That work was done by slaves. The number of slaves ramped up considerably in the 1760s and 1770s as more demand for sugar and coffee caused the land owners to push for more production. By 1789, the slave population on the small island was close to 500,000, nearly 90% of the population. The free islanders were split pretty evenly between free blacks and mixed race colonists, who owned a considerable amount of land and large numbers of slaves themselves, and white colonists, mostly French, who controlled about two-thirds of the land and three-quarters of the slaves.
The work that the slaves performed was particularly brutal. That, combined with the weather, poor sanitation, malnutrition, and disease meant that the death rate among slaves was extremely high. Many slaves killed themselves, either because they could not take the conditions, or simply to deny their enslavers the benefit of their labor.
The island had to import tens of thousands of slaves each year, just to keep up the numbers for work. About one-third of new slave arrivals died in their first year. The average life span for slaves on the island was seven to ten years. More than two thirds of the slaves on the island had been born in Africa. This meant they were not born into this life, but had grown up free, only to be enslaved as adults.
Escape was nearly impossible. There were a few thousand maroons who had fled plantations and had formed communities up in the mountains. Slave owners made regular attempts to exterminate these small communities since they represented a threat. Other slaves would be tempted to flee there, or these communities might become the center of a slave rebellion.
A rebellion was always a concern. Given that 90% of the population was enslaved, the owners were in a precarious position, that had to keep that majority population of slaves divided, docile, and without hope.
In the 1750’s the maroons had attempted to start a slave revolt, planning for more than six years to develop an organization among the slaves within the plantation system so that they could rise up and execute their plan. The leader, François Mackandal, was an escaped slave himself, who had been brought to the island to work on a sugar plantation at the age of twelve. During his time as a slave, he lost an arm while working at a sugar mill. He escaped and joined the maroon communities, where he began planning a rebellion. Using his knowledge of plants Mackandal taught his followers, including slaves still on the plantations, how to produce poisons to kill their enslavers
In 1758, some of his followers betrayed him, leading to his capture. To make an example of him, a court sentenced him to be burned alive. During the burning, Mackandal managed to break free and escape the fire. But he was immediately subdued, bound again, and tossed back into the fire. This made Mackandal a folk hero among the maroons and the slaves.
This had been one of the largest rebellions on the island, but as you might guess, there were constant efforts to resist, most of which were isolated killings where slaves managed to find a way to kill their masters. Whenever this happened, punishment came quickly and brutally to deter future attempts.
Revolutionary France
France tolerated slavery in its colonies as the most efficient way to get that cheap sugar and coffee. As was the case in Britain, France had abolished slavery during the middle ages. In 1685 Louis the XIV released an edict called the Code Noir, formalizing the law for holding slaves in the colonies.
Having decided that slavery was acceptable overseas, the king ensured that France would receive the benefits of cheap produce from the West Indies by requiring all French colonies to trade exclusively within the French Empire. Again, this was what all European powers did to make sure that there was no competition that would allow colonies to raise their prices.
French ministers also had to keep the colonial leaders divided, to make sure they did not unite and overthrow French rule and seek independence. They put in place systems that attempted to keep the colonial leaders financially dependent on France. They also made efforts to keep the white population and the free black population at odds with one another, as well as setting up conflicts between large and small land owners, all to make sure that the people would not unite against France. The result of this policy of division was that French control was maintained with only two regiments of soldiers, about 500 men, on the island to control 60,000 free colonists and 500,000 slaves.
There were some protest movements in 1722 and again in 1769, mostly protesting trade restrictions, but these were brought under control before they got out of hand. All of this began to change after the American Revolution.
The notions of liberty and equality began to spread all over the world after the United States overthrew royal authority and found a republic based on those ideals. These notions found particularly fertile soil in France, leading to the French Revolution in 1789. The French Assembly approved the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen that year, which proclaimed all men born free and equal.
When the Declaration reached Saint Domingue, the response of the slave owners in the colonies was something like: Wait! What? Certainly this doesn’t apply to us! The entire social and economic system on the island was completely incompatible with liberty and equality.
The initial reaction was to make sure the slaves on the island found out nothing about this declaration. French newspapers were banned from the island. Of course, word soon spread anyway, leading everyone to question how it would impact them.
One of the first responses cam from the free people of color, who had always been treated as second-class citizens, but still as citizens. Now, however, they were demanding the same rights and privileges as the free whites. Although they had property rights and other economic rights, they had been denied political rights, and were excluded from public office. They demanded their right to have a say in government.
The National Assembly, seeing the can of worms they had opened with the Declaration, began to back track on how it might apply to the colonies. In May of 1791, the Assembly clarified that not all free colonists were equal. They passed a law which had very strict voting requirements, including that voters could not be the children of slaves. Both father and mother had to be free before a person could qualify for voting. Even if they met that qualification, there were also substantial property requirements for voting, meaning that only about 1% of the free blacks on the island would be eligible to vote. Even that was too much for the white colonists. When the new law reached Saint Domingue in July, they immediately demanded that the new law be repealed. They protested the new law and threatened to seek protection from Britain or Spain if French officials tried to enforce it. When word of the response got back to France in September, the Assembly backed down and repealed the law.
The universal rights of man seemed not to be so universal after all. Black colonists were not the equal of white colonists and were not going to be given equal rights. And certainly, there were no plans to abolish slavery in the colonies. Talk of freedom and equality were all well and good, but if that was going to increase the price of a cup of coffee, we need to slow down and think about this a little more.
Slave Revolt
Despite all efforts, the slaves began to learn about some of the ideas coming out of France. Many slaves came to understand the French Revolution as white slaves in France having overthrown their masters. That wasn't quite accurate, but that was the story goin around. The hopelessness of slavery and brutal death gave way to a glimmer of hope for freedom, if only they could fight for it.
The French Revolution came to Haiti in 1791. Its first casualty was a former Continental officer. Colonel Thomas-Antoine, the Chevalier de Mauduit du Plessis had gone to fight as a French volunteer in the Continental Army in 1776. He received a commission as a captain of artillery early 1777, in time to see combat at the Battle of Brandywine and at Germantown. I mentioned Captain de Mauduit du Plessis back in Episode 168 when General Washington assigned him to defend Fort Mercer on the Delaware River during the end of the Philadelphia Campaign. He spent the winter at Valley Forge, and fought at Monmouth. His leadership was considered good, leading him to be promoted several times, serving as a lieutenant colonel by 1778.
That fall, de Mauduit resigned his commission in the Continental Army and returned to France. Some sources indicate that he came back to America with the army under General Rochambeau, but there is some debate on whether that was the case.
Major de Mauduit seemed ideologically aligned with the royal governor in Saint Domingue and opposed the revolutionary assembly in France. He supported the governor’s decision to defy decrees from the Revolutionary Assembly. He disarmed the national guard and formed a separate militia made up of royalists. He also arrested members of the revolutionary commission and dissolved the local assembly when they started sounding a bit too revolutionary.
In response, the government in France sent two more regiments to Port-au-Prince, whose commanders were much more politically aligned with the Revolutionaries. These new troops told de Maduit’s soldiers that their commander was defying the revolution. In response, his own troops killed the major with swords and bayonets. A mob mutilated his body and dragged it down the street. They cut off his head and posted it on a pike in front of his house, which they then demolished.
Through most of 1791 though the fighting was between free people, who were fighting over equal rights for slave owners, not any rights for slaves. The fight for freedom, however, was not lost on the slaves. In August, groups of slaves who were in supervisory positions on their plantations, began to coordinate plans for an uprising that would begin across the plantations at the same time.
On August 22 the slave insurrection began, across the colony, slaves invaded the homes of their masters, killing whole families. They burned their homes, along with crops in the fields. Hundreds of white colonists died in this first attack. Those who survived the initial attack fled their plantations to take refuge in towns. Some owners began massacring their own slaves who had not rebelled, fearing that they might soon join the rebellion.
A couple of weeks later, the white colonists signed an agreement ceding more power to the free blacks, hoping to bring them together so they could join forces and put down the slave rebellion. The idea of giving political power to free blacks which was so abhorrent a month earlier, now seemed quite reasonable in the face of a full slave rebellion.
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| Toussaint L'Ouverture |
Despite the threat from the slave revolt and the agreement to work together, the free colonists never really united. In November, a group of white conservatives lynched a free black man in Port-au-Prince. The result was a riot that led to two-thirds of the town being burned.
The slaves were not really united either. In December, many of the former slaves were beginning to starve. The island required food imports to feed its people, and those imports had stopped. Some of the leaders of the rebellion agreed to return the slaves to their plantations in exchange for the freedom of a few hundred of the rebellion’s leaders. They had received word that France was willing to institute reforms, but needed to have the colony working again. The Colonial Assembly of slave owners, however, rejected the offer. They could not reward the leaders of a slave insurrection with freedom.
Over the winter, another option opened as several leaders of the rebellion received recognition, as well as supplies and weapons, from the King of Spain. Spanish officials saw a colony run by revolutionary France as a threat, and hoped to use the slave rebellion to crush those revolutionaries.
Throughout the following year, 1792, the revolution, headed by former slaves, continued to spread and grow. The colony would remain in chaos for years.
American Reaction
I’m going to leave the story there since the Haitian Revolution would continue for more than a decade. In our story from the American Revolution Podcast, we are in the middle of 1792. I want to turn to the reaction of Americans at the start of this rebellion. They obviously had no idea where it was going in the future.
One might think that Americans, who had used rhetoric about liberty or death, and the need for violent resistance to prevent themselves from being reduced to slaves by the British government might cheer on the idea of the people of another country fighting for their liberty.
There were some. Connecticut Newspaper editor Abraham Bishop published a series of essays supporting the Haitian Revolution in late 1791 under the title “Rights of Black Men”. In 1792, the Reverend David Rice gave a Fourth of July Oration which praised “the brave sons of Africa, engaged in a noble conflict” for “sacrificing their lives on the altar of liberty.” Philadelphia editors Benjamin Franklin Bache and Philip Freneau both professed support for the uprising.
There was little support, however, in the government. Almost as soon as the slave revolt began in August, 1791, the General Assembly sent agents to neighboring colonies looking for help. The Spaniards in Cuba rejected help out of hand. The Spanish government was not going to help a government that supported the French Revolution. The British government in Jamaica was surprisingly more helpful. It sent naval ships, arms, and supplies to help the white colonists. Since Jamaica also had a population of roughly 90% slaves, they greatly empathized with the white colonists.
The US government reaction was not quite as enthusiastic, but also seemed to side with the white colonists. In September, 1791, about a month after the slave uprising began, President Washington agreed to provide arms and financial support at the request of French Minister to the US, Jean Baptiste Ternant. The cost of the aid was deducted from the debts owed to France from the American Revolution.
Many US leaders were still slave owners themselves. Whatever doubts some of them held regarding slavery as an institution, their concerns immediately went to the slave owners, not the rebelling slaves. Jefferson referred to the white colonists as brethren in distress. Although not a slave owner, Alexander Hamilton encouraged Washington to provide assistance to the white colonists.
The Pennsylvania Assembly, which had already begun the process of Abolition in that state, voted to raise funds for relief of white planters in Cap Francais.
Shortly after the first calls for assistance, Haitian refugees began to arrive in America. Their primary destination at first was Philadelphia, where locals raised thousands of dollars to support the white planters who arrived in their town. Some free blacks also fled the revolution and were welcomed. Some refugees even brought some of their slaves with them. Of course, they would have to leave Philadelphia within six months in order to keep their slaves. But the slave owners were welcomed temporarily. Philadelphians even postponed some fund raising to build African American Churches in the city in order to provide assistance to the white refugees.
Refugees went to other cities as well. White refugees were welcomed in Charleston, although some free black slave owners who had to escape the slave rebellion as well, were not welcome there.
The US response made clear that the ideology of liberty and equality did not extend to ending slavery. While half of the states were on the path toward ending slavery in their states. No one was willing to support a slave rebellion. The enslaved people of Haiti were largely on their own.
Next week: we will look at the ratification of the Bill of Rights.
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Next Episode 375 Ratification of the Bill of Rights (coming soon)
Previous Episode 373 State of the Union 1790-91
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Further Reading
Websites
François Makandal: https://slaveryandremembrance.org/people/person/?id=PP024
Code Noir: https://revolution.chnm.org/d/335
Eddins, Crystal Nicole. “Runaways, Repertoires, and Repression: Marronnage and the Haitian Revolution, 1766–1791.” Journal of Haitian Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, 2019, pp. 4–38. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26790801.
Teow, Jeremy. “Black Revolt in the White Mind: Violence, Race, and Slave Agency in the British Reception of the Haitian Revolution, 1791–1805.” Australasian Journal of American Studies, vol. 37, no. 1, 2018, pp. 87–102. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26532955.
Garrigus, John D. “Vincent Ogé ‘Jeune’ (1757-91): Social Class and Free Colored Mobilization on the Eve of the Haitian Revolution.” The Americas, vol. 68, no. 1, 2011, pp. 33–62. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41239138.
Matthewson, Tim. “Abraham Bishop, ‘The Rights of Black Men,’ and the American Reaction to the Haitian Revolution.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 67, no. 2, 1982, pp. 148–54. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2717572.
“Alexander Hamilton to George Washington, 22 September 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-08-02-0384.
“Henry Knox to George Washington, 22 September 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-08-02-0385.
“Ternant to George Washington, 22 September 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-08-02-0388.
“George Washington to Ternant, 24 September 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-09-02-0005.
“Ternant to George Washington, 24 September 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-09-02-0006.
“Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 24 November 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-22-02-0303.
Blackburn, Robin. “Haiti, Slavery, and the Age of the Democratic Revolution.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 4, 2006, pp. 643–74. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4491574.
Free eBooks
(from archive.org unless noted)
Beard, J.R. Toussaint L'Ouverture: A Biography and Autobiography, Boston, J. Redpath, 1863.
Rainsford, Marcus An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti, Duke Univ. Press, 2013 (first published 1805).
Steward, T.G. The Haitian revolution, 1791 to 1804; or, Side lights on the French Revolution, New York, Russell & Russell, 1914.
Books Worth Buying
(links to Amazon.com unless otherwise noted)*
Brown, Gordon S. Toussaint's Clause: The Founding Fathers and the Haitian Revolution, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2005.
Caesaire, Aime (Author), Kate Nash (Translator) Toussaint Louverture: The French Revolution and the Colonial Problem, Polity Press, 2025.
Dun, James Alexander Dangerous Neighbors: Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America, Univ. of Pa. Press, 2016
Faherty, Duncan The Haitian Revolution in the Early Republic of Letters, Oxford Univ. Press, 2024.
Fick, Carolyn E. The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below, Univ. of Tenn. Press, 1991.
Geggus, David (ed) The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History, Hackett Publishing Co, 2014.
Geggus, David P. (ed) The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, Univ of SC Press, 2001.
Hazareesingh, Sudhir Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, Penguin Books, 1989.
Wellman, Billy The Haitian Revolution: An Enthralling Tale of Resistance, Freedom, and the Birth of a Nation, (self-published), 2024.
* As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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