Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [110]
Despite its distinctly apocryphal flavor, this tale is interesting, and maybe its most important detail is that Toussaint performed his reac-Uonfor all the world to hear. That is to say, he publicly distanced himself from Bayon de Libertat—and by implication from the whole white planter class—while at the same time describing plainly for all hearers just what the role of that class was meant to be in the new order of things. The favor Toussaint showed to the grand blancs planters had brought him under some suspicion among many of the nouveaux libres, but his response to Bayon makes it clear that the grands blancs and their interests are now subordinate to the interests not only of “the first of the Blacks” but also of his whole “administration”; that is, a new black ruling class representing the power of the nouveau libre majority. Returning whites were the white grains, integrated into inconsequence by a thorough shakeup with the dark corn in the jar. And if Toussaint's economic policies did allow the white planters to pursue their own “small” interests, that was only in service of the larger interest of restoring the colony's prosperity for the benefit of the black administration and a newly constituted black citizenry.
The rebuilding of the colony was proceeding apace. After ten years of'war, Saint Domingue enjoyed a season of stability at the turn of the nineteenth century, and damage from the decade of conflict began to be repaired. The Jewel of the Antilles, Cap Francais, ‘was rebuilt to an even more sumptuous level than it had known under the ancien regime, featuring elegant new residences for Toussaint and his officers, eminently including the local commander, Henry Christophe. General Dessalines had accomplished something similar in Saint Marc. Many members of Toussaint's officer corps now had the opportunity to grow wealthy by operating plantations whose grand bL·nc owners had fled. This situation produced some tension ‘with the white landowners ‘who accepted Toussaint's invitation to return; their lands were supposed to be under a leaseholding arrangement whose details had become an impractical legalistic tangle since Sonthonax and Polverel first tried to manage things. In practice, the returning white planters often found it quite difficult to reassert control of their property or to extract the compensation to ‘which they were legally entitled.
Toussaint ordered all earnings from the properties of absentee owners to be paid into public treasuries, both to finance his extremely large army and to pay a corps of civil servants ‘which was often accused of the most flagrant corruption. Income from the rental of absentee-owned plantations and town houses was surprisingly large—one observer estimated it at over four million livres in the Western Department alone. Much of this money was spent on arms, and a great deal simply leaked away. The fact that many civil service posts were unpaid encouraged embezzlement, and at the same time Toussaint was assigning more and more civil service tasks to the military, especially collection of import-export duties. White civilians in Toussaint's inner circle, like Bunel, Idlinger, and Allier (the secretary'who did most of Toussaint's correspondence ‘with the home government), were rumored to have both hands in the till. The French general d'Hebecourt, whom Toussaint trusted for negotiations ‘with the English and other surrounding powers, had to be bribed before a returning planter could regain control of his land. In the end, however, the turnover of all sequestered properties required Toussaint's own signature. When Toussaint learned that debts were being sold for collection to the military, he put a stop to it.
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