Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [122]
What Toussaint really hoped to achieve was a sort of commonwealth status for Saint Domingue: complete local autonomy combined with the protection of France in foreign affairs. By some analyses the fatal flaw of this conception was simply that it was too far ahead of its time. Toussaint's nearly successful effort to bring it about involved a judicious deployment of carrot and stick. The fat juicy carrot was the prospect he had persuasively demonstrated of restoring the vast prosperity of Saint Domingue for the benefit of France. Toussaint augmented that prospect by taking special pains to create a safe haven in his new society for the white planter class, even at the risk of alienating his black power base. The idea of equalized cooperation among the races, coupled with the prohibition of all racial discrimination in his constitution of 1801, was a good two hundred years ahead of its time.
But if Napoleon chose to decline the carrot, the stick was ready and waiting: an army over twenty thousand strong, backed by a population well armed and thoroughly determined to fight to the death for freedom.
In 1801 the dominoes began to fall in a direction unfavorable to the realization of Toussaint's hopes and dreams. In March of that year, Thomas Jefferson succeeded John Adams as U.S. president. A southern slaveholder, Jefferson was a solid supporter of the U.S. version of the ancien regime. From the very beginning, the liberation of the slaves of Saint Domingue had been a matter of tremendous anxiety for the southern states, whose political interest Jefferson was committed to defend. He must have viewed the meteoric rise of Saint Domingue's blacks to equality with some personal discomfort also. His own colored mistress, Sally Hemings, could obtain freedom only at the pleasure of her master, and under the American system both she and their children together were legally defined as Negroes, since no category for persons of mixed African and European blood officially existed.
In July 1801, President Jefferson let the French know that the United States was opposed to an independent black state in Saint Domingue and that it preferred the restoration of French authority there. Still more critically, peace negotiations that began in October led to an agreement that the British navy would not interfere with a French expedition to Saint Domingue.
Napoleon appointed Emmanuel Leclerc, his sister Pauline's husband, as captain general of the force sent to ensure respect for French authority—21,175 crack veterans from Napoleon's European campaigns. Fascinated by tales of Saint Domingue's wealth, the soldiers whiled away their passage by fashioning money belts to hide all the gold they expected to loot. Some cynics have reasoned that the first consul (who had won power through a military coup) wanted to get rid of these men, or at least prevent them from hanging idly around the capital; in the end most would die in the war against the blacks. Certainly Napoleon did want to remove his sister Pauline—a famous beauty, adventuress, and all-around troublemaker—as far from Paris as possible. Initially reluctant, Pauline was coaxed with descriptions of how charming and seductive she could make herself appear in the tropical deshabille popular in the colony; she embarked with her toddler son, Dermide, and a considerable entourage of servants and courtiers in a flagship specially refitted for her comfort. The fleet also carried Toussaint Louvertures elder sons, Placide and Isaac, with their tutor (a priest named Coisnon), and a boatload of Toussaint's mulatto adversaries who were returning from exile, including Rigaud, Petion, and Villatte.
Colonel Vincent did not accompany the expedition. His defense of Toussaint's