Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [18]
The last fillip must have been derisory, since the assembly had undercut the commission at every turn and derailed every settlement the commissioners could arrange. Whether Toussaint had tears of frustration in his eyes when he left Le Cap that day has not been recorded; more likely he remained impassive, as Dorsinville described him on the way in. Certainly he understood very well that the whites' inability to agree among themselves had ruined their last chance to reach a peaceful settlement with the blacks.
During the weeks of talks with the whites, the rebel slaves had maintained a sort of cease-fire. By Gross account, Biassou meted out serious punishments to any of his men who went raiding in white-controlled territory during that period. But once the assembly's contemptuous attitude derailed the negotiations, the Northern Department was back at war. By mid-January 1792, Jean-François and his men were on the offensive, capturing the district of Ouanaminthe on the Spanish frontier, while Biassou made a daring night raid on l'Hopital des Peres de la Charite on the edge of Cap Francais itself, rescuing his mother, who was a slave there, and slaughtering the patients on his way out. To reach this hospital (where he himself had formerly been a slave), Biassou had flanked the outer defenses of Le Cap, briefly occupying Fort Belair, which protected the southern approach to the town along the road from Haut du Cap. He could most likely have captured or destroyed the entire town, if the goal of his raid had been less limited.
Jean-François had intimated to Gros that he felt himself to be almost a captive of the great mass of rebel slaves he was ostensibly leading. Of course, Jean-François could anticipate that Gros would report to the Colonial Assembly upon his release and so may have been simply hedging his bets. However, it does seem somewhat doubtful that he and the other leaders really could have delivered their followers back into slavery, especially on such disadvantageous terms as those being discussed in December 1791. An eyewitness reports that when the amnesty offer of September 24 was read in Biassou's camp, Toussaint followed it with such a persuasive speech that the rebel slaves in his audience were moved to declare themselves ready to return to work that very day, if he asked them to. At most other times, however, their mood was very much more intransigent.
The original purpose of the revolt in the north was not to end slavery for the majority of the slaves, but simply to improve its conditions. Soon enough, though, the stream of events they had started carried them far beyond that limited goal. In the last days of September, when white troops routed an encampment of insurgent slaves from Galliflet Plantation on the Northern Plain, they found a letter addressed to “Monsieur le general and the citizens of Le Cap,” dated September 4, 1791, and signed by Jean-François. “Come down to where we are,” the missive exhorts its audience,
and see this land which we have watered with our sweat—or what shall I say: with our blood; these edifices we have raised in the hope of a just compensation; have we received it? No, Monsieur General; the king, the universe have bemoaned our fate, and have broken the chains which we were dragging, while we, humble victims, were ready to bear anything, we never wanted to leave our masters: