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over all the royalists and has recognized us as her children, by her beneficent decree of 9 Thermidor, that she accords us all our rights for ‘which we are fighting, that you would let yourself be deceived by our former tyrants, ‘who only use some of our unfortunate brothers to charge the rest of them with chains? For a time, the Spaniards hypnotized me in the same way, but I was not slow to recognize their rascality; I abandoned them and beat them well; I returned to my country ‘which received me ‘with open arms and was very ‘willing to recompense my services. I urge you, my dear brother, to follow my example. If some particular reasons* should hinder you from trusting the brigadier generals Rigaud and Beauvais, Governor Laveaux, who is the good father of us all, and in ‘whom our mother country has placed her confidence, should also deserve yours. I think that you ‘will not deny your confidence to me, ‘who am black like you, and ‘who assure you that I desire nothing more in the world than to see you happy, you and all your brothers.”42

The letter goes on in this vein for quite some time; meanwhile, as Toussaint advised Laveaux soon after, the net effect of “your dispatches and mine” 43 was that a mutiny led by Dieudonne's lieutenant Laplume took Dieudonne prisoner and turned him over to Rigaud. However, instead of bringing Dieudonne's band of three thousand to Rigaud as expected, Laplume put it under the orders of Toussaint. With this more or less bloodless coup, Toussaint was able to extend the range of his command much further south than he had ever done before.

Toussaint's reference to the “beneficent decree of 9 Thermidor” may have been a slip of his pen. In the context of his letter to Dieudonne the date of 16 Pluviose, when the French National Convention had abolished slavery, would have made much more sense. There was no special decree promulgated on 9 Thermidor, the date when Robespierre and his faction fell from power and the Terror in France was brought to an end. Within forty-eight hours Robespierre and his closest allies had followed the Terror's hundreds of victims to the guillotine, and a reconstituted National Convention reclaimed the executive functions previously carried out by the dread Committee of Public Safety. France's situation began to stabilize.

In August 1795, the Constitution of the Year III was ratified, reaffirming the rights and obligations of man and of citizen—a category in which the blacks of Saint Domingue were still legally included. In October, Napoleon Bonaparte was named commander in chief of all armies within France, thanks to his role in scotching a royalist insurrection in Paris, and a five-member directory elected by the legislature took over all executive powers. These developments overseas were likely to have been on Toussaint's mind in February 1796, though he had more than enough to think about at home in Saint Domingue.

Toussaint's letter to Dieudonne evokes the themes of black-mulatto racial tension most adroitly, as well as the stresses between the anciens and nouveaux libres: though technically a member of the former group, Toussaint was determined to position himself at the head of the latter. Indeed, conflict had been brewing between the mostly colored anciens libres and the mostly black nouveaux libres almost from the day Toussaint had decided to reposition himself beneath the French republican flag.

Sonthonax had empowered the mulattoes, but just before his recall to France he had begun to shift his weight toward the black nouveaux libres. Perhaps it was in the context of mulatto support of the grands blancs and the British that Sonthonax had remarked to Dieudonne, “You are the representative of France; do not forget that so long as you see colored men among your own, you will not be free.”44 Toussaint, though never a strong supporter of Sonthonax, probably agreed with this statement—privately. Up until 1796 he did not show it. In the south, victories by the colored commander Rigaud had been almost as important to the republic as what Toussaint had accomplished