Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [68]
This language, too, springs from the core rhetoric of the French Revolution, but here it has taken a peculiarly familial twist. Moreover, while these nouveau libre citizens of the Port de Paix region recognize Toussaint as “father of all the blacks,” they also recognize two sides, it seems: theirs and his.
“They trouble us too much,” the spokesman continued. “They don't pay us well for the harvests we make, and they force us to give our Chickens and pigs for nothing when we go to sell them in the town, and if we want to Complain they have us arrested By the police and they put us in prison without giving us anything to eat&we have to pay still more to get out again.—you can plainly see, my General, that to be dragged around like that is not to be free—but we are very sure that you are not at all like that, from the way that we see that everyone with you is happy and loves you.'52
Once assured that the assembly had completely stated its case, Toussaint commenced his reply: “My friends—I ought not call you so, for the shame you have brought to me and all men of our color makes me see all too clearly that you are not my friends—all the reasons you give me strike me as Most Just, but although you do have a very strong case—”
But here, in the midst of reporting his own oration, Toussaint turned directly to Laveaux (whom he himself often addressed as “father”) to explain, “I used that expression To make them understand that though they might have all the good reasons that One could possibly have, that they were still wrong and that they had rendered themselves guilty in the eyes of God, of the Law, and of men.”53 It was a ticklish matter for Toussaint to convince this audience, whose members were accustomed to resort to arms to settle injustices which looked obvious to them, that in the French republic, to which Toussaint insisted they belong, Law might trump Justice, at least from time to time.
How is it possible, I said to them, that I who have just sent deputies to thank the national convention in the name of all the blacks for the Beneficent Decree which gives them all liberty,&and to assure the convention that they will do their best to deserve it, and will Prove to France and all the Nations by their obedience to the laws, their labor and their Docility, that they are worthy of it,—and that I answered for all and that Soon with the help of France we would prove to the entire universe that Saint Domingue would recover all its riches with the work of free hands—how shall I answer when the national convention demands that I account for what you have just done? Tell me—my shame makes me see that I have betrayed the national convention, that [what you have done] will prove to the national convention everything that the Enemies of our freedom have been trying to make it believe: that the blacks are in no way constituted to be free, that if they become free they won't want to work anymore and won't do anything but commit robbery and murder.54
Here for the first time in public (and to the sort of audience he most needed to convince), Toussaint announced his ambition for the colony: he would manage Saint Domingue so as to prove to the whole European world that slavery was not necessary to the success of the plantation economy, that sugar and coffee production could be revived, and the Jewel of the Antilles restored to its former luster—with free labor. But for that project to succeed there was a surprisingly vast cultural rift to be bridged, and almost as soon as Toussaint had finished speaking, that rift began to