Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [75]
A related issue was Toussaint's determination to restore the plantation economy, which his enemies could turn into an accusation that he meant to restore slavery. This claim had been a feature of Blanc Cassenave's abortive rebellion in 1795. In June of that year, “a citizen named Thomas” spread a rumor among plantation hands at Marmelade that Toussaint was “making them work,” so as to “return them to the slavery of the whites.” “I went there myself to preach to them and make them hear reason,” Toussaint reported to Laveaux; “they armed themselves against me and as thanks for my efforts I received a bullet in the leg, which still gives me quite vivid pain.”3
In April 1796, not long before the arrival of the Third Commission, Toussaint had to subdue a similar revolt in the parish of Saint Louis du Nord. His proclamation to the inhabitants there strikes the tone of a disappointed but affectionate father: “Oh you Africans, my brothers, you who have cost me so much weariness, sweat, work and suffering! You, whose liberty is sealed by the purest half of your own blood, how long will I have the grief of seeing my stray children flee the advice of a father who idolizes them! … Have you forgotten that it is I who first raised the standard of insurrection against tyranny, against the despotism that held us in chains? … You have liberty, what more do you want? What will the French people say … when they learn that after the gift they have just given you, you have taken your ingratitude to the point of drenching your hands in the blood of their children … Do you not know what France has sacrificed for general liberty?”4
As fervently as Toussaint claimed brotherhood with the mass of the nouveaux libres, he also addressed them as “Africans”—not as Creoles like himself. The two cultures had real and large differences between them, and the “Africans” were perennially resistant to the work ethic Toussaint was trying so urgently to get them to adopt. Any ruler who wanted productivity for the colony faced the same obstacle, which was described with a certain loftiness by a French commentator in Port-au-Prince: “Work, which produces wealth and nourishes commerce, is the child of our artificial needs; needs which the Negro ignores, just as the philosopher disdains them.”5 Toussaint's task was to dissuade the nouveaux libres from this disdainful attitude (philosophical or not) and to convince them that work was essential to the defense of their freedom. At the same time the African-Creole cultural gap must be bridged by a universal black solidarity.
Generally well informed about events in France, Toussaint probably knew in advance that Sonthonax was returning to Saint Domingue. The language of his address to the people of Saint Louis du Nord, even as it affirms the liberating role of France, also (like the proclamation of Camp Turel) stakes Toussaint's own claim to be the chief emancipator of the nouveaux libres. Later in the same address, his reassurances become more frank:
Pay close attention, my brothers: there are more blacks in the colony than there are colored men and whites together, and if some disturbance occurs it will be us blacks that the Republic holds responsible, because we are the strongest and it is up to us to maintain order and tranquility by our good example. I am, as chief, responsible for all events, and what account can I make to France, who has heaped us with so many good deeds and has granted me its trust, if you refuse to hear the voice of reason.6
Toussaint liked to illustrate such speeches by displaying ajar of black corn with a thin layer of white grains on top. With a couple of shakes the white particles would vanish completely