Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [79]
The repair and the reform of the plantation economy was hindered by the damaged state and the dubious status of the plantations themselves. Most had been abandoned by their grand blancs owners and managers during the first phase of extreme destructive violence beginning in 1791, but under varying circumstances. Some had fled their lands and the colony, purely and simply as refugees. Others had been deported as counterrevolutionaries during Sonthonax's first tour in Saint Domingue. A great many had sailed from Cap Francais with the fleet that carried away the defeated Governor Galbaud. The deportees and those who sailed with Galbaud were apt to be classified as emigres, counterrevolutionary enemies of the French republic; as such, their lands could be confiscated by the state. Yet no official list of emigres existed for Saint Domingue, so these plantations were sequestered, rather than confiscated outright, and could not legally be sold to anyone who might redevelop them. Leasing these plantations to temporary managers struck both Sonthonax and Toussaint Louverture as a stopgap solution; many were taken over by members of Toussaint's officer corps, who used various degrees of military force to put nouveaux libres back to work in the cane fields, and some by Toussaint himself.
Sonthonax was adamant in refusing to allow anyone to return to Saint Domingue who might be considered an emigre. Friction between Toussaint and the commissioner developed around this point, for Toussaint courted the return of many grand blancs landowners. In general, this group possessed a lot of managerial and technical knowledge which Toussaint felt was essential to the restoration of Saint Do-mingue's prosperity (and its value to the French nation), particularly in the skill-intensive area of refinement of white sugar. In particular, the group included men like Bayon de Libertat, who had fled Cap Francais with Galbauds fleet in 1793. During Bayons years of exile in the United States, Toussaint faithfully sent him the proceeds from his plantations in Saint Domingue, and in 1797 he authorized Bayon's return to the colony.
Thanks to his unusually close connection to Bayon de Libertat's circle, and to his own status as an ancien libre and sizable landowner before the revolution, Toussaint had a certain standing (by class though not by race) in the group of returning proprietors. This connection, and Toussaint's policy of advancing the claims of white landowners to recover their property and redevelop plantations with free labor, suggested, not only to Sonthonax and the white Jacobins but also to many among the nouveau libreblack majority, that Toussaint's loyalty was dangerously divided. The numerous small rebellions against his authority in the past few years had mostly been provoked by his effort to restore a system of plantation labor; putting white former slave masters back in authority was, in the eyes of many, more suspicious still.
Toussaint, like Sonthonax, was apparently working to build a new society, which would replace the hierarchies inherent in a slave-based system with a new triracial egalitarianism founded on regard for the Rights of Man. Freedom for the former slaves of Saint Domingue was absolutely fundamental to his plan, and Toussaint never wavered in insisting on that point—on which his support from the nouveaux libres depended. But among the colony's other races and classes, implementation of this program proved tricky.
Following Villatte's deportation and Sonthonax's disastrous mission to Rigaud, the mulatto-dominated Southern Department had to all intents and purposes seceded from the colony—at least it no longer recognized the commission's authority—while the gens de couleur elsewhere were quietly alienated from both Sonthonax and Toussaint. The military situation, though improved since Sonthonax's previous sojourn, was still difficult. The Treaty of Basel had formally ceded Spanish Santo