Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence | Page 6

the
government of the island. With the aid of M. Pascal, Abbe Moliere, and
Marinit, he drew up a constitution, and submitted the same to a General
Assembly convened from every district, and by that assembly the
constitution was adopted. It was subsequently promulgated in the name
of the people. And, on the 1st of July, 1801, the island was declared to
be an independent State, in which all men, without regard to
complexion or creed, possessed equal rights.
This proceeding was subsequently sanctioned by Napoleon Buonaparte,
whilst First Consul. In a letter to Toussaint, he says, "We have
conceived for you esteem, and we wish to recognize and proclaim the
great services you have rendered the French people. If their colors fly
on Santo Domingo, it is to you and your brave blacks that we owe it.
Called by your talents and the force of circumstances to the chief
command, you have terminated the civil war, put a stop to the
persecutions of some ferocious men, and restored to honor the religion
and the worship of God, from whom all things come. The situation in
which you were placed, surrounded on all sides by enemies, and
without the mother country being able to succor or sustain you, has
rendered legitimate the articles of that constitution."
Although Toussaint enforced the duties of religion, he entirely severed
the connection between Church and State. He rigidly enforced all the
duties of morality, and would not suffer in his presence even the
approach to indecency of dress or manner. "Modesty," said he, "is the
defense of woman."
The chief, nay the idol of an army of 100,000 well-trained and
acclimated troops ready to march or sail where he wist, Toussaint

refrained from raising the standard of liberty in any one of the
neighboring island, at a time when, had he been fired with what men
term ambition, he could easily have revolutionized the entire
archipelago of the west. But his thoughts were bent on conquest of
another kind; he was determined to overthrow an error which
designing and interested men had craftily instilled into the civilized
world,--a belief in the natural inferiority of the Negro race. It was the
glory and the warrantable boast of Toussaint that he had been the
instrument of demonstrating that, even with the worst odds against
them, this race is entirely capable of achieving liberty and of
self-government. He did more: by abolishing caste he proved the
artificial nature of such distinctions, and further demonstrated that even
slavery cannot unfit men for the full exercise of all the functions which
belong to free citizens.
"Some situations of trust were filled by free Negroes and mulattoes,
who had been in respectable circumstances under the old Government;
but others were occupied by Negroes, and even by Africans, who had
recently emerged from the lowest condition of slavery."
But the bright and happy state of things which the genius of Toussaint
had almost created out of elements the most discordant was doomed to
be of short duration. For the dark spirit of Napoleon, glutted, but not
satiated with the glory banquet afforded at the expense of Europe and
Africa, seized upon this, the most beautiful and happy of the
Hesperides, as the next victim of its remorseless rapacity.
With the double intention of getting rid of the republican army, and
reducing back to slavery the island of Hayti, he sent out his
brother-in-law, General Leclerc, with 26 ships of war and 25,000 men.
Like Leonidas at Thermopylæ, or the Bruce at Bannockburn, Toussaint
determined to defend from thraldom his sea-girt isle, made sacred to
liberty by the baptism of blood.
On the 28th of January, 1802, Leclerc arrived off the bay of Samana,
from the promontory of which Toussaint, in anxious alarm, beheld for
the first time in his life so large an armament. "We must all perish,"

said he, "all France has come to Santo Domingo!" But this
despondency passed away in a moment, and then this man, who had
been a kindly-treated slave, prepared to oppose to the last that system
which he now considered worse than death.
It is impossible, after so long a tax on your patience, to enter on a
detailed narration of the conflict which ensued. The hour of trial served
only to develop and ennoble the character of Toussaint, who rose, with
misfortune, above the allurements of rank and wealth which were
offered as the price of his submission; and the very ties of parental love
he yielded to the loftier sentiment of patriotism.
On the 2d of February, a division of Leclerc's army, commanded by
General Rochambeau, an old planter, landed at Fort Dauphin, and
ruthlessly murdered many of the inhabitants (freedmen) who, unarmed,
had been led by curiosity to the beach, in order to