Toussaint Louverture

“ The English tried once more to win him over to their cause. Writing to him through Lapointe, they endeavored to speculate upon his supposed jealousy of Toussaint Louverture on account of his being appointed Commander-in-Chief of the army. In his reply Rigaud asserted his devotion to France and defended Toussaint. "I must," said he, "repress your insolence and your insulting tone toward the French General Toussaint Louverture. You have no right to speak of him as a coward, since you do not dare to encounter him; or as a slave, because a French Republican cannot be a slave. ”

“ Toussaint-Louverture's detention in the Temple is an episode which reflects little credit upon the military and political history of the Consulate. Certainly the expedition of Saint-Domingue, under the command of General Leclerc, Napoleon's brother-in-law, makes a poor page in the annals of that period. After having received Toussaint-Louverture's submission, Leclerc, afraid of the great negro's influence, made him a prisoner by the merest trick, and despatched him to France. Confined at first in the Temple, he was afterwards removed to the fort of Joux, where he died in April, 1803. ”

“ Toussaint has filled the “Opening;” he is “Louverture.” A strong hand and a clear head, though black, direct the affairs of the island. Daily he gains strength, and the confidence of the negroes. They flock to his army—they listen and obey his words. Christophe, in the North, had encouraged cultivation. Toussaint throws his powerful influence into the work—his maxim, “that the liberty of the blacks can never be solid without agriculture,” [38] passes from mouth to mouth among the negroes, and rouses in them the desire for lands and wealth—for the first time now [Pg 41] possible. ”

“ Toussaint now expressed his wish to retire from power, and his quarters were thronged with deputations, whites, yellows, and blacks, praying him to continue their protector and father. Two kings cannot sit on the same throne: Louverture was the hero of the blacks, Rigaud the chief of the mulattoes—both were superior men. Roume, the remaining French commissioner, entered into the large plans of Toussaint, and pronounced him “a philosopher, a legislator, a general, and a good [Pg 47] citizen.” ”

“ The true sportsman gives his bird the wing. The true knight strikes not his unarmed enemy. The true man rests upon honor. The assassin strikes in the dark—the dastard deals in treachery—the base man knows not honor. The one was the black Toussaint—the other the white Napoleon!
Le Clerc believed the blacks must take advantage of his weakness; why should they not? If they rose, would not Toussaint be compelled to lead them? Might he not, even then, be plotting to do so? He suspected this, and he waited not for proof. He filled the district of Ennery with troops, which only excited the blacks. ”

“ Great is he who spends his blood and his life, fighting for liberty—but base is the man who kills and destroys for fame or plunder.
Toussaint sets himself to his work. The whole province of the North soon falls into his hands, and he drives the Spanish ally, Jean François, westward along La Montaigne Noire. Then he hastens into the rich valley of the Artibonite, attacks and beats back the English, and besieges the strong fortress of St. Marc; but neither forces nor ammunition are sufficient and he retires to the mountain fastnesses of Marmalade to recruit his troops. ”

“ Remy, a native of Hayti, has been published at Paris, of which La Semaine says: "Toussaint Louverture, the heroic personification of the black race, was one of the most extraordinary men of modern times. A son of a race hitherto oppressed, filled with a noble emulation, and desirous of sculpturing the figure of some of those great men who have fixed the destiny of their country, has commenced the pious task with the history of this old slave, whose genius raised him to the rank of general of the French army in St. ”

“ Grande Rivière, Dondon, Plaisance, Marmalade, and Ennery, the most important places in the north, quickly fell into Toussaint’s hands.
The French Commissioners were getting into straits. The Spanish troops were against them, the blacks were against them, the remaining whites were divided—some wore the black cockade, others the white; the troops and friends of the commissioners, the tricolor; the mulattoes, the red; war was everywhere, and no man was safe but with arms in his hands, and in the strongest party. ”

“ Rigaud was a perpetual danger to Louverture, whose safety depended on tolerating no rival. The Act of Congress threatened to create distress among the blacks and endanger the quiet of the colony; while Rigaud and the French authority would be strengthened by whatever weakened Louverture. Spurred both by fear and ambition, Toussaint took the character of an independent ruler. The United States government, counting on such a result, had instructed its consul to invite an advance ”

“ The “horrors” again were abroad—fear began them, the French seconded them; blacks again murdered whites—whites again slaughtered blacks. All the blacks, however, were not [Pg 69] savage, nor all the whites bloodthirsty, for the heart of man returns to mercy.
The strong redoubt of Crête à Pierrot, built by the English, defends the entrance to the wild mountains of the Artibonite; there a small army can fight against numbers. Thither Toussaint collects his beaten forces, thither came Dessalines and Lamartinière, their leaders. ”

“ His successes against the Spanish and English were immediate and great. “Cet homme fait donc l'ouverture partout,” exclaimed Laveaux, and afterward Toussaint was given the surname of L'Ouverture. Some authorities say that he adopted the title to declare himself the liberator of his people. Laveaux distrusted him, and was seeking an opportunity to dismiss him; but in March, 1795, there was an insurrection in Cape Français, and Toussaint, relieving Laveaux, was appointed lieutenant-general and deputy governor-general, and caused the negroes to lay down their arms. ”

“ Thus in the beginning of April, in the year 1803, died Toussaint L’Ouverture, a grandson of an African king. He passed the greater number of his days in slavery, and rose to be a soldier, a general, a governor, and to-day lives in the hearts of the people of his native isle. Endowed by nature with high qualities of mind, he owed his elevation to his own energies and his devotion to the welfare and freedom of his 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. ”

“ Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black chieftain of Hayti, was a slave on the plantation of M. Bayon de Libertas. When the general rising of the negroes took place, in 1791, Toussaint refused to join them, until he had aided M. Bayon and his family to escape to Baltimore. The white man had discovered in Toussaint many notable qualities, and had instructed him in some of the first branches of education; and the preservation of his life was owing to the negro's gratitude for his kindness. ”

“ M. Bayou de Libertas was such a humane and considerate man that life in his service seems to have been as happy as the condition of slaves can be. Long afterward, Toussaint, speaking of this period of his life, said: "My wife and I went hand in hand to labor in the fields. We were scarcely conscious of the fatigues of the day. Heaven always blessed our toil. We had abundance for ourselves, and the pleasure of giving to other blacks who needed it. On Sundays and festival days my wife, my parents, and myself went to church. ”

“ I have entirely lost the use of my limbs, for I can neither walk nor mount a horseback without the help of three or four men, which makes my life both uneasy and melancholy. But I submit to the will of God." This account, indeed, rather confirms a tradition that Lord Lovat, after the separation from his wife, sank into a state of despondency, and lay two years in bed previous to the Rebellion of 1745. ”

“ He is always busy attending to the wounded who [Pg 299] are brought up to him, or the sick, of whom there are many, for the cold air in the mountains has brought down great numbers with the fever, especially those whose plantations lay on the plain, and who were accustomed to sleep in huts. Very many have died, but Toussaint has saved many, and were it needed he could have two hundred for his guard instead of twenty. ”

“ Nat said.
"Yes, sir, thanks to Toussaint. You do not remember me, though I should know you were it daylight, for I have seen you several times when you have been over at our plantation with Mademoiselle Duchesne. I was chief helper in Monsieur Bayou's stables. Of an evening Toussaint had a sort of school, and four or five of us always went to him, and I learned to read and write, and to talk French as the whites talk it and not as we do. He is a good man, and we all love him. There are many who think he will one day be king of the island; he knows much more than any of the others. ”

“ Lord Lovat resolved, however, to profit in the general disasters. His influence among his clansmen was obvious: whether for good or, in some instances, for evil, there is much to admire in the resolute adherence of those faithful mountaineers, who had resisted the assumption of a stranger, and invited back to their hills the long-absent and ruined chief, whom they regarded as their own. ”

“ Tommy felt completely at his ease. “Well,” he began, and paused in order to visualize the shop and the men and their daily duties, “you tell your men what they must do to keep their jobs. Their product must always be the same, day after day. At college they tell a man what he must do in order that he himself may become the product of his own work. A man here is a cog in a machine. At college he is both a cog and a complete machine.” Tommy looked doubtfully at Mr. Thompson, who said:
“You are right—and very wrong. In the men themselves, Tommy, what is the difference?” ”

“ In order to think about his father Tommy found himself compelled to think about himself. The secret had driven him to Dayton. It had taken away his happiness, and in exchange had given to him Thompson, Byrnes, Grosvenor, Nevin, La Grange, and the men in the shop—more real friends than he had in New York. It had given to him not only something to do, but something to do gladly.
The friends and the work had increased his own power to fight. He must always fight everybody, everything that antagonized his friends and his work. ”

“ In all this singular and complicated affair, it is impossible to help wondering at the folly and audacity which Lord Lovat had shown in returning to France, conscious of having placed himself at the mercy of ruthless politicians, and aware that in that country he could expect no redress nor protection from law. But the original crime for which he had been sent forth, an outlaw from his country, was the source of all his subsequent mistakes and misfortunes. France was open to him; Scotland was closed ”

“ In this hospitable house, a strange contrast to the penuriousness and despotic management of Castle Downie, Lord Lovat was on the most intimate footing. His professions of friendship to the laird were unceasing. "I dare freely say," he observes in one of his characteristic letters, "that there is not a Forbes alive wishes your personal health and prosperity more than I do, affectionate and sincerely; and I should be a very ungrateful man if it was otherways, for no man gave me more proofs of love and friendship at home and abroad than John Forbes of Colodin did. ”

“ On the trial it appeared that the whole aim of Lord Lovat was, as Sir John Strange expressed it, "an endeavour to avoid being fixed himself and to throw it all upon his son,—that son whom he had, in a manner, forced into the Rebellion."
Rare, indeed, is such a case;—with that, let these few remarks on the character of Lord Lovat, conclude. Human nature can sink to no lower depth of degradation. ”

“ He seems to have been endowed with a capacity worthy of a better employment than waiting upon a noble and wealthy relative, or inflaming discords between Highland clans. If we may adduce the Latin quotations which Lovat parades in his Memoirs, and which he uttered during his last hours, we must allow him to have cultivated the classics. ”

“ That simple and faithful people, trusting in the worth and honour of their leader, swore that they would never desert him, that they would leave their wives, their children, and all that they most valued, to live and die with him. An organized resistance was planned; and the Master of Lovat intreated his father, as he himself expressed it, with tears, "to retire into the country of his kinsmen, the Macleods of Rye." The proposal was accepted, and Thomas of Beaufort, for he never assumed the disputed title of Lord Lovat, took refuge among that powerful and friendly clan. ”

“ Never was there a mixture of society so miscellaneous as was there assembled. From an affectation of loyalty to his new masters Lovat paid a great court to the military stationed in the North; such of the nobility in that quarter as were not in the sunshine, received his advances as from a man who enjoyed court favour, and he failed not to bend to his own purposes every new connection he formed. ”