Decree of General Liberty (August 29, 1793)and

Bramante Lazzary, General Call to Local Insurgents (August 30, 1793)

In declaring that men are born free and equal in rights, the National Convention unleashed a debate with momentous consequences. Not only did women like Olympe de Gouges agitate for inclusion in the revolutionary ideal of equality, so too did other minority groups. These included free blacks and slaves in the French colony of St. Domingue. News of the Revolution’s progress traveled quickly to the island, prompting slaves in the north to launch an insurrection against their white masters in August 1791. Violence worsened when the royalist government of Spain joined forces with the rebels to destroy France’s hold on the colony. To deal with the crisis and secure the insurgents’ support, the newly elected Legislative Assembly granted civil and political rights to free blacks in what became known as the Law of April 4. The French commissioners managing the situation in St. Domingue knew that the law did not go far enough, however, if France wanted to regain control. They thus took matters into their own hands, issuing the Decree of General Liberty on August 29, 1793. The decree succeeded in swaying some rebels to join the French side, including Bramante Lazzary who made a general call to local insurgents to join the French. Lazzary’s exact status is unclear; he may have been a slave or a free man of color. Regardless, he welcomed the commissioners’ call for unity under the banner of the liberty for all men regardless of their skin color. Propelled by these and other events, the National Convention voted to follow suit, abolishing slavery throughout the French Empire in February 1794.

From H. Pauléus Sannon, Histoire de Toussaint Louverture (Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Imprimerie Aug. A. Heraux, 1938), 1:146ff; and Bramante Lazzary to Toussaint L’Ouverture, Archives Nationales, DXXV 23, 231, letter 98. Trans. Laurent DuBois and John D. Garrigus (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006).

Decree of General Liberty

August 29, 1793

Men are born and remain free and equal in rights; citizens, this is France’s gospel. It is high time that it be proclaimed in all areas of the republic.

Sent by the nation to Saint-Domingue as civil commissioners, our mission was to enforce the law of April 4, to see it applied in all its force, and gradually, smoothly, without rupture, to prepare the general emancipation of the slaves.

Upon our arrival, we found a horrible division among the whites who, separated by interest and opinion, agreed only on a single point: to maintain the slavery of the nègres forever and therefore to prohibit any system of liberty or even improvement of their fate.

In order to foil malicious persons and to reassure everyone, since they all feared any sudden action, we declared that we believed slavery was necessary for agriculture.

What we said was true, citizens; at that time slavery was as essential to the continuation of work as it was to keeping the colonists faithful to France. A group of ferocious tyrants still ruled Saint-Domingue, men who publicly preached that one’s skin color should be a sign of power or condemnation. These were men like those who condemned the unfortunate Ogé¹ or the creators and members of those notorious military tribunals who filled the towns with gallows and torture racks in order to sacrifice Africans and men of color to their own foul pretensions. The colony was still full of these bloodthirsty men. If by some great foolhardiness, we had then broken the chains that bound slaves to their masters, undoubtedly their first reaction would have been to throw themselves upon their persecutors, and, in their justifiable rage, they might easily have confounded innocent with guilty people. At that time, we did not have the legal authority to decide the status of the Africans; we would have been disloyal and in violation of the law had we done so.

Today the situation is quite different. The slave traders and cannibals are gone. Some of them have died, victims of their impotent rage, while others have sought safety by fleeing to foreign countries. Those whites who remain believe in France’s laws and values.

The men of April 4² make up the majority of the [remaining] population; these are men to whom you owe your freedom, the first to show you what it is to have the courage to fight for natural and human rights. These men were so proud of their independence that they chose to lose their property rather than suffer the shame of putting on their old shackles. Never forget, citizens, that they gave you the weapons that conquered your liberty; never forget that you fought for the French Republic, that of all the whites in the universe, the only ones that are your friends are the Frenchmen of Europe.

The French Republic wants all men to be free and equal with no color distinctions. Kings can only be content when they are surrounded by slaves; they are the ones who sold you to the whites on the African coast; they are the tyrants in Europe who want this vile trade to continue. The republic adopts you among its children; these kings wanted only to load you down with chains or eliminate you.

The representatives of this very republic were the ones who rescued you by untying the hands of the civil commissioners and giving them authority to make provisional changes in the slave regime.

This regime is going to be changed; a new order of things will be born, and the old slavery will disappear. Yet do not think that the liberty that you will enjoy means laziness and inactivity. In France, everyone is free and everyone works; in Saint-Domingue under these same laws, you will follow the same model. After returning to your old work crews or your former owners, you will be paid for your work; you will no longer suffer the humiliating punishments previously inflicted upon you; you will no longer be property, as before. You will be your own master and live contented.

Since you have chosen to become citizens of the French nation, you must also be the zealous defender of its laws; you will undoubtedly defend the interests of the republic against kings, more out of gratitude for the benefits she has heaped upon you than to preserve your own independence. Liberty has brought you from nothingness into existence; show that you are worthy of her. Renounce laziness forever as if it were a crime. Have the courage to want to be a people, and soon you will be equal to the nations of Europe. Your detractors and your tyrants maintain that an African who is set free will never work again. Prove them wrong. Work twice as hard to win the prize that awaits you. Let your activity prove to France that, by including you on her side, she has truly increased her capacities and resources.

And you, citizens misled by the vile royalists, you who took up the flags and uniforms of the cowardly Spanish to fight blindly against your own interests, against the freedom of your women and children, open your eyes at last to the enormous advantages that the republic offers you. The kings promise you liberty, but do you see them giving this to their subjects? Do the Spanish free their own slaves? No, surely not. To the contrary, they are likely to weigh you down with chains as soon as they no longer need your services. Aren’t they the ones who turned Ogé over to his killers? What misfortune you suffer! If France returned to its kings, the [royalist] émigrés would turn on you. They flatter you today, but they would be the first to torture you.

Given this situation, the civil commissioner, reflecting on the petition signed by individuals assembled in a meeting, exercising the powers given him by Article 3 of the law passed by the National Convention last March 5:

Orders the following, to be carried out in the northern province [of Saint-Domingue].

First Article: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen will be printed, published, and displayed everywhere it is needed.

2. All the nègres and mixed blood people currently in slavery are declared free to enjoy all the rights of French citizens; they are nevertheless subject to the regime described in the following articles. . . .

5. Servants of either sex can be hired by their masters and mistresses only for three months, and this for a salary that they will fix according to the wishes of each.

6. Former house slaves working for persons who are older than sixty, or sick, or for nursing infants less than ten years old, are not free to leave them. Their salary is set at 1 portuguaise (8 gourdes)³ per month for wet nurses and 6 portuguaise for the others, for men and women alike. . . .

9. The nègres currently working on the plantations of their former masters are required to remain there. They will work in agriculture.

10. The enlisted fighters who are serving in army units or in forts will be allowed to establish themselves on plantations for agricultural work by first obtaining a furlough from their leader or an order from us, to be delivered if they find a willing man to replace them.

11. The former field hands will be obliged to work for a year, during which time they can change plantations only by permission of a justice of the peace.

12. The profits of each plantation will be divided into three equal portions after taxes are deducted from the whole amount. One-third will remain with the owner of the land. He will have access to another third to cover the costs of planting. The remaining third will be divided between the field workers in a manner to be set . . .

In addition, the field workers will have their own provision grounds; they will be divided equally between each family, according to the quality of the land and the amount needed. . . .

27. Punishment by the whip is absolutely forbidden; for violations of discipline it will be replaced by the stocks for one, two, or three days, according to the severity of the case. The most severe punishments will be fines, up to complete loss of salary.

28. For civil crimes, the former slaves will be judged like other French citizens.

29. Field hands cannot be forced to work on Sunday. . . .

31. Women who are seven months pregnant will not work and will only return to the fields two months after their deliveries.

32. Field hands can change plantations for health reasons or for an incompatible personality at the request of the crew in which they work. These affairs will be subject to the decision of a justice of the peace and his counselors.

33. On the fifteenth day after the publication of this proclamation, all men who do not own property and are neither in the military, nor working in agriculture, nor employed in someone’s home, within the time limits set above, or are found to be vagrants, will be arrested and put in prison.

34. Women who do not have an obvious source of income, who are not working in agriculture or employed in someone’s home, within the time limits set above, or are found to be vagrants, will be arrested and put in prison.

35. The men and women imprisoned in these cases for the first time will be held for a month. The second time they will be held for three months, and the third time they will be sentenced to a public work detail for one year.

36. Persons working in agriculture and household workers will not leave their employment for any reason without permission of the city or town government where they live. . . .

Bramante Lazzary, Commander of the Camps of the Tannerie and Lacombe

August 30, 1793, year 2 of the Republic⁴

To my brothers and friends in rebellion in the northern province

Can there be any greater happiness for us than to see ourselves all united together and enjoying a good and sweet natural liberty that France has given us?

At last, my friends, general liberty has been proclaimed on the island; it has given us our well-being and made us all children of the law. It is to them, the civil commissioners, to whom France gave its power, it is to them, my brothers, that we owe our legitimate happiness; it is to them and only to them that France had confided it to grant it to us. As soon as you receive my letter, you must gather together and present yourself to the representatives of the nation, and swear to be loyal to the nation and to die for the safety of our country, to march under the national flag, which is the sign of our union, which finally announces the reunion of the three colors.

Our flag makes it clear that our liberty depends on these three colors; white, mulatto, black. We are fighting for these three colors. The nobility and the Spaniards want us to have only the white in order to bring us back to the old order. But no, we are French; we are fighting for our freedom; we want to live free or die, that is the motto of all good French republicans.

You fought for something that now has been legitimately granted to us, so let us unite as your brothers from Limbé and Morne Rouge have, to form a single and same family, to march against those who wish to attack our liberty. Spain has joined a conflict that it made you think it would support. But remember, my brothers, that they will not do so for as long as they tell you. They will bite their thumbs, like the aristocrats of Le Cap who have gone to their side. France is more powerful than you think and has already made itself respected by several crowns, and Spain will be pinched in its turn. And France will also punish those to whom it has offered happiness but who pretend they do not know the law. . . .

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