Reading the American Past: Printed Page 178

DOCUMENT 9–4

A French Sugar Planter Describes the French and Saint Domingue Revolutions

In the midst of revolutionary turmoil in France, slaves in the French colony of Saint Domingue revolted to emancipate themselves from the claims of their masters and the rigors of sugar production. A wealthy, young, white Frenchman, a monarchist from a plantation-owning family, wrote a memoir around 1796, excerpted below, describing his experiences of the horrors of revolution in both France and Saint Domingue. This anonymous author and many other refugees from France and Saint Domingue fled to the United States, where — to many Americans — they personified the terrors of revolutionary uprisings. The slave insurrection in Saint Domingue became a watchword among slaveholders in the United States who feared that American slaves might follow that revolutionary example.

A Sugar Planter of Saint Domingue Experiences Revolution in France and Saint Domingue, 1791

[After leaving Paris in 1791 and arriving in Bordeaux, a merchant] introduced me into the Society of the city, with whom . . . I was very bored, as they were speaking then only about Liberty, Equality, and the Rights of Man, etc. These gentlemen, who owed all their fortune to colonial commerce, graciously said in my presence, knowing me well to be among the proprietors of Saint Domingue, that their most sincere wish was to see the overthrow of that island.

They said to me: “Whereas, my friend,

You have been master long enough,

Your slave in his turn must be.

That is natural. And should steel

Destroy the entire population

Of these colonists, who play the mighty,

Then the Blacks must be the Whites

And there strut in your place.” . . .

[Leaving France and sailing to Saint Domingue for refuge from the French Revolution,] I write mournfully:

Farewell France, in past days so beautiful,

Antique abode of Honor;

Today the cruel retreat

Of Crime and Sorrow.

Farewell, people, in the past so tranquil,

Loyal, lovable, and generous;

Today, so vile a rabble,

So wild and meek a herd.

I flee from your criminal principles,

The scourge of our virtues and manners,

From your frightful tortures

And your persecuting tyrants.

Alas! may a just Providence

Soon punish such heinous crimes,

And may I see once again in France

A king, happiness and peace. ...

The country house of my family [in Saint Domingue] is on a sugar plantation . . . near a pretty little river and in view of the ocean. ... Wide roads connect the plantations, which resemble little hamlets, because of the large number of buildings necessary for the making of sugar and housing of the Negroes. ...

How often . . . have I been able to recognize the injustice of the written diatribes, that were flooding Europe, against the poor planters of Saint Domingue! What lies! . . .

During the past months, between the different revolts and insurrections, I have seen everywhere Negroes who were fat, well cared for, and happy. I have seen them many times, about a hundred of them occupied with work that twenty Europeans could achieve in much less time. Their cabins appeared sanitary, commodious, and furnished with the necessary utensils for their needs. These cabins were surrounded by land where they raised pigs and a variety of fowl; they had me observe their individual gardens, which were perfectly tended and abundantly planted with all the necessary products of our country. ...

For those who question the discipline under which they live, it is certainly not more rigorous than that which is observed for soldiers and sailors; and when one realizes that thirty thousand whites are in the center of six hundred thousand semi-barbaric Africans, one should not hesitate to say that discipline is necessary. ...

The day after my arrival, while partaking with my family of the pleasures of an excellent lunch, a courier arrived to deliver . . . a letter full of the most terrifying news. The slaves, enflamed by emissaries sent from France, had burned the habitations of our neighbors . . . , after assassinating the proprietors without distinction of age or sex.

Already the insurrection was causing devastation on all sides, and they feared it would soon reach our place of habitation. The report of this terrific catastrophe was widely spread. The frightened families among our neighbors met together at our plantation. The men armed to face the storm; the mothers, wives, sisters were lamenting and gathering in all haste a few precious effects. Desolation and fear were painted on all faces. The sky seemed on fire. Guns could be heard from afar and the bells of the plantations were sounding the alarm. The danger increased. The flames at each moment were approaching and enclosing about us. There was no time to lose; we fled. The victims who escaped at sword's point came to swell the number of fugitives, and recounted to us the horrors which they had witnessed. They had seen unbelievable tortures to which they testified. Many women, young, beautiful, and virtuous, perished beneath the infamous caresses of the brigands, amongst the cadavers of their fathers and husbands. Bodies, still palpitating, were dragged through roads with atrocious acclamations. Young children transfixed upon the points of bayonets were the bleeding flags which followed the troop of cannibals. ...

[I became a soldier and] . . . shouldered my first arms.

We were crushed by this war. One hundred thousand slaves in full revolt and the entire colony of Saint Domingue only defended by two regiments of the regular army. ...

I pursued a Negro [rebel] whose regalia caused me to judge him to be one of the principal chiefs. As I was about to overtake him, he turned around, took aim, but happily for me, could not make his powder fire as it was too damp. I prepared to cleave his head with my sword, whereupon he fell to his knees, kissed my boots, and told me, with tears in his eyes, that he was my Mother's godson, that he was present at my birth, and carried me in his arms more than once, and beseeched me not to kill him; that he was a good Negro and that he had always loved the Whites. His manner disarmed me; I dismounted from my horse before having him conducted to camp. However, a soft sound made me quickly turn my head, and I saw the miserable hypocrite, who had recharged his gun, aiming point-blank at my head; being troubled at finding himself discovered, prevented him from aiming accurately, and the bullet went past me. I fell upon him, but he was on guard for my attack . . . [W]hen he was about to slash me [I] threw him into some weeds. Even then he had the impudence to maintain that I had not seen correctly, and that he loved the son of his godmother too much to try to kill him. When he heard himself convicted by a number of soldiers who had just arrived and had witnessed the incident, he changed his tune and told me in his jargon: “Master, I know that is true. It is the Devil who gets inside of this body of mine. I am a good nigger, but against my will the Devil is too strong.” His excuse made me laugh despite my anger, and had I been alone, I would certainly have saved him; but the soldiers seized him and bound him to a tree to be shot. When he saw his fate was sealed, he began to laugh, sing, and joke. At times, however, reviling us in a furious tone, at times jeering at us in mockery. He gave the signal himself and met death without fear or complaint. We found in one of his pockets pamphlets printed in France, filled with commonplaces about the Rights of Man and the Sacred Revolution. ... On his chest he had a little sack full of hair, herbs, bits of bone, which they call a fetish; with this, they expect to be sheltered from all danger. ...

But if our slaves were so well treated, why did they revolt? One must ask those composers of phrases who have inundated our country with their incendiary writings; those stupid innovators who brought turmoil to France and killed their King; those Whites of Europe who were found at the head of the insurgents; those idiots who thought that the destruction of commerce would usher in a counter-revolution and who needed an army to sustain their new rights. One must take into account the jealousy, the Machiavellism of a rival nation [Britain]. One must find the reason, at last, in the character of the ignorant populace, principally in the Negroes, like machines which can easier be made to start than to stop! These are the causes which started, accelerated, and prolonged the revolt, and destroyed the most beautiful country upon the earth. ...

Yesterday I was sitting tranquilly in my tent occupied in cleaning of my firearms, when all of a sudden . . . I saw a glow telling of an immense, encompassing fire. ... [It was] our plantation. Alas! [The burning] was enough to annihilate the work of long years. The cowardly monsters! . . .

[I]f you could have seen the actual state of this place which, before our arrival, so much care was taken to develop: the sugar refinery, the vats, the furnaces, the vast warehouses, the convenient hospital, the water-mill which was so expensive, all is no more than a specter of walls blackened and crumbled, surrounded by enormous heaps of coals and broken tiles. The cruel ones had not even respected the houses of their brothers; and those homes for the Negroes, solid, safe, shaded by trees, enclosed by gardens, suffered the same fate as the home of the master. ... [A]nd they did their work with great thoroughness. They demolished the aqueduct which conducted the river water to the great wheel of the mill; and they drained the pond by numerous irrigation trenches, that picturesque lake which carried such coolness to the habitation, and which always furnished such delicious fish. Why such fury in the devastation? Why deprive themselves of that which might have been so useful to them one day? It could not be out of hatred for us personally — we were complete strangers. We had been in France from our earliest years, and then the revolt broke out the day after our return, and so we were never allowed to live among them. ...

[After fleeing with other victims to a coastal city, the refugees were attacked by rebellious slaves.] These heinous Africans, all stained with blood, were replacing murder with excesses, amidst a [white] population without refuge, without clothes, and without food.

The thousands of unfortunates of different sex and ages were sitting on the ruins of their property crying for the loss of their families and friends. The shore was covered with debris, with weapons, with wounded, with dead and with dying. On one side, a barrier of flames and of swords [in the hands of rebellious slaves]; on the other, the immense expanse of ocean. Over all was misery, want, and suffering! And nowhere was there hope! . . .

[The author got aboard a merchant vessel that set sail for the United States.] I was exhausted with fatigue and in need of food. My clothing, which I had not been able to change for three days, was covered with blood, sweat, and dirt, and was almost entirely in tatters. ...

I was completely ruined, without home, without money, without clothes; I was going to a country of which I knew not the language, customs, nor habits, and where I had not one person whom I could approach for assistance. I was ignorant of the fate of my family . . . [and] believed them among the number of victims. ...

After two weeks of hardships, boredom, and privations, we arrived in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, along the coast of Virginia. What an astounding difference there was between these shores, which the late Spring had recently embellished, and the aspect of those desolate ones which I had just left! . . .

Condemned to a vile estate

Must we go from place to place,

Dragging out our broken existence. ...

Here then is this country [Saint Domingue], whose possession

Excited jealousy in the stranger's breast.

Alas! It offers now to my pitying heart

Only a picture of endless desolation.

You it is who caused this fearful suffering,

Vain and ignorant Philosophers,

With Humanity upon your lips

But never within your wicked hearts! . . .

You pretend to pity the unhappiness

Of the care-free Negro, who is protected in youth,

Nursed in sickness, and retired in old age;

While from the bosom of luxury and idleness,

You repulse with indignities

The suffering victims who tell you of the misery

Of white men, of Frenchmen, of your brothers!

See now the slave — free but miserable,

Polluted by the blackest crimes,

Cursing your questionable benefits

Which have rendered him wretched and unhappy.

From Althéa de Puech Parham, trans. and ed., My Odyssey: Experiences of a Young Refugee from Two Revolutions by a Creole of Saint Domingue (Baton Rouge, LA: State University Press, 1959).

Questions for Reading and Discussion