A particular account of the commencement and progress of the insurrection of the Negroes in St Domingo, which began August 1791, being a translation of the speech made to the national assembly 3rd November 1791 by the deputies from the General Assembly of the French part of St Domingo, 2nd edition, with notes and an appendix containing extracts from other authentic papers (London 1792

Description

An account of the rebellion in St Domingo by the beaten French, from a translation. The pamphlet includes a condemnation of the revolt and a criticism of the antislavery movement in France for putting ideas into the slaves’ heads, and also criticises the French Revolution for its part in helping to bring this revolution in St Domingo about.
‘Long have we foreseen the evils that afflict us, and which, doubtless, will end in our annihilation, if the national justice and power interpose speedily for our relief’.
‘The General Assembly of the French part of St Domingo…arriving on the 16th August…were witnesses of the burning of a trash house on Chabaud’s plantation. The incendiary was a Negro driver …being interrogated, he deposed “that all the drivers, coachmen, domestics, and confidential Negroes of the neighbouring plantations and adjacent districts had formed a plot to set fire to the plantations and murder all the whites”’.
‘In the night between the 22nd and 23rd (August) twelve negroes reached the sugar house of Noe’s plantation at Acul, seized upon the apprentice refiner; dragged him before the great house, where he expired under their wounds. His cries brought out the attorney of the estate, who was laid breathless on the ground by two muskets. The wretches proceeded to the apartment of the head refiner, and assassinated him in his bed’.
M. Odeluc, a member of the general assembly and attorney for the Galist plantation… escorted by a patrol, reached the plantation, and seized the ringleaders, , and returned at their head to the town. Immediately he went out again, with twenty men in arms that he might restore tranquillity and maintain order. But the negroes were all embodied, and attacked him…addressing himself to his coachman, whom he perceived among the foremost, exclaimed, “Wretch, I have treated thee ever with kindness, why dost thou seek my death?” “True”, he replied, but I have promised to cut your throat,” and, that instant, a hundred weapons were upon him’.
‘M. Cagnet, inhabitant of Acul, seeking to escape these horrors, embarked for the Cape. His domestic negro begged permission to attend him. Such a mark of attachment determined his master to leave him as a guard upon the plantation that he might endeavour to preserve it. But he had hardly set foot on board, when he saw that slave, with a torch in his hand, setting fire to his property’.
At Great River, an inhabitant M. Cardineau, had two natural sons of colour, to whom he had given their liberty, and who, in their childhood, had been the object of his tenderest cares. They accosted him with a pistol at his breast, and demanded his money. He delivered it, but no sooner had they obtained it than they stabbed him to the heart’.
‘Nothing, one would think, could deepen the horrors of this recital; and yet, Sirs, it is marked with a features of a still more dreadful character, when we see that those slaves, who had been most kindly treated by their masters, were the very soul of the insurrection. It was they who betrayed those humane masters to the assassin’s sword; it was they who seduced and stirred up to revolt the gangs disposed to fidelity.’
‘One hundred thousand negroes were in rebellion, and all the buildings and plantations, of more than half the Northern province appeared only as one conflagration. The plains and the mountains were filled with carnage and deluged with blood. The colonists, stupefied with fear, knew not where to seek refuge; one flies for safety to the woods; is there betrayed by his negroes, and stabbed; another confides in the promises of his gang; a rebel ringleader steals in among them; the gang rises, and the proprietor is their first victim’.

Details

Reference	Binnsvol016-009
Volume	BINNS VOL. 16
Author	Unknown
Publication year	1792
Pages	26