Assignment 450 words

Toussaint Between Two Worlds

Author(s): Madison Smartt Bell

Source: Journal of Haitian Studies , Fall 2005, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall 2005), pp. 30-44

Published by: Center for Black Studies Research

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/41715311

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms

Center for Black Studies Research is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Haitian Studies

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

30 The Journal of Haitian Studies, Vol. 1 1 No. 2 © 2005

Madison Smartt Bell

Goucher College

Toussaint Between Two Worlds

Haiti is a nexus and crossroads for a great migration- of spirits and of the bodies that house those spirits. On this little island, the Europeans, the American Indians, and the Africans all came together for the first time, and with a violent shock the Spanish exterminated the Arawaks in one of the most successful examples of genocide in all human history. At this kalfou, African slavery took its first root in the New World. In Haiti, and only in Haiti, slavery was put to a bloody, explosively violent end by those who had been enslaved.

One man stands at the confluence of these cultural and racial forces:

Toussaint Louverture, the first leader of the Haitian Revolution. I have been

obsessed with Toussaint since 1983, when I stumbled on a short biography of him: Citizen Toussaint by Ralph Korngold. I first exercised this obsession

(between 1991 and 2004) by writing a series of three novels about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution. I wrote over two thousand pages, and

yet somehow they were not enough to cure my obsession with the subject, so I am now telling the story all over again, though much more efficiently (or at least more briefly), in my own short biography of Toussaint.

By the time the Revolution began in 1791, the Indian population had been

wiped off the face of the earth- or at least their material presence had been.

Many of their beliefs did and still do.oersist, however, blended into Haitian Vodou. In Vodouisant terms, the Indian spirits are still present as part of sa

nou pa we yo- the invisible world parallel to the one that we see.

In 1789, the population of French Saint Domingue consisted (in very rough numbers) of about forty thousand whites, thirty thousand gens de couleur (that is, people of mixed African and European blood) and over half a million black African slaves. The slave system in the British colonies and in the United States only admitted the existence of two races, white and black. A person with as much as a sixteenth part African blood was legally considered to be a Negro and thus subject to enslavement- and the sixteenth degree is, quite deliberately, one step past the point where any

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Toussaint Between Two Worlds 31

visible evidence of African descent disappears. The French system, by contrast, acknowledged a third race, the mulattos or gens de couleur. In Saint Domingue, most of these people were free, as it was standard practice (again in total contrast to the British colonies and United States) for European

slave owners to free their mixed blood children. Many of these free gens de couleur were well-educated (often they went to schools in France) and owned

property and slaves themselves. The gens de couleur were an economic force in the colony, but had no political rights whatsoever.

When the French Revolution began, the white population in Saint Domingue split along pre-existing class lines. The land and slave-owning grand blancs were for the most part royalists. The petit blanc artisans, clerks

and drifters who populated the towns mostly sided with the revolutionaries.

The slave population was also divided, between creóles, those who had been born in the colony, and bossales, those imported from Africa. Conditions of slavery in Saint Domingue were so extraordinarily harsh that the slave population did not reproduce itself. So, as of 1791, some 65 percent

of Saint Domingue's slaves had been born in Africa, and in freedom.

Saint Domingue also had a small group of former slaves liberated by their

masters for reasons of sentiment or extraordinary service, or who more often

had earned their freedom through service in the colonial police or through some skilled trade like carpentry or blacksmithing. Just how many of these

people there were is hard to say, since legally they were lumped in with the

free gens de couleur, as affranchis, or freedmen. Legally, the black freedmen

had the same status as free gens de couleur, but their social situation was very different, since the gens de couleur had blood ties to their white families

and educational advantages which the black freedmen did not.

Where does Toussaint Louverture fit into all this?

He was the grandson of an African prince who had been brought to Saint Domingue as a slave- thus a second generation creole. He was a slave at Bréda Plantation at Haut du Cap, a few miles outside the town of Cap Français, the cultural capital of the colony. He was a privileged and trusted slave- coachman, livestock handler, horse-trainer, veterinarian, and

messenger- functions which gave him much more freedom of movement than the average slave. He had a close relationship with Bréda's French manager, Bayon de Libertat. True to this friendship, he saved Bayon and his family from massacre during the first bloody phase of the revolution in 1791- before joining the revolting slaves himself and finally emerging as their leader.

So goes the legend. Like most legends, it is both true and not.

One of the most remarkable- and most modern- things about this

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

32 Madison Smartt Bell

extraordinary man is the extraordinary degree to which he controlled and manipulated his own story. He always let it be known that he "had been a slave" - as indeed he had, but for how long? In the 1970s, 200 years after the fact, documents turned up to prove that Toussaint was a free man as early as 1776. Though he encouraged people to believe that he had won his freedom in the Revolution, by the side of a half million other revolting

slaves, the truth is that by 1791 he had not only been free for fifteen years

but also owned land and slaves himself. He was a considerable proprietor.

He was amazingly successful in suppressing this little fact. For two hundred years no one mentioned it. In the course of his career, Toussaint was constantly discussed by people who either worshiped or hated him- and none of them ever mention that he was a free man well before the Revolution,

though certainly it did and does make a difference- the difference between

the Toussaint who was the product of his circumstances and the Toussaint he invented and became.

In fact, Toussaint did not belong to the five hundred thousand slaves freed by the Revolution, the mass that would become his power base. He belonged to the tiny group of black freedmen, which offered him no power base at all. Before the Revolution, Toussaint's economic interests were actually closest to those of the royalist grand blanc circle of Bayon de Libertat, with whom he was intimate. He knew and understood this class

of white people very well, and was extremely adept at negotiating with them, throughout his emergence to leadership of the new black nation he brought to its beginnings.

Though a second-generation creole, Toussaint also had, because of his royal lineage, very strong African roots. Long before the Revolution he had

been quite well-educated on the European model, in part by the Jesuits who

ran a hospital in the hills between Bréda and Cap Français, where many free

blacks congregated. Toussaint picked up much of his medical knowledge there, but he was also a doktè fey- a practitioner of African-based herbal medicine. He was, very publicly, a devout Catholic, also, almost as certainly, a practicing Vodouisant- a common enough combination both in colonial Saint Domingue and in Haiti today. Legally he belonged to the mulatto- majority freedmen's group- but racially and socially he was a breed apart from the gens de couleur. He had a surprising amount in common with the grand blanc master class- for example he was a Freemason of high degree- yet the racial chasm divided him from them.

Some accuse him of imperial ambitions, and it's true that at the height of his power he introduced two very troublesome elements into the Haitian heritage: permanent military dictatorship and Presidency for

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Toussaint Between Two Worlds 33

life. Nevertheless I am convinced that he was always, completely and wholeheartedly, in favor of freedom for the great mass of African slaves. . .

although he was not exactly one of them.

I am also convinced that he envisioned a society in which all three of Saint Domingue's races- black, white, and colored- would cooperate harmoniously, in a climate of mutual respect. For a short time he realized that vision. It would be nice if someone could do it again, in Haiti, or in the

United States, or a whole lot of other places. For Toussaint, it was a very tricky

business to accomplish, especially from the position where he started.

We can see examples of this in the many letters Toussaint wrote to his superior in the French Army, General Etienne Laveaux, who would become Toussaint's closest white friend after Bayon de Libertat. One of these letters

was written in February 1796, at a time when Toussaint had had considerable

success in simultaneous campaigns against British and Spanish invaders, but was also contending with considerable unrest and rebelliousness among his "own" people- whoever exactly they were. I read the whole of this correspondence while working on my novels, but I'm indebted to the French anthropologist Gérard Barthélemy for sending me back to this one letter, which is longer and more detailed and well, more novelistic than the rest. It also demonstrates much more clearly the complicated strategies of accommodation which Toussaint needed to survive and to succeed.

On February 13th, while camped at his Artibonite outpost, Verrettes, Toussaint received two letters delivered by a white messenger, Gramont L'Hôpital, informing him that the soldiers and fieldhands had revolted in the mountains above Port de Paix. One of those letters had been dictated by the black commander of the region, Etienne Datty, who claimed that he had

no idea of the cause of the rebellion. Toussaint wrote back to Datty at once, exhorting him to restore order. But soon after, "two citizens of the mountain

of Port de Paix, more clear-eyed and more reasonable than the others" approached Toussaint at Verrettes and let him know that "many assassinations had been committed" in the region from which they had come.

"Believing that all this might spread into neighboring parishes," Toussaint wrote to his general, "I decided to leave myself to go to that area and try to remedy, if it should be possible, all the disorders. . .." He put the

fort he had just constructed at Verrettes into a "state of defense" and rode north to Grande Rivière, where he met a third deputation who had come to let him know that "the Disorder at Port de Paix was at its height," and that many had been killed. Toussaint had left Verrettes at eight in the evening; after circling through Grande Rivière, he rode southwest to Petite Rivière,

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

34 Madison Smartt Bell

and halted at his headquarters on Habitation Benoit, where he arrived at eleven at night- in three hours he had covered an astonishing distance, given the difficulty of the terrain.

At six a.m., he rode on to Gonaives, and stopped at his headquarters there to write letters and to ready a small detachment of dragoons for his expedition to Port de Paix. With this light reinforcement, he rode north from Gonaives at four in the afternoon, and reached the town of Gros Morne (about halfway to Port de Paix) at midnight. There he learned that an officer

named Jean Pierre Dumesny had gone in search of Etienne Datty but had been unable to find him.

During Toussaint's halt at Gros Morne a large number of "citizens of all colors who had the Happiness to escape the assassinations which were being committed came to see me and gave me a recital which filled me with

horror. As my Horses as well as my dragoons were tired I Gave the order to

unsaddle, and to hold themselves ready, I had them given their rations. . . at

three in the morning Jean Pierre Dumesny, having learned that I had arrived

in the village of Gros Morne, came to join me and reported that he had not yet been able to find Etienne, that he had presented himself at the appointed

rendezvous but had found no trace of him. ... At four o'clock in the morning I gave the order to the Dragoons to Saddle, and got on the road to Port de Paix by five." On this sort of maneuver is founded Toussaint's reputation for rapid, unpredictable movement and for indefatigability.

A couple of miles outside of the town, Toussaint paused to send out a few advance messengers, Jean Pierre Dumesny among them, to try to coax Etienne Datty to meet him for an interview. Then he rode a little further, halting at Ravine Pourrie, where he "had the horses unbridled so they might graze on a little grass." It would have been full daylight by then;

dawn comes quickly so near the equator. After an hour's wait, a couple of horsemen of Datty's troop appeared, then ten armed men on foot. Toussaint

notes that while he reproached them vigorously for the riots and killings that had been going on, "they all seemed very satisfied to see me." Having sent these people away with new messages urging Datty to present himself, Toussaint rode on, stopping at two in the afternoon at the river of Passe Seguier for long enough to compose a letter to the recalcitrant and thus far

invisible Datty, this time ordering him directly to a meeting at the nearby Habitation Andro.

". . .1 got back on the road; at three o'clock I arrived at Habitation Andro,

where I found a black citizen named Baptiste who told me that he served as a herdsman for Citizen Andro, the owner, & also Two black women citizens

and an old mulattress, of whom I asked, Why all these disorders? -they

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Toussaint Between Two Worlds 35

replied that they did not Know the cause. As soon as I arrived I wrote to Pageot, Commandant of the Northern Province, to inform him of my arrival,

and I sent the said Baptiste, with Two of my dragoons, to carry this letter. At

the same moment there came to see me a large number of men and women fieldworkers, who brought me provisions, some fowls and some eggs, and testified to the pleasure they had in seeing me, and that they Hoped that I would settle all these Disorders. I Gave them the order to go find me some forage, which they did on the spot and seemed to do with pleasure. That seemed to me to be a Good omen and made me believe that settling these things would not be difficult."

In all these maneuvers one begins to sense the delicate balance with which Toussaint walked the line between French military commander and African chieftain. He had arrived in the unstable region with just a few cavalrymen at his back; if Datty's rebellion were determined, his forces would hugely outnumber Toussaint's, though likely they would be far less well-trained and well-disciplined. In his daylong meander through the area, Toussaint was spreading the news of his presence as broadly as he could, while being careful never to remain in one spot for more than an hour; he had no intention of making himself a stationary target until he had a better

sense of the local mood. His letters to Datty were written in French military

style -commander to subordinate- but the verbal messages he sent, parallel to his written communications, must have been more like invitations to a

sort of clan meeting. Toussaint drew his confidence from subtle harbingers in the locals' response to him that would likely have passed unnoticed by a European officer. When the field-hands brought him offerings of food and willingly followed his directions to find hay for his horses, he was reassured

that they accepted the style of patriarchal authority he was trying to assert.

Secure in their support, he was encouraged to remain at Habitation Andro till Etienne Datty should come; before, he may well have been as shy of Datty as Datty was of him.

"At seven o'clock in the evening, Etienne presented himself in conformity to the order which I had Sent him, with about five hundred men of whom

a great Part were armed. I had my horse saddled and Gave the order to Etienne To have all the citizens who had come with him form a circle, as

well as those who had just come in with the forage." With these directions, Toussaint managed to mingle Datty's men, whose intentions and loyalties were uncertain, with the field-hands who had turned up earlier and had demonstrated their loyalty to Toussaint.

"I mounted my horse & entered into the Circle...." To address the throng from horseback increased Toussaint's air of authority; he was also

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

36 Madison Smartt Bell

ready for a swift departure if anything should go wrong, "...after having Preached to them the morals of reason and having reproached them for the

assassinations which they had committed, I told them that if they wanted to save their liberty, they must submit to the laws of the republic & be docile- that it was not by such [violent] conduct that they would enjoy their

freedom, that if they had some claim or complaint this was no way to get it recognized, and that Jesus had said, 'Ask and you shall receive, knock at my door and it shall be opened to you, but he did not tell you to commit crimes to demand what you Need.'

"I asked them if they knew me and if they were happy to see me; they

replied, yes, they knew I was the father of all the blacks, that they also knew

that I had never ceased laboring for their Happiness and for their freedom,

but that they prayed me to Listen to them and Perhaps I would see that they were not so far in the wrong as I said that they were."

At this point the encounter (as steered by Toussaint) had become a sort of court proceeding, African-style, where grievances could be aired before

the assembled community and resolved by the judgment of the patriarch "I was silent," Toussaint wrote to Laveaux, "and listened to them. One Among them said, 'My General, we all regard you as our father, you are the most precious to us after God, and in you we have the greatest confidence.' I hushed him & told him that if they had considered me so, they would not have behaved as they did; that if they were afraid to address themselves to the Governor-General [Laveaux], whom we must all regard as our father and defender of our liberty, they should have addressed themselves to me & and that I would have worked to obtain satisfaction from the Governor-

General of whatever claims of theirs I found to be just & that I would have Avoided their plunging into Crime."

Here Toussaint is reinforcing a chain of command running down from Laveaux through himself to his subordinate officers and thence to individual

soldiers and citizens; though the hierarchy is orthodox, his style of asserting it is not. For the abstraction of European military organization, where all individuals can be replaced in their ranks, is substituted an alternative where the whole apparatus is held together by Toussaint's personal, paternal relationship with all the people under his authority- though he wields his authority in the name of Laveaux and the French Republic.

"They replied that all loved the Governor-General, but that it was unfortunate that everyone was not like him." And then they got down to the

real complaint. "'Since the beginning of the revolution Etienne has always been our Chief; it is he who has always commanded us; he has eaten all our

misery with us to win our liberty- Why did they take the command away

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Toussaint Between Two Worlds 37

from Etienne to give it to someone else against our wishes & why do they treat him as nothing? To ask that question, my General, we took up arms; it is unfortunate for us that we have some bad men among us who have committed crimes, but few of us are implicated in all that. Alas! My General,

they want to make us Slaves again; Equality is nowhere here- nothing Like it seems to be on your side. See how the Whites and the hommes de couleur who are with you are good, and are friends with the blacks till one would say they are all brothers born of the same mother- That, my General, is what we call Equality.'"

This language, too, springs from the core rhetoric of the French Revolution, but here it has taken a peculiarly familial twist. Moreover, while these nouveaux libres citizens of the Port de Paix region recognize Toussaint as "father of all the blacks," they also recognize two sides, it seems: theirs and his.

"They trouble us too much," the spokesman continued. "They don't pay us well for the harvests we make, and they force us to give our Chickens and pigs for nothing when we go to sell them in the town, and if we want to Complain they have us arrested By the police and they put us in prison without giving us anything to eat & we have to pay still more to get out again.- you can plainly see, my General, that to be dragged around like that

is not to be free- but we are very sure that you are not at all like that, from

the way that we see that everyone with you is happy and loves you."

Once assured that the assembly had completely stated its case, Toussaint

commenced his reply: "My friends- I ought not to call you so, for the shame you have brought to me and all men of our color makes me see all too clearly that you are not my friends- all the reasons you give me strike me as Most Just, but although you do have a very strong case-"

But here in the midst of reporting his own oration, Toussaint turns directly to Laveaux (whom he himself often addressed as "father) to explain,

"I used that expression To make them understand that though they might have all the good reasons that One could possibly have, that they were still wrong and that they had rendered themselves guilty in the eyes of God, of the Law, and of men." It was a ticklish matter for Toussaint to convince this audience, whose members were accustomed to resort to arms to settle

injustices which looked obvious to them, that in the French Republic, to which Toussaint insisted they belong, Law might trump Justice, at least from time to time.

"How is it possible, I said to them, that I who have just sent deputies to thank the national convention in the name of all the blacks for the Beneficent

Decree which gives them all liberty, & and to assure the convention that

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

38 Madison Smartt Bell

they will do their best to deserve it, and will Prove to France and all the

Nations by their obedience to the laws, their labor and their Docility, that they are worthy of it, -and that I answered for all and that Soon with the

help of France we would prove to the entire universe that Saint Domingue would recover all its riches with the work of free hands- how shall I answer

when the national convention demands that I account for what you have just done? Tell me- my shame makes me see that I have betrayed the national convention, that [what you have done] will prove to the national convention

everything that the Enemies of our freedom have been trying to make it believe: that the blacks are in no way constituted to be free, that if they become free they won't want to work any more and won't do anything but commit robbery and murder."

Here for the first time in public (and to the sort of audience he most

needed to convince), Toussaint announced his ambition for the colony- he would manage Saint Domingue so as to prove to the whole European world that slavery was not necessary to the success of the plantation economy, that sugar and coffee production could be retrieved, and the Jewel of the Antilles

restored to its former luster- with free labor. But for that project to succeed

there was a surprisingly vast cultural rift to be bridged, and almost as soon

as Toussaint had finished speaking, that rift began to widen once more.

The people he had addressed swore up and down to sin no more, to be good and obedient and peaceful, that they desired nothing more than to have Toussaint restore order among them. Toussaint exhorted them to prove these good intentions by returning to their plantations- and to work.

Once they were gone he turned to Datty and pointed out that by no means

all the inhabitants of the region had been present for this talking-to. Datty admitted that there were still three camps of rebels on the mountain above

Port de Paix. Toussaint loaned Datty a secretary to draft a letter ordering those camps to report to Toussaint at Habitation Andro. That letter sent, Toussaint and Datty shared a supper. At ten-thirty that night, Datty took his leave, promising to appear with the remaining rebels the next day. "I had the ration given to my dragoons," Toussaint wrote, "who had eaten nothing all day but a few bananas which the field-hands had brought me, as I said before. I told them to pay good attention to their horses, and passed that night without anything new happening."

By the next morning, however, it became clear that Etienne Datty had again slipped his leash. He sent emissaries but avoided appearing in person before Toussaint as he had promised, and the rest of the rebels remained where they were. Toussaint began sending letters once more.

Headquarters, Habitation Andro,

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Toussaint Between Two Worlds 39

29 Pluviôse, year 4 of the French Republic, one and indivisible.

Toussaint Louverture, Brigadier General, Commander in Chief of the Cordon of the West, to Etienne Datty, Commander of the Africans

Immediately upon the reception of my letter, I order you to present yourself before me at Habitation Andro with all the citizens of the mountain and all those that I

saw yesterday. My dear Etienne, I believe you to be too reasonable, not to Know what obedience is; I believe that you will present yourself right away, and spare me the pain of repeating this order.

Salut

(Signed)

Toussaint Louverture

But Toussaint's belief was disappointed: Datty did not reappear, nor did he send a direct reply. Instead Toussaint received a letter from "the Citizens

in arms at Lagon," explaining that since Datty has so often been entrapped in the past by "Beautiful Propositions" - they themselves had restrained him from returning to Toussaint.

This cat and mouse game went on all day, with numerous exchanges of letters and circuits of messengers. By this time, Datty's insubordination was unmistakable, and the use of force seemed the inevitable next step. A white French officer might have taken it, but Toussaint had a different turn

of mind. "Etienne's refusal made me spend the whole night considering what line I ought to Take. I reflected that if I used force, that might occasion

Much more evil that there had so far been. At six in the morning, I decided; I left to go Find Etienne. I took with me Jean Pierre Dumesny, my Secretary,

and four of my dragoons."

No wonder it took all night to calculate the risk of entering a rebellious

encampment with this merely symbolic escort; in very similar circumstances, Toussaint had enticed various opponents into weak positions where he took them prisoner. But this time, the gamble paid off: "I arrived at Camp Lagon

at six-thirty; seeing me arrive, Etienne came before me; I scolded him and asked him Why he had Disobeyed, and what he could have been thinking of. He apologized and said that it was his troops who had kept him from

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

40 Madison Smartt Bell

coming. When I got down from my horse, all the Citizens, armed or not, came to tell me Good Day and to tell me how glad they were to see me." The peaceful approach, however risky, allowed Toussaint to reoccupy his patriarchal role. The men of Etienne's command were ready to recognize him as head of a household that included them all.

Toussaint then took Datty aside for another long session of remonstrance

and coaxing, and finally "succeeded in making him hear reason." Then he inquired where was Datty's secretary, one Maguenot (most likely a white Frenchmen, one of several who served the black officers as scribes), and learned that he was lurking in another of the three rebel camps on the mountain. Maguenot was the probable author of the letter justifying Datty's

failure to appear that Toussaint had received the day before. Between the lines of Toussaint's report to Laveaux, it appears that at this point Toussaint

saw a possibility for laying the blame for Datty's insubordination on this Maguenot.

"You have a Secretary there who is a cunning, wicked man," Toussaint suggested to Datty. '"He is deceiving you, I am sure of it,' and I asked him if he had seen a postscript he had put in the margin of the Letter that he wrote to me and sent by the citizen Gramont [i.e. the first news Toussaint had of the insurrection at Port de Paix, delivered to him at Verrettes], in these terms: The bearer of the Letter is the citizen Gramont, I am in No

Way guilty, I am forced to live with wolves." Etienne Datty declared that he

had not seen this bit of marginalia, which suggests that perhaps he himself could not read- many of the black officer corps were illiterate and so at the

mercy of their secretaries. With the scales thus fallen from his eyes, Datty

told Toussaint "no doubt he [Maguenot] could have put other bad things into the letters which I had him Write to the Governor General and the

Commandant of the province, Without my knowing anything of it."

It may well have been true that Maguenot had helped to stir up the trouble;

it was certainly true that arresting him made it easier for Toussaint to reinstate

Datty in his command without any punishment or reprimand- which, given

the mood of Datty's men, was clearly the prudent thing to do. Maguenot was

sent away under armed guard, while Toussaint and Datty dined together. After the repast, these two returned together to Habitation Andro.

"I arrived at Habitation Andro at four o'clock and found that everyone was there; I ordered Etienne to have them fall into line in front of the house.

That being done I made them all Swear to put everything back into good order, to submit to the laws of the republic, and I Gave them Etienne Datty

To Command them." Whereupon Datty's men cried "Vive la République! Vive la Liberté et l'Égalité ! Vive le Général Laveaux ! Vive le Général

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Toussaint Between Two Worlds 41

Toussaint! » Then they all began to dance, while Toussaint retired to his room for a long overdue rest- in seventy-two hours he had taken scarcely more than a catnap. The next day he had to gallop back to Verrettes, for the English had taken advantage of his absence to attack his post there. In partnership with Laveaux, Toussaint had done a great deal to restore stability to much of the colony, but what he'd achieved was still constantly threatened, both from within and without.

Resolving the Datty affair had taken six rather hectic days, and Toussaint

had needed to walk delicately over a long line of eggshells to avoid coming to blows with his own people- to the extent that Datty's people entirely were

his own. Even the style of address of their letters underlines the gap between

them- Toussaint is Brigadier General in the French Army, while Datty (in his own signatures as well as in Toussainte salutations) is "Commander of the Africans." One is a French military officer who happens to be wearing a black skin; the other is a tribal leader. It is likely that all or most of Etienne's men really were "Africans" in the sense that like the majority of the nouveaux libres they had been born in Africa. The first instinct of these men was to trust the chiefs of their own group ahead of any Creole commander like Toussaint, though Toussaint, who knew how to operate as a tribal leader as well as a member of the French military hierarchy, was able to win Datty's men over, and without any serious show of force. His situation required him to shuttle constantly between these two roles, and he had a remarkable facility for doing just that, as his long report on the Datty affair is intended to demonstrate. A European officer in his place would have been far less likely to grasp, for example, that the willingness of the locals to find hay for his horses meant that they were likely to stand

by him in the controversy, but it was through such near-intangible gestures

that Toussaint maintained his connection to his popular base.

Toussaint was black, as he would often remind the nouveaux libres, but

he was also (unlike the majority of them) a Creole, born in the colony and adapted to its ways from birth, and furthermore (unlike all the nouveaux libres) he had been a prosperous land- and slave-holding freedman well before the Revolution whose principal leader he was now becoming. Much as he labored to disguise them, those differences did create a fissure between Toussaint and the roughly half million people he was trying to mold into a new black citizenry, competent to defend its own freedom on both the political and military fronts.

What did freedom mean to Toussaint Louverture? From this point to the

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

42 Madison Smartt Bell

end of his career, his public pronouncements are all at pains to distinguish liberty from libertinage- the latter denounced as idle wandering vagrancy. . .. But Toussainte libertinage was rather similar to marronage- the culture of runaway slaves who formed communities in the mountains and survived on

hunting, foraging, rudimentary farming and occasional raids on plantations

and their stores. Before the Revolution, marronage was the only mode of freedom that the African slaves had known- and it was drastically different

from what Toussaint required- a freedom yoked to responsibility and indeed to organized labor.

In Toussaint's view, restoration of the plantation economy would prove to France that slavery was not necessary in Saint Domingue, and so be the best defense of liberty for all. But if France or any other of the great colonizing European powers decided to try to reimpose slavery in Saint Domingue, then Toussaint would still need the plantation economy up and running to produce the means to buy arms for the defense of general liberty. He did not see any way out of this bind. And perhaps there was no way out. Moreover, Toussaint, a second-generation Creole who had earned his own freedom and his subsequent prosperity through the value of his own labors, had a work ethic on the European model and considered it to be a cardinal virtue.

This attitude was shared, perhaps, by many or most of Toussaint's Creole contemporaries, free or slave, but the bossale freedmen, fresh out of

Africa, did not share it. No reason that they would. They had experienced work as a form of torture and knew of course that they were being forced to work for the master's prosperity and not for their own. Take away the compulsions of slavery, and the motives for anyone to do the intensive labor required for cash crops like sugar or coffee quickly disappear. Both white colonial observers and members of Toussaint's black officer cadre

saw that point clearly enough. The African population was very resistant to acquiring European-style needs- frustratingly, maddeningly, they could not be taught that commodities were necessities! If one could not turn them

into consumers, one could not make them work without force, at least not

in the still reasonably paradisal situation of Saint Domingue, where three months of unarduous labor out of 12 would provide the basics of food, clothing and shelter. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who would become emperor after Toussaint's fall, put it more bluntly- if you want to make a negro work, you must whip him.

It would be a mistake, maybe, to say that the bossale/African attitude is

primitive, backward or wrong. The refusal of artificially cultivated "needs" is a strong mode of resistance against the industrial society, and later the

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Toussaint Between Two Worlds 43

technological society. See for example Le Droit à la Paresse by Paul Lafargue. If we renounced our so-called need for plug-in room deodorizers, for example, a lot of the dark Satanic mills in this country would go up in their own black smoke.

Toussaint's inability to win over the whole of the mass of African Nouveaux libres to his idea of responsible industrious liberty became a sort of tragic flaw in the architecture of his system. Rebellions kept breaking out over this issue, most damagingly the Moyse rebellion in 1801- and when the French invasion arrived in 1802, ambivalence over this issue prevented the Haitian resistance from presenting a perfectly united front. The result:

while the Revolution succeeded, Toussaint Louverture finished his days in a French dungeon.

In August of 1796 Toussaint wrote again to Etienne Datty, who seemed as if he might again be drawn into rebellion: "You know that I am the friend of order, of union, of peace, and that I am black like you, and that my interests are yours and those of all men of our color. Listen to me, my friend, listen to a Black like you. . ..Recall that Toussaint Louverture is the true friend of his color, and that his friendship for them would make him die a thousand times rather than see them go back under the tyrannical yoke

that he has struggled to pull them free of. You know that when someone has a few stains on his face he looks for a mirror in order to see them. Ah well,

my friend, it is I who am the mirror of the blacks, it is I that they should consult, if they wish to enjoy liberty. . .."

Yes and no. Toussaint had to keep appealing to universal black solidarity

only because there really was a social and cultural rift even among the blacks- simply stated, between creóles and bossales. The effect of it can be felt in Haiti even today. The creóles became the governing class. (I return here to the ideas of Gérard Barthélemy.) The bossales- the Africans- became a class which has precious little need for the services of the government and often, vigorously or violently, refuses to be governed at all. Even in the

mind of the 18th century colonist Malenfant it was clear that these people could be best enslaved through spurious needs which would attach them to laboring within an industrial society. The descendants of the bossales of 1804, those unregenerate Africans who are today's paysans Haitiens, have stubbornly refused to commit themselves to what Barthélémy calls "endless accumulation," but instead content themselves with the satisfaction of their

most basic immediate needs. To "us" it may seem "backward." To them it has

long been the best defense of what they understand to be their freedom.

With a Haitian friend I share a small lakou in Morne Rouj, not too far

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

44 Madison Smartt Bell

from Habitation Bréda where Toussaint was a slave for a time. My friend is

from Cap Haitien, an urban person, though well traveled within Haiti- after

living in this remote rural place for some time he declared to me with some bitterness, "Je n'aime pas les gens sauvages." I was shocked by that at first, and saddened, but over time I understood what he meant- as he began to adapt himself more successfully to the different culture he had entered.

Easy rural prosperity is long gone from these areas, where the descendants of bossales are more than ready to work all they can to feed their families- but there is next to no work. That produces a mood of confused desperation, unreasonable rivalries and some real danger. This problem is nationwide and it's not unusual to hear people say that it would take the spirit of Toussaint Louverture to resolve it.

It's only now that I realize that, a couple of months ago in Haiti, I was in a way reenacting a scene from the 1790s, when I marched into the lakou of one of our avowed enemies down the road, alone, inadequately armed for the occasion, equipped with nothing but my poor diplomatic skills to settle a problem that had begun with pigs but gone on to men attacking each other

with knives. Very soon my antagonist and I were surrounded by a horseshoe

of local young men- some I knew and most I didn't- and I didn't know which way their sentiments ran. If I'd been on horseback I could have felt just like Toussaint addressing Datty's men in 1796- however, I'd left my truck on the road outside the compound. Some way or another- by the mood

of all the people who had showed up out of nowhere, out of the better angel

of the antagonist, sa nou pa we yo , or I just don't know, a little good was accomplished- we reached a point where we could take each other's hand. Briefly. But we did that much. Maybe the spirit of Toussaint Louverture was walking with me then. If so, M'ap fe'l action de grace.

Note: A version of this article will be included in a forthcoming book, Toussaint Louverture , to be published by Pantheon Books in the spring of 2007. Original orthography was maintained in quotes from Toussaint's original correspondence.

Bibliography

Letter from Toussaint Louverture to General Etienne Laveaux, February 1796. In Bibliothèque Nationale de la France, Paris, Fonds Français 1204 V3 484ff.

Laurent, Gérard M., Toussaint Louverture à travers sa Correspondance ( Madrid: n.p. 1953).

This content downloaded from �������������169.226.92.8 on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:48:32 UTC��������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms