Page:Haiti- Her History and Her Detractors.djvu/336



To fully appreciate the origin of the unceasing and persistent calumnies of which Haiti has been made the target, one must go back to the very first days of her existence and call to mind the circumstances under which she started life as an independent country.

When in 1804 Haiti was so bold as to proclaim the abolition of slavery all the countries where this inhuman practise was still in favor were inclined to consider her attitude as somewhat of a challenge; consequently, they deemed fit to take such steps as to enable them the better to protect a system the abolition of which, according to the opinion of the civilized world of that time, would cause the greatest calamities. By rising up against their masters and in revealing themselves on the battlefields their equals in courage, the slaves of Saint-Domingue had committed what was to the minds of the partisans of slavery an unpardonable crime, rendered all the more monstrous as the Haitians, after having dispossessed the whites of their property and becoming in their turn masters of the country, openly declared that any man of the black race upon setting foot on the Haitian soil would be considered as a freedman. They were not satisfied with having cast off their own yoke, they wished also to give some hope to other unfortunate beings who were receiving worse treatment