Page:Haiti- Her History and Her Detractors.djvu/52

44 the slavery question. Whilst the matter was under discussion, Charles de Lameth, one of the wealthy planters, spoke, on the 4th of December, in favor of the freedom of the blacks and claimed their right to become members of the colonial assemblies. The colonists decided that the time had come to check the audacity of the "affranchis," and as usual they resorted to all kinds of atrocities. In the town of Cap-Français the mulatto Lacombe was hanged, his only crime having been that he dared to present a humble petition claiming the "Rights of man" (Les Droits de 1'homme). At Petit-Goave, a highly respected old man, Fernand de Baudières, a white, was beheaded. He was charged with having drawn up a petition asking, not for equality of rights in favor of the "affranchis," but only for a slight betterment of their condition. At Aquin, a mulatto, G. Labadie, seventy years old, simply suspected of having in his possession a copy of the petition, was attacked by night at his home by the whites. Severely wounded, this septuagenarian, a man universally esteemed, was tied to the tail of a horse and dragged through the streets. At Plaisance, the mulatto Atrel, guilty of having accepted a claim upon a white man, was killed by a band of infuriated people. At Fonds-Parisien the whites set fire to the most important sugar refineries of the "affranchis" Desmares, Poisson, Renaud. In time to come, the slaves who revolted, remembering this merciless destruction of property, in their turn reduced to ashes the rich plantations of the colonists. The French spared not even the children. At