Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/410

1802. finally established in Hayti, and the entrance of the Mississippi barred to Bonaparte.

The news of Leclerc's success reached Paris early in June, and set Bonaparte again in motion. Imagining that the blacks were at his mercy, orders were at once issued to provide for restoring them to slavery. The truth relating to this part of the subject, habitually falsified or concealed by Bonaparte and his admirers, remained hidden among the manuscript records of the Empire; but the order to restore slavery at Guadeloupe was given, June 14, by the Minister of the Marine to General Richepanse, who commanded there, and on the same day a similar instruction was sent to General Leclerc at St. Domingo, in each case leaving the general to act according to his discretion in the time and manner of proceeding.


 * "As regards the return of the blacks to the old régime, wrote the Minister to General Leclerc, "the bloody struggle out of which you have just come victorious with glory commands us to use the utmost caution. Perhaps we should only entangle ourselves in it anew if we wished precipitately to break that idol of liberty in whose name so much blood has flowed till now.  For some time yet vigilance, order, a discipline at once rural and military, must take the place of the positive and pronounced