Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/428

 Santo Domingo. The situation here, the richest of the sugar colonies, was serious; it soon received special attention from the home government. A colonial assembly was chosen, and did in miniature what the National Assembly undertook for all France. It controlled royal officers and troops, attempted to reorganize the administrative system and the courts, and even opened the ports to products specifically excluded by a royal ordinance. The question of the status of the free blacks had reached an acute stage. As property holders their interests were identical with those of the whites, provided the whites did not exclude them from a share in the civil conquests of the French Revolution. The National Assembly finally gave to the colonies an organization similar to the local administrative system of France except that it delegated executive powers to a governor. The constitution of the colony, once approved by the national legislature, could not be changed without the demand or consent of the local assemblies. To this local legislature was given the responsibility for the making of laws on all matters except trade and defense. If the governor did not withhold his consent in order that the authorities at Paris should first be consulted, laws could be put into force provisionally before they received the final sanction of the National Assembly and the Crown.

The free people of color petitioned the National Assembly for political rights and privileges in 1789. On May 15, 1791, on the question of the free blacks, the Assembly passed a decree declaring that people of color, born of free parents, were entitled to all the privileges of French citizens. When the news reached the island the mulattoes and free Negroes rejoiced. The whites were opposed to any such measure. Thereupon the governor of the island delayed promulgating the decree while he communicated with the home government. The free people of color were angered and civil strife followed. The mulattoes took up arms against the whites. To complicate matters, the slaves rose in insurrection in August, 1791. The whites, finding them-