Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/277

 heaven, and there remain so long as God should preserve their lives. After their death, their heads were to be severed from their bodies and placed upon poles — that of Ogé on the road to Dondon, and that of Chevanne on the road to Grand Riviere, and the property of both to be confiscated to the king.

Chevanne died as he had lived, the stern, unyielding enemy of the whites; but Ogé in that terrible moment lost all his firmness. He implored the pity of his judges, and offered to reveal important secrets if they would spare his life. Twenty-four hours were granted him, and he revealed the existence of a wide-laid conspiracy among tin-mulattoes and negroes of the island; but as not much importance was attached to his communications, he was ordered hack to punishment. Twenty-one of his associates, among whom was his brother, were condemned to be hung, and thirteen others were sent to the galleys for life — the rest were pardoned.

Although the insurrection of Ogé was ill-timed and rash, and his death that of the most degraded criminal, his name and sufferings have ever been hallowed in the memory of his race; and the martyrdom of Ogé was ever afterwards the rallying signal to encourage and unite the mulattoes in deadly hostility against the whites. By this barbarous massacre the breach between these two races was made irreconcilable and eternal. However they were united by the sympathy of relationship, or the ties of interest and property, all these bands were sundered by a hatred, deep, rankling, and inexpiable.

All this occurred while the eighty-five members of the assembly were absent in France. They had reached that country in September, 1790, and been well received at first; but when they appeared before the national assembly, that body treated them with marked insult and contempt. On the 11th of October, Barnave proposed and carried a decree annulling all the acts of the colonial assembly, dissolving it, declaring its members ineligible again for the same office, and detaining the eighty-five unfortunate gentlemen prisoners in France. Barnave, however, was averse to any attempt on the part of the national assembly to force a constitution upon the colony against its will; and especially he was averse to any direct interference between the whites and the people of color. These matters of internal regulation, he said, should be left to the colonists themselves; all that the national assembly should require of the colonists was, that they should act in the general spirit of the revolution. Others, however, among whom were Gregoire, Brissot, Robespierre, and Lafayette, were for the home government dictating the leading articles of a new constitution for the colony; and especially they were for some sweeping assertion by the national assembly of the equal citizenship of the colored inhabitants of the colony. For some time the debate was carried on between these two parties; but the latter gradually gained strength, and the storm of public indignation which was excited by the news of the cruel death of Ogé gave them the complete victory. Tragedies and dramas founded on the story of Ogé were acted in the theatres of Paris, and the popular feeling against the planters and in favor of