Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/285

 and appointed a new governor, M. Galbaud. When M. Galbaud arrived in the island, there ensued a struggle between him and the commissioners, ho being empowered to supersede them, and they refusing to submit. At length the commissioners calling in the assistance of the revolted negroes, M. Galbaud was expelled from the island, and forced to take refuge in the United States. While this strange struggle for the governorship of the colony lasted, the condition of the colony itself was growing worse and worse. The plantations remained uncultivated, the whites and the mulattoes were still at war, masses of savage negroes were quartered in the hills, in fastnesses from which they could not be dislodged, and from which they could rush down unexpectedly to commit outrages in the plains.

In daily jeopardy of their lives, and seeing no prospect of a return of prosperity, immense numbers of the white colonists were quitting the island. Many families had emigrated to the neighboring island of Jamaica, many to the United States, and some even had sought refuge, like the royalists of the mother country, in Great Britain. Through these persons, as well as through the refugees from the mother country, overtures had been made to the British government for the purpose of inducing it to take possession of the island of St. Domingo and convert it into a British colony; and in 1793, the British government, against which the French republic had now declared war, began to listen favorably to the proposals. General Williamson, the lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, was instructed to send troops from that island to St. Domingo, and attempt to wrest it out of the hands of the French. Accordingly, on the 20th of September, 1793, about 870 British soldiers, under Colonel Whitelocke, landed in St. Domingo — a force miserably defective for such an enterprise. The number of troops was afterward increased, and the British were able to effect the capture of Port-au-Prince, and also some ships which were in the harbor. Alarmed by this success, the French commissioners, Santhonax and Polverel, issued a decree abolishing negro slavery, at the same time inviting the blacks to join them against the British invaders. Several thousand did so; but the great majority fled to the hills, swelling the army of the negro chiefs, Francois and Biassou, and luxuriating in the liberty which they had so suddenly acquired.

It was at this moment of utter confusion and disorganization, when British, French, mulattoes, and blacks, were all acting their respective parts in the turmoil, and all inextricably intermingled in a bewildering war, which was neither a foreign war nor a civil war, nor a war of races, but a composition of all three — it was at this moment that Toussaint L'Ouverture appeared the spirit and the ruler of the storm.

He was one of the most extraordinary men of a period when extraordinary men were numerous, and beyond all question, the highest specimen of negro genius the world has yet seen. He was born in St. Domingo, on the plantation of the count de Noé, a few miles distant from Cape François, in the year 1743. His father and mother were African slaves on the count's estate. On the plantation there was a black of the name of Pierre-Baptiste, a shrewd, intelligent man, who had acquired much information, besides having been taught the