Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/290

 brethren the blacks. You may depend, citizen directors, on happy results; and you shall soon see whether I engage in vain ray credit and your hopes."

The people of Paris received with a generous astonishment the intelligence of the doings of the negro prodigy, and the interest they took in the novelty of the case prevented them from being angry. The Directory, however, judged it prudent to send out General Hedouville, an able and moderate man, to superintend Toussaint's proceedings, and restrain his boldness.

The evacuation of St. Domingo by the English in 1798, did not remove all Toussaint's difficulties. The mulattoes, influenced partly by a rumor that the French Directory meditated the reëstablishment of the exploded distinction of color, partly by a jealous dislike to the ascendency which a pure negro had gained in the colony, rose in insurrection under the leadership of Rigaud and Petion, two able and educated mulattoes. The insurrection was formidable; but, by a judicious mingling of severity with caution, Toussaint quelled it, reducing Rigaud and Petion to extremities; and the arrival of a deputation from France in the year 1799, bringing a confirmation of his authority as commauder-in-chief in St. Domingo by the man who, under the title of first consul, had superseded the Directory, and now swayed the destinies of France, rendered his triumph complete. Petion and Rigaud, deserted by their adherents, and despairing of any further attempt to shake Toussaint's power, embarked for France.

Confirmed by Bonaparte in the powers which he had for some time been wielding in the colony with such good effect, Toussaint now paid exclusive attention to the internal affairs of the island. In the words of a French biographer, "he laid the foundation of a new state with the foresight of a mind that could discern what would decay and what would endure. St. Domingo rose from its ashes; the reign of law and justice was established; those who had been slaves were now citizens. Religion again reared her altars; and on the sites of ruins were built new edifices." Certain interesting particulars are also recorded, which give us a better idea of his habits and the nature of his government than these general descriptions. To establish discipline among his black troops, he gave all his superior officers the power of life and death over the subalterns: every superior officer "commanded with a pistol in his hand." In all cases where the original possessors of estates which had fallen vacant in the course of the troubles of the past nine years could be traced, they were invited to return and resume their property. Toussaint's great aim was to accustom the negroes to industrial habits. It was only by diligent agriculture, he said, that the blacks could ever raise themselves. Accordingly, while every trace of personal slavery was abolished, he took means to compel the negroes to work as diligently as ever they had done under the whip of their overseers. All those plantations the proprietors of which did not reappear, were lotted out among the negroes, who, as a remuneration for their labor, received one-third of the produce, the rest going to the public revenue. There were as yet no civil or police courts which could punish idleness or vagrancy, but the same purpose was served by courts-martial. The ports of the island were opened