How Should We Remember Toussaint Louverture?

A good leader possesses many important qualities and is a person whom others look up to and rely on. Toussaint Louverture was a good leader and he was someone whom the slaves looked up to and relied on. Louverture spent a large part of his life dedicated to helping the slaves gain their freedom. The French took control of the western half of the large Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1697 and named it Saint Domingue. In 1804, Saint Domingue was renamed Haiti and is still called that today. Saint Domingue was producing more than half of the world’s coffee and 40 percent of the world’s sugar by the 1780’s. Saint Domingue had 8,000 plantations producing these products and the work was done by 500,000 slaves owned by several thousand rich white planters. Sometime in the 1740’s, Toussaint Louverture was born into slavery. Louverture served as a slave in a couple of different positions. He was eventually granted freedom by his owner and went on to gain a small coffee plantation and attained a dozen slaves of his own. Louverture first emerged as a leader after the whites refused to end slavery. Thousands of plantations were burned and hundreds of white and mixed-raced people were killed as a response. Louverture encouraged slaves to fight for their freedom behind the scenes. Louverture commanded a rebel army against the French forces on the island in 1793, which lead to the abolishment of slavery in the French colonies in 1794. Louverture became the most powerful person on the island after he pledged loyalty to France and became commander-in-chief of the army in Saint Domingue. Napoleon, unexpectedly, had gained power in France and was planning to reinstate slavery. In 1802, Napoleon sent an invasion of 21,000 French troops and successfully captured Louverture. He was taken back to France and Napoleon then pulled out his troops giving up the fight. Louverture was put in a French jail and while he was dying from pneumonia Saint Domingue was celebrating victory because on January 1, 1804 Haiti became an independent nation. As a leader, Louverture had many great qualities and he should be remembered. Toussaint Louverture should be remembered for being a liberator of slaves, military commander, and ruler of Saint Domingue. His role as a liberator of slaves was the most important because everything he did was to fight for the freedom of slaves.

First off, Louverture should be most remembered as a liberator of slaves. Every decision he made was to benefit the slaves and help them gain their freedom. The start of the French Revolution in 1789 triggered the slave revolution of Saint Domingue. In 1791, the slave revolt began and Louverture served as a doctor to the troops and also commanded a small detachment of slave soldiers (Document A). He gained a reputation as a military commander for running a well-ordered camp and for training his men well. When the revolutionary government in France abolished slavery in 1794, Louverture and his troops stopped the revolt. Once slavery was abolished he pulled out his troops and ended the revolt. This shows how Louverture did whatever to benefit the slaves and changed sides based on who was trying to abolish slavery. Toussaint Louverture wrote a letter to the French Directory to discourage them from reinstating slavery. He was letting them know that if they tried to reinstate slavery the slaves would fight back. Louverture claimed in the letter that since the slaves knew what it was like to be free that they were willing to fight to the death. He said in the letter, “We have known how to confront danger to our liberty, and we will know how to confront death to preserve it” (Document B). This is him saying that they are threatening to fight back and not stop till death. Louverture was willing to work hard to help the slaves maintain their freedom. Additionally, Louverture lead the commission that created Saint Domingue’s Constitution of 1801. Article 3 promised all inhabitants of Saint Domingue that slavery be forever abolished and all men were born free, lived free, and died free (Document C). Also, Article 28 stated The Constitution nominate citizen Toussaint-Louverture, Chief General of the army of Saint Domingue (Document C). As long as Louverture is Governor he would never reinstate slavery. These are some of the many reasons why Toussaint Louverture should be remembered as a liberator of slaves.

Second, Toussaint Louverture should be remembered as a military commander. The Saint Domingue’s constitution of 1801 included that everyone must work on the plantation, but got to earn money. Basically, he was having the slaves do the same labor and work as before except this time they were to be paid and treated like “family”. Former slaves objected to this because they were being forced to work with poor conditions just like when they were enslaved. “The more [Toussaint’s] military had to [force] the former plantations slaves to do plantation labor, the more unpopular the army became,” (Document E). Louverture’s army was forcing the slaves to do the work they had been doing as slaves and they were not happy about that. Toussaint Louverture made his nephew, Hyacinthe Moyse, commander of all the Northern Department. Moyse preferred small holdings rather than large plantations. He would let the plantation workers be their own boss on a small piece of land. Moyse and the former slaves began to distrust Toussaint. They thought he was getting too close to the whites and it wasn’t fair to them to be forced into working again. A revolt broke out on October 29, 1801 and Louverture did not respond well to this. He stepped in and ordered many rebels to step out of line and kill themselves. During the revolt rebels cried, “General Moyse is with us-death to all the whites,” (Document E). Louverture then ordered Moyse to be arrested and executed. Louverture’s decision to arrest and execute his nephew was a decision made to maintain order. He was a military commander and he had to make pretty tough decisions. Between December 1801 and February of 1802 several ships left France and with help 31,131 troops landed on Saint Domingue. Toussaint had gained his soldiers respect with three important characteristics. He possessed humanity, generosity, and courage. A lot of what he did astonished people. The ships were going to the port city of Samana and according to Louverture it was to reinstate slavery. Toussaint Louverture ordered his generals to burn down the port city as the French were arriving. He did this so that when the French arrived they would be at a disadvantage because they were arriving to nothing. There were no resources for them to use as an advantage. When the French arrived, Louverture had his men retreat to the mountains. Within the mountains they could use guerrilla warfare. Louverture was a great military commander because he was both inspirational and did everything very strategically. Before fleeing to the mountains, Louverture gave a pep talk to his soldiers. In the speech he said, “That soul, when once the soul of a man, and no longer that of a slave, can overthrow the pyramids and the Alps themselves, sooner than again be crushed down into slavery,” (Document F).  He was preparing his men for war and letting them know that they should fight to death because they knew what it was like to be a free man. Toussaint Louverture should be remembered as a military commander.

Lastly, Toussaint Louverture should be remembered as a ruler of Saint Domingue. As Ruler of Saint Domingue, Toussaint Louverture created a Proclamation. The proclamation established more laws with regards to who is supposed to work and where they were to work. Also, it was to try and control the population that was refusing to work. He stated within this proclamation the consequences for the people who broke the rules he made. Since slavery had been abolished none of the former slaves wanted to go back and work just like when they were slaves. So, Louverture had to put in rules. The proclamation stated, “Vagabond cultivators arrested...shall be taken to the commander of the quarter, who will have them sent to the gendarmerie [local police] on their plantation,” (Document D). The people who did not want to work had to be arrested by the plantation police and forced to work again. The former slaves felt a lot like slavery was back even though that was not Louverture’s intention. He was putting in rules about agriculture because it was the island's main source of income and everyone depended on it. Louverture was a good ruler of Saint Domingue and should be remembered for it.

Toussaint should be remembered for being a liberator of slaves, a military leader, and a ruler of Saint Domingue. But, he should be most remembered for being a liberator of slaves. He did everything to help the slaves gain freedom and keep it. He would switch sides depending on who was fighting to abolish slavery. Louverture did a number of memorable things in his life and he should be remembered for all of them.

Were the Revolts Successful or Failures?

The essential question of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 lesson was, were the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really failures as many historians have concluded. We started off this lesson by discussing a comment made by Alexis de Tocqueville, a liberal French political thinker and historian, and how the map of Revolutions in Europe, 1830 and 1848 shows this.

He said, “We are sleeping on a volcano. Do you not see that the earth trembles anew? A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.” The wind of revolution is very powerful and revolutions are still occurring. By trying to oppress the revolutions, more revolutions are happening. After the activator, we created a scale of success and failure.

Following the analyzing of quotes we then split up into small groups. Each group was assigned one of the five revolts we were studying during this unit.  There was the 1825 Decembrist Revolt, 1830 France Revolt, the 1848 France Revolt, the 1848 Frankfurt Assembly, and the 1848 Hungary Revolt. My group was assigned the 1830 France Revolt. As a group we read the introduction summary and skimmed the primary sources on our Revolt and used the information we collected and completed a chart. Within the chart, we had to record the basics. We had to record the country, date, goal, opponent, outcome, and the reason for success/failure. The second part of the assignment was to go through all of the primary sources and choose what category it belonged to (goal, opponent, or outcome), we had to pull a quote that expresses the point being made, and include sourcing information. Next, we had to scale the revolt on the scale we created earlier and then create a survey monkey. We took the knowledge and evidence we acquired and produced a survey that our classmates had to take. Finally, we took the other groups surveys to learn about their revolts.

As I mentioned before my group’s revolt was assigned the 1830 France Revolt. This event took place in France, July of 1830. The opponent of the revolt was Charles X and the goal was to get rid of him and his ideas of absolutism. According to the introduction document, “When Louis XVIII died in 1824, his younger brother, Charles X, inherited the throne. Charles, a strong believer in absolutism, rejected the very idea of the charter. In July 1830, he suspended the legislature, limited the right to vote, and restricted the press.” This upset the people and they barricaded the streets of Paris while attacking the soldiers. The rebels took control of Paris within days. The control of Paris forced Charles X to abdicate and flee to England. According to the primary source Theirs, Adolphe.2 “Orleanist Manifesto.” July 30, 1830. In Laurisse and Rambaud, Histoire Genrale, 287-288, “The Duke of Orleans [Louis Philippe] is a prince devoted to the cause of the Revolution… The Duke of Orleans is a citizen king.” The outcome of this revolt included Charles X’s cousin, Louis Philippe, being chosen as king by the Chambers of deputies. He was called “citizen king”. As a group, we used information from the other primary sources and this information to create our survey monkey.

I think the historians were wrong when they concluded that the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were failures. Although none of the revolts were completely successful for the most part the revolts helped to change the way things were. The only real failure was the Decembrist Revolt of 1825. It ended with many rebels being put in jail or killed. On top of the fact that many were either killed or imprisoned, the rebels did not reach their goal of not being under the power of Nicholas. A primary source given for the Decembrist Revolt (Nicholas I, Speaking about the Decembrists to the French Ambassador, c. 1825) said, “The leaders and the instigators of the conspiracy will be dealt with without pity, without mercy. The law demands retribution and, in their cases, I will not use my power to grant mercy.” Clearly, Nicholas was still in power and not treating his people right, so it shows that the rebels didn't make progress in trying to get what they wanted.  With the exception of this revolt being a failure, the other revolts were either neutral or partial success. My group put the 1830 France Revolt as a partial success on the scale. The rebels wanted Charles X out of power and they accomplished that by forcing him to flee, but this wasn't a total success because Louis Philippe favored the wealthier over everyone. He granted the wealthier people the right to vote and did not grant the middle and low classes the right to. An example of a neutral revolt was the Hungary Revolt of 1848. The overwhelmed Austrian government temporarily agreed to an independent government, end to serfdom, and a written constitution to protect their basic rights. According to the Hungary intro document, “Austrian troops soon regained control of Vienna and Prague. With Russian help, Austrian forces also smashed the rebels in Budapest. Many were imprisoned, executed, or forced into exile.” This Revolt was both a success and a fail. Overall, I disagree with the historians and I think the revolutions of 1380 and 1848 were not all failures.