Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haytian Revolutions

Speech on Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution given by Dr. James McCune Smith in 1841. While the speech might not be accurate in all details, it gives serves to illustrate how Toussaint Louverture was regarded by abolitionists and how the reading of Toussaint's actions inevitable is always filtered through the lens of the society the observer hails from. This also accounts for the perception of the Haitian liberator Dessalines as a historical figure not quite in the same spotlight as Louverture and labeled here as the Haitian Robespierre.

Dr. James McCune Smith (April 18, 1813 – November 17, 1865) a graduate of the New York African Free School and son of a freed slave, is regarded as having been the first African-American to earn a medical degree in the United States. He was also the first African-American to operate a pharmacy.

McCune Smith was a prominent author and abolitionist he worked with Frederick Douglass to establish the National Council of the Colored People.

* Extracts from a lecture delivered at the Stuyvesant Institute, New York, for the benefit of the Colored Orphan Asylum, February 26, 1841.