'Toussaint L'Ouverture' A lecture by Wendell Phillips (1861) - Revision history

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 ==See also==
 * [[Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haytian Revolutions]] - 1841 speech by James McCune Smith.
 * '''[[Memoir of Toussaint Louverture, Written by Himself]]'''

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 * [[Toussaint Louverture related pages|Toussaint Louverture related pages at The Louverture Project]]
 * [[An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti]] - Marcus Rainsford's excerpt portraying Toussaint Louverture.
 * [[To Toussaint Louverture - poem by Wordsworth]] - 1802 hommage to the imprisoned Toussaint.

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 <p>He looked a moment, counted the flotilla, let the reins fall on the neck of his horse, and, turning to [[Christophe]], exclaimed: “All France is come to [[Hayti]]; they can only come to make us slaves; and we are lost!” He then recognized the only mistake of his life—his confidence in [[Bonaparte]], which had led him to disband his army. Returning to the hills he issued the only proclamation which bears his name and breathes vengeance: “My children, France comes to make us slaves. God gave us liberty; France has no right to take it away. Burn the cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the roads with cannon, poison the wells, show the white man the hell he comes to make”—and he was obeyed. When the great William of Orange saw Louis XIV cover Holland with troops, he said, “Break down the dikes, give Holland back to ocean”; and Europe aid, “Sublime!” When Alexander saw the armies of France descend upon Russia, he said, “Burn Moscow, starve back the invaders”; and Europe said, “Sublime!” This black saw all Europe marshaled to crush him, and gave to his people the same heroic example of defiance.</p>
-<p>It is true, the scene grows bloodier as we proceed. But, remember, the white man fitly accompanied his infamous attempt to reduce freemen to slavery with every bloody and cruel device that bitter and shameless hate could invent. Aristocracy is always cruel. The black man met the attempt, as every such attempt should be met, with war to the hilt. In his first struggle to gain freedom, he had been generous and merciful, save lives and pardoned enemies, ad the people in every age and clime have always done when rising against aristocrats. Now, to save his liberty, the negro exhausted every means, seized every weapon, and turned back the hateful invaders with a vengeance as terrible as their own, though even now he refused to be cruel.<p>
+<p>It is true, the scene grows bloodier as we proceed. But, remember, the white man fitly accompanied his infamous attempt to reduce freemen to slavery with every bloody and cruel device that bitter and shameless hate could invent. Aristocracy is always cruel. The black man met the attempt, as every such attempt should be met, with war to the hilt. In his first struggle to gain freedom, he had been generous and merciful, save lives and pardoned enemies, ad the people in every age and clime have always done when rising against aristocrats. Now, to save his liberty, the negro exhausted every means, seized every weapon, and turned back the hateful invaders with a vengeance as terrible as their own, though even now he refused to be cruel.</p>
 <p>[[Leclerc]] sent word to [[Christophe]] that he was about to land at [[Cape]] City. Christophe said, “Toussaint is governor of the island. I will send to him for permission. If without it a French soldier sets foot on sore, I will burn the town, and fight over its ashes.” [[Leclerc]] landed. [[Christophe]] took two thousand white men, women, and children, and carried them to the mountains in safety, then with his own hands set fire to the splendid palace which French architects had just finished for him, and in forty hours the place was in ashes. The battle was fought in its streets, and the French driven back to their boats. Wherever they went, they were met with fire and sword. Once, resisting an attack, the blacks, Frenchmen born, shouted the Marseilles Hymn, and the French soldiers stood still; they could not fight the Marseillaise. And it was not till their officers sabred them on that they advanced, and they were beaten. Beaten in the field, the French then took to lies. They issued proclamations, saying, “We do not come to make you slaves; this man [[Toussaint]] tells you lies. Join us, and you shall have the rights you claim.” They cheated every one of his officers, except [[Christophe]] and [[Dessalines]], and his own brother Pierre, and finally these also deserted him, and he was left alone. He then sent word to Leclerc, “I will submit. I could continue the struggle for years—could you prevent a single Frenchman from safely quitting your camp. But I hate bloodshed. I have fought only for the liberty of my race. Guarantee that, I will submit and come in.” He tood the oath to be a faithful citizen; and on the same crucifix Leclerc swore that he should be faithfully protected, and that the island should be free. </p>

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 ==See also==
 * '''[[Memoir of Toussaint Louverture, Written by Himself]]'''
 * [[Toussaint Louverture related pages|Toussaint Louverture related pages at The Louverture Project]]

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 <p>The white man heard then aghast. He had read the streets of Paris running blood. The [[slave]] heard them with indifference; it was a quarrel in the upper air, between other races, which did not concern him. The [[mulatto]] heard them with a welcome which no dread of other classes could quell. Hastily gathered into conventions, they sent to Paris a committee of the whole body, laid at the feet of the National Convention the free gift of six millions of francs, pledged one fifth of their annual rental toward the payment of the national debt, and only asked in return that this yoke of civil and social contempt should be lifted from their shoulders. </p>
-<p>You may easily imagine the temper in which Mirabeau and Lafayette welcomed his munificent gift of the [[affranchis|free mulattoes]] of the West Indies, and in which the petition for equal civil rights was received by a body which had just resolved that all men were equal. The Convention hastened to express its gratitude, and issued a decree which commences thus: “All freeborn French citizens are equal before the law.” [[Oge]] was selected—the friend of Lafayette, a lieutenant-colonel in the Dutch service, the son of a wealthy mulatto woman, educated in Paris, the comrade of all the leading French Republicans—to carry the decree and the message of the French Democracy to the island. He landed. The decree of the National Convention was laid on the table of the General Assembly of the island. One old planter seized it, tore it in fragments, and trampled it under his feet, swearing by all the saints in the calendar that the island might sink before they would share their rights with bastards. They took an old [[mulatto]], worth a million, who had simply asked for his rights under that decree, and hung him. A white lawyer of seventy, who drafted the petition, they hung at his side. </p>
+<p>[[image:honore_mirabeau.jpg|right|thumb|180px|Honoré Mirabeau, one of the co-founders of the [[Amis des Noirs]].]]You may easily imagine the temper in which Mirabeau and Lafayette welcomed his munificent gift of the [[affranchis|free mulattoes]] of the West Indies, and in which the petition for equal civil rights was received by a body which had just resolved that all men were equal. The Convention hastened to express its gratitude, and issued a decree which commences thus: “All freeborn French citizens are equal before the law.” [[Oge]] was selected—the friend of Lafayette, a lieutenant-colonel in the Dutch service, the son of a wealthy mulatto woman, educated in Paris, the comrade of all the leading French Republicans—to carry the decree and the message of the French Democracy to the island. He landed. The decree of the National Convention was laid on the table of the General Assembly of the island. One old planter seized it, tore it in fragments, and trampled it under his feet, swearing by all the saints in the calendar that the island might sink before they would share their rights with bastards. They took an old [[mulatto]], worth a million, who had simply asked for his rights under that decree, and hung him. A white lawyer of seventy, who drafted the petition, they hung at his side. </p>
 <p>They took [[Oge]], broke him on the wheel, ordered him to be drawn and quartered, and one quarter of his body to be hung up in each of the four principal cities of the island; and then they adjourned. You can conceive better than I can describe the mood in which Mirabeau and Danton received the news that their decree had been torn in pieces and trampled under foot by the petty legislature of an island colony, and their comrade drawn and quartered by the orders of its Governor. Robespierre rushed to the tribune and shouted, “Perish the colonies rather than sacrifice one iota of our principles!” The Convention reaffirmed their decree, and sent it out a second time to be executed.</p>

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 <p>Now, blue-eyed Saxons, proud of your race, go back with me to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please. Let him be either American or European; let him have a brain the result of six generations of culture; let him have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical life; crown his temples with the silver of seventy years; and show me the man of Saxon Lineage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel rich as embittered foes have places on the brow of this negro—rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a state to the blood of its sons—anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of Roger Williams before any Englishman or American had won the right;--and yet this is the record which the history of rival states makes up for this inspired black of [[St. Domingo]].</p>
-<p>It was [[1801]]. The Frenchmen who lingered on the island described it prosperity and order as almost incredible. You might trust a child with a bad of gold to go from Samana to [[Port-au-Prince]] without risk. Peace was in every household; the valleys laughed with fertility; culture climbed the mountains; the commerce of the world was represented in its harbors. At this time Europe concluded the Peace of Amiens, and Napoleon took his seat on the throne of France. He glanced his eyes across the Atlantic, and, with a single stroke of his pen, reduced Cayenne and Martinique back into chains. He then said to his Council, “What shall I do with St. Domingo?” The slaveholders said, “Give it to us.” [[Napoleon]] turned to the [[Abbe Gregoire]], “What is your opinion?” “I think those men would change their opinions, if they changed their skins.” [[Colonel Vincent]], who had been private secretary to [[Toussaint]], wrote a letter to Napoleon, in which he said: “Sire, leave it alone; it is the happiest spot in your dominions; God raised this man to govern; races melt under his hand. He has saved you this island; for I know of my own knowledge that, when the Republic could not have lifted a finger to prevent it, George III offered him any title and any revenue if he would hold the island under the British crown. He refused, and saved it for France.” Napoleon turned away from his Council, and is said to have remarked, “I have sixty thousand idle troops; I must find them something to do.” He meant to say, “I am about to seize the crown; I dare not do it in the faces of sixty thousand republican soldiers: I must give them work at a distance to do.” The gossip of Paris gives another reason for his expedition against [[St. Domingo]]. It is said that the satirists of Paris had christened [[Toussaint]], the black Napoleon; and [[Bonaparte]] hated his black shadow. Toussaint had unfortunately once addressed him a letter, “The first of the blacks to the first of the whites.” He did not like the comparison. You would think it too slight a motive. But let me remind you of the present Napoleon, that when the epigrammatists of Paris christened his wasteful and tasteless expense at Versailles, Soulouquerie, from the name of Soulouque, the Black Emperor, he designed to issue a specific order forbidding the use of the word. The Napoleon blood is very sensitive. So Napoleon resolved to crush Toussaint from one motive or another, from the prompting of ambition, or dislike of this resemblance—which was very close. If either imitated the other, it must have been the white, since the negro preceded him by several years. They were very much alike, and they were French—French even in vanity, common to both. You remember Bonaparte’s vainglorious words to his soldiers at the Pyramids: “Forty centuries look down upon us.” In the same mood, Toussaint said to the French captain who urged him to go to France in his frigate, “Sir, your ship is not large enough to carry me.” Napoleon, you know, could never bear the military uniform. He hated the restraint of his rank; he loved to put on the gray coat of the Little Corporal, and wander in camp. [[Toussaint]] also never could bear a uniform. He wore a plain coat, and often the yellow Madras handkerchief of the slaves. A French lieutenant once called him a maggot in a yellow handkerchief. Toussaint took him prisoner next day, and sent him home to his mother. Like Napoleon, he could fast many days; could dictate to three secretaries at once; could wear out four or five horses. Like Napoleon, no man ever divined his purpose or penetrated his plan. He was only a negro, and so, in him, they called it hypocrisy. In Bonaparte we style it diplomacy. For instance, three attempts made to assassinate him all failed, from not firing at the right spot. If they thought he was in the north in a carriage, he would be in the south on horseback; if they thought he was in the city in a house, he would be in the field in a tent. </p>
+<p>It was [[1801]]. The Frenchmen who lingered on the island described it prosperity and order as almost incredible. You might trust a child with a bag of gold to go from Samana to [[Port-au-Prince]] without risk. Peace was in every household; the valleys laughed with fertility; culture climbed the mountains; the commerce of the world was represented in its harbors. At this time Europe concluded the Peace of Amiens, and Napoleon took his seat on the throne of France. He glanced his eyes across the Atlantic, and, with a single stroke of his pen, reduced Cayenne and Martinique back into chains. He then said to his Council, “What shall I do with St. Domingo?” The slaveholders said, “Give it to us.” [[Napoleon]] turned to the [[Abbe Gregoire]], “What is your opinion?” “I think those men would change their opinions, if they changed their skins.” [[Colonel Vincent]], who had been private secretary to [[Toussaint]], wrote a letter to Napoleon, in which he said: “Sire, leave it alone; it is the happiest spot in your dominions; God raised this man to govern; races melt under his hand. He has saved you this island; for I know of my own knowledge that, when the Republic could not have lifted a finger to prevent it, George III offered him any title and any revenue if he would hold the island under the British crown. He refused, and saved it for France.” Napoleon turned away from his Council, and is said to have remarked, “I have sixty thousand idle troops; I must find them something to do.” He meant to say, “I am about to seize the crown; I dare not do it in the faces of sixty thousand republican soldiers: I must give them work at a distance to do.” The gossip of Paris gives another reason for his expedition against [[St. Domingo]]. It is said that the satirists of Paris had christened [[Toussaint]], the black Napoleon; and [[Bonaparte]] hated his black shadow. Toussaint had unfortunately once addressed him a letter, “The first of the blacks to the first of the whites.” He did not like the comparison. You would think it too slight a motive. But let me remind you of the present Napoleon, that when the epigrammatists of Paris christened his wasteful and tasteless expense at Versailles, Soulouquerie, from the name of Soulouque, the Black Emperor, he designed to issue a specific order forbidding the use of the word. The Napoleon blood is very sensitive. So Napoleon resolved to crush Toussaint from one motive or another, from the prompting of ambition, or dislike of this resemblance—which was very close. If either imitated the other, it must have been the white, since the negro preceded him by several years. They were very much alike, and they were French—French even in vanity, common to both. You remember Bonaparte’s vainglorious words to his soldiers at the Pyramids: “Forty centuries look down upon us.” In the same mood, Toussaint said to the French captain who urged him to go to France in his frigate, “Sir, your ship is not large enough to carry me.” Napoleon, you know, could never bear the military uniform. He hated the restraint of his rank; he loved to put on the gray coat of the Little Corporal, and wander in camp. [[Toussaint]] also never could bear a uniform. He wore a plain coat, and often the yellow Madras handkerchief of the slaves. A French lieutenant once called him a maggot in a yellow handkerchief. Toussaint took him prisoner next day, and sent him home to his mother. Like Napoleon, he could fast many days; could dictate to three secretaries at once; could wear out four or five horses. Like Napoleon, no man ever divined his purpose or penetrated his plan. He was only a negro, and so, in him, they called it hypocrisy. In Bonaparte we style it diplomacy. For instance, three attempts made to assassinate him all failed, from not firing at the right spot. If they thought he was in the north in a carriage, he would be in the south on horseback; if they thought he was in the city in a house, he would be in the field in a tent. </p>
 <p>They once riddled his carriage with bullets; he was on horseback on the other side. The seven Frenchmen who did it were arrested. They expected to be shot. </p>
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 ===French translation of speech===
 * [http://haitiforever.com/ Windows on Haiti]: [http://haitiforever.com/windowsonhaiti/wendell.shtml Discours de Wendell Phillips Décembre 1861, à New York et à Boston] - Translation of the lecture into French by Dr. Letances.
 ==See also==

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-"'''Toussaint L'Ouverture'''" A lecture on [[Toussaint Louverture]] by Wendell Phillips (November 29, 1811 Boston - February 2, 1884 Boston) given December 1861, in New York and Boston. Phillips was a lawyer and president of the Anti-slavery Society <small>{{fn|1}}</small>  and candidate of the labor reformers and prohibitionists for governor of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. [[image:wendell_philipps.jpg|right|thumb|160px|Photograph of Wendell Philips.]]<br>
+[[image:wendell_philipps.jpg|right|thumb|160px|Photograph of Wendell Philips.]]"'''Toussaint L'Ouverture'''" A lecture on [[Toussaint Louverture]] by Wendell Phillips (November 29, 1811 Boston - February 2, 1884 Boston) given December 1861, in New York and Boston. Phillips was a lawyer and president of the Anti-slavery Society <small>{{fn|1}}</small>  and candidate of the labor reformers and prohibitionists for governor of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. <br>
 ==Lecture given in New York and Boston==
+[[image:toussaint_louverture_horse.jpg|right|thumb|160px|Toussaint Louverture<br>French engraving from [[1802]].]]
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 <div align="justify"><p>LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I have been requested to offer you a sketch made some years since, of one of the most remarkable men of the last generation—the great [[St. Domingo]] chief, [[Toussaint l’Ouverture]], an unmixed Negro, with no drop of white blood in his veins. My sketch is at once a biography and an argument—a biography, of course very brief, of a Negro soldier and statesman, which I offer you as an argument in behalf of the race from which he sprung. I am about to compare and weigh races indeed, I am engaged tonight in what you will think the absurd effort to convince you that the Negro race, instead of being that object of pity or contempt which we usually consider it, is entitled, judged by the facts of history, to a place close by the side of the Saxon. Now races love to be judged in two ways—by the great men they produce, and by the average merit of the mass of the race. We Saxons are proud of Bacon, Shakespeare, Hampden, Washington, Franklin, the stars we have lent to the galaxy of history; and then we turn with equal pride to the average merit of Saxon blood, since it streamed from its German home. So, again, there are three tests by which races love to be tried. The first, the basis of all, is courage—the element which says, here and today, “This continent is mine, from the Lakes to the Gulf: let him beware who seeks to divide it!” And the second is the recognition that force is doubled by purpose; liberty regulated by law is the secret of Saxon progress. And the third element is persistency, endurance; first a purpose, then death or success. Of these three elements is made that Saxon pluck which has placed our race in the van of modern civilization.</p>

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-"'''Toussaint L'Ouverture'''" A lecture on [[Toussaint Louverture]] by Wendell Phillips (November 29, 1811 Boston - February 2, 1884 Boston) given December 1861, in New York and Boston. Phillips was a lawyer and president of the Anti-slavery Society {{fn|1}}  and candidate of the labor reformers and prohibitionists for governor of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. [[image:wendell_philipps.jpg|right|thumb|160px|Photograph of Wendell Philips.]]<br>
+"'''Toussaint L'Ouverture'''" A lecture on [[Toussaint Louverture]] by Wendell Phillips (November 29, 1811 Boston - February 2, 1884 Boston) given December 1861, in New York and Boston. Phillips was a lawyer and president of the Anti-slavery Society <small>{{fn|1}}</small>  and candidate of the labor reformers and prohibitionists for governor of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. [[image:wendell_philipps.jpg|right|thumb|160px|Photograph of Wendell Philips.]]<br>
 ==Lecture given in New York and Boston==
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 <p>But he was not cheated. He was under espionage. Suppose he had refused: the government would have doubted him—would have found some cause to arrest him. He probably reasoned thus: “If I go willingly, I shall be treated accordingly”; and he went. The moment he entered the room, the officers drew their swords, and told him he was prisoner; and one young lieutenant who was present says, “he was not at all surprised, but seemed very sad.” They put him on shipboard, and weighed anchor for France. As the island faded from his sight, he turned to the captain, and said, “You think you have rooted up the tree of liberty, but I am only a branch; I have planted the tree so deep that all of France can never root it up.” Arrived in Paris, he was flung into jail, and Napoleon sent his secretary, [[Caffarelli]], to him, supposing he had buried large treasures. He listened awhile, then replied, “Young man, it is true I have lost treasures, but they are not such as you come to seek.” He was then sent to the [[Castle of St. Joux]], to a dungeon twelve feet by twenty, built wholly of stone, with a narrow window, high up on the side, looking out on the snows of Switzerland. In winter, ice covers the floor; in summer, it is damp and wet. In this living tomb the child of the sunny tropic was left to die. From this dungeon he wrote two letters to [[Napoleon]]. One of then ran thus:-- “Sire, I am a French citizen. I never broke a law. By the grace of God, I have saved for you the best island of your realm Sire, of your mercy grant me justice.” Napoleon never answered the letters. The commandment allowed him five francs a day for food and fuel. Napoleon heard of it, and reduced the sum to three. The luxurious usurper, who complained that the English government was stingy because it allowed him only six thousand dollars a month, stooped from his throne to cut down a dollar to a half, and still [[Toussaint]] did not die quick enough. </p>
-<p>This dungeon {{fn|2}}  was a tomb. The story told that, in Josephine’s time, a young French marquis was placed there, and the girl to whom he was betrothed went to the Empress and prayed for his release. </p>
+<p>This dungeon <small>{{fn|2}}</small> was a tomb. The story told that, in Josephine’s time, a young French marquis was placed there, and the girl to whom he was betrothed went to the Empress and prayed for his release. </p>
 <p>Said Josephine to her, “Have a model of it made, and bring it to me.” Josephine placed it near [[Napoleon]]. He said, “Take it away—it is horrible!” She put it on his footstool, and he kicked it from his. She held it to him the third time, and said, “Sire, in this horrible dungeon you have put a man to die.” “Take him out,” said [[Napoleon]], and the girl saved her lover. In this tomb [[Toussaint]] was buried, but he did not die fast enough. Finally, the commandment was told to go into Switzerland, to carry the keys of the dungeon with him, and to stay four days; when he returned, [[Toussaint]] was found starved to death. That imperial assassin was taken twelve years after to his prison at St. Helena, planned for a tome, as he had planned that of Toussaint, and there he whined away his dying hours in pitiful complaints of curtains and titles, of dishes and rides. God grant that when some future Plutarch shall weigh the great men of our epoch, the whites against the blacks, he do not put that whining child of St. Helena into one scale, and into the other the negro meeting death like a Roman, without a murmur, in the solitude of his icy dungeon!</p>