Vincent Ogé

Vincent Ogé (also Jacques Vincent Ogé) (1750 Dondon, Saint-Domingue - February 6, 1791 Le Cap, Saint-Domingue) an affranchis delegate in France and leader of a mulatto revolt. He had been educated in Paris. He was the son of a wealthy butcher in Le Cap. (Beard p. 46)

Vincent Ogé, member of the Amis des Noirs

As a member of the Friends of the Negro (a mulatto organization), Ogé had been frustrated by the Assembly's refusal to extend the Rights of Man to mulattoes and decided to take matters into his own hands. With money he got from Thomas Clarkson in London, he purchased firearms on a trip to New Orleans in the United States (James p. 73) returning with 250 men to Saint-Domingue (on October 23, 1790 near Le Cap) to attempt a mulatto uprising. Unfortunately, though an eloquent speaker, Ogé was no general and was decisively overpowered.

Vincent Ogé sent this letter from Grande Rivière, his camp in the Department of the North, to the President of the Assembly of that department:

Ogé's letter to the Provincial Assembly of Le Cap

VINCENT OGÉ TO THE MEMBERS COMPOSING THE PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CAPE. GENTLEMEN:--A prejudice, too long maintained, is about to fall. I am charged with a commission doubtless very honorable to myself. I require you to promulgate throughout the colony the instructions of the National Assembly of the 8th of March, which gives without distinction, to all free citizens, the right of admission to all offices and functions. My pretensions are just, and I hope you will pay due regard to them. I shall not call the plantations to rise; that means would be unworthy of me. Learn to appreciate the merit of a man whose intention is pure. When I solicited from the National Assembly a decree which I obtained in favor of the American colonists, formerly known under the injurious epithet of 'men of mixed blood,' I did not include in my claims the condition of the negroes who live in servitude. You and our adversaries have misrepresented my steps in order to bring me into discredit with honorable men. No, no, gentlemen! we have put forth a claim only on behalf of a class of freemen, who, for two centuries, have been under the yoke of oppression. We require the execution of the decree of the 8th of March. We insist on its promulgation, and we shall not cease to repeat to our friends that our adversaries are unjust, and that they know not how to make their interests compatible with ours. Before employing my means, I make use of mildness; but if, contrary to my expectation, you do not satisfy my demand, I am not answerable for the disorder into which my just vengeance may carry me.

(Beard p. 46-47)

Vincent Ogé Dies on the Stake

On November 20, 1790 Vincent Ogé and 23 his associates, including Jean Baptiste Chavannes, are captured in Hinche - then part of the Spanish controlled part of Hispaniola - on behalf of Governor-Greneral Blanchelande. Vincent Ogé's exceptionally brutal (Kennedy p. 136) torture and death (James pp. 73 - 74) on the stake in Le Cap on February 6, 1791 served only to heat up an already rapidly boiling cauldron of dissatisfaction.

See also

• Letter to the Citizens of Color and Free Negroes of Saint-Domingue - 1791 letter by Henri Grégoire refering to Ogé.
• Vincent Ogé motion to the Assembly of Colonists in Paris (1789) - Vincent Ogé pleads the affranchis cause before delegates of Grands Blancs in Paris.
• William Wells Brown - Toussaint L'Ouverture - Contains section on Ogé.

References

• Beard, J. R. (John Relly) (1863). Toussaint L'Ouverture: A Biography and Autobiography. Chapel Hill, NC: Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH. Online Publication
• James, C.L.R. (1989). The Black Jacobins. Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. (2nd Ed., Revised) New York: Vintage Press. ISBN 0-679-72467-2.
• Kennedy, Roger G. (1989). Orders from France: The Americans and the French in a Revolutionary World, 1780-1820. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-55592-9.

External links

• Wikipedia: Vincent Ogé