Toussaint Louverture

Toussaint Louverture (born c. 1743, Bréda, near Cap-Français, Saint-Domingue [Haiti]—died April 7, 1803, Fort-de-Joux, France) was the leader of the Haitian independence movement during the French Revolution (1787–99). He emancipated the enslaved people and negotiated for the French colony on Hispaniola, Saint-Domingue (later Haiti), to be governed, briefly, by formerly enslaved people as a French protectorate.

Rise to power

Louverture was the son of an educated enslaved person. He acquired through Jesuit contacts some knowledge of French, though he wrote and spoke it poorly, usually employing Haitian Creole and African tribal language. Winning the favor of the plantation manager, he became a livestock handler, healer, coachman, and finally steward. Legally freed in 1776, he married and had two sons. Louverture was homely, short, and small framed. He was a fervent Roman Catholic, opposed to Vodou (Voodoo). He dressed simply and was abstemious and a vegetarian. His energy and capacity for work were astonishing, and asa leader he inspired awe and adulation.

When a sudden revolt by enslaved peoples began in the northern province (August 1791) and soon spread to encompass thousands of slaves across the colony, Louverture was at first uncommitted. After hesitating a few weeks, he helped his former master escape and then joined the Black forces who were burning plantations and killing many Europeans and mulattoes (people of mixed African and European ancestry). He soon discerned the ineptitude of the rebel leaders and scorned their willingness to compromise with European radicals. Collecting an army of his own, Louverture trained his followers in the tactics of guerrilla warfare. In 1793 he added to his original name the name of Louverture; the name’s exact significance is unknown, but its meaning in French, “opening,” may have referred to his tactical ability as a military commander.

When France and Spain went to war in 1793, the Black commanders joined the Spaniards of Santo Domingo, the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic). Knighted and recognized as a general, Louverture demonstrated extraordinary military ability and attracted such renowned warriors as his nephew Moïse and two future monarchs of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe. His victories in the north, together with mulatto successes in the south and British occupation of the coasts, brought the French close to disaster. Yet, in May 1794, Louverture went over to the French, giving as his reasons that the French National Convention had recently freed all slaves, while Spain and Britain refused, and that he had become a republican. He has been criticized for the duplicity of his dealings with his onetime allies and for a slaughter of Spaniards at a mass. His switch was decisive: the governor of Saint-Domingue, Étienne Laveaux, made Toussaint lieutenant governor; the British suffered severe reverses; and the Spaniards were expelled.

By 1795 Toussaint Louverture was widely renowned. He was adored by Blacks and appreciated by most Europeans and mulattoes, for he did much to restore the economy. Defying French Revolutionary laws, he allowed many émigré planters to return, and he used military discipline to force the former slaves to work. Convinced that people were naturally corrupt, he felt that compulsion was needed to prevent idleness. Yet the laborers were no longer whipped: they were legally free and equal, and they shared the profits of the restored plantations. Racial tensions were eased because Louverture preached reconciliation and believed that Blacks, a majority of whom were African born, had to learn from Europeans and Europeanized mulattoes.

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Elimination of rivals

Though he worked well with Laveaux, Louverture eased him out in 1796. Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, a terrorist French commissioner, allowed Louverture to rule and made him governor-general. But the ascetic Black general was repelled by the proposals of the European radical to exterminate the Europeans, and he was offended by Sonthonax’s atheism, coarseness, and immorality. After some devious maneuvers, Louverture forced Sonthonax out in 1797.

Next to go were the British, whose losses caused them to negotiate secretly with Louverture, notwithstanding the war with France. Treaties in 1798 and 1799 secured their complete withdrawal. Lucrative trade was begun with Britain and with the United States. In return for arms and goods, Louverture sold sugar and promised not to invade Jamaica or the American South. The British offered to recognize him as king of an independent Haiti, but, scornful of pompous titles and distrustful of the British because they maintained slavery, he refused.

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Louverture soon rid himself of another nominal French superior, Gabriel Hédouville, who arrived in 1798 as representative of the Directory (the French Revolutionary government). Knowing that France had no chance of restoring colonialism as long as the war with England continued, Hédouville attempted to pit against Toussaint the mulatto leader André Rigaud, who ruled a semi-independent state in the south. Louverture divined his purpose and forced Hédouville to flee. Succeeding Hédouville was Philippe Roume, who deferred to the Black governor. Then a bloody campaign in 1799 eliminated another potential rival to Louverture by driving Rigaud out and destroying his mulatto state. A purge that was carried out by Jean-Jacques Dessalines in the south was so brutal that reconciliation with the mulattoes was impossible.