As we have seen (“Toussaint L’Ouverture” 12/10/2013), Toussaint by 1795 had been appointed Brigadier-General of San Domingo colony, achieved on the basis of the black revolutionary army that he had formed, and he was given the charge of expelling foreign and counterrevolutionary armies that controlled the Southern province. His influence among the people was growing, strengthening and further legitimating his charismatic authority. “If the army was the instrument of Toussaint’s power, the masses were its foundation and his power grew with his influence over them” (James 1989:151). “These years 1795 and 1796 marked the growth of confidence in him by the labourers in the North Province, not only as a solder, but as a man devoted to their interests, whom they could trust in all the difficulties that surrounded them, the man who was on their side in the struggle against slavery. By his incessant activity on their behalf he gained their confidence, and among a people ignorant, starving, badgered and nervous, Toussaint’s word by 1796 was law—the only person in the North whom they could be depended upon to obey” (James 1989:153-54).
The masses over whom Toussaint had influence had just been liberated from the degradation of slavery and now entered “a world of indiscriminate murder and violence” (James 1989:151). During the slave rebellions of 1791, before Toussaint had joined the movement, in the desperate struggle between slaves seeking liberty and those whose economic interests mandated the preservation of slavery, there was violence and abominable cruelty on both sides, including the displaying of the heads of victims, designed to instill terror in the enemy camp (James 1989:94-96).
Toussaint invoked his charismatic authority to prevent terrorist violence. For example, in 1796, upon hearing that black labourers had massacred some whites, he traveled all night to arrive on the scene. “He calls the blacks together and gives them an address on the way they should conduct themselves. If they have grievances, assassination is not the way to have them redressed.” One of them protests, saying that the white owners have not given adequate provisions and have taken their animals, and anyone who protests is put into prison. “‘The reasons you have given me seem justified,’ says Toussaint, ‘but if even you had a house full of them, you have rendered yourself wrong in the sight of God.’” He obtains their support and their commitment to follow the rules he is laying down, and he appoints a commander over them (James 1989: 152-53). Later, in the victorious military campaigns of 1798, when English and mulatto armies were overcome, James reports that “Toussaint’s Africans. . . , starving and half naked, marched into the towns, and such was their discipline that no single act of violence or pillage was committed” (1989:204).
In 1801, as Bonaparte prepared an invasion of San Domingo in order to restore slavery, there was an insurrection against Toussaint, led by his nephew, Moise. Apparently, Moise wanted the plantations broken up and distributed, at least to the officers. And he advocated a policy of alliance with mulattoes instead of white planters. These proposals imply the creation of an agricultural petty bourgeoisie among black officers, who would form an alliance with petty bourgeois mulattoes, with the masses of blacks receiving more limited benefits. Toussaint dealt with the insurrectionists harshly. Moise was quickly tried and executed, and some of his followers were summarily shot (James 1989:275-79). Moise had violated a fundamental rule of revolutionary processes: unity must be maintained, and disagreements in strategy must be contained within the context of a unified struggle. In response to a treacherous rebellion just prior to an invasion by France, Toussaint felt justified in taking harsh action against his own people, in order to ensure unity. Nevertheless, the killing of persons without due process is not justifiable. On the other hand, there is evidence that Toussaint later lamented his harsh treatment of the insurrectionists. And Toussaint’s behavior on this occasion departed from the general norm, in which he was a constant voice against terror in a generally violent context.
Popular vengeance against those who have systematically exploited and abused with impunity is a normal tendency. When the structures of power have been turned up-side-down, and the abused people find themselves in power and their abusers without defense, a popular fury for justice is unleashed. When the popular demand for justice expresses itself as uncontrolled popular vengeance, it administers punishments that are excessive, and its wave submerges some who actually have committed no crime. The revolutionary leadership has the responsibility to control the popular need for vengeance and to ensure that popular justice is satisfied in a form that respects the right of all to due process and administers reasonable punishments.
Toussaint complied with this ethical responsibility of revolutionary leadership. His general opposition to terror and vengeful violence was rooted in a character that abhorred useless violence and in an understanding that the cooperation of whites and the support of France were indispensable for the economic and cultural development of the nation in the long term. He thus consistently pursued a policy of no reprisals against whites, guaranteeing the protection of lives and property of the white population of the colony, and seeking financial and administrative support from France for the development of the colony. In his consistent opposition to terror directed against whites, Toussaint stood in sharp contrast to the Jacobins who controlled the government of France from 1792 to 1794, who capitulated to popular demands for vengeance (see “Revolutionary Terror” 12/2/2013).
James, C.L.R. 1989. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, Second Edition, Revised. New York: Vintage Books, Random House.
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