means, the colored people of San Domingo had acquired an appreciation of
freedom including more than the mere desire to be free from slavery. The
revolt against slavery, however, was their most notable manifestation of
their love of liberty. Petion in his consultation with Bolivar after the
latter's defeat before mentioned, insisted that on renewing his efforts
he should proclaim the freedom of all the slaves as a first step.
Bolivar in his letter to Petion replying to this suggestion said: "In my
proclamation to the inhabitants of Venezuela, and in the decree that I
shall issue announcing liberty to the slaves, I do not know that it will
be permitted to me to demonstrate the real sentiment of my heart toward
Your Excellency, and to leave to posterity an undying monument to your
philanthropy." He then asked if he might make known the fact that wise
counsel and material aid had been furnished him by the infant black
Republic.
Petion's reply was as follows: "You know, general, my sentiments toward
the cause that you have the valor to defend and also toward yourself
personally. You surely must feel how ardently I desire to see the
oppressed delivered from the yoke of bondage; but because of certain
diplomatic obligations which I am under toward a nation that has not as
yet taken an offensive attitude toward the republic, I am obliged to ask
you not to make public the aid I have given you, nor to mention my name
in any of your official documents."
Toussaint L'Ouverture in his first proclamation to the self-emancipated
slaves of his country, and to those still in bondage, says: "It is my
desire that liberty and equality shall reign in Saint Domingo. I am
striving to this end. Come and unite with us, Brothers, and combat with
us for the same cause."
Liberty and equality then reigned in the French mind and however vague
the idea which had found lodgment in the brain of the San Domingo blacks
and mulattos, it was nevertheless sufficiently entrancing to call them
from the depths of the inferno in which they were cast and to tempt them
to essay the dizziest heights. At a later period this most remarkable
man in explaining the object for which he was contending, defined his
idea of liberty in words worthy of that greatest statesman, soldier and
patriot that has adorned the Negro Race in modern times.[3] He said: "It
is not a liberty of circumstance, conceded to us alone, that we wish; it
is the adoption of the principle absolute that no man, born red, black
or white, can be the property of his fellow man."
[3] "But Bonaparte's plans were doomed to encounter an obstacle in the
most remarkable man of negro blood known to modern history.
Toussaint L'Ouverture was the descendant, he claimed, of an African
chieftain. Highly endowed by nature, he had obtained an excellent
education, and had gradually, though born a slave, cultivated his
innate power of leadership until all the blacks of San Domingo
regarded him with affection and awe."--Sloan's Napoleon, Vol. II,
pages 236-237.
Thus spoke Toussaint L'Ouverture, the man of whom Lamartine says: "After
God, this man was a nation;" thus he spoke in 1799, a time when all the
nations of the earth were themselves slaves to slavery. To this black
man was given to see the truth; to them it was not given.
We are now, I trust, prepared to estimate that thirteen years' struggle
which went on in that island, during which the tidal wave of
destruction, torture, and death, swept the land from side to side, and
from end to end, inundating everything except the indomitable spirit of
the humble people to whom the heavens of freedom had been opened. Truly
does MacMaster class it among the noblest struggles for liberty. I
cannot detail that mighty struggle here. For the history of those
thirteen eventful years, for the instructive and thrilling story of
those heroic black men who garlanded our race, I must refer you to my
book on the Haitian Revolution from 1791 to 1804.
We may pause here at the close of this awful period and stand in the
proud presence of these triumphant black heroes, as the last of their
enemies sail slowly away as prisoners of war. With the new flag floating
over the fortresses of the Cape, and the victorious army well-equipped
and intact, it is Dessalines, the intrepid Dessalines, never beaten in
battle, never surprised in camp, who in the name of the black people and
Men of Color of Saint Domingo announces:
"The Independence of Saint Domingo is Proclaimed.
"Restored to our primitive dignity, we have asserted[4] our
rights; we swear never to yield them to any power on earth."
These were the words of war-worn veterans with swords still unsheathed.
[4] "Asserting their liberties as men, he (Toussaint L'Ouverture) and
his fellow slaves rose against their masters and a servile War
insued." Sloan, ibid.
They have proclaimed independence, they must now take up the task of
government. For this work their training hitherto had been the worst
possible, while their anthropological and sociological condition was
most unfavorable. Among them were represented fourteen different African
tribes,--coming from widely separated territory in their native land and
differing in customs and language.[5] Besides these diversities there
was also a positive and assertive element of mulattos, some of whom had
been slaveholders, and, what was worse still, the country had but
recently emerged from a war of caste, a war between blacks and mulattos,
more cruel than the war between the Lancastrians and Yorkists in
England, and much more pernicious in the hates it bequeathed.
[5] "C'etaient des hommes tires de regiones fort differentes de
l'Afrique equatoriale ou equinoxiale. En partant du nord du
continent noir, des Senegalais, des Yolofs, des Foulahs, des
Bambaras, des Mandingoes, des Bissagots, des Sofas se
rencontraient, pele mele, dans les marches a esclaves de la
colonie. Au sud de Sierra-Leone, on embarquait pour Saint-Domingue
des negres de la Cote d'Or, dont les Aradas, les Socos, les
Fantins, les Caplaous, les Mines et les Agones. De la Cote des
Esclaves on a tire les Cotocolis, les Popos, les Fidas ou Foedas.
Viennet ensuite les Haousas, les Ibos, les Nagos; les Congos tires
de la cote du Congo ou d'Angola, partages en sous-divisions de
Congos-May youmbes, Congos-Moussombes et Mondongues. De l'Afrique
orientale ont ete tires les negres de la cote de Mosambique, dont
les Mosambiques proprement dits, les Quiriams et les Quilos, Quilos
et les Montifiats."
"M. Roosevelt, president des etats-Unis et la Republique d'Haiti,"
par A. Firmin, published 1905, p. 232-233.
"Here in Haiti, there are recognizable traces of fourteen different
African tribes." Bishop Holly. "Haitian Revolution," T. A. Steward,
p. 282.
The government set up could but be a military oligarchy. It is well
known that there can be no such thing as personal liberty unless there
is what may be termed a sovereignty apart from, behind and above the
government.[6] With us that power behind the government, that
sovereignty, is the people; but in Haiti in 1804 and for many years
thereafter there was no such thing as people in a political sense. There
were population, army, government, but not people. Their condition was
like that of the Europeans generally during the Middle ages. In Europe
there were populations, subjects, governments, vassals, tenants, serfs,
slaves, soldiers, knights and lords, but not people. By people
politically, we mean a body held together by some internal bond, by a
spiritual consensus. Perhaps to this extent the Haitian population of
1804 might be vaguely called a people. But the idea of people
politically includes also that this body must have a common
consciousness of fundamental right, and a common sense of necessary
duty; and then possess force of character adequate to the attainment of
these rights and the fulfilment of this duty. Rights precede duty; and
not vice versa. When complete the idea of people is that body which
holds in its hands the sovereignty. Governments are divine, but are
created by evolution, coming to us as comes our daily bread, through
divinely appointed processes. Rights like the ground, are a natural
endowment; government like bread is a production. It is no reflection
upon Haiti to state the historic fact that in 1804 and for many years
thereafter there was no such thing on her soil as people, in a political
sense. The idea and the love of liberty were there and the frequent
revolutions that have beset her pathway during the century of her
existence attest the continued presence of that spirit. The problem of
reconciling government with liberty is still unsolved. Even our own
country which in this respect is in advance of all others is at this
moment, according to Professor Burgess, stumbling in this process.
[6] "The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty" by John Burgess,
1915. The whole volume, Especially pp. 148-149.
The Haitian "people," then, employing the word in the popular sense were
but recently from barbarism, and the little education they had received
politically had been obtained through war; an excellent school perhaps
for the training of leaders in the mere matters of preservation and
order, but of almost no benefit in the development of the common people;
although it is related by St. Remy, that Rigaud established schools in
his army to have his soldiers taught to read and write. This ex-slave
population of half a million souls, had been replaced during the later
period of its existence as slaves, about every twenty years with fresh
arrivals from Africa.[7]
[7] "Roosevelt et Haiti." A. Firmin p. 245.
No one expected the self-liberated people of Haiti to set up and
maintain a stable government. All history was against such a phenomenon.
If it required for England, the most fortunately situated of all the
modern nations a period of nearly ten centuries to reach stable
government, how could Haiti with its population of ex-barbarians and
ex-slaves be expected to perform at once so brilliant a feat? Is Haiti,
because it is black, expected to do the impossible? Firmin says at the
time of which we speak, there was scarcely a person who did not ridicule
the idea that Dessalines and his associates should even think they could
create a country and govern it independent of foreign control. The
statesmen of France were so sure that these people would fail, simply
because of racial weakness, that they confidently expected the colony to
return to France. They had not given up this hope ten years later; for
in 1814 when the island was divided in government, these statesmen
proposed to both Christophe who governed in the North, and to Petion who
governed in the West that they should return the island to the mother
country. They offered to these two colored rulers the highest grades in
the French army and large sums of money; but neither Christophe nor
Petion could be bought.[8] In this connection, I may remark on the
authority of Professor Sloan (his standard work--Life of Napoleon) that
it was the heroic resistance of Toussaint L'Ouverture and his
compatriots that defeated Bonaparte's plan for the Western Hemisphere
and gave us Louisiana. In a letter written by Robert G. Harper in March
1799,[9] which has just reached my hands through the American Historical
Society, I find the following: "Last summer, while Mr. Gerry was still
in Paris, and the Directory was employing every artifice to keep him
there, Hedouville was preparing to invade the southern states from St.
Domingo, with an army of blacks; which was to be landed with a large
supply of officers, arms and ammunition, to excite an insurrection among
the Negroes by means of missionaries previously sent, and first to
subjugate the country by their assistance, then plunder and lay it
waste. For the execution of this scheme, he waited only till the English
should evacuate a certain port in the island which lay most convenient
for the expedition; but he was interrupted by a black general of the
name of Toussaint, who drove him from the island, compelled him to
embark for France and took the whole authority into his own hands."
[8] "The West Indies and Louisiana in one hemisphere, in the other the
Cape of Good Hope, Egypt and a portion of India, with St. Helena
and Malta as ports of call--of this he dreamed, but the failure to
secure San Domingo and England's evident intention to keep Malta,
combined to topple the whole cloud castle into ruins?"
"The magnificent French plan of American colonization having lost
the supports of both San Domingo and Louisiana, collapsed leaving
no trace."
--Page 289 et seq.
[9] American Historical Magazine. December, 1915.
The independence of Haiti has been maintained as we have seen for one
hundred and eleven years. In 1873 while visiting that country and
looking upon her lofty hills, and upon the toiling people at their base,
I fancied an appealing cry coming from these masses and I interpreted
that cry in the following lines:
"The cry of souls for bread;
The cry of men and woman who
Have done great deeds and
Whose guiding star is liberty.
Who strong in their right arms,
Have won a name, a place,
And who with valor true will dare defend
That place and sooner die
Than wear the badge of slave."
On Sunday, June 15, 1873, I witnessed, in Port-au-Prince a great
religious procession to pray against a return of fire upon their city.
This is no unusual thing in a Roman Catholic city, although to an
American it seems a waste of piety. Mr. Douglass in his graphic way in a
private letter to me thus describes one of their outpourings of
religious enthusiasm which occurred while he served in Port-au-Prince as
United States Minister: "Yesterday," he says, "all over town, a great
racket was heard of people driving the devil out of their houses by
beating on their doors. On one account I was glad of their efforts to
get rid of the devil although I was aware that the devil would laugh at
this method of ridding the city of his presence. This is Holy week here
and I must say that on account of the stillness, the absence of the tom
tom and the apparent serenity of the people, I could wish holy week
continued indefinitely."
With the impression of that religious procession upon my young and
inexperienced mind I wrote then in my journal: "Poor, poor Haiti! As a
nation it is the veriest humbug; and yet there is something splendid
about it." Fourteen days later I was able to write differently. I was
riding on the road leading from L'Arcahai to St. Mark in company with
some young friends. "On both sides of the road were luxuriant fields of
sweet potatoes, bananas and sugar cane. Mountain streams were sending
down their pure waters by which the plains below were irrigated. It was
the fete of St. Pierre at the bourg, and on the road we met hundreds of
people, some on foot, some on donkeys, and many on beautiful horses with
most magnificent saddles and trappings, all going to the bourg. Fine
country gentlemen, mounted on these steeds and riding as though born on
horseback, pass us very frequently, every one of whom lifts his hat
entirely off his head and gives the Bon jour, monsieur. Ladies dressed
in snowy white dash by us at full galop, but never so fast, but they
have time to say in the sweetest voice: Bon jour, monsieur."
The constitution of Haiti contains a very complete Bill of Rights
bearing testimony to the idea of liberty, but unfortunately there is
nowhere any adequate defense of these rights against the encroachment of
government. There is no check and balance system between executive and
legislative departments; nor can the courts guarantee the rights of
individuals. Governments we know are ever ready to encroach; typo
demagogues ever ready to arise in professed defense of constitutional
rights; hence revolutions. The soul of Haiti is military. General
Legitime speaking before the Universal Races Congress in London in 1911
said: "Born in troublous time, Haiti is essentially a military state;
and though he cannot entertain ideas of conquest, its head must
nevertheless retain the character of a noble gendarme, the guardian of
its institutions." Still there is another side. The great statesman
Firmin was not a devotee of militarism. He deplored the existence of so
much of it which he described as a burden falling heavily upon the rural
classes. He says the "only thing the soldier learns by his long military
apprenticeship is passive obedience, the absence of all moral
initiative, of all exercise of personal volition, with the complete
annullment of the view of human liberty struggling against injustice and
wrong. When a Haitian wearing epaulettes says to you, I am a soldier,
that means that he is ready to commit the most horrible crimes, to rob,
to burn, to kill, just so he has the order to do so from his immediate
chief." There is in fact a decidedly brilliant literary element in
Haiti, including editors, authors and lawyers who are not so thoroughly
military as the general trend of her history would lead us to believe.
It is now time to inquire in what light Haiti regards herself in
relation to the whole Negro Race. What is her mission as she understands
it?
The first man I shall call upon in this respect will be our author
Antenor Firmin. The following facts will show that he is entitled to a
hearing. He was born in Haiti in 1851. Received all of his education
there; a lawyer by profession, in 1889 he was a member of their
Constitutional Convention, was Minister of Finance and of Foreign
relations 1889-1891, as Mr. Blaine had good reason to know; was Minister
to Paris 1900-1902; a profound scholar and a very respectable writer,
possessed of a large share of common sense philosophy. He says in the
preface of his book on Roosevelt and Haiti, written while in exile at
Saint Thomas: "No people any more than the individual can live, make
progress, and advance with sustained ardor in the walks of civilization,
without an end, an ideal, which leads them onward in all the wanderings
of their existence. The end is ordinarily more evident, more clear,
before the will of the individual; for nations, it is some times veiled
in indefinite form; but it exists always, and acts imperiously, like
magnetism terrestrial impressing an irresistible direction upon the
magnetic needle in spite of the fog which conceals on the horizon the
point of orientation. This ideal for Haiti is the sublime effort of a
little people striving for the rehabilitation of whole race of men, an
effort so noble and so worthy that each one of those who participates in
it may justly regard himself as an apostle." Edmund Paul, another
brilliant Haitian whose life went out too soon, wrote that the end or
goal of this young nation is to prove the aptitude of the whole African
race to the present civilization, "An end he says, powerful,
gigantesque, capable of devouring generations, ever worthy to demand and
to employ all of our activity."
"In Haiti," says the late Minister Price, "the black man is in
possession of national responsibility. In Haiti he is called upon to
form his character, and to conduct his movements at his own risk; he
receives directly the consequences, and suffers the deplorable results,
of his own errors and passions. He is not being _led along_ in
civilization; he moves on the road by his own efforts. He is marching
without any support on which to lean; without any other force than his
own. And when he shall become sufficiently advanced to remove all doubt;
when he shall become sufficiently free from his errors, and shall have
sufficiently conquered his passions which now retard his steps, it will
be evident that he has accomplished this result because he willed it,
and because he had within his being the necessary force for its
accomplishment." According to Mr. Price there will be no one who can say
of the Haitians: "We civilized and educated you; none who can say:
without us you would soon have relapsed into African barbarism." Haiti's
mission as he understood it is to rehabilitate the Negro race. His dying
gift to mankind was his splendid work on the Rehabilitation of the Black
Race by the Republic of Haiti.
It is Price who says: "The Negro who shows his dainty hands and his
little feet, and is piqued because, with adornments the aristocrats, who
are also adorned with little hands little feet do not open their doors
to him is an ignoramus and a poltroon, and is still a slave."
I shall close this paper with the counsel of Haiti to the African Race
as voiced by the same author.
"As to the children of the African race, I could wish to see them
everywhere, disdain public offices, in order that they might enter into
civilization not by the door that the slaveocrats and politicians point
out, but by that door through which has passed the real white
democracy--knowledge and industry. When one is the son of a serf, who
but yesterday was beaten and cuffed without mercy, and aspires to
manhood, it is the workman's blouse that he must put on. The blouse
leads to the conventional black and white gloves. But he who wishes to
commence by a black suit, ought to put a napkin on his arm, and place
himself as a servant, behind the man who wears a blouse.
"Haitians, all, and Negro of the continent of America and of all the
adjacent islands; My Brethren! Learn it at once, and never forget it.
The free man is the one who takes the responsibility? of his own proper
well-being. He has nothing to ask, nothing to solicit, neither from the
pity nor the generosity of his fellows. He is bound to count upon
himself, and upon himself alone, to turn aside or to overcome, whatever
obstacles that lie in the way of his happiness. Strength and skill are
for the free man absolute necessities."
Thus has Haiti spoken by her actions and in the words of her eminent
statesmen given to us a message of lofty purpose, of sorrowful struggle,
of hardy endurance, and we trust of willingness to learn from events.
Lafayette M. Hershaw. The Status of the Free Negro Prior to 1860
The difficulty surrounding a proper understanding of any question
consists in the fact that self-interest is more than likely to enter to
darken the vision. It is seldom that men differ about matters or have a
difficulty in understanding matters which do not affect their vanity,
their pride, their ambition or their material belongings. The truth
concerning any matter which is the subject of controversy can be reached
with accuracy in proportion as it is free from these matters. A question
of justice, opportunity and humane consideration for persons wholly or
partly of African origin is influenced entirely by considerations of the
kind just mentioned. If men were not obsessed by the phantom of race
superiority and of local vanity and group consciousness, and more than
all by the propensity to make gain out of the misfortunes and injustices
of conditions, what is known as the Negro question would vanish into
thin air. All forms of oppression, caste, proscription and distinction
have their origin in the desire and purpose of a man or set of men to
improve their condition at the expense of others. If it had not been
believed and indeed demonstrated that the subjection of the black man
would prove economically profitable to the white man or that he would
gain some other fancied advantage from the degradation of the black man
we should never have had African slavery together with its attendant
chain of ills which afflict the body politic even unto this hour.