The colony
was the French equivalent of Jamaica, but more prosperous and more
self-willed and self-indulgent. Its whites were impatient of outside
control, and resolute that the slaves be ruled with iron hand and that the
colored freemen be kept passive.
A plentiful discontent with bureaucracy and commercial restraint under the
old regime caused the planters to welcome the early news of reform projects
in France and to demand representation in the coming States General. But
the rapid progress of radical republicanism in that assembly threw most of
these into a royalist reaction, though the poorer whites tended still to
endorse the Revolution. But now the agitations of the _Amis des Noirs_
at Paris dismayed all the white islanders, while on the other hand the
National Assembly's "Declaration of the Rights of Man," together with its
decrees granting political equality in somewhat ambiguous form to free
persons of color, prompted risings in 1791 among the colored freemen in the
northern part of the colony and among the slaves in the center and south.
When reports of these reached Paris, the new Legislative Assembly revoked
the former measures by a decree of September 24, 1791, transferring all
control over negro status to the colonial assemblies.
Pages:
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836