This issue begins by reporting the abolition of the slave trade, not slavery, in France and all its harbors and colonies. All five articles of Napoleon Bonaparte’s “Decree of the Abolition of the Slave Trade,” as taken from Peltier’s l’Ambigu, are reprinted in full. After praising the actions of British and French abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, and the abbé Grégoire, attention is turned once again to the failed expedition of Lavaysse, Dravermann, and Médina, and the former ex-colonists, whose designs on independent Haiti, the editor tells us, were foiled by Bonaparte’s re-establishment of his control of France. The editor subsequently includes, in order to prove that France still wants to reclaim the former colony, a long passage from a work published anonymously in Paris in 1814 entitled, Des véritables causes qui ont amené la ruine de la colonie de Saint-Domingue, et des moyens certains d’en reprendre possession et d’y vivre tranquillement à l’abri de nouveaux ouragans politiques, par un observateur de bon sens, ami de la justice et de la témoin de tous les évènemens. One memorable interpretation from this pro-colonial text concerns Toussaint Louverture, whom the anonymous author claimed, “protected whites,” and would have accepted for the colony to remain French had Bonaparte, “instead of sending the Leclerc expedition, which only started a new fire in the colony,” simply given Louverture a certificate recognizing him as captain-general.
RECENT COMMENTS