Republication of the original text. Skip to content. Do you find this information helpful? A small donation would help us keep this accessible to all. If we do not take the most prompt and efficacious measures; if firmness, courage, and constancy do not animate all of us; if we do not quickly bring together all our intelligence, all our means, and all our efforts; if we fall asleep for an instant on the edge of the abyss, we will tremble upon awakening! We will see blood flowing, our lands invaded, the objects of our industry ravaged, our homes burnt.
We will see our neighbors, our friends, our wives, our children with their throats cut and their bodies mutilated; the slave will raise the standard of revolt, and the islands [of the Caribbean] will be but a vast and baleful conflagration; commerce will be ruined, France will receive a mortal wound, and a multitude of honest citizens will be impoverished and ruined; we will lose everything.
But, Sirs, there is still time to prevent the disaster. I have perhaps presumed too much from my feeble understanding, but I have ideas that can be useful; if the assembly [of white planters] wishes to admit me, if it desires it, if it wants to authorize me to draw up and submit to it my Plan, I will do it with pleasure, even with gratitude, and perhaps I could contribute and help ward off the storm that rumbles over our heads.
It is believed that Voodoo, although prohibited from practices, played a singular role in the life of a slave as a religion giving them spiritual force and a psychologic liberation to break in the chains of Slavery. Voodoo united various rebel factions to help them fight side by side. The 19th and 20th centuries have widely misunderstood this religion and has viewed it as primitive and savage, ignoring its African origins.
Other have seen some similarities within the Catholism because the long relation between masters and slaves over the years. The 21th century continues to confirm adepts of this religion.
Bookman and his force of around , burned plantations, taking prisoners and killing whites, while the revolt was spreading in the North Cap, Limbe, Port-Margot.
His army reached because the slaves deserted their plantations to fight for freedom. Planters who were unable to protect their plantations, sent for help in Santo Domingo, Jamaica and Cuba. The revolt spreads and become more organized, ruining financially many planters. Half of the French troop have already perished from endemic diseases. The slaves continued to make demands while the entire colonial system was at stake. The Colony Assembly at Saint Marc recognizes by a decree on May 15, , citizenship to mulattoes and free blacks.
Tensions continue among the white planters and finally the National Assembly in France revokes the May 15 decree. From these men he learned his lessons of freedom. I am charged with a commission doubtless very honorable to myself. I require you to promulgate throughout the colony the instructions of the National Assembly of the 8th of March, which gives without distinction, to all free citizens, the right of admission to all offices and functions.
My pretensions are just, and I hope you will pay due regard to them.
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