Saint-Domingue In Haiti

Contradictory aspirations amongst white planters, free people of color and slaves led to the outbreak of revolt in Haiti. In Saint-Domingue, there were continuous debates about whether revolutionary authorities, the National Assembly and the new Provincial Assembly of Saint- Domingue should extend its inalienable rights that were already given to the whites citizens to its free people of color and slaves as well. The European population was made up of French colonial officials, wealthy plantation and slave owners, merchants and poor artisans and clerks. However, the colony’s five hundred thousand enslaved people and forty thousand free people of color (90% of the population) vastly outnumbered the white population. The difference between

Although there were attempts to improve the treatment of slaves such as the 1685 Code Noir (Black Code), the tenets rarely enforced this code. In addition to physically harming their slaves, masters would ruthlessly overwork their slaves and starve them. Instead of restoring their health, masters would let them die and purchase new slaves to replace the perished ones. News of abolitionist movements and freedom reforms to gain political enfranchisement and reassert equal status had spread throughout Saint- Domingue. However, white slaveholders looked to revolutionary ideas as a chance to gain control of their own affairs. In July 1790 Vincent Ogé, a free man of color, returned to Saint- Domingue, rose an army of hundreds of people and sent letters to the new Provincial Assembly of Saint- Domingue demanding political rights for all free citizens. After his army was defeated, Ogé was tortured and executed by colonial officials. However, in May 1781, the National Assembly granted political rights to free people of color born to two free parents who possessed sufficient property. News of this spread quickly, leaving the white elite and colonial governors furious. In August 1791, slaves started holding nighttime meetings to plan a