1776-00-00: (Toussaint Louverture Manumitted by His Enslaver on the Bréda Plantation, Remaining as a Salaried Worker and Accumulating Property, a Position of…

1776-00-00: (Toussaint Louverture Manumitted by His Enslaver on the Bréda Plantation, Remaining as a Salaried Worker and Accumulating Property, a Position of Relative Privilege That Would Shape His Initial Response to the Revolution Fifteen Years Later): In 1776, Toussaint Bréda, as he was then known, received his manumission from his enslaver on the Bréda plantation in northern Saint-Domingue. He was thirty-three years old. He remained on the plantation as a salaried worker and began accumulating property, including land and livestock. His position was one of considerable relative privilege among formerly enslaved people, and it informed his initial reaction when the Revolution erupted in 1791: he held back from the uprising at first and worked to protect his former enslaver’s family from the violence. That instinct, to preserve order even in the face of justified fury, would define his leadership throughout the revolutionary years. Louverture was a man who had navigated the colonial system with enough skill to prosper within it, and who understood that the system’s destruction required strategy.