1790: An overseer on a plantation in the Cap Français district reported the arrest of twenty-seven people who had escaped in his vicinity within a single short

1790: An overseer on a plantation in the Cap Français district reported the arrest of twenty-seven people who had escaped in his vicinity within a single short period. Many of them were found hiding in the plantation’s quarters for the enslaved. They had not gone to the surrounding hills. This incident reflected a broader tradition of short-term desertion that bedeviled managers across Saint-Domingue. By this time, white colonists began to fear that these mobile individuals would facilitate the spread of revolutionary ideas from the cities to the countryside.