1802-05-00: (Louverture Surrenders Under a Fraudulent Promise That Slavery Will Never Be Reimposed, the French Seizing Him Within Weeks and Shipping Him to a…

1802-05-00: (Louverture Surrenders Under a Fraudulent Promise That Slavery Will Never Be Reimposed, the French Seizing Him Within Weeks and Shipping Him to a Prison in the Jura Mountains Where He Will Die Alone): In May 1802, Louverture signed a treaty with Leclerc and surrendered on the explicit condition that slavery would never be reimposed in Saint-Domingue. The promise was a lie. Within weeks, the French seized Louverture and his family, loaded them onto a ship, and sent them to France. Louverture was imprisoned in the Fort de Joux in the Jura Mountains, a cold stone cell in the French Alps designed to break a man accustomed to the Caribbean. He was denied adequate food, clothing, and medical care. He died there on April 6, 1803, seven months before his revolution would achieve the independence he had spent his life pursuing. Before his deportation, he is said to have told his captors that in overthrowing him, they had merely cut down the trunk of the tree of Black liberty in Saint-Domingue, and that it would spring up again from the roots, for they were many and deep.