1795-04-06
Etienne Polverel, who freed the enslaved of the West and South, dies on trial
Haitian
Etienne Polverel died in Paris on 6 April 1795. He had landed at Le Cap on 17 September 1792 as one of three civil commissioners sent to Saint-Domingue, with Leger-Felicite Sonthonax and Jean-Antoine Ailhaud. In 1793 he signed the emancipation proclamations that ended slavery in the West and the South, months before Paris caught up. Colonists dragged him and Sonthonax before a tribunal in France for it. He died while that trial was still running.
Source
Researched: Wikipedia (English); Haiti-Reference, citing Cabon, Histoire religieuse d'Haiti