Nantes. Home port of the Emmanuel, which carries the Swiss.

During this interval Caradeux and Lérembourg, who never lost sight of the maintenance of slavery, proposed to Bauvais, Lambert and Pinchinat that the enslaved men who had taken up arms with the freedmen under the name of Swiss be deported. This proposal, which had already been made at the Croix-des-Bouquets at the time of the concordat of 11 September, placed Bauvais, Lambert and Pinchinat before a painful choice. They did not dare decide it alone. The chiefs of the whites and those of the men of color, met in assembly, voted by sitting and standing, over the opposition of Rigaud, Pétion and several others, that it would be dangerous to send back to the plantation gangs men who had enjoyed liberty. It was resolved that they would be sent to the Mosquitos of Guatemala with implements of husbandry. They were embarked on the ship Emmanuel, of Nantes (2 November); and four commissioners of color, Citizens Charles Haran, Louis Bonneau, Cadet Chanlatte and Barthélemy Richiez, went with them aboard a brig of war, the Philippine, Captain Bélanger. These four commissioners were charged with carrying out the decision of the white citizens and the freedmen with regard to the unfortunate Swiss. The freedman Boisrond the younger protested against this frightful crime in a vigorous writing. How fine and noble the day of 24 October would have been, had each man found in it the reward due to his valor; it remains instead, in our history, a dark and ill-omened day. When the Emmanuel and the Philippine reached the waters of Jérémie, Captains Bélanger and Colimin, after conferring together, parted company during the night. The warship carrying the commissioners went to the bay of the Mosquitos, visited its coasts, reached Cartagena, and nowhere met the Emmanuel. It then went to Jamaica, where it learned what Captain Colimin had done. Instead of taking the Swiss, Black and of color, to the far end of the Gulf of Mexico, he had cast them on the coasts of Jamaica, after trying in vain to sell them. The governor and the Assembly of that colony were indignant at this act of the government of Saint-Domingue; they feared that such guests would spread ideas of liberty among their captives. Commodore Affleck was charged with demanding redress for this offense from the Colonial Assembly, which gave the English government every kind of satisfaction. The Colonial Assembly sent to the Môle Saint-Nicolas the unhappy Swiss whom the English had brought back to Saint-Domingue. They were put in irons on a hulk.