Ogé’s ship anchored at the Cap, and he began his attempt to obtain the execution of the decree of 8 March.

XXVIII. Vincent Ogé groaned at Paris over the lot of his own people; electrified by the sublime DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN, each of the injustices with which his brothers in the colonies were being made to drink carried him away in a holy indignation. He resolved to go to Saint-Domingue, to demand, even by force of arms, the literal execution of the beneficent decree of 8 March. His determination was spontaneous. Intelligent as he was, he knew the influence that the sight of military insignia exerts in the colonies on the population of the three colors; he bought from the prince of Limbourg an investiture of his order of chivalry, and had a colonel’s uniform made for himself. He had taken for his motto: He loves liberty as he knows how to defend it. Vivit et ardet. He had this motto engraved at the foot of his portrait, which he intended to spread through the colony (1). But as the princes who were colonists had succeeded in obtaining from the minister of the navy, M. de la Luzerne, a prohibition on men of color leaving France, so greatly did they dread the propagation of the principles of the revolution, Ogé could not leave directly for the colony. Fair as a white man, for he was a *quarteron*, he took the name of Poissac and left Paris on 19 March. He remained some time in London; destitute of money, he was given some by Clarkson, whose acquaintance he had made at Paris at the house of general Lafayette (2), to continue his journey. Landing at Charlestown, in New England, on 26 June, he sought long for the means of reaching Saint-Domingue. At last he embarked on an American ship bound for Cap. He was approaching that land where his arrival had already been announced by the colonists of Paris. He wished to be set ashore at Monte-Christo, on Spanish territory; the captain of the ship refused. In vain did Ogé tell him that he had had a duel at Cap, where he had had the misfortune to kill his adversary; the captain persisted in his refusal. Providence, which watched over Ogé, no doubt reserved for him a death of renown. On the morning of 24 October (1), the ship anchored at Cap. Ogé went ashore. The police office that adjoined the port was not open; Ogé passed close by the guards and went to an inn, from which he sent for his trunks (2). He set out for Grande-Rivière and stopped at the house of his friend Chavanne, a *mulâtre* cultivator of the district, who had distinguished himself at the siege of Savannah under the comte d’Estaing, and who, on his return to the country, had had the glory of being implicated in the trial of the immortal Lacombe, and whose ardent love of liberty was known. There some fifteen of his own people, free Black men and *mulâtres*, came to join him. Must the Black people and the *mulâtres* who are in slavery be called to liberty? Must the general emancipation of the African race be proclaimed through iron and fire, over the ruins of the colony ruined and bloodied? Chavanne voted for this determination. But Ogé had seen in France the prospect of the triumph of the liberty of the human race. That triumph was near; why defile it with blood? Ogé wished above all, therefore, to obtain equality of political rights among all free men, without distinction of color. The abolition of slavery, of which I have shown that he was the boldest partisan, was necessarily to flow from this first triumph.