Skip to content
🇭🇹   BETA  ·  10,079 entries published  ·  89,921 entries away from the 100k milestone.       🇭🇹   BETA  ·  10,079 entries published  ·  89,921 entries away from the 100k milestone.       
You are offline — some content may not be available
1790-12-25

The most prominent men of color of the South, among them Rigaud, were arrested in the night and thrown into the dungeons of Port-au-Prince.

Haitian

“People of color,” he said, “I speak to you in the name of the nation, the law and the king; you are led astray by mad pretensions; you must never cross the line of demarcation that separates you from the whites, your fathers and your benefactors; return to your duty, for I declare that if you do not submit to the favorable conditions which I have obtained from the Assemblée provinciale of the South and from the municipalités, which you have offended; I declare, I say, that I bring you with one hand peace and with the other, war; that I shall march against you; I shall arrive and make you return to your duty (1).” This speech caused a gloomy consternation; and such was the submission of the freedmen to the law that those who had taken up arms only against the colonists laid them down as soon as they heard the voice of an agent of the metropole. This reconciliation was of short duration; the most prominent men of color were arrested in the night of 25 December, taken to Port-au-Prince and thrown into the dungeons. A revolutionary committee began their trial.

Source  ·  p. 86 Joseph Saint-Rémy (des Cayes), Pétion et Haïti: étude monographique et historique, tome 1 (Paris: chez l'auteur, 1854), p. 86; English translation, Rasanblaj.