The National Assembly issued its first decree on the colonies, with instructions that Saint-Rémy calls ambiguous.

Meanwhile the constituent assembly awaited a report from its committee on the situation of the islands and the means of restoring calm there. Barnave presented this report, but without touching the capital questions of prejudice. The assembly, at his request, issued on 8 March its first decree on the colonies. This decree authorized each colony to make known its wish concerning the constitution, the legislation and the administration suited to its inhabitants. Royal instructions, also drafted by Barnave and sealed on the 28th, declared all persons who were proprietors or taxpayers, aged twenty-five years, to be electors and eligible to the colonial assemblies. In vain did the curé of Emberménil, the abbé Grégoire, ask that express mention be made of free men without distinction of color; in vain did Raymond and Ogé also make requests to obtain the same result. The crafty Barnave answered them that such an enunciation would suggest that the rights of the men of color were open to dispute! The whites who were in Paris considered the decree and the instructions that accompanied it as the true triumph of their privileges over the absurd pretensions of the freedmen. Indeed, these acts were interpreted, and the whole colonial oligarchy agreed that they did not concern the men of color, because those were not expressly named in them.