The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  SIFFLEUR MONTAGNE: literally mountain whistler, a night-singing bird.

  SONGE: dream, vision.

  SONNETTE: medicinal herb.

  SOULÈVEMENT: popular uprising, rebellion.

  SOUPE GIRAUMON: squash soup, also known as soupe joumoun. TABAC À JACQUOT: medicinal herb.

  TAFIA: rum.

  TAMBOU: drum.

  THYM À MANGER: medicinal herb believed to cause miscarriage.

  TI BON ANGE: literally, the “little good angel,” an aspect of the Vodou soul. “The ti bon ange is that part of the soul directly associated with the individual . . . It is one’s aura, and the source of all personality, character and willpower.”7

  TONNELLE: brush arbor.

  TREMBLEMENT DE TERRE: earthquake.

  VÉVÉ: diagram symbolizing and invoking a particular loa.

  VINGT-ET-UN: card game, a version of blackjack.

  VIVRES: life stuff—roots and essential starchy foods.

  VODÛN: generic term for a god, also denotes the whole Haitian religion.

  YO DI: they say.

  Z’ÉTOILE: aspect of the Vodou soul. “The z’étoile is the one spiritual component that resides not in the body but in the sky. It is the individual’s star of destiny, and is viewed as a calabash that carries one’s hope and all the many ordered events for the next life of the soul. . . .”8

  ZAMAN: almond.

  ZOMBI: either the soul (zombi astrale) or the body (zombi cadavre) of a dead person enslaved to a Vodou magician.

  ZORAY: ears.

  CHRONOLOGY OF HISTORICAL EVENTS

  1789

  JANUARY: In the political context of the unfolding French Revolution, les gens de couleur, the mulatto people of the colony, petition for full rights in Saint Domingue.

  JULY 7: The French Assembly votes admission of six deputies from Saint Domingue. The colonial deputies begin to sense that it will no longer be possible to keep Saint Domingue out of the Revolution, as the conservatives had always designed.

  JULY 14: When news of the storming of the Bastille reaches Saint Domingue, conflict breaks out between the petit blancs (lower-class whites of colonial society) and the land- and slave-owning grand blancs. The former ally themselves with the Revolution, the latter with the French monarchy.

  AUGUST 26: The Declaration of the Rights of Man causes utter panic among all colonists in France.

  OCTOBER 5: The Paris mob brings King and Assembly to Paris from Versailles. The power of the radical minority becomes more apparent.

  OCTOBER 14: A royal officer at Fort Dauphin in Saint Domingue reports unrest among the slaves in his district, who are responding to news of the Revolution leaking in. There follows an increase in nocturnal slave gatherings and in the activity of the slave-policing maréchaussée.

  OCTOBER 22: Les Amis des Noirs (a group of French sympathizers with African slaves in the colonies) collaborate with the wealthy mulatto community of Paris, organized as the society of Colons Américains. Mulattoes claim Rights of Man before the French Assembly. Abbé Grégoire and others support them. Deputies from French commercial towns trading with the colony oppose them.

  DECEMBER 3: The French National Assembly rejects the demands of mulattoes presented on October 22.

  1790

  OCTOBER 28: The mulatto leader Ogé, who has reached Saint Domingue from Paris by way of England, aided by the British abolitionist society, raises a rebellion in the northern mountains near the border, with a force of three hundred men, assisted by another mulatto, Chavannes. Several days later an expedition from Le Cap defeats him, and he is taken prisoner along with other leaders inside Spanish territory. This rising is answered by parallel insurgencies in the west which are quickly put down. The ease of putting down the rebellion convinces the colonists that it is safe to pursue their internal dissensions. . . . Ogé and Chavannes are tortured to death in a public square at Le Cap.

  1791

  APRIL: News of Ogé’s execution turns French national sentiments against the colonists. Ogé is made a hero in the theater, a martyr to liberty. Planters living in Paris are endangered, often attacked on the streets.

  MAY 15: The French Assembly grants full political rights to mulattoes born of free parents, in an amendment accepted as a compromise by the exhausted legislators.

  MAY 16: Outraged over the May 15 decree, colonial deputies withdraw from the National Assembly.

  JUNE 30: News of the May 15 decree reaches Le Cap. Although only four hundred mulattoes meet the description set forth in this legislation, the symbolism of the decree is inflammatory. Furthermore the documentation of the decree causes the colonists to fear that the mother country may not maintain slavery.

  JULY 3: Blanchelande, governor of Saint Domingue, writes to warn the Minister of Marine that he has no power to enforce the May 15 decree. His letter tells of the presence of an English fleet and hints that factions of the colony may seek English intervention. The general colonial mood has swung completely toward secession at this point.

  Throughout the north and the west, unrest among the slaves is observed. News of the French Revolution in some form or other is being circulated through the Vodou congregations. Small armed rebellions pop up in the west and are put down by the maréchaussée.

  AUGUST 11: A slave rising at Limbé is put down by the maréchaussée.

  AUGUST 14: A large meeting of slaves occurs at the Lenormand Plantation at Morne Rouge on the edge of the Bois Cayman forest. A plan for a colony-wide insurrection is laid. The hûngan Boukman emerges as the major slave leader at this point. The meeting at Bois Cayman is a delegates convention attended by slaves from each plantation at Limbé, Port-Margot, Acul, Petite Anse, Limonade, Plaine du Nord, Quartier Morin, Morne Rouge and others. The presence of Toussaint Bréda is asserted by some accounts and denied by others. In the following days, black prisoners taken after the Limbé uprising give news of the meeting at Bois Cayman, but will not reveal the name of any delegate even under torture.

  AUGUST 22: The great slave rising in the north begins, led by Boukman and Jeannot. Whites are killed with all sorts of rape and atrocity; the standard of an infant impaled on a bayonet is raised. The entire Plaine du Nord is set on fire.

  There follows a war of extermination with unconscionable cruelties on both sides. Le Cap is covered with scaffolds on which captured blacks are tortured. There are many executions on the wheel. During the first two months of the revolt, two thousand whites are killed, one hundred eighty sugar plantations, and nine hundred smaller operations (coffee, indigo, cotton) are burnt, with twelve hundred families dispossessed. Ten thousand rebel slaves are supposed to have been killed.

  During the initial six weeks of the slave revolt, Toussaint remains at Bréda, keeping order among the slaves there and showing no sign of any connection to the slave revolt.

  In mid-August, news of the general rebellion in Saint Domingue reaches France. Atrocities against whites produce a backlash of sympathy for the colonial conservatives, and the colonial faction begins to lobby for the repeal of the May 15 decree.

  SEPTEMBER 24: The National Assembly in France reverses itself again and passes the Decree of September 24, which revokes mulatto rights and once again hands the question of the “status of persons” over to colonial assemblies. This decree is declared “an unalterable article of the French Constitution.”

  OCTOBER: Expeditions begin to set out from Le Cap against the blacks, but illness kills as many as the enemy, so the rebel slaves gain ground.

  In France this month, radicals in the French Assembly suggest that the slave insurrection is a trick organized by émigrés to create a royalist haven in Saint Domingue. The arrival of refugees from Saint Domingue in France over the next few months does little to change this position.

  NOVEMBER: Early in the month, news of the decree of September 24 (repealing mulatto rights) arrives in Saint Domingue, confirming the suspicions of the mulattoes.

  Toussaint rides to join the rebels, at Biassou’s camp on
Grande Rivière. For the next few months he functions as the “general doctor” to the rebel slaves, carrying no other military rank, although he does organize special fortifications at Grand Boucan and La Tannerie. Jeannot, Jean-François, and Biassou emerge as the principal leaders of the rebel slaves on the northern plain—all established in adjacent camps in the same area.

  NOVEMBER 21 : A massacre of mulattoes by petit blancs in Port-au-Prince begins over a referendum about the September 24 decree. Polling ends in a riot, followed by a battle. The mulatto troops are driven out, and part of the city is burned.

  For the remainder of the fall, the mulattoes range around the western countryside, outdoing the slaves of the north in atrocity. They make white cockades from the ears of the slain, rip open pregnant women and force the husbands to eat the embryos, and throw infants to the hogs. In Port-au-Prince, the petit blancs are meanwhile conducting a version of the French Terror. The city remains under siege by the mulatto forces through December. As at Le Cap, the occupants answer the atrocities of the besiegers with their own, with the mob frequently breaking into the jails to murder mulatto prisoners. In the south, a mulatto rising drives the whites into Les Cayes, but the whites of the Grande Anse are able to hold the peninsula, expel the mulattoes, arm their slaves and lead them against the mulattoes.

  NOVEMBER 29: The first Civil Commission, consisting of Mirbeck, Roume, and Saint Léger, arrives at Le Cap to represent the French revolutionary government.

  DECEMBER 10: Negotiations are opened with Jean-François and Biassou, principal slave leaders in the north, who write to the Commission a letter hoping for peace. The rebel leaders’ proposal only asks liberty for themselves and a couple of hundred followers, in exchange for which they promise to return the other rebels to slavery.

  DECEMBER 21: An interview between the commissioners and Jean-François takes place at Saint Michel Plantation, on the plain a short distance from Le Cap.

  Toussaint appears as an adviser of Jean-François during these negotiations, and represents the black leaders in subsequent unsuccessful meetings at Le Cap, following the release of white prisoners. But although the commissioners are delighted with the peace proposition, the colonists want to hold out for total submission. Invoking the September 24 decree, the colonists undercut the authority of the Commission with the rebels and negotiations are broken off.

  1792

  MARCH 30: Mirbeck, despairing of the situation in Le Cap and fearing assassination, embarks for France, his fellow-commissioner Roume agreeing to follow three days later. But Roume gets news of a royalist counterrevolution brewing in Le Cap and decides to remain, hoping he can keep Blanchelande loyal to the Republic.

  APRIL 4: In France occurs the signature of a new decree by the National Assembly which gives full rights of citizenship to mulattoes and free blacks, calls for new elections on that basis, and establishes a new three-man Commission to enforce the decree, with dictatorial powers and an army to back them.

  APRIL 9: With the Department of the West reduced to anarchy again, Saint Léger escapes on a warship sailing to France.

  MAY: War is declared between French and Spanish Saint Domingue.

  MAY 11: News of the April 4 decree arrives in Saint Domingue. Given the nastiness of the race war and the atrocities committed against whites by mulatto leaders, this decree is considered an outrage by the whites. By this time, the whites (except on the Grande Anse) have all been crammed into the ports and have given up the interior of the country, for all practical purposes. The Colonial Assembly accepts the decree, having little choice for the moment, and no ability to resist the promised army.

  AUGUST 10: Storming of the Tuileries by Jacobin-led mob, virtual deposition of the King, call for a Convention in France.

  SEPTEMBER 18: Three new commissioners arrive at Le Cap to enforce the April 4 decree. Sonthonax, Polverel, and Ailhaud are all Jacobins. Colonists immediately suspect a plan to emancipate the slaves. The commissioners are accompanied by two thousand troops of the line and four thousand National Guards, under the command of General Desparbés. But the commissioners distrust the general and get on poorly with him because of their tendency to trespass on his authority. Soon the commissioners deport Blanchelande to France.

  OCTOBER: In the aftermath of a conflict between his troops and the petit blanc Jacobins of Le Cap, General Desparbés is deported by the commissioners to France as a prisoner, along with many other royalist officers. This event virtually destroys the northern royalist faction.

  OCTOBER 24: The Commission led by Sonthonax begins to fill official posts with mulattoes, now commonly called “citizens of April 4.” By this tendency Sonthonax begins alienating the petit blanc Jacobins of Le Cap by creating a bureaucracy of mulattoes at their expense. In the end, Sonthonax closes the Jacobin club and deports its leaders.

  The Regiment Le Cap’s remaining officers refuse to accept the mulattoes Sonthonax has appointed to fill vacancies left by royalists who have either been arrested or had resigned.

  DECEMBER: Young Colonel Etienne Laveaux mounts an attack on the rebel slaves at Grande Rivière. By this time, Toussaint has his own body of troops under his direct command, and has been using the skills of white prisoners and deserters to train them. He also has gathered some of the black officers who will be significant later in the revolution, including Dessalines, Moyse, and Charles Belair.

  Toussaint fights battles with Laveaux’s forces at Morne Pélé and La Tannerie, covering the retreat of the larger black force under Biassou and Jean-François, then retreats into the Cibao Mountains himself.

  DECEMBER 1: Laveaux is sent to try to recall the disaffected Le Cap officers to the fold, but his efforts are ineffective.

  DECEMBER 2: The Regiment Le Cap meets the new mulatto companies on parade in the Champ de Mars. Fighting breaks out between the two halves of the regiment and the white mob. The mulattoes leave the town and capture the fortifications at the entrance to the plain, and the threat of an assault from the black rebels forces the whites of the town to capitulate.

  In the aftermath, Sonthonax deports the Regiment Le Cap en masse and rules the town with mulatto troops. He sets up a revolutionary tribunal and redoubles his deportations.

  DECEMBER 8: Sonthonax writes to the French Convention of the necessity of ameliorating the lot of the slaves in some way—as a logical consequence of the law of April 4.

  1793

  JANUARY 21: Louis XVI is executed in France.

  FEBRUARY: France goes to war against England and Spain.

  Toussaint, Biassou, and Jean-François formally join the Spanish forces at Saint Raphael. At this point Toussaint has six hundred men under his own control and reports directly to the Spanish general. He embarks on an invasion of French territory.

  MARCH 8: News of the King’s execution reaches Le Cap.

  MARCH 18 : News of the war with England reaches Le Cap, further destabilizing the situation there.

  APRIL: Blanchelande is executed in France by guillotine.

  MAY: Early in the month, minor skirmishes begin along the Spanish border, as Toussaint, Jean-François, and Biassou begin advancing into French territory.

  MAY 7: Galbaud arrives at Le Cap as the new Governor-General, dispatched by the French National Convention, which sees that war with England and Spain endangers the colony and wants a strong military commander in place. Galbaud is supposed to obey the Commission in all political matters but to have absolute authority over the troops (the same instructions given Desparbés). Because Galbaud’s wife is a Creole, and he owns property in Saint Domingue, many colonists hope for support from him.

  MAY 29: Sonthonax and Polverel, after unsatisfactory correspondence with Galbaud, write to announce their return to Le Cap.

  JUNE 10: The commissioners reach Le Cap with the remains of the mulatto army used in operations around Port-au-Prince. Sonthonax declares Galbaud’s credentials invalid and puts him on shipboard for return to France. Sonthonax begins to pack the harbor for a massive
deportation of political enemies. Conflicts develop between Sonthonax’s mulatto troops and the white civilians and three thousand-odd sailors in Le Cap.

  JUNE 20–22: The sailors, drafting Galbaud to lead them, organize for an assault on the town. Galbaud lands with two thousand sailors. The regular troops of the garrison go over to him immediately, but the National Guards and the mulatto troops fight for Sonthonax and the Commission. A general riot breaks out, with the petit blancs of the town fighting for Galbaud and the mulattoes and town blacks fighting for the Commission. By the end of the first night of fighting, the Galbaud faction has driven the commissioners to the fortified lines at the entrance to the plain. But during the night, Sonthonax deals with the rebels on the plain, offering them liberty and pillage in exchange for their support. During the next day the rebels sack the town and drive Galbaud’s forces back to the harbor forts by nightfall. The rebels burn the city. Galbaud empties the harbor and sails for Baltimore with ten thousand refugees in his fleet.

  In aftermath of the burning of Le Cap, a great many French regular army officers desert to the Spanish. Toussaint recruits from these, and uses them as officers to train his bands.

  AUGUST 29: Sonthonax proclaims emancipation of all the slaves of the north.

  This same day, Toussaint issues a proclamation of his own from Camp Turel, assuming for the first time the name Louverture.

  SEPTEMBER 3: Sonthonax writes to notify Polverel of his proclamation of emancipation. Polverel, though angry at this step having been taken without consultation among the commissioners, bows and makes similar proclamations in the south and west.

  On the same day, the Confederation of the Grande Anse signs a treaty with the governor of Jamaica transferring allegiance to the British crown.

  SEPTEMBER 19 : The British invasion begins with the landing of nine hundred soldiers at Jérémie. The surrounding area goes over to the British, but the eastern districts and Les Cayes are still held by mulatto General Rigaud for the French Republic.

  SEPTEMBER 22: Major O’Farrel, of the Irish Dillon regiment, turns over the fortress of Le Môle with a thousand men, including five hundred National Guards, to a single British ship. The peninsula goes over to the British as far as Port-au-Paix.