Part 3

A few years later, and after the revolution in their own island, a strong contingent went forth from there to the aid of Bolivar in Venezuela, and by their timely and effective co-operation converted Bolivar's overwhelming defeat into victory. But for the modesty and state policy of Petion, his own name would have been associated with that of Bolivar in the liberation of South America.[2] During Cuba's recent struggles the Haitian people manifested the liveliest interest and sympathy in the efforts of the Cuban patriots.

[2] A monument to Petion has been set up in the public square of Caracas.

These glimpses are sufficient to show that from some cause and by some means, the colored people of San Domingo had acquired an appreciation of freedom including more than the mere desire to be free from slavery. The revolt against slavery, however, was their most notable manifestation of their love of liberty. Petion in his consultation with Bolivar after the latter's defeat before mentioned, insisted that on renewing his efforts he should proclaim the freedom of all the slaves as a first step. Bolivar in his letter to Petion replying to this suggestion said: "In my proclamation to the inhabitants of Venezuela, and in the decree that I shall issue announcing liberty to the slaves, I do not know that it will be permitted to me to demonstrate the real sentiment of my heart toward Your Excellency, and to leave to posterity an undying monument to your philanthropy." He then asked if he might make known the fact that wise counsel and material aid had been furnished him by the infant black Republic.

Petion's reply was as follows: "You know, general, my sentiments toward the cause that you have the valor to defend and also toward yourself personally. You surely must feel how ardently I desire to see the oppressed delivered from the yoke of bondage; but because of certain diplomatic obligations which I am under toward a nation that has not as yet taken an offensive attitude toward the republic, I am obliged to ask you not to make public the aid I have given you, nor to mention my name in any of your official documents."

Toussaint L'Ouverture in his first proclamation to the self-emancipated slaves of his country, and to those still in bondage, says: "It is my desire that liberty and equality shall reign in Saint Domingo. I am striving to this end. Come and unite with us, Brothers, and combat with us for the same cause."

Liberty and equality then reigned in the French mind and however vague the idea which had found lodgment in the brain of the San Domingo blacks and mulattos, it was nevertheless sufficiently entrancing to call them from the depths of the inferno in which they were cast and to tempt them to essay the dizziest heights. At a later period this most remarkable man in explaining the object for which he was contending, defined his idea of liberty in words worthy of that greatest statesman, soldier and patriot that has adorned the Negro Race in modern times.[3] He said: "It is not a liberty of circumstance, conceded to us alone, that we wish; it is the adoption of the principle absolute that no man, born red, black or white, can be the property of his fellow man."

[3] "But Bonaparte's plans were doomed to encounter an obstacle in the most remarkable man of negro blood known to modern history. Toussaint L'Ouverture was the descendant, he claimed, of an African chieftain. Highly endowed by nature, he had obtained an excellent education, and had gradually, though born a slave, cultivated his innate power of leadership until all the blacks of San Domingo regarded him with affection and awe."--Sloan's Napoleon, Vol. II, pages 236-237.

Thus spoke Toussaint L'Ouverture, the man of whom Lamartine says: "After God, this man was a nation;" thus he spoke in 1799, a time when all the nations of the earth were themselves slaves to slavery. To this black man was given to see the truth; to them it was not given.

We are now, I trust, prepared to estimate that thirteen years' struggle which went on in that island, during which the tidal wave of destruction, torture, and death, swept the land from side to side, and from end to end, inundating everything except the indomitable spirit of the humble people to whom the heavens of freedom had been opened. Truly does MacMaster class it among the noblest struggles for liberty. I cannot detail that mighty struggle here. For the history of those thirteen eventful years, for the instructive and thrilling story of those heroic black men who garlanded our race, I must refer you to my book on the Haitian Revolution from 1791 to 1804.

We may pause here at the close of this awful period and stand in the proud presence of these triumphant black heroes, as the last of their enemies sail slowly away as prisoners of war. With the new flag floating over the fortresses of the Cape, and the victorious army well-equipped and intact, it is Dessalines, the intrepid Dessalines, never beaten in battle, never surprised in camp, who in the name of the black people and Men of Color of Saint Domingo announces:

"The Independence of Saint Domingo is Proclaimed. "Restored to our primitive dignity, we have asserted[4] our rights; we swear never to yield them to any power on earth."

These were the words of war-worn veterans with swords still unsheathed.

[4] "Asserting their liberties as men, he (Toussaint L'Ouverture) and his fellow slaves rose against their masters and a servile War insued." Sloan, ibid.

They have proclaimed independence, they must now take up the task of government. For this work their training hitherto had been the worst possible, while their anthropological and sociological condition was most unfavorable. Among them were represented fourteen different African tribes,--coming from widely separated territory in their native land and differing in customs and language.[5] Besides these diversities there was also a positive and assertive element of mulattos, some of whom had been slaveholders, and, what was worse still, the country had but recently emerged from a war of caste, a war between blacks and mulattos, more cruel than the war between the Lancastrians and Yorkists in England, and much more pernicious in the hates it bequeathed.

[5] "C'etaient des hommes tires de regiones fort differentes de l'Afrique equatoriale ou equinoxiale. En partant du nord du continent noir, des Senegalais, des Yolofs, des Foulahs, des Bambaras, des Mandingoes, des Bissagots, des Sofas se rencontraient, pele mele, dans les marches a esclaves de la colonie. Au sud de Sierra-Leone, on embarquait pour Saint-Domingue des negres de la Cote d'Or, dont les Aradas, les Socos, les Fantins, les Caplaous, les Mines et les Agones. De la Cote des Esclaves on a tire les Cotocolis, les Popos, les Fidas ou Foedas. Viennet ensuite les Haousas, les Ibos, les Nagos; les Congos tires de la cote du Congo ou d'Angola, partages en sous-divisions de Congos-May youmbes, Congos-Moussombes et Mondongues. De l'Afrique orientale ont ete tires les negres de la cote de Mosambique, dont les Mosambiques proprement dits, les Quiriams et les Quilos, Quilos et les Montifiats."

"M. Roosevelt, president des etats-Unis et la Republique d'Haiti," par A. Firmin, published 1905, p. 232-233.

"Here in Haiti, there are recognizable traces of fourteen different African tribes." Bishop Holly. "Haitian Revolution," T. A. Steward, p. 282.

The government set up could but be a military oligarchy. It is well known that there can be no such thing as personal liberty unless there is what may be termed a sovereignty apart from, behind and above the government.[6] With us that power behind the government, that sovereignty, is the people; but in Haiti in 1804 and for many years thereafter there was no such thing as people in a political sense. There were population, army, government, but not people. Their condition was like that of the Europeans generally during the Middle ages. In Europe there were populations, subjects, governments, vassals, tenants, serfs, slaves, soldiers, knights and lords, but not people. By people politically, we mean a body held together by some internal bond, by a spiritual consensus. Perhaps to this extent the Haitian population of 1804 might be vaguely called a people. But the idea of people politically includes also that this body must have a common consciousness of fundamental right, and a common sense of necessary duty; and then possess force of character adequate to the attainment of these rights and the fulfilment of this duty. Rights precede duty; and not vice versa. When complete the idea of people is that body which holds in its hands the sovereignty. Governments are divine, but are created by evolution, coming to us as comes our daily bread, through divinely appointed processes. Rights like the ground, are a natural endowment; government like bread is a production. It is no reflection upon Haiti to state the historic fact that in 1804 and for many years thereafter there was no such thing on her soil as people, in a political sense. The idea and the love of liberty were there and the frequent revolutions that have beset her pathway during the century of her existence attest the continued presence of that spirit. The problem of reconciling government with liberty is still unsolved. Even our own country which in this respect is in advance of all others is at this moment, according to Professor Burgess, stumbling in this process.

[6] "The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty" by John Burgess, 1915. The whole volume, Especially pp. 148-149.

The Haitian "people," then, employing the word in the popular sense were but recently from barbarism, and the little education they had received politically had been obtained through war; an excellent school perhaps for the training of leaders in the mere matters of preservation and order, but of almost no benefit in the development of the common people; although it is related by St. Remy, that Rigaud established schools in his army to have his soldiers taught to read and write. This ex-slave population of half a million souls, had been replaced during the later period of its existence as slaves, about every twenty years with fresh arrivals from Africa.[7]

[7] "Roosevelt et Haiti." A. Firmin p. 245.

No one expected the self-liberated people of Haiti to set up and maintain a stable government. All history was against such a phenomenon. If it required for England, the most fortunately situated of all the modern nations a period of nearly ten centuries to reach stable government, how could Haiti with its population of ex-barbarians and ex-slaves be expected to perform at once so brilliant a feat? Is Haiti, because it is black, expected to do the impossible? Firmin says at the time of which we speak, there was scarcely a person who did not ridicule the idea that Dessalines and his associates should even think they could create a country and govern it independent of foreign control. The statesmen of France were so sure that these people would fail, simply because of racial weakness, that they confidently expected the colony to return to France. They had not given up this hope ten years later; for in 1814 when the island was divided in government, these statesmen proposed to both Christophe who governed in the North, and to Petion who governed in the West that they should return the island to the mother country. They offered to these two colored rulers the highest grades in the French army and large sums of money; but neither Christophe nor Petion could be bought.[8] In this connection, I may remark on the authority of Professor Sloan (his standard work--Life of Napoleon) that it was the heroic resistance of Toussaint L'Ouverture and his compatriots that defeated Bonaparte's plan for the Western Hemisphere and gave us Louisiana. In a letter written by Robert G. Harper in March 1799,[9] which has just reached my hands through the American Historical Society, I find the following: "Last summer, while Mr. Gerry was still in Paris, and the Directory was employing every artifice to keep him there, Hedouville was preparing to invade the southern states from St. Domingo, with an army of blacks; which was to be landed with a large supply of officers, arms and ammunition, to excite an insurrection among the Negroes by means of missionaries previously sent, and first to subjugate the country by their assistance, then plunder and lay it waste. For the execution of this scheme, he waited only till the English should evacuate a certain port in the island which lay most convenient for the expedition; but he was interrupted by a black general of the name of Toussaint, who drove him from the island, compelled him to embark for France and took the whole authority into his own hands."

[8] "The West Indies and Louisiana in one hemisphere, in the other the Cape of Good Hope, Egypt and a portion of India, with St. Helena and Malta as ports of call--of this he dreamed, but the failure to secure San Domingo and England's evident intention to keep Malta, combined to topple the whole cloud castle into ruins?"

"The magnificent French plan of American colonization having lost the supports of both San Domingo and Louisiana, collapsed leaving no trace."

--Page 289 et seq.

[9] American Historical Magazine. December, 1915.

The independence of Haiti has been maintained as we have seen for one hundred and eleven years. In 1873 while visiting that country and looking upon her lofty hills, and upon the toiling people at their base, I fancied an appealing cry coming from these masses and I interpreted that cry in the following lines:

"The cry of souls for bread; The cry of men and woman who Have done great deeds and Whose guiding star is liberty. Who strong in their right arms, Have won a name, a place, And who with valor true will dare defend That place and sooner die Than wear the badge of slave."

On Sunday, June 15, 1873, I witnessed, in Port-au-Prince a great religious procession to pray against a return of fire upon their city. This is no unusual thing in a Roman Catholic city, although to an American it seems a waste of piety. Mr. Douglass in his graphic way in a private letter to me thus describes one of their outpourings of religious enthusiasm which occurred while he served in Port-au-Prince as United States Minister: "Yesterday," he says, "all over town, a great racket was heard of people driving the devil out of their houses by beating on their doors. On one account I was glad of their efforts to get rid of the devil although I was aware that the devil would laugh at this method of ridding the city of his presence. This is Holy week here and I must say that on account of the stillness, the absence of the tom tom and the apparent serenity of the people, I could wish holy week continued indefinitely."

With the impression of that religious procession upon my young and inexperienced mind I wrote then in my journal: "Poor, poor Haiti! As a nation it is the veriest humbug; and yet there is something splendid about it." Fourteen days later I was able to write differently. I was riding on the road leading from L'Arcahai to St. Mark in company with some young friends. "On both sides of the road were luxuriant fields of sweet potatoes, bananas and sugar cane. Mountain streams were sending down their pure waters by which the plains below were irrigated. It was the fete of St. Pierre at the bourg, and on the road we met hundreds of people, some on foot, some on donkeys, and many on beautiful horses with most magnificent saddles and trappings, all going to the bourg. Fine country gentlemen, mounted on these steeds and riding as though born on horseback, pass us very frequently, every one of whom lifts his hat entirely off his head and gives the Bon jour, monsieur. Ladies dressed in snowy white dash by us at full galop, but never so fast, but they have time to say in the sweetest voice: Bon jour, monsieur."

The constitution of Haiti contains a very complete Bill of Rights bearing testimony to the idea of liberty, but unfortunately there is nowhere any adequate defense of these rights against the encroachment of government. There is no check and balance system between executive and legislative departments; nor can the courts guarantee the rights of individuals. Governments we know are ever ready to encroach; typo demagogues ever ready to arise in professed defense of constitutional rights; hence revolutions. The soul of Haiti is military. General Legitime speaking before the Universal Races Congress in London in 1911 said: "Born in troublous time, Haiti is essentially a military state; and though he cannot entertain ideas of conquest, its head must nevertheless retain the character of a noble gendarme, the guardian of its institutions." Still there is another side. The great statesman Firmin was not a devotee of militarism. He deplored the existence of so much of it which he described as a burden falling heavily upon the rural classes. He says the "only thing the soldier learns by his long military apprenticeship is passive obedience, the absence of all moral initiative, of all exercise of personal volition, with the complete annullment of the view of human liberty struggling against injustice and wrong. When a Haitian wearing epaulettes says to you, I am a soldier, that means that he is ready to commit the most horrible crimes, to rob, to burn, to kill, just so he has the order to do so from his immediate chief." There is in fact a decidedly brilliant literary element in Haiti, including editors, authors and lawyers who are not so thoroughly military as the general trend of her history would lead us to believe. It is now time to inquire in what light Haiti regards herself in relation to the whole Negro Race. What is her mission as she understands it?

The first man I shall call upon in this respect will be our author Antenor Firmin. The following facts will show that he is entitled to a hearing. He was born in Haiti in 1851. Received all of his education there; a lawyer by profession, in 1889 he was a member of their Constitutional Convention, was Minister of Finance and of Foreign relations 1889-1891, as Mr. Blaine had good reason to know; was Minister to Paris 1900-1902; a profound scholar and a very respectable writer, possessed of a large share of common sense philosophy. He says in the preface of his book on Roosevelt and Haiti, written while in exile at Saint Thomas: "No people any more than the individual can live, make progress, and advance with sustained ardor in the walks of civilization, without an end, an ideal, which leads them onward in all the wanderings of their existence. The end is ordinarily more evident, more clear, before the will of the individual; for nations, it is some times veiled in indefinite form; but it exists always, and acts imperiously, like magnetism terrestrial impressing an irresistible direction upon the magnetic needle in spite of the fog which conceals on the horizon the point of orientation. This ideal for Haiti is the sublime effort of a little people striving for the rehabilitation of whole race of men, an effort so noble and so worthy that each one of those who participates in it may justly regard himself as an apostle." Edmund Paul, another brilliant Haitian whose life went out too soon, wrote that the end or goal of this young nation is to prove the aptitude of the whole African race to the present civilization, "An end he says, powerful, gigantesque, capable of devouring generations, ever worthy to demand and to employ all of our activity."

"In Haiti," says the late Minister Price, "the black man is in possession of national responsibility. In Haiti he is called upon to form his character, and to conduct his movements at his own risk; he receives directly the consequences, and suffers the deplorable results, of his own errors and passions. He is not being _led along_ in civilization; he moves on the road by his own efforts. He is marching without any support on which to lean; without any other force than his own. And when he shall become sufficiently advanced to remove all doubt; when he shall become sufficiently free from his errors, and shall have sufficiently conquered his passions which now retard his steps, it will be evident that he has accomplished this result because he willed it, and because he had within his being the necessary force for its accomplishment." According to Mr. Price there will be no one who can say of the Haitians: "We civilized and educated you; none who can say: without us you would soon have relapsed into African barbarism." Haiti's mission as he understood it is to rehabilitate the Negro race. His dying gift to mankind was his splendid work on the Rehabilitation of the Black Race by the Republic of Haiti.

It is Price who says: "The Negro who shows his dainty hands and his little feet, and is piqued because, with adornments the aristocrats, who are also adorned with little hands little feet do not open their doors to him is an ignoramus and a poltroon, and is still a slave."

I shall close this paper with the counsel of Haiti to the African Race as voiced by the same author.

"As to the children of the African race, I could wish to see them everywhere, disdain public offices, in order that they might enter into civilization not by the door that the slaveocrats and politicians point out, but by that door through which has passed the real white democracy--knowledge and industry. When one is the son of a serf, who but yesterday was beaten and cuffed without mercy, and aspires to manhood, it is the workman's blouse that he must put on. The blouse leads to the conventional black and white gloves. But he who wishes to commence by a black suit, ought to put a napkin on his arm, and place himself as a servant, behind the man who wears a blouse.

"Haitians, all, and Negro of the continent of America and of all the adjacent islands; My Brethren! Learn it at once, and never forget it. The free man is the one who takes the responsibility? of his own proper well-being. He has nothing to ask, nothing to solicit, neither from the pity nor the generosity of his fellows. He is bound to count upon himself, and upon himself alone, to turn aside or to overcome, whatever obstacles that lie in the way of his happiness. Strength and skill are for the free man absolute necessities."

Thus has Haiti spoken by her actions and in the words of her eminent statesmen given to us a message of lofty purpose, of sorrowful struggle, of hardy endurance, and we trust of willingness to learn from events.

Lafayette M. Hershaw. The Status of the Free Negro Prior to 1860