Toussaint L’Ouverture and the Haytian Revolutions[1]
By James McCune Smith, M. A., M. D
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Whilst the orgies of the French revolution thrust forward a being whose path was by rivers of blood, the horrors of Santo Domingo produced one who was preeminently a peacemaker—Toussaint L’Ouverture
In estimating the character of Toussaint L’Ouverture, regard must be paid, not to the enlightened age in which he lived, but to the rank in society from which he sprang a rank which must be classed with a remote and elementary age of mankind.
Born forty-seven years before the commencement of the revolt, he had reached the prime of manhood, a slave, with a soul uncontaminated by the degradation which surrounded him. Living in a state of society where worse than polygamy was actually urged, we find him at this period faithful to one wife the wife of his youth and the father of an interesting family. Linked with such tender ties, and enlightened with some degree of education, which his indulgent master, M. Bayou, had given
- ↑ Extracts from a lecture delivered at the Stuyvesant Institute, New York, for the benefit of the Colored Orphan Asylum, February 26, 1841.
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