Black insurgents building an autonomous mountain kingdom rejected freedom papers they distrusted

Evidence

The freedom papers were signed by Rigaud and the Provincial Assembly, and some slaves were suspicious of their validity because they had not been signed by their masters. Furthermore, freedom was granted only to those who had been armed by free-coloreds, and not to those who had been armed by whites or who had risen up independently. Only a little more than half of the eligible 700 accepted the offer. The others stayed at Platons, trusting their weapons rather than the papers offered to guarantee the freedom they had claimed for themselves. … They were building a new life in the mountains. They had several camps protected by entrenchments built on the edges of cliffs, each with 800 to 900 cabins, as well as hospitals for the sick. The residents called their home the “kingdom of the Platons,” and chose a king to govern them. … By late 1792 one-third of the plantations in the south had been burnt, and all of the nearly 100 sugar plantations on the once-thriving Plaine des Cayes had been destroyed or damaged. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 481