Colonist civil wars between whites and free coloreds armed the slaves and spread revolution

Evidence

During the year, however, the compass of slave action expanded dramatically in these regions. Some slaves attacked their masters and took control of their plantations, and by the end of the year independent bands of insurgent slaves had established themselves in parts of the south. Slave revolution, initially limited to the Northern Province, now engulfed much of the colony. It was groups of whites and freecoloreds—many of them plantation owners—who laid the foundation for this expansion of slave revolution by arming slaves to fight alongside them in their violent battles against one another. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 457

Categorization

• XREF: A powerful irony — the oppressors arming slaves for their own quarrels — that parallels patterns in other slave societies and could anchor an essay.
• SEED: Article angle: how inter-elite civil wars repeatedly armed the oppressed and inadvertently powered revolutions, from Haiti to colonial India.