Commissioners envisioned controlled gradual emancipation that instead became a flood they could not contain.

Evidence

Many rebels remained aloof, however. The commissioners, desperate to gain the allegiance of the mass of the insurgents, understood that they had to offer more. As early as July they had warned a free-colored commander in the north that if the members of his class resisted their gradual preparation of “an emancipation that is now inevitable,” it would happen “all at once” through “insurrection and conquest.” They challenged the free-coloreds to embrace a “pure republicanism,” reminding them that equality was not “the only principle,” and that liberty preceded it. This letter, according to one contemporary, proved that the commissioners already saw “the torrent that would carry everything away.” In fact, though, it suggests the opposite. They imagined, as did abolitionists in France, that it would be possible to oversee a gradual emancipation that would not “hurt cultivation.” Soon, however, they would be decreeing a very different kind of emancipation, seeking to channel and contain a torrent they could not control. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 555

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the broader pattern in revolutionary history where elites attempt to manage forces of change they ultimately cannot control.

Related

• French commissioners initially tried to manage gradual emancipation but were overtaken by events. (similarity 0.94)
• Commissioners sent to end the insurrection instead embraced its demand for liberty (similarity 0.83)
• Commissioners sent to suppress revolt would instead embrace slave demands for liberty (similarity 0.81)
• French commissioners sent to end the revolt would end up embracing it instead (similarity 0.80)
• French commissioners initially backed slavery as necessary to colonial survival (similarity 0.80)
• Desperate commissioners granted citizenship to any slave who fought for the Republic (similarity 0.79)
• The Saint-Domingue revolt escalated into empire-wide emancipation (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial institutional rivalries escalated dangerously amid slave reform and war (similarity 0.79)