Dessalines justified massacring whites as punishment for pro-slavery conspiracy

Evidence

In late February he declared that all those who were suspected of participation in the massacres ordered by Leclerc and Rochambeau should be put on trial. He produced a letter written to Bonaparte in late 1802 by a number of residents celebrating Rochambeau’s successes and complimenting him for rejecting the “false philosophy” that had been so detrimental to Saint-Domingue, which could be “made fertile” only by Africans held under “strict discipline.” It was a thinly veiled call for the return of slavery, Dessalines claimed, and all the signatories were therefore complicit in the terror the French had inflicted during their final year in the colony. Dessalines also feared that whites in the colony were actively conspiring to prepare a new attack aimed at bringing slavery back to the island. He ordered a series of massacres of white inhabitants, although precisely how many perished is difficult to establish. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 1057

Categorization

• QUESTION: Was there real evidence of a white conspiracy, or was the letter a pretext for preemptive massacre?