Free colored leaders had repeatedly betrayed or killed black insurgent commanders

Evidence

Ex-slave troops and their officers had good reason to be suspicious. In 1792, after all, the Swiss—slaves who fought on the side of the free coloreds—had been sold out by their erstwhile allies, and most paid with their lives. In early 1793 the insurgent leader Alaou, soon after his triumphant meeting with Sonthonax in Port-au-Prince, was assassinated by troops loyal to Bauvais in what they presented as a preemptive strike meant to stop a planned assassination of their leader. Sonthonax himself had contributed to Dieudonné’s hostility to the colored leaders: in June 1794 he had placed his commissioner’s medallion around Dieudonné’s neck, warning him that the free coloreds were a threat to freedom. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 683

Categorization

• XREF: The colored-officer-versus-African-band antagonism presages the later Rigaud-Louverture civil war, a key hinge in the revolution’s narrative arc.