Free people of color miscalculated that selective emancipation would preserve slavery

Evidence

Most free people of color (many of whom, like the Raimond family, owned plantations in the area) shared with whites a desire to see slavery maintained in the area, and assumed—reasonably enough, given the long history of slave recruitment in Saint-Domingue and elsewhere in the Americas—that the granting of freedom to some slaves in return for their service would not fundamentally undermine their own power or wealth. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 462

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes a recurrent miscalculation in revolutionary histories: that controlled concessions by an elite won’t unravel the whole system. Ties to themes from the Frankfort reading on how revolutionary implications transcend their authors’ intent.