French atrocities pushed wavering slaves into joining the revolt

Evidence

It had become an “exterminating war.” Because of the indiscriminate killing of slaves by French troops, many who might have opted for the relative safety of their plantations fled to the insurgent camps. There was little room for neutrality. “The country is filled with dead bodies, which lie un-buried. The negroes have left the whites, with stakes, &c. driven through them into the ground; and the white troops, who now take no prisoners, but kill everything black or yellow, leave the negroes dead upon the field.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 394

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the logic of escalation in other colonial/national revolts where state terror radicalizes the middle ground.

Related

• French indiscriminate killing drove slaves into insurgent ranks, killing neutrality (similarity 0.90)
• French atrocity toward slaves drove fence-sitters into the insurgent camps (similarity 0.86)
• The slave revolt’s violence superseded French abolitionists’ moderation and ended their group (similarity 0.84)
• Planters’ treason pushed the French to arm rebel slaves (similarity 0.84)
• Violence by insurgent slaves was no greater than that of other revolutions (similarity 0.83)
• The northern slave revolt emboldened slaves colony-wide to challenge plantation authority (similarity 0.83)
• French brutality pushed loyal black troops into defection. (similarity 0.83)
• Insurgent violence had forced recognition as a political force. (similarity 0.82)
• Spanish flogging of slaves triggered revolts that swung the colony back toward France (similarity 0.82)
• French reprisals trapped colonial soldiers between two lethal fates. (similarity 0.82)
• Terror, not force alone, secured slave obedience in the French colonies (similarity 0.82)
• Southern slave revolts consciously imitated the northern revolt model (similarity 0.82)
• Suspected black soldiers chose mass suicide over French imprisonment (similarity 0.82)
• Slaveholders committed far more atrocities than revolting slaves did (similarity 0.82)
• Former slave insurgents entered Le Cap and repelled Galbaud’s troops. (similarity 0.81)