French commissioners initially tried to manage gradual emancipation but were overtaken by events.

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