Leclerc believed deporting Louverture would rob the blacks of their leadership.

Evidence

By spiriting Louverture out of the colony, Leclerc felt he had won a great victory. “I have taken away the gathering point of the blacks,” he announced to the minister in mid-June. “The blacks have lost their compass,” he wrote to Bonaparte the same day; “they are all divided amongst themselves.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 984