Louverture declined to extend immediate abolition to enslaved people in Santo Domingo

Evidence

The universal liberty that had been granted to the slaves in the French colony, then, could not be applied: “we must change nothing in the system that currently exists.” Like many critics of the 1794 decree in Paris, Louverture seems to have envisioned a process of gradual emancipation as the ideal. And for the relatively small percentage of the population still enslaved in Santo Domingo, his occupation in 1801 seems not to have brought immediate liberty. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 839

Categorization

• XREF: This qualifies and complicates the heroic emancipator narrative—connects to later portrayals of Louverture in the war against the French and the final moves toward independence.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did Louverture’s gradualist view on emancipation sit with his constitutional claims to liberty, and did this weaken his standing with supporters?