Louverture equated post-revolution liberty itself with dangerous idleness

Evidence

The plantations were also full of dangerous men and women. “Since the revolution,” Louverture claimed, “perverse men” had declared that “liberty was the right to remain idle, to do bad with impunity, to disdain the laws and follow only their whims.” Such a “doctrine” was of course accepted happily by “bad subjects, thieves, and assassins.” “It is time to strike out against the hardened men who persist in these ideas; all must know that there is no way to live peacefully and respectfully except through work, assiduous work.” “As soon as a child can walk,” Louverture declared, “he must be put to work on the plantations doing some useful task.” “In a well-ordered state,” he explained, “idleness is the source of all disorders.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 882

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader pattern of plantation discipline persisting through emancipation, echoing themes of coerced labor after formal freedom in Atlantic histories.