Planters threatened pan-American unity against abolition even before the Haitian revolution began

Evidence

Like many planters, she saw the decision as proof that the National Assembly was committed to destroying their lives as masters, and believed that secession from France might be necessary. Saint-Domingue, she argued, should send deputies “to all the powers that have slave colonies” in order to “ask for help in case the Assembly ends up pronouncing the abolition of slavery, which it certainly will do.” The slave owners of the Americas, she hoped, would band together to stop the “contagion of liberty.” … In the midst of all these troubles, Madame de Rouvray took solace in “high hopes” for the crops of cane and coffee that were growing around her, still worked by obedient slaves. “The cane is magnificent,” she wrote in July 1791, and the weather was perfect. The storms had been coming in almost every day. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 307

Categorization

• SHARE: A planter proposing a unified slave-owning bloc of the Americas against metropolitan abolition prefigures later Confederate-style arguments about the ‘contagion of liberty’ — would interest a historian of Atlantic slavery.
• CANDY: ‘The cane is magnificent, the weather perfect, the storms almost daily’ — the dramatic irony of a planter woman’s contentment amid brewing revolution is a tweetable image.
• XREF: connects to: Planters envisioned pan-American cooperation to stop abolition — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 307; Planters sought autonomy to save slavery but Louverture sought it to save freedom
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Planters envisioned pan-American cooperation to stop abolition — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 307; Planters sought autonomy to save slavery but Louverture sought it to save freedom

Broader Connections

• Planters envisioned pan-American cooperation to stop abolition #expands (0.95) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 307