Slave drivers were simultaneously collaborators and clandestine community leaders loyal to rebels

Evidence

At the same time they were community leaders among the slaves. Often chosen because of the respect they already enjoyed on the plantation, as drivers they achieved more power, adding fear to this respect, as well as the ability to help weak or sick slaves and to allow some to leave the plantations at night or on weekends. A manual for prospective plantation masters advised them to be wary of their drivers, who excelled at maintaining an illusion of perfect devotion to the whites but were also close to the most rebellious of the slaves on the plantation, whom they spared from punishment. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 140

Categorization

• SEED: The duplicity of the driver figure — feigning loyalty while shielding the most rebellious — is a ready-made engine for the early stages of the Haitian revolt narrative.
• XREF: Echoes the go-between figure in Things Fall Apart and other colonial hierarchies where intermediaries straddle two worlds.