Some planters fled even unbeleaguered colonies out of fear of contagion

Evidence

Her slaves had not rebelled, and no insurgents had reached her plantation. Her husband, the marquis de Rouvray, was leading troops that had kept the insurgents out of the region. Still, Madame de Rouvray announced resolutely that they would have to leave Saint-Domingue, “for how can one stay in a country where slaves have raised their hands against their masters?” They might go to Havana, where they could find land and rebuild a plantation with their slaves—“if we are lucky enough to preserve them from the contagion.” If it became impossible to live as slave masters in Saint-Domingue, Cuba would have to do—even if its customs were “quite opposed to our own.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 390

Categorization

• XREF: The planters’ flight to Havana anticipates the wider Atlantic spread of the Haitian Revolution, which the reader’s arc would trace onward.