The 1791 insurrection grew out of organized nighttime meetings across the northern plain

Evidence

In August 1791 a series of nighttime meetings of slaves took place in the northern plain. Some of the Gallifet slaves attended, and decided to join in the mass insurrection that was being planned. On the night of August 21 the manager of La Gossette, Pierre Mossut, was awakened by a group of slaves who announced that they were “coming to talk to him” and who then attacked him. Mossut was wounded in the arm but fought back and managed to escape. He sent word to the main Gallifet plantation, and soon Odeluc and several other whites arrived at La Gossette. The next morning, accompanied by a judge from Le Cap, they interrogated slaves and extracted a worrisome confession: there was a plan afoot to start “a war to the death against the whites.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 317

Categorization

• XREF: The slave overseer Blaise’s role as ringleader echoes the pattern of enslaved elites fomenting revolt found in other Atlantic rebellions.