The rebels timed their revolt to decapitate the colonial elite in one blow.

Evidence

The date set for the event was, as best we can tell, the night of Wednesday August 24. It was a surprising choice; with remarkable consistency, slave conspirators in the Americas during the eighteenth century planned their uprisings for Sundays or holidays, days when it was easier for slaves to circulate without inciting suspicion, and when they would not have to fight after a long day of work in the fields. But on August 25 a meeting of the entire Colonial Assembly was scheduled in Le Cap. It would have been, as one historian notes, “not only a day when the population of Le Cap would have been distracted by the big event, but also a unique opportunity to eliminate the en- 98 av e n g e r s o f t h e n e w w o r l d tire political elite of Saint-Domingue.” The choice was a measure of their ambition. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 334

Categorization

• XREF: This inversion of the usual Sunday-rebellion convention parallels how tactical surprise shapes breakthroughs described in other insurrectionary histories on the shelf.