The revolution began as violent colonial racial conflict before the slave uprising

Evidence

During 1789 delegations of free men of color had repeatedly demanded inclusion in local political assemblies. Except in rare cases, whites overwhelmingly rebuffed them, and soon began responding with violence. In November 1789, in the town of Petit-Goâve in the Southern Province, an elderly white man named Fernand de Baudière was accused of being the author of a petition written by the free-coloreds in the town. He was arrested and put into prison, but a crowd overpowered the local magistrates and lynched him. Elsewhere in the south, a group of whites broke into the house of a wealthy free man of color, beat him, tied him to a horse, and dragged him down the road. Some friends intervened and saved his life, but one of his sons was killed. … Soon free men of color were responding by arming themselves. The first skirmishes in the war were under way. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 278

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader question of how colonial class/racial conflicts precede and trigger slave revolution — parallels with the ‘complaints go way back’ pattern of moral panic literature.