The Saint-Marc assembly’s defiance provoked white militarized response within the colony.

Evidence

When it received the National Assembly’s March 8 decree the Saint- Marc assembly decided to obey the new law only to the extent that it did not contradict its “Constitutional Principles.” They invited voters to reconfirm the sitting representatives in an election carried out according to its old suffrage regulations, and declared flatly they would never share political power with a “bastard and degenerate race”—the free-coloreds. The campaign led to the “confirmation” of the delegates at Saint-Marc, who, riding high, opened all the ports of Saint-Domingue to foreign trade. A clear violation of the new laws passed by the National Assembly, this was too much for both the governor and the more conservative Provincial Assembly of the north. In Port-au-Prince an officer mobilized white troops and invited veterans of the free-colored militia to join him in crushing the seditious assembly. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 298