Toussaint joined the 1791 revolt already free and himself a former slaveholder

Evidence

When he joined in the insurrection in 1791, Toussaint was already a free man. He had been born in slavery just outside Le Cap on a plantation owned by the Bréda family. He worked as a coachman and took care of livestock on the plantation. Sometime in the 1770s the plantation manager, Bayon de Libertat, emancipated Toussaint. Within a few years Toussaint had acquired his own slave, an African-born man named Jean-Baptiste, whom he freed in 1777. Toussaint tried his hand at agriculture, renting a small coffee plantation near the town. After two years, when he ended his lease, he owed the owner the cost of two slaves, one women and one child, who had died during his tenure. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 589

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the popular image of Toussaint as a field slave rising directly out of bondage; a nuance worth tracking across the narrative.
• QUESTION: The detail that Toussaint himself owned and freed a slave complicates his moral and legal position at the revolution’s start.