White planter radicals in Saint-Domingue openly defied Paris and the free-coloreds

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. Troops were also sent from Le Cap, and the two armies converged on Saint-Marc. Many of the more cautious representatives at Saint-Marc, disagreeing with the radical course the group had taken, had already resigned. Others slipped back to their homes in the face of the attack. But eighty-five representatives took advantage of a sailors’ revolt on a ship anchored at Saint-Marc, the Léopard, and leapt on board, heading for Paris to present their case and argue that they had been victimized by a tyrannical colonial government. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 298

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Saint-Domingue whites built a racist democratization that excluded free people of color; Some French planters backed free-colored rights out of fear of repeating aristocratic ruin — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 282
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Saint-Domingue whites built a racist democratization that excluded free people of color; Some French planters backed free-colored rights out of fear of repeating aristocratic ruin — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 282

Broader Connections

• Some French planters backed free-colored rights out of fear of repeating aristocratic ruin #complicates (0.74) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 282