TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE, FRANÇOIS DOMINIQUE
(20 May 1743 – 7 April 1803)
THE LEADER OF THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION.
“WHATEVER DEFAMATION OF CHARACTER MY ENEMIES ARE SPREADING ABOUT ME, I DO NOT FEEL THE NEED TO JUSTIFY MYSELF TOWARD THEM. WHILE DISCRETION OBLIGES ME TO REMAIN SILENT, MY DUTY COMPELS ME TO PREVENT THEM FROM DOING ANY MORE HARM”.
“IN OVERTHROWING ME YOU HAVE CUT DOWN IN SAINT DOMINGUE ONLY THE TRUNK OF THE TREE OF LIBERTY; IT WILL SPRING UP AGAIN FROM THE ROOTS, FOR THEY ARE NUMEROUS AND THEY ARE DEEP”
Toussaint Louverture, François Dominique (1743-1803), Haitian general, now known as “the Precursor.”
He was born to slave parents near Cap-Français, Saint-Domingue (now Cap-Haïtien, Haiti), Toussaint was self-educated. He acted as a physician to the insurgent army and became a leader of the Haitian slave revolt, a 1791 black slave uprising against the French colonial regime. After France abolished slavery in the territory in 1794, Toussaint supported the French rulers of the country against British invaders and was made a general in 1795. In 1801 he succeeded, after many struggles, in liberating Saint-Domingue from French control and became president for life of a new republic. In 1802 Napoleon sent troops under the command of his brother-in-law, General Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc, to subdue the Haitians. Toussaint was betrayed by Jean-Jacques Dessalines as some scholars have stated and was defeated, captured, and accused of conspiracy. He was taken to France, where he was imprisoned and died on April 7, 1803.
He is honored today as one of the founders and heroes of Haiti. His immense knowledge of the military was genius and his political acumen transformed an entire society of enslaved people to freedom which is known today as the independence of HATI.
Louverture gained some education from his godfather Pierre-Baptiste on the Bréda plantation. His extant letters demonstrate a moderate familiarity with Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher who had lived as a slave, while his public speeches showed a familiarity with Machiavelli.[19] Some cite Enlightenment thinker Abbé Raynal, a French critic of slavery, and his publication Histoire des deux Indes predicting a slave revolt in the West Indies as a possible influence.
Louverture received a degree in theological education from the Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries through his church attendance and devout Catholicism. His medical knowledge is attributed to a familiarity with the folk medicine of the African plantation slaves and Creole communities, as well as more formal techniques found in the hospitals founded by the Jesuits and the free people of color. Legal documents signed on Louverture’s behalf between 1778–1781 suggest that he could not yet write at that time.Throughout his military and political career during the revolution, he was known to have verbally dictated his letters to his secretaries, who prepared most of his correspondence. A few surviving documents from the end of his life in his own hand confirm that he eventually learned to write, although his Standard French spelling was “strictly phonetic” and closer to the Haitian Kreyòl he spoke for the majority of his life.[
As a revolutionary leader, Louverture displayed military and political acumen that helped transform the fledgling slave rebellion into a revolutionary movement. Louverture is now known as the “Father of Haiti”.
Louverture was born enslaved in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, now known as Haiti. He was a devout Catholic who became a freeman before the revolution and, once freed, identified as a Frenchman for the greater part of his life. During his time as a freeman, he attempted to climb the highly stratified social ladder on the island, combatting racism whilst gaining and losing much wealth while working as a planter, slave owner, coachman, muleteer, and miller across several plantations. At the start of the Haitian revolution, he was nearly 50 years old and began his military career as a lieutenant to Biassou, an early leader of the 1791 War for Freedom in Saint-Domingue. Initially allied with the Spaniards of neighboring Santo Domingo, Louverture switched his allegiance to the French when the new Republican government abolished slavery. Louverture gradually established control over the whole island and used his political and military influence to gain dominance over his rivals.
Throughout his years in power, he worked to balance the economy and security of Saint-Domingue. Worried about the economy, which had stalled, he restored the plantation system using paid labor; negotiated trade agreements with the United Kingdom and the United States, and maintained a large and well-trained army. Although Louverture did not sever ties with France in 1800 after defeating rival leaders among the Haitian revolutionary population, he promulgated an autonomous constitution for the colony in 1801 that named him as Governor-General for Life, even against Napoleon Bonaparte’s wishes.
In 1802, he was invited to a parley by French Divisional General Jean-Baptiste Brunet but was arrested upon his arrival. He was deported to France and jailed at the Fort de Joux. He died in 1803. Although Louverture died before the final and most violent stage of the Haitian Revolution, his achievements set the grounds for the Haitian army’s final victory. Suffering massive losses in multiple battles at the hands of the Haitian army and losing thousands of men to yellow fever, the French capitulated and withdrew permanently from Saint-Domingue the very same year. The Haitian Revolution continued under Louverture’s lieutenant, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who declared independence on 1 January 1804, thereby establishing the sovereign state of Haiti.
In his absence, Jean-Jacques Dessalines led the Haitian rebellion until its completion, finally defeating the French forces in 1803, two-thirds of the men had died when Napoleon withdrew his forces.
John Brown claimed influence by Louverture in his plans to invade Harpers Ferry. During the 19th century, African Americans referred to Louverture as an example of how to reach freedom.
On 29 August 1954, the Haitian ambassador to France, Léon Thébaud, inaugurated a stone cross memorial for Toussaint Louverture at the foot of Fort de Joux. Years afterward, the French government ceremoniously presented a shovelful of soil from the grounds of Fort de Joux to the Haitian government as a symbolic transfer of Louverture’s remains. An inscription in his memory was installed in 1998 on the wall of the Panthéon in Paris
A NARRATIVE BIO HAS BEEN MADE GREAT TO WATCH AND KNOW THE MAN AND THE BEAUTY OF HAITI. TO ME HE WAS THE DAVID AND THE GOLIATH WAS THE EN -SLAVERS. TOUSSAINT WAS A GREAT LEADER WHO BELIEVED IN FREEDOM AND PURSUED IT WITH A PASSION TO THE VERY END.