Melville Cooke You think you have rooted up the tree of liberty, but I am only a branch. I have planted the tree so deep that all of France can never root it up. Toussaint L'Overture as he was taken from Haiti by the French, 1803
I AM grateful to have been reminded by a man I have not yet met that it has been 200 years since that lying, murderous stump of a creature, Napoleon of France, had a man he could never match killed.
That man was Toussaint L'Overture, the last name given to him by his troops and meaning "the opening". He was the architect of the only successful slave revolt ever and the architect of the first independent black nation amongst the "colonies", this in 1803. And that is truly independent, not like having marijuana and Iraqi War "advisories" issued to us by the USA.
Like Martin Luther King Jnr., he figuratively went to the mountaintop and looked over into the Promised Land. Literally, he was starved to death in a 12 by 20 feet stone dungeon at the Castle of St. Joux in April 1803, seven months before Jean-Jacques Dessalines very sensibly wiped the white out of the French tri-colour to create the flag of the Haitian Republic.
I had learnt a little about Toussaint L'Overture, Dessalines and the Haitian Revolution in high school. Two centuries of white discrimination, sanctions and cruelty, leading to the appalling state that some parts of the country are in today, have not been enough to make me ashamed of Haiti.
To the contrary, I am and will always be very proud of those 12 years, from August 22, 1791, to November 28, 1803, from Boukman started the fire burning to the declaration of a republic, when black Haitians beat France, Spain and England, as well as the mulatto population of the country.
Toussaint L'Overture was a statesman and a superb commander of troops, but he had one flaw which proved his undoing. He trusted white people and hence the bad ending.
What I learnt in high school was the equivalent of CNN's news - brief and from a very prejudiced point of view. I was taught that Toussaint L'Overture defeated the French by leading slave revolts in St. Domique, after plantation owners beat back the attempt to extend the "Rights of Man" to free blacks and coloureds.
SLAVERY
I was also taught that he fought invading British and Spanish troops successfully, helped the French to kick them out of the island, then in turn fought the French to a standstill when they tried to reimpose slavery on the island.
The man himself remained a sketch for a very long time.
I had to go on the good old Internet to find out more about the man and what a man he is, as outlined in a lecture given by Wendell Phillips in New York and Boston, dated 1861.
He joined the rebelling army as physician after he turned 50. He stopped the slaughter of 1,500 white men, after a white chap whipped a black general across the shoulders, by telling the angry men "brothers, this blood in yonder French camp can wipe it (the insult) out. To shed that is courage; to shed this cowardice and cruelty beside". So he was compassionate. Not that the whites would return the sentiment.
In 1800, in an era of protectionism when competing nations banned trade with others under a different flag, Toussaint L'verture declared: "Put at the head of the chapter of commerce that the ports of St. Dominique are open to the trade of the world."
He was a shrewd businessman. And he did not hold rancour, nor was he prejudiced. In 1800, when he could have taken it all, Toussaint said to those of lighter hue who had fled: "Sons of St. Domingo, come home. We never meant to take your houses or your lands. The Negro only asked that liberty which God gave him. Your houses wait for you; your lands are ready; come and cultivate them."
This "niceness" was to prove his undoing. Summoned to a council meeting by Frenchman Leclerc in early 1803, after agreeing to quit battle on the premise that slavery would end, Toussaint was arrested, shipped back to France and incarcerated as previously described.
Even as he was left to die, Napoleon, who achieved by typical deceit what he never could in battle, cut Toussaint's daily food money from five francs to three. Even starving in this stone tomb for the barely living, where ice forms on the floor in the winter, it took one more heinous act to finish off Toussaint L'Overture. His jailer was ordered to take a four day trip into Switzerland, with the keys and the door locked, naturally. Toussaint starved to death.
Of course, Toussaint L'Overture has been generally written around, or reduced to a less than imposing figure, in the history books. Much like Paul Bogle, whose march from Stony Gut to Spanish Town has taken precedence over his command to "cleave to the Black", so has Toussaint L'Overture been pigeonholed into "The Centaur of the Savannas".
When I think of Haiti, I do not think first of overloaded boats hell bent for America, but of a nation of black people who took their freedom and did not thank some insipid Queen for the privilege of not being slaves. When I think of Haiti I think of Toussaint L'Overture and I am so proud. So proud.
What could the death of one wretched Negro mean to me?- Napoleon
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
