A Social History of the American Negro - Being a History of the Negro Problem in the United States. Including - A History and Study of the Republic of Liberia by Benjamin Brawley
page 110 of 545 (20%)
page 110 of 545 (20%)
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He at once compelled the surrender of the English who had invaded his
country. With the aid of a commercial agreement with the United States, he next starved out the garrison of his rival, the mulatto Rigaud, whom he forced to consent to leave the country. He then imprisoned Roume, the agent of the Directory, and assumed civil as well as military authority. He also seized the Spanish part of the island, which had been ceded to France some years before but had not been actually surrendered. He then, in May, 1801, gave to Santo Domingo a constitution by which he not only assumed power for life but gave to himself the right of naming his successor; and all the while he was awakening the admiration of the world by his bravery, his moderation, and his genuine instinct for government. Across the ocean, however, a jealous man was watching with interest the career of the "gilded African." None knew better than Napoleon that it was because he did not trust France that Toussaint had sought the friendship of the United States, and none read better than he the logic of events. As Adams says, "Bonaparte's acts as well as his professions showed that he was bent on crushing democratic ideas, and that he regarded St. Domingo as an outpost of American republicanism, although Toussaint had made a rule as arbitrary as that of Bonaparte himself.... By a strange confusion of events, Toussaint L'Ouverture, because he was a Negro, became the champion of republican principles, with which he had nothing but the instinct of personal freedom in common. Toussaint's government was less republican than that of Bonaparte; he was doing by necessity in St. Domingo what Bonaparte was doing by choice in France."[1] [Footnote 1: _History of the United States_, I, 391-392.] |
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