Douglass penned this essay as an introduction to the American edition of Vie de Toussaint-Louverture (1889) by the French abolitionist and statesman Victor Schoelcher. The planned edition fell through, however, and the essay is published here for the first time. It is Douglass’s only extended assessment of Toussaint.
SOURCE: Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress
To give the world a full and fair estimate of the character, qualities and works of a great black man of the period in which Toussaint L’Ouverture lived and worked, is a task not easily performed. Whether this task is undertaken by a white man or a black man, a Frenchman or an American, there is danger of an inability to reach a satisfactory conclusion. There may be in the author the best intention and the most conscientious endeavor to hold the scales steady and perfectly level, yet the force of the moral atmosphere and the inequality of its pressure in which he must work will be apt to cause some deviation from the right line and ensure defeat to his honest purpose to tell the whole truth in respect to him.
It is the misfortune of men of the African race that they rest under a heavy cloud which time and events have yet to dispel. Every man in whose veins there is found a trace of African blood is on first sight prejudged and falls under the depressing weight of an unfavourable popular opinion. In respect of him the verdict is usually made up and ready for presentation in advance of all vindicating evidence and argument.
Few things are more blinding than prejudice, and few things more persistently and inflexibly defy the assaults of reason and common sense. It may be well hoped that the contents of this volume of the life and times of a great black man will prove a valuable auxiliary in the work of combatting this prejudice, especially as here it is most prevalent and exerts a more powerful influence than in any other part of the civilized world.
But the difficulty of writing a correct life of Toussaint L’Ouverture is not wholly one-sided. Possible prejudices for, as well as those against, though less likely to intervene, may prove a hindrance in attaining a just estimate of the character and deeds of this remarkable black man. He may be unduly exalted by reason of the very influences that have caused him to be disparaged and depressed. Though the danger in one direction is much less than in the other, neither can be wisely ignored where truth and impartiality are sought.
A man of tender and humane impulses, deeply penetrated with a sense of the wrongs inflicted upon the Negro for ages, and aware of the unjust judgment by which he has been oppressed, despised, and depressed may be easily led in a spirit of magnanimity to magnify his virtue or conceal or apologize for his faults, not only by way of atonement for such wrongs but by a spirit of combativeness. He may also be carried away by an enthusiasm perfectly natural, arising out of surprise and gratification at the discovery in his hero of so many qualities which are in point blank contradiction to the prevalent opinion of the race and which transcend in excellence his own expectations. Extremes beget extremes, and the pendulum swung too far in one direction inevitably swings too far in the other.
Besides, there is much in the career of this hero of Santo Domingo to touch and warm the heart of our common humanity, as well as to the poetic side of human nature. The generally accepted theory of the inferiority of the Negro, combined with the common disposition to be in accord with surroundings and to conform individual opinions to that which is held by the multitude on the one hand, and humane and poetic feeling on the other, are the two obvious dangers to be guarded against in this and similar cases. They constitute the Scylla and Charybdis between which an author, like a mariner, must steer.
Another element in the history of the man before us, calculated to mislead and confuse the mental and moral vision, is the practical existence of a dual standard of measurement of the character and deeds of men. One is the ethnological standard which determines excellence according to race, and the other is the standard which arises out of common human nature, and applies to all men alike. Unhappily for the Negro, he is made to stand outside of this broad and comprehensive standard of measurement. The world looked upon the example of George Washington, battling with England during seven years for the freedom and independence of his people and country, from a point entirely different from that of Toussaint L’Ouverture battling against France for the freedom and independence of his people and country. To the one was extended the warmest sympathy and was regarded with admiration as a model of manhood, a paragon of patriotism; while the other was detested as a savage insurgent and a villainous cut-throat. One was fighting against political abuses, and the other against personal slavery, one hour of which, according to Jefferson, himself a slave-holder, was worse than ages of that which Washington rose in rebellion to oppose. Yet one was lauded to the skies as an example for mankind, and the other is branded as a moral monster for whom the prison and the halter are too good. This standard of measurement, which was in full force in the days of these two great men, obtains in some degree today. As it worked injustice then, so it works injustice now. Nathaniel Turner, the Negro who in 1831 struck for the freedom of himself and brothers at Southampton, Virginia, was, in the estimation of his times, a blood-thirsty murderer fit only for the gallows. A white man who should do the same thing today would be hailed as a saint or a hero.
But again there is another difficulty in the way of a just view of the black hero of Santo Domingo. It is that greatness is relative and not easily arrived at when standing alone. It is discoverable better by analogy, than by being viewed separately. For the most part, men appear either great or small by comparison. A ship sailing alone on a smooth sea, with its broad canvass filled with a favourable breeze, will seem to those who stand upon her deck to be making much better speed than when another of equal size and canvass is alongside, sailing the same way and with equal rate of speed.
Just here is the difficulty of the case of Toussaint L’Ouverture. There is no fit example with which to compare him. His circumstances were as peculiar as his character was unique. He stands alone as a liberator, warrior and statesman, separate and apart from all other heroes and leaders of men. Others may have risen higher but none have started from a point lower. Greater things have been done by other men, but none have done greater things than he with conditions so unfavourable and means so small as his.
Circumstances sometimes make men great, but greater men than those who were made by circumstances were those that made their own. Toussaint L’Ouverture was one of this latter class of great men. He created the sea upon which he floated. He imparted to others strength, and infused the valour which gave himself and them the victory.
Other redeemers and liberators of men come from heaven; this one came to us from the hell of slavery. From such a quarter no such man as Toussaint L’Ouverture could have been expected. It is your free-born, educated, and sensitive man whose neck has never been bowed or calloused by the yoke, whose soul is capable of being stung to madness by oppression, and whose spirit, ambition and eloquence are able to rouse the oppressed to rise in revolt against powerful slaveholders and tyrants. It is the hand of little employment that hath the daintier touch. The condition of a slave is not favourable to this sensitiveness. The natural effect of slavery is to blunt all the finer feelings of the human soul, destroy self-respect and reduce a man simply to a beast of burden, and to divest him of all manly ambition. In fact, it may be said that to treat a slave well, to deal tenderly with him, to give him a good bed to sleep upon, to provide him good food to eat, ample time for sleep, rest and recreation, is the best preparation that can be devised to make him discontented and to equip him as a leader of revolt against slavery.
The case of Toussaint L’Ouverture is an illustration of this theory only in part. He was a slave, but a favoured slave. His position as his master’s coachman was one of comparative ease. He had time to think, and his contact with his master and his master’s family was in some degree a school. The more light it brought to him, the more clearly he could see the false and unjust position he occupied. He was a slave, but had in him a spirit too strong for slavery to crush. He knew the value of liberty by being denied its possession. To outward seeming, he was no doubt a contented slave, when the desire to be free was burning in every throb of his manly heart. His comparatively easy condition on the one hand, and his low estate as a bondsman alike, rendered it improbable that in him could be the great qualities displayed by him as a leader of a fierce and sanguinary rebellion against slavery.
He was, in fact, a gigantic surprise. He came upon the world like a bolt from a clear sky, or rather like one forced to the surface by a sudden and violent disturbance underground, an upheaval from impenetrable depths and darkness, a furious outburst of valour, smoke, and volcanic fire, destined to fill all the air of his country with odours, pestilence and death. He is seen as [if] by the lurid glare of a furnace, infernal in the midst of horrors where men came to glut over warm, smoking, human blood, to laugh at human agony, and mock at human despair and death. In this conflict between the white and the black, the slave and the master, men seemed transformed into devils and earth into a hell, till the very name of Santo Domingo sent a shudder around the world. Since the horrors of the inquisition, when bigotry and priest-craft in the name of religion taxed human ingenuity to the extent of all its powers in the invention of engines of cruelty, there has been nothing with which to compare the scenes enacted in Santo Domingo. Indian savages on our western borders, with their gleaming tomahawks and scalping knives, with their war-whoops and death dances, sparing in their fury neither age nor sex, have given examples of cruelty not more shocking than that perpetrated in the interest of slavery in Santo Domingo. Every outrage by the French brought retaliation by the Negroes. Each brought with it some added element of horrors.
It is remarkable that the man who might have been expected to be the most cruel and blood-thirsty, in view of that for which he struggled and the terrible power against which he had to contend, was distinguished above all for the quality of mercy, and this man was Toussaint L’Ouverture.
Toussaint L’Ouverture was an unmixed Negro. The busts and portraits I have seen of him in Hayti do him full justice in this respect. Happily no part of his greatness can be ascribed to blood relationship to the white race. His colour, his features, his hair proclaim him at once a Negro. True, he had a high broad forehead, and a dignified and thoughtful expression of face, but he was in all respects a typical Negro. He therefore demonstrates beyond cavil or doubt the possibilities of the Negro race. We may take him as an unanswerable argument against all detractors of his race on account of colour and features. It enables the Negro to say to the world that what the Negro has done once, he can do again; what he has done in the past he may do in the future. If there has been one Toussaint, there may be yet another. The material is not exhausted or decreased. It is said that he is an exception. So he is. All Englishmen are not Peels, Gladstones, Brights, or Broughams; and all Americans are not Clays, Conklings, Websters or Sumners; but the races that produced them can produce more like them. The black race may well enough contemplate Toussaint with the complacency with which other races contemplate their great men. In the light of this reasoning they may well gain courage to resist the forces operating against them here and elsewhere.
But the beneficent example of Toussaint is not confined to the Negro race, or to the Negro’s relations—as all are calling Negroes who have any Negro blood in their veins. To the white people of this country, he has a mission scarcely less important than that of the Negro. His example is fitted [for] oppressors of whatever land or colour, that there is a danger of goading too far the energy that may “slumber in the black man’s arm”; that out of the depth of misery and oppression there may come another black man, not inferior to Toussaint in talent, zeal, and organizing ability, who may convert the Gulf States into another Santo Domingo. In such a contest it should be remembered, in the language of Thomas Jefferson, that the Almighty has no attribute that will take the side of the oppressor. Besides, conditions are more favourable to the Negro than was the case when Toussaint rose against slavery in Santo Domingo. Then, almost the whole Christian world was against him, and thought him only fit for slavery. All the greatest states were slave-holding. England, France, Spain, Holland, Portugal, Central and South America as well as the United States were slave-holding nations. Now, the reverse is true. The whole Christian and civilized world has pronounced against it, and now there is a generous feeling in favour of giving the Negro a fair chance in the race of life. In no part of the world now is the lesson taught by Toussaint more needed than in the United States. For though the system of slavery is here abolished, the spirit of slavery is still visibly alive, active and baneful. A large debt is due not only to the author, but to Mr. Stanton for translating and publishing this in this country.
In this volume the reader will observe that there is nothing sensational beyond the measure of the simple truth. There is no straining after effect. The author is not a searcher after fame and evidently has no desire to attract attention to himself. He has passed beyond the time of such ambition. His work is the work of a venerable statesman, a member of the French Senate, a position of honour to which mere authorship can add nothing. He is not only aged and venerable, but he is one who can look back over a long line of public service and has had the good fortune and satisfaction to see some of his most radical and cherished ideas accepted by his countrymen and organized into law. His life of Toussaint comes to us from under the solid weight of four score years, and was probably meant by him to be, as it well might be so meant, as the crowning work of a long and useful life. He could have done few things more appropriate and serviceable to mankind. His work has given us in a calm, clear light a true view of a great man, a figure of which we have heretofore only had glimpses, and one, too, that was rapidly vanishing from the vision of the world, and one that the world could poorly afford to lose sight of.
No one is perhaps so well qualified as Victor Schoelcher to perform this work. His years extend back to the time when the character and deeds of Toussaint were much talked of. All that we know of Victor Schoelcher proves that he would be likely to take a deep interest in the misfortunes of a man like Toussaint and endeavour to know all that could be known about him. Not less fitted by fullness of knowledge (as his work shows) than by sympathy with the fallen chief to do justice to his merits. Aside from this, his own history, his name and station are a guarantee of the quality of his work and proof of its value. No temptation of fame or wealth has induced him to write this book. It comes from his pen as [a] labour of love and a contribution to the truth of history. If he has departed a hair’s breadth from the strict line of truth in his estimate of Toussaint, no man who knows him will think for a moment it is due to anything but his intense love of liberty and his equally intense and outspoken hatred of oppression. The Negro, to Mr. Schoelcher, is a man and a man among men, with all the attributes and dignity of manhood. Hence if in this book he has leaned to either side, it is to the side of a deeply wronged people. While, however, he has spoken well of Toussaint and of the race of which he is a conspicuous example, he has been too just and impartial to flatter the variety of the race by imputing to Toussaint qualities which he did not possess. While he has allowed nothing to escape him which could serve to illustrate the greatness of his hero, he has not withheld his faults. Nor has he refrained from exposing in fitting language the terrible crimes of those against whom Toussaint fought.
Nothing other, or less, than this could have been expected from a man like Victor Schoelcher. A man without bigotry or prejudices, and fearless of criticism, a born philanthropist, a friend of progress, a patron of education, a champion of liberty, could do no other than expose and denounce the shocking outrages perpetrated against the Negroes of Santo Domingo.
Schoelcher is to France what Wilberforce was to England, and Sumner was to the United States. The proud position now held by France on the slavery question is largely due to his statesmanship. He had the sagacity to see the golden opportunity for freeing his country from the crime of slavery, and what is better still, he had the moral firmness to improve the opportunity, the courage to strike the blow required at the moment when it could be most effective. This opportunity might have been as plain to other men as to himself, and yet have been lost on various grounds of fancied expediency. No better eulogy could be pronounced upon our author than the way in which he accomplished emancipation in the French colonies.
His agency in that measure stamps him as one of the noblest among the patriots and wisest of the statesmen who took part in the Revolution of 1848. He was at that time a secretary under the provisional government which succeeded the downfall of Louis Philip. It was a time when men in his position did not lack for employment. They were in the midst of pressing affairs. Though Victor Schoelcher was as busy as the busiest of them, he did not forget the slaves of the French Colonies. There was much in the occupation furnished [to] him at home which to another mind than his might have excused forgetfulness of those abroad, but Schoelcher was not of the sort to forget a manifest duty where liberty was concerned, whether at home or abroad; and he pressed upon the colonial minister the duty of freeing the slaves with such eloquence and urgency as at last to bring that scientist and statesman to support and carry out the measure. When told that emancipation would bring on a war of races, Schoelcher said, on the contrary, a failure to emancipate would bring on such a war, and boldly declared that he would advise the slaves to rise if they were not emancipated. It was this bold and lofty spirit of the true statesman of the hour that brought Arago to his support, and it was the hand of this man who wrote the memorable decree, signed by M. Arago, that freed France from all participation in the shame and guilt of slavery, and now the same hand that wrote that decree, has written this voluminous history of the life and times of Toussaint L’Ouverture.
It was my good fortune while in Paris four years ago to have several interviews with the author of this life of Toussaint. I was first introduced to him in the chamber of the French Senate, and afterwards met him on two occasions with Mr. Theodore Stanton at his house. To say I was very much impressed by M. Schoelcher’s conversation, bearing, and surroundings is to say almost nothing. I look back to my calls upon him as among the most interesting and memorable of the many I have had the privilege of making upon distinguished public men in America and in Europe. M. Schoelcher was at that time nearly 80 years old, and though his form implied as much, I found him still about as warmly alive to all that was going on in the world, as if in the midst of his years. He was still in the busy world and taking his full part in it abreast with the men whose locks were unhinged by time and toil. He seemed to have no idea of quitting work on account of declining health or weight of years. It was here I learned of his purpose to write the life of Toussaint L’Ouverture. I confess, in view of his years, his many duties and his engagements as a senator, I felt some amazement at his announcement; but remembering the long lives attained by European statesmen, I could not but hope that his intention would be carried out. So I told him, then and there, if an American edition were published of his work, I would write an introduction to it. In fulfillment of this promise I have written what, I hope, may pass as not an entirely unsuitable introduction of his work to my countrymen.
I learned much of the life and good works of the author while in Paris, and could say much about him and them, but willingly leave this material to the pen of Mr. Theodore Stanton, whom I learn is to write a sketch of the author’s life. I must, however, be allowed to say I was considerably surprised to find in Paris any house having such emblems of barbarism as I found in his. The room in which M. Schoelcher received me was itself eloquent. It proclaimed the character and history of the man more forcibly than any words of mine can do. The walls were decorated with slave-whips, broken chains, fetters, hand-cuffs, and iron collars which had been used on the backs, necks and limbs of slaves. They were sent to him from the colonies by emancipated Negroes, in grateful recognition of the noble liberator’s services in bringing their bondage to an end. There were, too, in the room other evidences of the gratitude of the emancipated people of the colonies to their friend and benefactor. These memorials came from Martinique and Guadeloupe. It was evident that the venerable philanthropist valued highly these grateful testimonials. Several coloured members of the Corps Legislatif called upon him while I was there, and were received by the grand old statesman with dignified cordiality. They came mostly to obtain the benefit of his experience and counsel, and I think showed their wisdom in applying to that source.
At the time of my visit to M. Schoelcher I had no idea that I should be appointed Minister-resident to Hayti, the land of Toussaint L’Ouverture. I am sorry to say, one of the painful impressions made upon me here was the small appreciation in which the memory of Hayti’s greatest man is held in Hayti. His case is another illustration of the scripture saying that a prophet is without honour in his country and among his own kinsmen. In my search for the cause of this lack of grateful remembrance, I found that it was not pretended that Toussaint was not a great man and a friend to the liberty of his people, but it was said that he was a Frenchman and was for keeping his country as a colony of France. It is also alleged that his government was hard in that it insisted upon keeping the productions of the island up to the point at which slavery left them. Small faults these, if faults they were, in comparison with the eminent services performed and the lustre shed on the Negro race by this illustrious personage. This man, like many another Moses, finds his fiercest critics among those he has served best, and on the other hand, the highest appreciation among impartial observers under no special obligations to him.
To his countrymen, his skillful generalship, his enlightened statesmanship, and heroic courage while contending for the liberty of his people, and his splendid vindication of Negro ability, seem to count for nothing in Hayti because of a political difference of opinion, entirely sincere on his part, and which was quite natural to a loyal soul like his. Besides, his allegiance to France was conditional. He was for France with liberty, but against the whole world for the freedom of his people and country.