REVUEDESCOLONIES,MONTHLY COMPENDIUM OF POLITICS,
ADMINISTRATION, JUSTICE, INSTRUCTION AND COLONIAL CUSTOMS,BY A SOCIETY OF MEN OF COLORSOCIETY OF MEN OF COLORDIRECTED BY C.-A. BISSETTEC.-A. BISSETTE.N°6December.PARIS, AT THE OFFICE OF THE
REVUE DES COLONIES,46, RUE NEUVE-SAINT-EUSTACHE1834.
REVUEDES COLONIESON THE FUSION OF THE TWO RACES IN THE COLONIES AND THE CAUSES THAT DELAY IT.The much-to-be-desired fusion of the two races in the colonies cannot truly take place there, given the still little advanced state of their civilization. It is evident that, until, on the one hand, caste prejudices have fallen, and, on the other, the natural resentment born of long oppression has been extinguished, necessity alone will regulate the social relations between men of color and whites. Nevertheless, philosophy and reason, through the unceasing action of a few men of heart and of devotion, will end by showing everyone where evil and error lie, and where truth and remedy are; and, within a span of time surely less distant than some hope and others fear, the work will have become so easy that the all-powerful, maternal impulse of the metropolis alone will suffice to bring it to completion. For it is indeed impossible that, once just grievances have been satisfied, resentments appeased, interests leveled, oppressors disarmed and punished—in a word, rights proclaimed equal and suitably protected by public authority—it is impossible, we say, that the white and Black populations of the colonies should not fraternize and unite in order to cultivate together, to the greatest advantage of all, that land—today their common fatherland—of which a better organization of labor and the development of the eminently social sentiment of human fraternity will make for them a homeland as dear as it is free, industrious, and prosperous. Once slavery is abolished, all these men restored to freedom, initiated through education into the lights and sciences of Europe, so fertile in happy results, will seek—make no doubt of it—in intelligent and free labor sources of prosperity and well-being that may surpass all the calculations of human foresight. Freedom will make of these Blacks, whom their condition alone makes what we see, hardworking laborers, indefatigable cultivators, useful citizens in every branch of
human work. What do they lack? freedom and the tools of labor, which one always ends by acquiring once one possesses it; freedom, the first condition of every happy society; freedom, which corrects itself, enlightens its own faults and heals—like Achilles’ spear—the wounds it makes, and which, together with equality, imposes virtue upon man. There lies, for the colonies, the source of their future destinies and of prosperities perhaps unheard-of. “The slave is everywhere indolent, vicious, and abject; the free man is active, virtuous, and enterprising,” said a celebrated American, one of the most illustrious writers of our age. There is the whole secret of the immobility of slave societies and of the immense activity of societies founded on the practical recognition of everyone’s rights. In the former, the slave is indolent, vicious, and abject indeed—and it cannot be otherwise: for him there is neither honor nor advantage in being anything else. Slavery is for him like Dante’s hell: he left all hope behind upon entering. The master is harsh, haughty, cruel, and no less vicious—by position as well—besides being the first and fatal cause of the other’s degradation and of all his vices. Hated, moreover, by the one whom he exploits without pity, his life is a continual apprehension. This is not a free man; he too is a slave—guilty, since he is forced to be a tyrant—locked in perpetual struggle with his conscience or with the perilous necessities of his situation, eternally threatened, and therefore without security or true freedom. Such a social state is intolerable, especially in this century, when freedom and equality are the foundations of public law among all civilized peoples; it is a detestable exception that cannot endure.
As for the present fusion of the two free classes, the first step toward a better future, as we have already said, it cannot truly take place in the colonies of the Antilles until the government of the metropolis seriously intends to clear away the obstacles that stand in its way—something which today, it cannot be denied, it seems to have only very modestly at heart.
We shall point out some of these obstacles, persuaded
that publicity can be, in this as in everything, only salutary. The first and greatest is the composition of the royal courts. The members of these courts exercise an unfortunate influence over the mass of the privileged class. If we take as our only example the composition
of the royal court of the MartiniqueMartinique, one is convinced that there will never be any possible agreement between the two rival classes. So long as this court is not completely renewed in keeping with the new spirit, so long as magistrates are retained whose obvious interest is to convict in all political accusations, and whose ill will and hateful passions are a matter of public notoriety, there will be neither peace nor truce to hope for between the opposing parties.
The poor selection of governors and of the principal authorities, who for the most part go to seek their fortune in the colonies, is also one of the causes that prevent the fusion. In order to remain in their post for as long as possible, the governors ordinarily place themselves at the service of the aristocratic party—called by the whites themselves the oligarchy of the country. These governors, most of them weak, timid, or little educated, often lacking the simplest knowledge in matters of administration and government, are obliged to entrust themselves to schemers sold to the aristocratic party or chosen within this oligarchy; in reality they are only the responsible publishers of a few influential men who govern as they please and at the whim of their passions.If the choice of governors were made with generous and forward-looking aims, among men devoted to the true principle of the revolution, the fusion would take place little by little; but to find these men, one must not look for them only within the narrow cadre of the navy’s general officers; the Ministry of the Navy must not yield to the intrigues of the colonial coterie that sits in Paris, that coterie which, all-powerful in the Navy offices—one knows not by what strange influence—makes, unmakes, and remakes at will the governors and everything that pertains to the internal administration of the colonies. It would therefore be fitting, for the purpose we propose, to choose as governor only administrators—enlightened and capable men—seeking above all the common good, and imbued with political principles and sociability whose propagation is so necessary in the colonies. If the governors of the colonies did not themselves display a foolish and stupid prejudice against Blacks and men of color, the colonial aristocracy would yield little by little and its repugnances would disappear.
But what have the governors done since the July Revolution to bring about the fusion? Nothing. In the MartiniqueMartinique, after 1830, the theater had become accessible to men of color as to whites; but, in order to avoid contact between whites and mulattoes, the director was paid a sum of 20,000 francs so that he would not perform. This sum was taken from the treasury, and yet men of color pay the tax just like whites. At the same moment, authorization was formally refused to young men of color to stage bourgeois comedy and to have an amateur theater society—an authorization that some men of color had the simplicity to request. Later, dramatic artists open a show, but entry this time is refused to men of color, on the pretext that it is a subscription-based private theater (1). They are driven from the church at certain solemnities where whites alone are admitted.In the GuadeloupeGuadeloupe, men of color have been turned away from cafés to make room for whites alone, and the authorities have converted these public establishments into private gatherings in order to exclude mulattoes. Fights ensue; the young men of color are driven back with brutality by armed force; they are arrested and imprisoned.Local ordinances that prevented men of color, in the MartiniqueMartinique, from appearing on certain promenades reserved for whites were abolished by the July Revolution. But the aristocracy of that colony resisted, and men of color were forced to come to blows with it in order to win such a right. Is that not incredible?Despite the ordinances that grant the qualification of sieur and dame—until now refused to men of color in public acts—the authorities resisted for a long time to comply with this formula of politeness. It took explicit orders from the Minister of the Navy to overcome the ill will of ministerial officers and of the civil registry. The aristocracy has rejected primary education established in the colonies of the MartiniqueMartinique and of the GuadeloupeGuadeloupe. The governors yielded to this demand of the colonists, who do not want there to
3) See no. 5 of the revue des colonies, page 43
open schools for the oppressed classes: the directors sent from FranceFrance by the Minister of the Navy to establish these schools were obliged to leave the colonies.Administrative officials and European magistrates fraternize with men of color; they receive them at dinner. A governor (his name must be given, to brand him), M. DupotetM. Dupotet, has these officials deported on the complaint of a Creole prosecutor general. This prosecutor general had, shortly before, carried out a ruling of the royal court that sentenced a poor enslaved woman to the lash for having sung La Parisienne (1), without the governor placing the slightest obstacle in the way.Young Creole lawyers and Europeans who want progress in the colonies are paralyzed in their generous efforts; their independence is null before the retrograde party, called oligarchy. There is no possible future for them if they dare to show themselves men of progress. In their pleadings before the courts, they are constantly obliged to be circumspect, never to plead for a man of color or an enslaved person with that ardor and that momentum of conviction; they must plead only for mitigating circumstances, because the royal court—composed of magistrates who want fusion only with scaffolds and the executioner—calls to order or insolently reprimands the courageous lawyer who dares to plead with conscientious energy. From then on, no future for them—only tedium, persecutions, and disgusts of every kind.Such are the principal obstacles which, in those French colonies we know most particularly, delay this fusion, which we rightly consider one of the greatest advances that can be accomplished there. Sincerely desiring the union and fraternity of the two races in the colonies, however great our confidence may otherwise be in the near and universal triumph of philosophy and reason, it is painful to us—and we lament with good cause—to see the government of the metropolis do so little to hasten this triumph in lands where its action could be exercised in so direct and so decisive a manner.
(1) This punishment was carried out by the executioner. To flog a woman naked in the public square—such are the mores of our colonies.
SLAVERY IN OUR COLONIES IS HARSHER AND MORE INHUMANE THAN THAT OF ANY PEOPLE OF ANTIQUITY.The most general and most ordinary cause of slavery among the ancient peoples was war. The law of nations of that period allowed the victor to dispose of his prisoners. Instead of taking their lives, he preserved them on the condition that they serve him. Slavery was thus only the ransom of life. Since the chances had been equal, and the fortune of arms alone had decided, the vanquished submitted to his condition with less repugnance; it was a consolation for his misfortune: his master, for the same reason, lightened the weight of his servitude.Slaves, being subjected to the harshest despotism—the kind that weighs of one individual upon his fellow—have at all times been condemned to satisfy in turn the pride, avarice, insolence, and cruelty of their masters. Some, however, enjoyed a gentler lot, depending on the character of their masters or the civilization of the people among whom they lived.Among the Egyptians, for example, the laws interposed their salutary mediation between the master’s fury and the oppressed slave; they severely punished attempts against his life. The temple of Hercules was constantly open to slaves, who sought there an asylum against the persecutions of their masters.The lawgiver of the Jews was more favorable still to slaves. He made gentleness toward them an obligation. He ordained that ill-treatment should be a sufficient cause for the emancipation of slaves. Under the law of that people, a man’s slavery could last only until the sabbatical year, so that he could not be a slave for more than six years and often much less,The gentle mores of the Athenians—their civilization, their enlightenment—made them worthy to give Europe examples of humanity toward slaves, just as they gave it their masterpieces in the liberal arts. The law among them had fixed the price of emancipations and given slaves means to accumulate savings that would allow them to buy themselves back. Emancipation was also their reward for services rendered to private individuals or to the republic.
Did a master push his power to the point of barbarity? Athens had a temple dedicated to Theseus, where slaves could take refuge until the magistrate had ruled on the offense of which they complained. Slaves could also bring suits in their own name against citizens who had caused them some wrong; in a word, they enjoyed all the privileges inseparable from good laws in a country where justice and love of order were preferred to influence and wealth. Thus there was in Athens only a single slave revolt during the entire duration of the republic; whereas the Spartans, whom a false policy led to mistreat the helots, and who often massacred them solely in order to accustom themselves to blood, more than once ran the greatest danger from the desperate efforts slaves made to recover their liberty.So long as the Romans remained faithful to virtue—the true principle and foundation of the republic—they treated their slaves with gentleness. They were just and moderate with them. If they discovered in them seeds of genius, far from taking offense, they sought to develop it by having them instructed in belles lettres and the liberal arts. Such is the education that produced Phaedrus and Terence. These slaves were permitted to devote their leisure to a lucrative trade, and when they had amassed a sum sufficient to buy themselves back, their ransom was never refused.A despotic government having succeeded that of a free and generous people, the subjugation of the masters made the yoke of the slaves heavier. It was in that period that gladiatorial combats became the Romans’ favorite spectacle, and that one saw on their stages as many as two thousand slaves or prisoners of war expire at once.I am reluctant to speak of the servitude of our forefathers. If they were humiliated for a long time, they also bequeathed to all the slaves of the world a great example to follow: they broke their irons, and with the fragments of their chains they sacrificed their tyrants.Bringing this brief analysis of the condition of slaves among the different peoples of antiquity into comparison with the account we have given of the treatment endured by Blacks in the colonies, it follows evidently that the latter are more unhappy and treated with less humanity.
The climate of Italy and that of Greece are the finest and the healthiest. Can they be compared to that burning tropical sun under which Africans are condemned to labor? Cultivation in the colonies is far more difficult and more painful than in Europe.Let us grant that the punishments of the ancients were as cruel, as terrible as those of the colonies; that the blood of slaves flowed under their blows, as it is spilled every day by planters; at least they had the hope that their torments would have an end: they could create a small fund and obtain their manumission, whereas the dreadful “never” is pronounced for Blacks.Among the Romans, the master’s simple declaration, made in temples or before the praetors, was sufficient to obtain freedom, and that freedom was not restricted like that of men of color in the colonies. Freedmen passed at once into the condition of citizens and shared in all the privileges of the city. The patent of freedom in GuadeloupeGuadeloupe is a certificate of infamy, a title that stains the origin of the freed: “savanna freedom” is an abuse, a sign of the perfidy and egoism of the colonists. They have made of it a mixed, vicious condition, incompatible with a well-established public order and with true liberal ideas. It is a new line of demarcation in favor of the colonial aristocracy—the most ridiculous and the most absurd of all—for there, as M. de LabordeM. de Laborde has said, it has no motive other than difference of color.The slaves of antiquity practiced the liberal arts and could engage in commerce; they were secretaries, clerks, architects, and authors. Aleman, Epictetus, Aesop, Phaedrus, and Terence did not see their genius stifled by the despotism of their masters. Woe to the slave who, in the colonies, could so much as read and write! Every kind of suspicion would hover over him without cease: one would fear correspondence, revelations on his part; death or a perpetual dungeon would be his only prospect.Among the Athenians and among the Egyptians, magistrates received slaves’ complaints against the excesses and furies of their masters; temples, as we have said, were always open and offered them an inviolable asylum against brutality
and injustice. In our colonies, Blacks are men struck with civil death, inventoried like oxen, horses, and ploughing implements; they are the master’s property, an automaton driven by springs, an agent that receives the impulse and moves, pressed by a superior force: it is the lowest degree of abjection and debasement.This leads us to an objection found on every tongue and which the colonists exploit with skill. Everyone has an interest, it is said, in preserving his property. Can one then conceive that, cheerfully, and to satisfy a whim, one would consent to sacrifice one’s fortune? Planters should not mistreat their slaves any more than their livestock; and if they seek to preserve an ox or a horse, why would you have them be indifferent to the loss of a slave, who costs them more and whom they replace with greater difficulty?This argument seems strong, and it is only specious. In the colonies, property does not have the stability it presents in France: hurricanes, wars, the diseases that ravage those lands—those scourges, constantly threatening—give everyone the desire to make of them only a place of passage. There, each seeks to liquidate in order to return to France: it takes stubborn labor to amass capital; one must grow rich quickly to shorten the time of exile. Negroes are precisely the passive instruments of this immoderate desire for riches; they are the machines used in this kind of exploitation. Moderate labor would delay too much; it is forced, and the expedients are rigor, a harsh and terrible discipline. In four years, the Negro pays what he cost, and since the remainder of his life is pure profit for the master, he is employed without respite and without consideration. He is a post-horse that must arrive on time, driven by the whip! What does it matter if he suffers, what does it matter if he dies at the end of the run, provided he arrives.This comparison is crushing for you, gentlemen planters: your domestic animals receive from your hands—less miserly for them—food sufficient for their needs, while your Negroes are obliged to ask it furtively of the earth, in the moments of rest and during the most scorching heat of the day. Besides, are your oxen and your horses
torn by whip blows like your Negroes? Do you make their blood spurt with the same ferocity? For them there is neither narrow, foul dungeon nor four stakes, nor chains, nor iron collars armed with spikes, nor all those refinements invented by your barbarity! You do not fear from them a revolt or a claim to rights: these animals are submissive because they must be; but for your slaves you would fear compromising your authority if indulgence were to take the place, for a moment, of your severe temper. You know that, in the depths of these human hearts, the idea of human dignity always germinates, that a noble hope is never extinguished there; a spark would produce a conflagration capable of consuming you. It is therefore necessary, by force of punishments, to surround them with a permanent terror, and they suffer, and they die under your blows.I will not demean myself by answering those who have had little enough modesty to dare to compare the slaves of the colonies to our peasants. They extol to us the happiness of slaves; I would take them at their word, despite what I have seen, if, following the example of several figures in history, they wish to share the happiness of that condition. Diocletian and Cyrus the Younger made themselves gardeners out of sympathy for the inhabitants of the countryside; Peter the Great made himself a carpenter to study shipbuilding. Let the partisans of slavery follow these illustrious examples; let them go to America—if they are there, the thing will be easier—and let them share for some time the lot of those they claim so happy. After this trial, I shall defer to their assertions, if they persist. I therefore urge them to experience the leniency of the overseers, the voluptuousness of whip blows, the taste of a foul cod, nakedness, downpours, misery, the caprices of insolence, the furies of brutality—and then, if they have wives or daughters, the inexpressible charm of being made to satisfy at will the fancies of their tyrants.X. TANC,
former magistrate in GuadeloupeGuadeloupe.
HISTORICAL DOCUMENT.THE LAST THREE CONSPIRACIES IN GUADELOUPEAt the very moment when, in MartiniqueMartinique, the bloodthirsty passions of the white rulers—who style themselves magistrates—have just shown themselves in all their avidity for vengeance, allow us to recall the spirit of prudence, if not of justice, which, in a neighboring colony, has, within the space of a few years, presided over the judgment of three alleged conspiracies, in which were implicated first men of color, then slaves, and finally, most recently, whites.To recount the history of the last three conspiracies in GuadeloupeGuadeloupe is to recount that of most of those that have erupted in all the colonies. Fortunate are those which have contained within their bosom only magistrates and assessors intelligently impartial, like those of GuadeloupeGuadeloupe, and which did not wish to add to the ridiculousness of the accusation the atrocity of the punishment!In 1829, eleven free individuals of color, from the commune of Sainte-Anne, were brought before the assize court of the district of Pointe-à-Pitre. The charge bore the title of a conspiracy tending to bring massacre into the colony and to the destruction of the white class!What was the crime? The facts, as they were revealed by the debates—which, like all those of this kind, presented the hideous and disgusting spectacle of false testimony, arbitrary arrests, violations of domiciles, of private papers, ordered outside the case of flagrante delicto by the military authority—will teach us.A review of the militia dragoons, who at that time were the praetorian soldiers of the Creole aristocracy, among whom whites alone could be enrolled, had been ordered—not on the public square of the borough of Sainte-Anne, which was to be the place of assembly, but on an estate where, as was customary, the dragoons had drunk like Swiss. The fumes of wine and tafia, combined, having heated their heads, free speech followed,
and among the reckless remarks produced by drunkenness, several fanatics proposed, on their return, to fall upon the men of color, who for some time past had, they said, become very insolent. Others having joined in chorus with them, a dragoon whose head was cooler than that of his comrades, and who had received services from several persons of color, rode at full gallop to Sainte-Anne and gave warning of these dispositions—dispositions which it was perhaps not in the thought of those who had conceived them to carry out. The men of color grew alarmed and resolved to defend themselves if they were attacked. They armed themselves, not to be aggressors, but so as to be able to oppose force to violence. A few imprudent words were uttered; one of them, recently emerged from slavery, in turn warned the whites of what was happening. The men of color were arrested, imprisoned, and accused of conspiracy...... Like the whites, they were guilty of panic terror. They were unanimously acquitted.When, after the glorious days of July 1830, the hope of a better future entered all minds, the slaves too dreamed of freedom, or at least of some relief from their sufferings. Agents provocateurs, taking advantage of their natural disposition toward insurrection, persuaded them that the metropolitan government had granted them three days of rest per week, but that the local aristocracy had succeeded in neutralizing the effect of this concession by preventing the governor from promulgating the royal ordinance. It was easy to stir the slaves to a few expressions of discontent, to a few exclamations of independence. That was the basis of a charge of conspiracy. A Creole prosecutor-general was found who, in the indictment—a masterpiece of ignorance and ineptitude—made it a crime that a few slaves brought before the assize court had learned to read and write. It is true, as a national poet says with force, that:
“One does not educate the one one wishes to keep enslaved.
The alphabet is deadly to absolute powers,
And man wants his rights as soon as he has read them.”
In this circumstance, as in the preceding one, the assize
court did not allow itself to be influenced by colonial prejudices, and there was acquittal as well.The third conspiracy—would one believe it?—was the work of a governor. It is true that, although of age, he acted without discernment, and that from then on public opinion had to absolve him, just as the accused were absolved by the jury’s verdict.Listen—and laugh, or rather shudder!After fires that had taken place in MartiniqueMartinique in 1851 had provided the assize court of that colony with a matter it did not disdain, there were found in GuadeloupeGuadeloupe combustible materials near an old abandoned and isolated hut, to which fire had been set, though it had made no progress. On the other hand, hedges were burned, without it being possible to know whether malice or imprudence had presided over the event.The governor of that colony then issued an order according to which freedom was promised to any slave, and a sum of three thousand francs to any free person, who would make known the authors of fires that might break out at various points of GuadeloupeGuadeloupe. This was to offer a bounty to denunciation: it answered the call.Young Nelson is accused of having wished to set fire to a carpentry workshop in which he had worked as an apprentice. The Negro Jean-Baptiste saw him at the moment when, crouched in a corner of the shop, he was striking a flint to light wood shavings destined for the fire. The glow of the sparks lit up his face and allowed him to discern his features. He moved toward him in order to seize him; but at that very instant he was struck by a bullet that passed through the flesh of his thigh. He fell, and Nelson fled by opening one of the doors of the shop. The report of the weapon was heard by the neighbors: the Negro lay on the floorboards, gravely wounded; the preparations for the fire were found in the corner of the workshop from which the shot was said to have come. Jean-Baptiste named Nelson as his murderer, and he persisted in that declaration until his death, which followed his wound. The bullet extracted from the wound was wrapped in paper; that paper contained the first three letters of Nelson’s name. The accusation appeared plausible: it was not true. The debates show that Jean-Baptiste
longed for freedom; that since the promulgation of the governor’s order he had announced that very soon he would no longer be a slave; that he had asked several individuals whether a bullet in the flesh would cause much pain; that the three letters written on the paper extracted from the wound, and which appeared there several times repeated, were those of the word n'était (the ignorant instructor had not noticed the stroke of the t, which, however, was clearly marked); that this handwriting was not by Nelson’s hand, Nelson who did not even know how to read. Finally, the latter established an alibi. He was unanimously acquitted by the court, which remained convinced that Jean-Baptiste had wounded himself in order to obtain his freedom by an infamous means, by devoting Nelson to the scaffold. The wretch paid the penalty of his misdeed. In vain had he wrapped in paper the very small bullet with which he loaded the pistol, because, in his coarse thinking, it was to cause less harm thus concealed. Providence willed that this bullet cut an artery. He died.Ruined by debts and tormented by his creditors, a naval clerk, attached to the service of one of the state vessels, read the governor’s order. This order became for him an anchor of salvation: to create an incendiary conspiracy and then denounce its authors—four in number, himself included—receive, as the price of denunciation, 1,200 francs: such is his fixed idea. He pursues its execution with an awkward perseverance. He rents several apartments in different quarters of Basse-Terre, deposits incendiary devices in these apartments, gives a dinner to a sailor from the ship on which he is embarked, to a non-commissioned artillery officer, and to a soldier of the 58th regiment, his compatriots. The meeting had been signaled in advance to the authorities; its aim had been indicated: to confer on the day on which fire would be set at various points of the city, already placed under the impression of terror by the burning of a few fragments of the roof of the clerk’s office of the court of first instance, situated opposite an infantry post, which from the first moment was able to master the progress of the flame. The imaginary accomplices of the informer—whose minds had been altered by the abuse of strong liquors with which they had been previously stuffed—remember nothing; but the splendor of the dinner, ordered with ostentation, compromised them. The combustible preparations found in the various lodgings of the naval clerk serve
as auxiliaries to his accusation, in which he does not hesitate to include himself as the repentant chief of the conspiracy, while concluding that the benefit of the remunerative order be applied in his favor.After three days of solemn debates, the judges and assessors could not bring themselves to any conviction—not even that of the wretch caught in flagrante delicto of calumny and the most infamous turpitude.Such facts speak with eloquence; they carry with them their lesson. There at least, whatever the opinion of the judges may have been, they recoiled before the monstrosity of the accusation; they did not dare to give the world the hideous spectacle of those scandalous convictions in which the judges’ interest plainly dominates the entire case. The judges and assessors of GuadeloupeGuadeloupe showed, in these three grave circumstances, some measure of judicial loyalty. In MartiniqueMartinique, it is not so; far from it. There they pride themselves on having fewer scruples: scaffolds are raised there with marvelous ease, and the oppressors walk with heads held high, always escorted by the executioner. Thus do we believe that, although the colonists of the first of these islands may be, perhaps to the same degree as their neighbors, imbued with the prejudices against which we have raised our standard, when the day comes when right and usurpation must settle their accounts in the colonies, there at least the voice of the blood of innumerable martyrs will not rise up to accuse, to curse, and to call for blood!ON THE RETENTION OF CERTAIN JUDGES IN THE COLONIES.It is a very sad subject for reflection, this obstinate retention, as judges in the colonies, of certain men who have for a long time inscribed their names in letters of blood in the judicial annals of those unfortunate lands. One therefore asks by what strange and all-powerful influence these retrograde men are kept in office, despite the most just grievances and in spite of their removable status—men whose opposition to the spirit and the letter of the new legislation does not even, in most cases, take care to conceal itself.
One cannot understand why the naval offices, which cannot plead ignorance, have not long since done justice upon the prevaricating judges to whom we allude, and whom the majority of the colonial population, white and of color, rejects with contempt and points out as one of the most active causes of the divisions and hatreds by which the country is riven. From several quarters we have received, on this score, more than expressions of astonishment: we have received assertions, founded on very plausible reasonings, which tend to nothing less than to gravely compromise the honor of highly placed men, as exercising the strange influence that maintains—against all reason—judicial power in the hands of a few men notoriously and exclusively devoted to the interests of the oppressive caste over the African race to which we belong, thus delivering entirely into these men’s hands the destinies of numerous populations.These rumors, we say, spread and gain credit more each day among the public, which can evidently attribute to motives of little honor only that high protection under which our masters and lords invested with judicial power in the colonies, a quasi-sovereign power, one may say, take shelter; and by means of which, by confining themselves within certain legal formalities that escape cassation, they have people hanged and strangled until death follows—those whom they provoke as enemies. In such a state of affairs, it is natural to think that the rulers shrink from no sort of sacrifice, and that too is what we are assured takes place. Those among them who possess great fortune (and names have been cited) would, it is said, at certain times make a considerable outlay of funds, in order not to be dispossessed of that judicial power of which they are above all jealous—as we have said previously, for what reason.Moreover, the greater the incrimination that results from these rumors, the more those over whom they naturally hover ought to seek the means to destroy them. Those means are very simple. Let them cease granting aid and favor to the colonial oligarchy and to certain removable magistrates who do not enjoy the confidence of the country; let them renew, in accordance with the spirit of our present institutions, the courts and tribunals of the colonies; and then these rumors will fall. But until then, let them not be surprised to be in a state of permanent suspicion. Indeed it cannot be otherwise. It is impossible that, when atrocious men—named a thousand times for acts that have aroused public opinion against them—when men not only devoid of progressive capacity and a spirit of conciliation, but who have even become almost notorious for their cruelty, are maintained in functions where they do nothing but harm, and always harm, those who with a word could make that harm disappear should not be suspected of acting, in a matter so important, under the stigmatizing influence of corruption.
These grave suspicions are most powerfully corroborated by a consideration of great weight. The judges of whom we wish to speak—colonists and slave owners—are thus maintained, we say, despite incredible acts of malfeasance; the Ministry of the Navy covers them with its approval and with a favor that does not falter. But let a European magistrate wish to fulfill his duty rigorously by enforcing the repressive law against the slave trade; let him protect slaves with the law in hand; let him point out acts of peculation, finally display some independence in the exercise of his functions; let him permit himself only to dine with men of color (an enormous crime!)—he is immediately dismissed, brutally sent back from the colony, and his complaint expires in those same offices which have only indulgence and protection for Creole magistrates. On the one hand, malfeasance and injustice may be exercised with impunity; one does not even have words of blame for it. On the other, independence is punished like an offense, and without further form of trial one strikes the man who has been guilty of it:
“Convicted only of the detested crime
Of having loved, served, sung freedom.”
In the presence of such facts, moral conviction cannot be commanded. So much the worse for the men whom that conviction strikes! We could not, in the interest of a cause that for us dominates all considerations of detail, hesitate for a moment to deliver these facts to the meditation of our readers.
SAD OUTCOME OF THE TRIAL OF GRAND'ANSEGRAND'ANSE.The recent decision of the Court of Cassation rejecting the appeal of our unfortunate compatriots of Grand'AnseGrand'Anse, and which is about to bring terror and sorrow into the families of these wretched people, is founded solely on the fact that all legal formalities were observed by the judges of MartiniqueMartinique in the proceedings that led to their horrifying judgment. The Court’s decision strikingly demonstrates all that is tragic in the exceptional regime to which the colonies are subjected. Thus, we have the Court of Cassation driven to sanction the monstrous iniquity of the so-called assize court of Saint-PierreSaint-Pierre, because judges, assessors, and witnesses did not violate, in a sufficiently established manner, the forms imposed by the ordinance of 24 September 1828! Form has prevailed over substance, of which the supreme court could not be called upon to take cognizance, and thus men’s blood will flow because, this time, the Martiniquan judges knew how to confine themselves within the circle of obligatory formalities!This constitutes the indictment of that supposed organization which, in a sense, vests with the right of life and death men who are not the peers, but the enemies, of most of those they judge. That is a ground for cassation that may fail before the supreme court, but it will not fail before the tribunal of reason. For our part, it is the supposed organization by virtue of which all this has been done that we attack. For it is not, indeed, a law worthy of respect for the populations of the colonies, this judicial organization that is not the expression of their will, that was made without them and against them by an ordinance of the Restoration. That too must be the constant object of our opposition. We want freedom and equality for the colonies, as the parties to whom the future belongs want them in Europe. We want them full and entire, correcting and containing one another, resulting from the practical implementation of equal rights, because from these principles alone will be born for us an era of justice and happiness. If all the oppressed of our race were truly imbued with this truth and united their efforts to bring that time forward; if, in the face of the misfortunes that so cruelly afflict some of our colonies, those concerned would reflect that these very misfortunes arise from their exclusion
from rights (rights imprescriptible for them), and were to demand unceasingly, with intelligence, perseverance, and firmness, the exercise of those rights, the obstinacy of their oppressors would soon be overcome, and we would have fewer misfortunes to lament in the future! It is in just right and in reason that we must have faith; it is by them that we shall prevail. And if our brothers die (God forbid, for all hope is not lost of saving them), let us weep for them, and not lose heart! Let us take up again, with more energy and ardor than ever, the defense of a cause that has such martyrs. Let each have confidence in his strength and in his will, and do all that lies within him to triumph, through intelligence and philosophy, for want of other weapons, over the oppression of a race whose power is made solely by our lack of unity and our moral inertia. The future is ours!Let our unfortunate brothers hope nonetheless; all is not yet finished for them!ENGLAND.The Revue des Colonies, in one of its most recent issues, made known the keen sympathy that its publications have inspired in the Society for Universal Emancipation of London; we are pleased to publish today the program of this honorable Society, as well as the names of the members who compose it.THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN SOCIETY FOR THE UNIVERSAL ABOLITION OF NEGRO SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE.The committee, chaired by the Reverend George STEPHEN, is com
posé of Messrs.AGGS (Henry), esq., London.
BARRETT (Richard), esq., ditto. Cambridge. COOPER (Emanuel), esq., ditto. COOPER (Joseph), esq., ditto. Cox, REV. Dn., ditto.
DIXON, REV. JAMES, ditto. ELLIOTT, J. S., ditto.. S., esq.,
PRICE, REV. THOMAS, ditto. STEPHEN (George), esq., ditto. SEARS (Robert), esq., ditto. WILSON (Joseph), esq., ditto. STUART (Captain), London.
EDWARDS (William), esq., ditto. WARDLAW, REV. DR., Glascow. HELGH, REV. DR., ditto.
FARISH, the Reverend Professor,
EATON (Joseph), esq., Bristol.
WEST (Arthur), esq., Bath. BLAIR (William), esq., ditto.
STURGE (Joseph), esq., Birmingham.
EDMONDS (Cyrus), esq., ditto. JAMES, REV. JOHN ANGELL, ditto.
JOHNSTON (James), esq., ditto.
CARLILE, REV. JAMES, Belfast. Moonson (Richard), esq., Whit by.
TO THE SOCIETIES WHOSE AIM IS THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY, AND TO THE FRIENDS OF THE EMANCIPATION OF NEGROES.Several friends of humanity have deemed it necessary to prolong the existence of the societies established for the defense and emancipation of Negroes.Although slavery is abolished, and probably forever in our colonies, not only must the manner of applying the measures ordered be supervised, but sustained efforts are still needed in order to protect, in the future, the Negro in the enjoyment of the rights that have been recognized for him. It has also been considered that, since slavery is proscribed by no other civilized nation, it is necessary to bring to bear the moral influence of Great BritainGreat Britain to effect everywhere its most immediate and most complete abolition possible. The profound conviction of our religious duties, which has enabled us to obtain so much success in our own country, must inspire in us the same zeal in seeking all legitimate means to attain the same end abroad. Slavery, wherever it exists, is the same moral deformity; it is the same crime before God; and it must be regarded with execration and condemned with boldness by every man who professes the principles of Christianity.Moreover, there is rising at this moment in the Northern States of the Union a powerful and almost unforeseen interest in favor of the slaves.We believe we ought to cite here a few facts little known to the public.The number of slaves in America exceeds two millionIn some places (as for example in South Carolina) education is forbidden to them by law, and a free man of color has no right to set foot on the territory. The testimony of a slave has no value, except when it serves to convict another slave. Trial by jury is not admitted there, even in capital cases. Finally, obstacles so insurmountable have been placed in the way of emancipation that even if a slaveholder, good and conscientious, wishes to rid himself of his iniquitous property, he has the law against him; he dares not, he cannot emancipate
his slave unless he banishes him from his home and his family; for, to emancipate him, he must first take him to another state and exile him forever. The condition of free people of color in America, whose number exceeds 300,000, is also truly pitiable. Their acquired privileges are of little importance and little regarded, their degradation is intolerable, and their progressive banishment from the states is generally regarded as a maxim of national policy. We are still obliged to add that the traffic in human beings continues within the country with all the most abject and most disgusting incidents. Husbands and wives, mothers and children are publicly offered for sale, bargained over and examined like cattle, and then separated from one another forever, with the same indifference as if it were a matter of the sheep or oxen in our markets.It was easy to foresee that such a state of affairs could not fail to awaken in America the sympathy and indignation of the friends of humanity. But unfortunately people there are so accustomed to slavery, the national contempt for men of color has such deep roots, that to this day that indignation makes little progress, even in the Northern States, despite the most energetic efforts of worthy men. When they have tried to bring about a revolution in public opinion, they have encountered nowhere either encouragement or help.However, far from losing heart, they have recently established at PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia a National Society for the abolition of slavery; unfortunately the number of members is too small in proportion to the immense extent of the country which must be the object of the Society’s labors, and the modesty of its pecuniary resources makes one fear great difficulties in pursuing this generous undertaking. This Society requests our assistance. Several of its members have been eyewitnesses to the miraculous successes that the blessing of the Almighty has permitted us to obtain in our country, and they have resolved to follow our example. Their aim is to spread their principles throughout all the States by the means of the press and preaching, to stir and direct the efforts of all men who profess the same principles, by creating associations affiliated with the central Society; they have decided, moreover, to adhere conscientiously to the principle that slavery, being a crime before God, must be abolished as such, the principle that has always served as the basis of our actions.The committee could not remain indifferent to the appeal of this generous Society; and when the hope of joining with it and lending it help decided us to prolong the existence and action of our own, numerous letters, arriving from several parts of the country, enabled us to judge that our view of this great cause had found an echo throughout the country. In some places, the committee has even been surpassed; at LiverpoolLiverpool and in ScotlandScotland especially, considerable sums have already been subscribed; and the need for a central committee to coordinate and set operations in motion was evident and indispensable. The committee assembled amid these circumstances and, after a considered examination of its future work, reorganized itself by adopting the name of British and Foreign Society for the Universal Abolition of Negro Slavery and the Slave Trade.This title clearly sets out our aim, and we hope for the help and assistance of all good men in our country. We regard it as the first of our duties to support the abolition of slavery in America by all the means that can make it triumph; we shall send distinguished preachers, and we shall propagate, by every possible means, the lively interest that is beneficial to so worthy a cause.The Society desires to become the organ of the voice of our enslaved and suffering brothers over the whole surface of the world. It will seek to unveil and bring to light the secrets of prisons and the cries of distress of the Negro exposed to the tortures of the tropical sun or chained in the abysses of the mines of Peru. We firmly believe that, by constantly arousing the attention of the public, we shall assist the protective influence that Parliament must retain over the rigorous observance of our laws and treaties, whose salutary provisions, intended to prevent the slave trade, often remain without execution in ministerial offices. We also believe that the impulse given by Great BritainGreat Britain will induce other countries to follow the noble example we offer them.We feel all that is difficult, even presumptuous, in our hopes; but is it possible to forget that the e
mancipation of our colonies was regarded a few years ago as a dream of enthusiastic visionaries, or at most as an imaginary and impracticable utopia. Yet God has blessed our labors, though we had no other guides than the principles of Christianity, and no other aid than a few subscriptions. Encouraged by popular opinion, we have realized this dream of imagination, and after a few years colonial slavery has disappeared, if not everywhere and completely, at least forever in certain lands.Full of confidence in divine protection, and conscientiously relying on the same Christian principle, we shall seek no other means to obtain the far greater and nobler triumph to which we now aspire; and we declare that we are guided by the holy book of the Bible, in seeking to bring about THE COMPLETE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE WORLD, ““not by force, not by power, but by my spirit,” said the Lord of heaven.” The president, George STEPHEN. The secretary, John SCOBLE.Persons who wish to assist the Societythe Society are requested to send their subscriptions to M. Scoble, 18, Aldermanbury, London; or in Paris, postage paid, to the president of the Society for Christian Morality, 12, rue Taranne.FRANCE.PARIS.COURT OF CASSATION.Hearing of 22 November. Presided over by M. de BastardM. de Bastard.APPEAL OF THE CONVICTED OF GRAND'ANSEGRAND'ANSE (MARTINIQUE.)After several successive adjournments, the examination of this great case had been set for Saturday, 22 November. During these delays,
M. Prosecutor General Dupin had the documents transmitted to him. It was rumored that he was to speak in this trial, which perhaps has no example in the annals of the supreme court. At the sitting definitively announced, of which we are about to give our readers an account, the bench of the public prosecutor’s office was occupied by M. Parant, advocate-general, the court sitting under the presidency of M. de Bastard.One notes the absence of M. Councillor Mérilhou, whom a painful and very recent loss prevented from attending the hearing. M. Councillor Isambert is also one of the magistrates whom one seeks with anxiety within the court: his seat is empty. It is soon learned that this honorable magistrate is abstaining, and that the Keeper of the Seals and the Prosecutor General have sought his recusal, on the ground that, in a letter to the men of color of Martinique, written in his capacity as deputy, M. Isambert had expressed in advance an opinion on one of the grounds of appeal, that of amnesty (1).Many men of color are present at the bar, among whom two are particularly noticed, living examples of the furies of another era, now reproduced a decade later in the events of Grand'Anse. One also sees behind the rail M. Macaulay, of the Anti-Slavery Society of London, and MM. John Scoble and James Copper, members of the British and Foreign Society for the Abolition of Slavery. On the rapporteur’s desk lies the enormous case file, bearing in giant letters these words: “Insurrection de la Grand' Anse”.M. Councillor de Ricard begins his report, the reading of which lasts about three hours. We shall not follow this magistrate through the general outline of the facts that he sketches in broad strokes, and the grounds of appeal that he analyzes with impartiality. The facts are today well known, after all the contradictory publications to which they have given rise; we can do no better than to refer, on this point, to the Memoir of Me Gatine that we
(1) The publicity given to this letter is not, as M. Dupin claims, the fault of M. Isambert. M. Fabien, representative of the men of color of Martinique, to whom the letter was delivered, believed he ought to publish it in the interest of his constituents.
announced in our last issue. As for the numerous grounds for cassation, the pleadings that we shall report succinctly and the judgment will make them sufficiently known. On the ground of amnesty, the rapporteur read several documents transmitted to the court by the Minister of the Navy, including in particular a letter from the former governor Dupotet, denying the orders and full powers he had given to Captain Montigny, sent to meet the insurrection in order to settle this matter by all suitable means; then another letter from Rear-Admiral Halgan, the current governor, who was not in Martinique at the time of the events of December 1833, and who nonetheless certifies that the insurgents were in no way amnestied. The reading of these documents, after that of the passages from the committal decision and from the indictment itself, which positively acknowledge the fact of the amnesty, is received with a painful sensation.After the report and a brief suspension of the hearing, the floor is given to counsel. Mr Gatine, charged with the defense by all the condemned, with the power to associate another defender with him if the needs of the case required it, shares with M Crémieux the burden of this matter. Here is a rapid analysis of the pleading, full of warmth and logic, by Me Gatine: ““Gentlemen,” he says as he begins, “the appeal of the condemned of Grand'Anse rests on fairly numerous grounds for cassation. In any other circumstance, we would have feared abusing the moments of the court and the reverent attention it deigns to grant us, especially when we come before it to defend men sentenced to death. But here, in this forever deplorable affair, our grounds, however numerous they may be, still remain fewer than the number of capital sentences alone. In the presence of all these scaffolds, by probing this long procedure, we may have been able to point out to you all the nullities that it seemed to present, and your benevolence, we are assured, will not fail us for the rapid development of the proposed grounds.”” ““In following the series of operations of the assize court, we had first to address the drawing of the assessors. The first five grounds relate to this phase of the procedure.”” ““We shall first make a general observation, under the im
pression of which the grounds seem to us to require assessment.”” ““You know it, gentlemen, the colonies do not enjoy the institution of the jury. There one merely adds to the magistrates composing the assize court assessors taken from a college or body of criminal judges existing within the jurisdiction of each assize court. I say criminal judges, for that is the title that suits them: they are at once judges of fact and appliers of the penalty; they have, with few differences of attribution, the same powers as the magistrates themselves.”” ““That is the importance of their functions. It makes one grasp the equal importance attached to the operations of the drawing and the formation of the assessors’ list.”” ““But that is not all. What the court must remark above all is the composition of the assessors’ college. They are recruited exclusively among whites. No man of color is included, although a great number meet the required conditions. That is, gentlemen, a fact of the highest gravity in the presence of class enmity, before these implacable hatreds that attach to men of color and which, it was said, recently for this very trial, crossed the ocean, pursuing their victims even into your hall (1)! Gentlemen, in their sufferings, men of color often cry out that they have no judges in the colonies. At the very least they do not have judgment by their peers, that common right of French citizens in criminal matters. Ask the white assessors whether the mulatto accused are their peers…. Oh! yes, gentlemen, the drawing of the assessors, the recusals, the formation of the list of four for judgment, these are important formalities!”” ““What happened? We shall see.”” Here counsel discusses five grounds, relating among other things to the recusal of the sieur Duval-Dugué, who was kept on the list despite the accused, who wished to have him struck out: “They were exer(1) RICHARD-Lucy and M. Lepelletier-Duclary, who have condemned so many unfortunates in Martinique, came to France with the documents of the trial. They were received by the Keeper of the Seals and by M. Dupin, Prosecutor General. After their visit, M. Dupin sought, before the Court of Cassation, the removal of M. Isambert. M. Charles Dupin, brother of the Prosecutor General, is the agent of the privileged colonists of Martiniqueon a wage of 20,000 francs per year.
cising peremptory challenges, said Me Gatine, that is to say, absolute, without examination or discussion, for the law recognizes no others. It is a right for which it asks no account of the accused, no more than it asks account of judges for their convictions. The accused also had to confer in order to exercise their challenges; otherwise they would have been illusory for the greater number. Were they not there eighty-eight! Can one say that each of them enjoyed the right of challenge if no concert was established among them in all the breadth and all the freedom that must belong to the defense!” ““Should one not be astonished as well by the incident that marked the last operation of the drawing? A single name remained in the urn after all the excuses successively admitted, for everyone recoiled before the role of judge in this horrifying trial. The name of the sole assessor remaining was drawn from the urn; it could hardly fail to come out. Was it chance that drew it? Drawing lots is the choice of chance among a number of individuals greater than those that must be chosen; one understands it for a certain number of assessors or jurors; one understands it for a plurality; one does not understand it for a unity. Will it be said that there was no recusal? But it was impossible, for it would have prevented the formation of the list and would necessarily have sent the case to other extraordinary assizes. In sum, and this will not be the least deplorable, eighty-eight accused who were there, plunged for six months into dungeons, were forced either to renounce the exercise of their right of recusal or, by exercising it, to prolong still further the sufferings of their captivity, the anguish of a hundred families; yet the right of recusal is the very right of the defense. Once it was impracticable, the trial itself had become impossible. One could not find judges; all the assessors successively designated by lot recoiled in terror; the accused, by their number, so to speak innumerable, were themselves an impossibility; everything, in the preliminaries of the trial, led to the impossible! It was perhaps a warning from on high; if only it had been heard!”” Coming to the hearings, counsel pauses on the testimony of the witness Dieudonné Valmont, one of the most important, as the assize court itself declared: ““This witness,” says Mr Gatine,
“was afflicted with mental alienation, according to a physician’s certificate that is probative; nevertheless his deposition was read. It is not one of the least strange circumstances of this dreadful trial that the introduction of such a document into the proceedings should be used to arrive at the discovery of truth. Do reason, morality, and public honor allow one to make use, in any matter whatsoever, of the deposition of a madman against accused persons? High-ranking magistrates, assessors taken from among the elite of citizens, criminal judges in short, having to decide the life or death of eighty-eight accused, will they seek their convictions in the narratives of a diseased mind! That is what is seen only in the colonies, there where abuse reigns, where the law is nothing.”” “The court must also examine whether the publicity of the hearings was sufficiently established. This guarantee had here an importance higher still than usual. This unheard-of trial, this great drama with its bloody denouement, which for an entire month unfolded in its monstrous proportions, ought at least to have taken place in the full light of day. If, in Martinique, justice, besides its thousand wounds, were also occult, there would no longer be any restraint on abuses. Publicity is still a guarantee for those who no longer have any other.”” Mr Gatine then points out grave irregularities in the most important part of the trial, the framing of the questions of fact and their resolution.The defenders had asked that the question be put whether many of the accused had not been dragged into the bands under constraint; for, in such a case, the leaders command, the multitude follows them, blind and intelligent. It is a case of excuse provided by law. The assize court of Saint-Pierre could not dispense with putting the requested question. There lay the salvation of the accused: ““In a solemn circumstance,” says counsel, “on an application by the Prosecutor General, in the interest of the law, you judged by decision of 10 January 1834 that the law was not violated by the putting of a question of constraint. I seize upon that decision dictated by reason and by humanity; I conclude from it that the question lies within the rights of the accused, within the rights of the defense, since the law does not forbid it. Here again, the right of the defense was ignored!””
Finally, no penalty could be pronounced on the state of facts as they resulted from the answers given to the questions put. Counsel recalls the questions and the answers; he sets them alongside the provisions of the law; he concludes from them that neither the plot nor the attack imputed to the accused is duly established in all its constituent circumstances. He also notes, after a convincing discussion on this point, that the aim and the character of the bands were not determined. In support of his observation he cites several judgments rendered in the affairs of Vendée and in that of rue des Prouvaires in 1832. ““The consequences are palpable,” adds Me Gatine. “The attack committed in bands, the posts or commands in those bands, all facts stripped of the circumstances that criminalize them, are no longer reached by the penal law. Those who underwent the death penalty for those commands or posts could not be struck by it. Those who, for having merely been part of the bands, underwent perpetual expulsion from the colony could not be torn from their families, for article 100 of the colonial penal code, that legislative monstrosity, however discretionary it may be, can evidently be applied only insofar as it concerns criminal bands.”” Mr Gatine concludes in roughly these terms:““There would remain to develop one ground that would dominate all the others, that of amnesty. But to assess that ground, one would have to enter into the examination of the facts, so that the court might see how amnesty was proclaimed as the only possible issue to a military event; how the governor himself, before his immense responsibility, had to have recourse to that amnesty; whether it is true that the insurrection of Grand' Anse was only an explosion of colonial passions; whether it is true, finally, that blind and implacable enmities did all the evil in this affair.You would have to, gentlemen, count all these scaffolds, measure with sorrow this unlimited extension given to political accusations; for this is a work of politics, and of the worst, the most intolerant, the most murderous, the politics of the colonists!After this long and laborious discussion, courage would fail us to place again before the eyes of the court so many desolations,
so many tears, so much blood already shed by armed force before the action of justice had begun!””Amnesty was the only remedy for all these ills. It was proclaimed by a military chief invested with the powers of the governor, as the indictment itself has acknowledged; and in the presence of that formal admission by the accusers, we scarcely understand that, with the delegations of the current governor, who was not in Martinique at the time of the so-called insurrection, one should come to quibble over amnesty for ninety-three condemned! It is in contempt of that amnesty, in contempt of national honor, that so many men would go to perish miserably in exile or in the penal colonies, that so many families would be decimated, heaped pell-mell in this dreadful hecatomb!Gentlemen, this ground of amnesty deserves no less than the others the solicitude of the court. But, for our part, we shall not prolong any longer these long observations to which a colleague must still add. What we ask, we can now summarize and say in two words: it is an act of that benevolent vigilance that you do not cease to exercise over your overseas litigants, it is the revision of this trial, the most deplorable that has for a long time desolated the colonies; it is a new examination, new judges. One may look twice when fifteen heads are at stake!“Mr Crémieux then takes the floor: Gentlemen, I take the floor after the pleading you have just heard; it is not that I feel the need to add new arguments to those that have just been set out, but it is to fulfill a duty of conscience and humanity, so that my voice may not be lacking in this hall for these unfortunate men who, from the depths of their dungeons, asked for it as a favor, they who could demand it as a right. Oh! what a dreadful procedure, gentlemen, what a despairing condemnation! What then? The law will offer no means to annihilate forever this frightful decision! What justice, that of the colonies! Not that I wish to inquire whether the condemned were guilty, a competent tribunal has pronounced; but, great God, no mercy, no pity! Fifteen heads promised to the scaffold,
twenty-five unfortunates destined for the penal colony, thirty, forty, what do I know, expelled from the colony forever, and a fearful mass of death sentences in absentia! You remember, gentlemen, the consternation that came to freeze the metropolis at that fatal announcement! And yet, it was possible not to prosecute, not to judge, not to condemn! It was possible, and I go further: condemnation, judgment, and prosecution are struck with illegality. I shall not enter into the examination of the fifteen grounds that have been successively presented to you; but there are two that are, in my eyes, of palpable evidence. One dominates the case, it abolishes the accusation, it strikes it and ruins it at its base, it is amnesty. Amnesty, pledge of peace and reconciliation, support of thrones, glory of princes, amnesty, so sweet to decree, so favorably welcomed by all who bear a generous heart.You judged it recently, gentlemen, with those high lights that recommend your supreme jurisdiction: when amnesty has been promised by a chief having authority, and that, on the faith of that amnesty, rebels have surrendered, judicial proceedings are null. Well then! In the case, an amnesty was promised, it was accepted, it was violated! What I assert, I prove by the committal decision. Here are passages that decide the question:Captain Montigny was charged by the governor to appease the sedition, and to employ, to that end, all the means that would seem to him the most suitable.Thus, all the governor’s powers were placed in Montigny’s hands. Would one tell us, by chance, that the suitable means were only means of repression and vengeance? Woe to whoever would say such words in France! Repression after promises, after threats, after summonses, after all promises of humanity; otherwise repression is a crime. Thus Montigny had the power to grant amnesty, he granted it, here is the proof, I read the committal decision:Montigny approaches the insurgents with twenty armed men, he summons them to surrender, in the name of the governor, and at these first words a great number throw down their arms. Then Montigny approaches alone at a gallop, he declares, according to persons who were within hearing: for his part he does not recall his
expressions well, he declares, in the name of the governor, that if they surrender NOTHING WILL BE DONE TO THEM; immediately, one of the chiefs steps out of the ranks, and all the insurgents lay down their arms!Nothing will be done to them, and death, the galleys, and exposure await them! They are amnestied, and they are struck with fury! Amnestied, and what amnesty? Not that which goes to seek the inculpated in prison and sends him away, after the charge, without judgment; but the amnesty of battlefields, the one that stops the shedding of the most precious blood; the one that says: Lay down your arms, do not redden yourself with the blood of your brothers, and the veil of oblivion will cover all. This amnesty is the salvation of all, not only of those whom you pardon, but of those who came to fight them; for, in combat, death reaps on both sides. And you violate this capitulation between brothers!Gentlemen, you will not endure it, you will quash a judgment that tramples underfoot what is most sacred in the world, the law of pardon. You will proclaim the rights of amnesty; and we who plead for Frenchmen from a distant colony will profit from this solemn sitting to say again: Amnesty! amnesty! let dungeons and prisons open before it, let citizens forget and forgive, and let a fraternal hand come to clasp the hand of the amnestied! (General movement in the audience.)Gentlemen, there is a second ground that likewise entails the quashing of this procedure, namely the violation of article 64 of the penal code, combined with article 359 of the code of criminal instruction. After recalling some of the arguments given by Mr Gatine, Mr Crémieux adds: What did the accused say? We ask that a question be put in this form: Were the accused constrained to the crime by a force they could not resist? That question resolved in their favor, there was no longer any crime, and they refuse to put it! The assessors will know that there is no crime if there was force, and they will not declare guilt. Gentlemen, the assessors are the jurors of the colonies, and jurors have no questions of law to resolve, but facts to judge. And in what circumstance do you refuse to put this question? In a case where it concerns an insurrection, a civil war. And who does not know that in such a case the mass
follows and fights without understanding? Its will is the will of a few chiefs. Alas! almost always the chiefs escape through betrayal, and the thunderbolt strikes the people obeying the voice of the true guilty!I stop, gentlemen, I did not mean to plead, but to call your high wisdom to these two points that carry the case. Let the scaffolds and the chains fall, let the judgments of exile and expulsion perish! Oh! I know well that fifteen heads will not fall; the king, I know well, will not suffer this judicial butchery; but nonetheless it is to death that the judgment destines them! The voice that implored me is vox morituri. Sacred is the prayer of a condemned man, especially of a political condemned; I have answered it as far as it depended on me; the salvation of all these unfortunates is in your hands, they will be saved!””M. Parant, advocate-general, contests successively all the grounds of the appeal. As regards amnesty, he seeks to demonstrate that, under the colonial ordinances, the governor did not have the right to grant it.It is six o’clock in the evening; the court postpones the delivery of its judgment to Monday 24. All day Sunday is spent deliberating. At the opening of the Monday sitting, the court again postpones its judgment to Thursday 27. On that day, finally, the court sitting, Mr. President reads a long judgment rejecting the appeal.A painful impression follows this unexpected result. All those who had followed the court’s sittings with anxiety withdraw in a bleak silence.One wonders what the governor of Martinique will do with his fifteen heads.An application for pardon was immediately filed by Mr Gatine. We shall make known this document, which completes the defense of our compatriots.
OPINION OF THE NEWSPAPERS ON THE MINISTER OF THE NAVY AND THE COLONIES, OF THE “THREE-DAY MINISTRY.”Although the “three-day ministry” is now as if it had never been, we believe it appropriate to give here the opinion of the newspapers on one of the most inconsistent men of that party of political eunuchs, called the third party, which was so cruelly mystified in the strange governmental comedy played in Paris in the first fortnight of November. M. Charles Dupin, the savant, as they say, interests us for more than one reason; for if we no longer have the happiness of having him as Minister of the Navy and the Colonies, he is nonetheless said to remain delegate of the white colonists of Martinique, with emoluments of 20,000 francs.OPINION OF THE NEWSPAPERS ON THE MINISTER OF THE NAVY AND THE COLONIES, OF THE “THREE-DAY MINISTRY.”Although the “three-day ministry” is now as if it had never been, we believe it appropriate to give here the opinion of the newspapers on one of the most inconsistent men of that party of political eunuchs, called the third party, which was so cruelly mystified in the strange governmental comedy played in Paris in the first fortnight of November. M. Charles Dupin, the savant, as they say, interests us for more than one reason; for if we no longer have the happiness of having him as Minister of the Navy and the Colonies, he is nonetheless said to remain delegate of the white colonists of Martinique, with emoluments of 20,000 francs. It is therefore good and useful to know what to think of this singular personage, who meddles in everything without suspecting anything.Here is the opinion of the capital’s newspapers on the appointment of M. Charles Dupin to the Ministry of the Navy and the Colonies:LE COURRIER FRANÇAIS.Mr. Charles Dupin, who, by having himself designated under the title of savant, has almost succeeded in making the title of savant ridiculous, who has made proverbial the boredom inspired by his tribune speeches, whose disinterestedness is attested by the accumulation of twelve or fifteen posts, whose borrowed learning, diluted in large volumes, has pushed back the limits of charlatanism, M. Charles Dupin was, of all the men who could be chosen, the most antipathic to the naval corps, the one whose elevation was bound to cause the most discontent. What was hoped for in appointing him? Certainly, it was not thought to strengthen the cabinet with a man of the tribune; it was not thought to endow the navy with a specialist. Perhaps it was wished to reward the author of the motion that brought about the resignation and retirement of Lafayette; in that respect, he has well merited the Palais-Royal, and he may find that the reward was long in coming. No doubt too, one counts on attaching the naturally precarious and variable support of his brother; but even if that support were irrevocably acquired to the new cabinet, it would not compensate for what the presence of M. Charles Dupin brings with it: disfavor, unpopularity,
and, it must be said, ridicule. It is said that M. de Rigny, accustomed to being called the victor of Navarino, finds it somewhat hard to fall under the orders of M. Charles Dupin. Louis-Philippe indeed subjects the humility of his former minister to a rude test.The influence of M. Dupin the elder will have contributed to having the combination adopted in which his brother found a place. For anyone who would judge the President of the Chamber by his parliamentary importance, his conduct, once again, would remain without explanation; as for us, it causes us no surprise. If M. Dupin truly had political views and an ambition somewhat lofty, he would have avoided delivering the party of which he believes himself the leader to the public’s disdain and to the laughter of his adversaries. Instead of imposing the inflated nullity of his brother on colleagues who together brought neither too great a personal authority nor too great a sum of talents, he would have boldly undertaken it himself, and would have made himself the orator of that ministry which is now at the knees of M. Sauzet. One may feel indulgence toward oneself, but one cannot prevent a ministry that has added M. Charles Dupin to itself from being devoted to ridicule.LE BON SENS.The President of the Chamber of Deputies put his brother at the navy as a matter of family convenience. In this affair, there is no one to pity but the sailors, who will have to endure the pompous insufficiency of the successor of M. Jacob.M. Charles Dupin no doubt has a tireless organ and will give very verbose orders to admirals and to all naval officers; but the talent he has for making even the most resigned listeners flee the Chamber is a privilege that is not very parliamentary.There are people who know how to profit from their position, however difficult and humiliating it may be. We have said that M. Charles Dupin had resigned none of his employments, whose number is almost incalculable; that he had even kept the title of delegate of the colonists to the Minister of the Navy: he did better than that, he tried, immediately after giving his forced resignation, to have himself granted one of the richest sinecures, that of director of naval matériel. Having presented the ordinance of appointment to the king, the latter observed
to him that he would be obliged to countersign the ordinance himself; whereupon the accumulator was forced to renounce the 20,000 francs of salary he had coveted.LE MESSAGER.Seriously considered in its whole as in its individualities, does the new cabinet represent anything other than the court, which seems to have sought, outside all the required conditions, flexible persons for its immutable thought? Can one imagine an officer of maritime engineering, constructor of a single vessel which took on water on all sides at its first contact with the sea, commanding our fleets and directing our colonies?…..LE NATIONAL.Since we are in the time of devotions and sacrifices, we would like to know whether provision will be made for the replacement of M. le duc de Trévise as Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor. We advise M. Mortier to imitate the foresight of M. Charles Dupin. This skilled calculator, delegate, as is known, of the colonists of Martinique to the Ministry of the Navy, had judged it appropriate to remain delegate to his own person, with emoluments of 20,000 francs per year.The talents and the salaries accumulated by M. Charles Dupin have more than once been displayed before the electoral colleges and the committees of the Chamber. But this time, it must be admitted, M. Charles Dupin outdid himself.REVUE DES DEUX MONDES.France cannot always be tossed between MM. Thiers and Guizot, or between MM. Thiers and Dupin. M. Dupin already sees how poorly the idea succeeded that he had of sending his brother Raton to pull for him the chestnuts of ministerial fire. Thus, if M. Dupin manages to form, before the session, in his uncertain head, a sort of political system, if he arrives at forming a just idea of the amnesty he wants, if he succeeds in reconciling his hatred for his friends on the left with his aversion for his friends of the castle, in making agree his taste for popularity and his contempt for the press and for opinion, if he comes to unite all these
things, quite reconcilable as one sees, we shall soon have a third-party ministry, a ministry Dupin, a unique ministry.MISCELLANEOUS NEWSFollowing the resignation of the “three-day” ministers, the cabinet has been reconstituted as follows:MM. Marshal Mortier, Minister of War, President of the Council.
Thiers, Minister of the Interior.
Admiral de Rigny, Minister of Foreign Affairs;
Humann, Minister of Finance;
Guizot, Minister of Public Instruction;
Duchâtel, Minister of Commerce;
Persil, Minister of Justice;
Admiral Duperré, Minister of the Navy and the Colonies.-The ministry of Lord Melbourne has given way to the Tory-Wellington ministry. The Duke of Wellington is First Lord of the Treasury, and, as principal Secretary of State, holds the seals of the departments of the interior, foreign affairs, and the colonies. Sir Robert Peel occupies the functions of Chancellor of the Exchequer.The following appointments have just taken place in the colonial judiciary and administration:M. E. Reizet, licentiate in law, has been appointed judge of first instance at Basse-Terre (Guadeloupe), replacing M. de Waldemar, who has resigned.MM. Ledentu, Aubin and Bigeon have been appointed privy councillors, full members, of Guadeloupe for the years 1855 and 1836.MM. Pedemonte, Belost and Bellaud-Descommunes have been appointed privy councillors, alternates of the same colony. -We read in the Journal de la Marine:The appointment of M. Rivoil, former solicitor, to the post of auditing councillor at Guirne has been the object of lively protests. The laws governing the colonies required that M. Rivoil be a licentiate in law to fulfill the functions entrusted to him. It is said that at the Ministry of the Navy they are very dissatisfied at having been deceived on this point, and that they are resolved to reverse this appointment.-M. Famiral Halgan, Governor of Martinique, who was not in the colony at the time of the Grand'Anse affair, was consulted by the Minister of the Navy on the question of whether there had been, on the part of the colonial authority, a promise of amnesty made to the men of color condemned in this affair. The admiral’s answer was negative; and the Ministry of the Navy hastened to add to the case file the dispatch of M. Halgan. The Court of Cassation did not admit the ground pleaded for the condemned, drawn from this promise of amnesty; the appeal of these victims was rejected!-Another dispatch from Admiral Halgan to the Minister of the Navy pointed out several acts of cruelty by a colonist, who would have caused several of his slaves to die in torments and horrible tortures, says the admiral.We learn that this colonist, who had fled during the first proceedings brought against him, surrendered, was tried by his brothers and friends, and acquitted, as was to be expected, unanimously by seven votes.-We read in the second issue of the Abolitionist: “In the correspondence of the English commissioners with the government, one gathers the sad proof that the infamous commerce of the slave trade is still carried on with activity and that the means employed by the government to prevent it are wholly insufficient. The number of slavers captured by the English on the west coast of Africa, and brought to Sierra Leone to be sold, amounts to five, namely: four Spanish and one Portuguese. They had on board at the time of their capture 1,884 Negroes; 185 died in the interval before the sale of the vessels. There thus remained to be restored to freedom 1,701 Africans.” “We are firmly persuaded, say the commissioners, that the trade continues under the Spanish flag with as much perseverance as in the past. We are distressed, however, to have to announce that this infamous traffic soils the French flag.” The latest news we have from the foreign colonies is of 12 November. On that date, the greatest tranquility reigned in the Antilles; the newly emancipated slaves worked peacefully at cultivation on all the plantations.
Charter of 1814Charte de 1814The Charter of 1814 was the written constitution of the Restoration government. The Bourbon Monarchy’s return under Louis XVIII was not a return to absolutism, but rather a constitutional monarchy with an elected legislature in the lower house of parliament (suffrage was highly restricted) and appointed nobles in the upper house. Other aspects of the revolution remained, including civil liberties, religious tolerance, the administrative organization of the state, among others. Müssig, Ulrike, “La Concentration monarchique du pouvoir et la diffusion des modèles constitutionnels français en Europe après 1800,” Revue Historique de Droit Français et Étranger 88, no. 2 (2010). 295–310. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43852557.Stovall, Tyler, Transnational France: The Modern History of A Universal Nation . Avalon, 2015.La Charte de 1814 est le texte constitutionnel du régime de la Restauration. Avec le retour des Bourbons sous Louis XVIII, la monarchie absolue ne renaît pas pour autant : elle devient une monarchie constitutionnelle. Le parlement se compose d’une chambre basse élue (avec un suffrage très restreint) et d’une chambre haute formée de nobles nommés. Certains acquis de la Révolution sont préservés, notamment les libertés civiles, la tolérance religieuse et l’organisation administrative de l’État.Müssig, Ulrike, “La Concentration monarchique du pouvoir et la diffusion des modèles constitutionnels français en Europe après 1800,” Revue Historique de Droit Français et Étranger 88, no. 2 (2010). 295–310. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43852557.Stovall, Tyler, Transnational France: The Modern History of A Universal Nation . Avalon, 2015.Ordinance of 1825Ordonnance de 1825One of the Haiti’s main goals after independence, aside from preventing French reinvasion, was securing its economic well-being through formal recognition from the foreign governments it traded with. Negotiations for recognition failed under Dessalines, Pétion and Christophe, as various early independence governments balked at France’s terms and French agents’ continued designs on the land they continue to refer to under the colonial name of Saint-Domingue. President Jean-Pierre Boyer (1818–1843) attempted his own negotiations with France but his hand was ultimately forced when Charles X’s emissary, Baron Mackau, arrived with a military squadron in the harbor of Port-au-Prince with a new ordonnance from the king (dated April 17, 1825). The order stated that Haiti would give France preferential trade status via a reduced customs duty and pay a staggering 150 million francs to compensate French property owners for their “loss.” Boyer signed, under the threat of gunboats, on July 11, 1825.Boyer’s government immediately took out a loan to make their first payment—borrowing 30 million francs from French banks in order to repay the French government for recognition of their independence. The indemnity agreement and the loans had disastrous consequences for the economic and political autonomy of the nation. Economists have estimated the total cost of the indemnity to Haiti over the last 200 years to be at least $21 billion dollars, perhaps as much as $115 billion.https://memoire-esclavage.org/lordonnance-de-charles-x-sur-lindemnite-dhaitihttps://memoire-esclavage.org/lordonnance-de-charles-x-sur-lindemnite-dhaitihttps://esclavage-indemnites.fr/public/Base/1https://esclavage-indemnites.fr/public/Base/1Blancpain, François, Un siècle de relations financières entre Haïti et la France (1825-1922) . L’Harmattan, 2001. Brière, Jean-François, “L'Emprunt de 1825 dans la dette de l'indépendance haïtienne envers la France,” Journal of Haitian Studies 12, no. 2 (2006). 126–34.Daut, Marlene, “When France Extorted Haiti—The Greatest Heist in History,” The Conversation , June 30, 2020, https://theconversation.com/when-france-extorted-haiti-the-greatest-heist-in-history-137949https://theconversation.com/when-france-extorted-haiti-the-greatest-heist-in-history-137949Dorigny, Marcel; Bruffaerts, Jean-Claude; Gaillard, Gusti-Klara; and Théodat, Jean-Marie, eds., Haïti-France. Les chaînes de la dette. Le rapport Mackau (1825) . Hémisphères Éditions, 2022.Gaffield, Julia, “The Racialization of International Law after the Haitian Revolution: The Holy See and National Sovereignty,” The American Historical Review 125, no. 3 (2020). 841–868. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhz1226Porter, Catherine; Méhout, Constan; Apuzzo, Matt; and Gebrekidan, Selam, “The Ransom,” The New York Times , 20 Mai 2022.L’un des principaux objectifs d’Haïti après son indépendance, en plus de prévenir une éventuelle réinvasion française, est d’assurer sa stabilité économique en obtenant une reconnaissance officielle des gouvernements étrangers avec lesquels elle commerce. Sous Dessalines, Pétion et Christophe, les négociations en ce sens échouent, les premiers gouvernements haïtiens refusant d’accepter les conditions imposées par la France, tandis que les agents français continuent à revendiquer le territoire sous son nom colonial de Saint-Domingue.Le président Jean-Pierre Boyer (1818–1843) entreprend à son tour des négociations avec la France, mais la situation prend un tournant décisif lorsque l’émissaire de Charles X, le baron Mackau, arrive dans le port de Port-au-Prince à la tête d’une escadre militaire, porteur d’une ordonnance royale datée du 17 avril 1825. Celle-ci stipule qu’Haïti doit accorder à la France un statut commercial préférentiel, par le biais d’une réduction des droits de douane, et verser une indemnité de 150 millions de francs pour compenser les propriétaires français de la « perte » de leurs biens. Sous la pression militaire, Boyer signe l’accord le 11 juillet 1825.Afin de s’acquitter du premier paiement, son gouvernement contracte immédiatement un emprunt de 30 millions de francs auprès de banques françaises, destiné à financer la somme exigée par le gouvernement français en échange de la reconnaissance officielle de l’indépendance haïtienne. L'accord d'indemnité et les emprunts contractés ont des conséquences désastreuses sur l'autonomie économique et politique de la nation. Les économistes estiment que le coût total de l'indemnité pour Haïti au cours des 200 dernières années s'élève à au moins 21 milliards de dollars (environ 19,11 milliards d'euros), voire jusqu'à 115 milliards de dollars (environ 104,65 milliards d'euros).Blancpain, François, Un siècle de relations financières entre Haïti et la France (1825-1922) . L’Harmattan, 2001. Brière, Jean-François, “L'Emprunt de 1825 dans la dette de l'indépendance haïtienne envers la France,” Journal of Haitian Studies 12, no. 2 (2006). 126–34.Daut, Marlene, “When France Extorted Haiti—The Greatest Heist in History,” The Conversation , 30 Juin 2020, https://theconversation.com/when-france-extorted-haiti-the-greatest-heist-in-history-137949https://theconversation.com/when-france-extorted-haiti-the-greatest-heist-in-history-137949Dorigny, Marcel; Bruffaerts, Jean-Claude; Gaillard, Gusti-Klara; et Théodat, Jean-Marie, eds., Haïti-France. Les chaînes de la dette. Le rapport Mackau (1825) . Hémisphères Éditions, 2022.Gaffield, Julia, “The Racialization of International Law after the Haitian Revolution: The Holy See and National Sovereignty,” The American Historical Review 125, no. 3 (2020). 841–868. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhz1226Porter, Catherine; Méhout, Constan; Apuzzo, Matt; and Gebrekidan, Selam, “The Ransom,” The New York Times , May 20, 2022.Law of Floréal, Year 10Loi de floréal, an 10The loi de floréal an 10 refers to the decree-law (or statuary law) authorizing the slave trade and slavery in the colonies restored by the Treaty of Amiens (Décret-loi autorisant la traite et l'esclavage dans les colonies restituées par le traité d’Amiens). The law, proposed by First Consul Bonaparte and debated by the assemblies, was adopted on May 20, 1802 (30 floréal an 10).The pertinent text of the law is as follows:Article 1: “Dans les colonies restituées à la France en exécution du traité d’Amiens, du 6 germinal an X, l’esclavage sera maintenu conformément aux lois et réglemens antérieures à 1789.”Article 3: “La traite des noirs et leur importation des lesdites colonies, auront lieu, conformément aux lois et règlemens existans avant ladite époque de 1789.”Slavery had been abolished first in Saint Domingue in 1793 by civil commissioners Leger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel. A committee from Saint-Domingue then sailed to France to urge the government to ratify the 1793 proclamations for all French colonies. On February 4, 1794 the Convention proclaimed slavery abolished throughout the Republic. Though applied in Guadeloupe and, eventually, Guyana, the 1794 decree was not applied in Martinique, Saint Lucia or Tobago (then under British occupation) or in the Indian Ocean colonies (which essentially delayed and refused). The Treaty of Amiens signed March 15, 1802 with Great Britain thus restored to France those colonies that had maintained slavery and the slave trade throughout the period of occupation. The May 20 law did not reestablish slavery throughout the French colonies but was nevertheless a stark retreat from the values of 1789: slavery and the slave trade was now legal in the French Republic. A consular order from July 16, 1802 (27 messidor an X) reestablished slavery in Guadeloupe. There is a lack of clarity, both in contemporary scholarship and in the Revue, on the nature of the May 20 decree-law. Scholars often incorrectly cite the law as the date that marks Bonaparte’s reestablishment of slavery throughout the French colonies. Bissette’s exaggerated claim, “Tout le monde sait que la loi de floréal an 10, qui rétablit l’esclavage dans les colonies, fut le signal de la défection de tous les chefs de Saint-Domingue” reveals that this confusion was in place even in 1830s. It also confirms the effectiveness of Bonaparte’s attempts to reestablish slavery under the radar and without fanfare. Nevertheless, Bissette is correct about the consequences of Bonaparte and the Consulate’s pro-slavery machinations in contributing to the anticolonial, antislavery act of Haitian independence. Niort, Jean-François and Richard, Jérémie, “ A propos de la découverte de l’arrêté consulaire du 16 juillet 1802 et du rétablissement de l’ancien ordre colonial (spécialement de l’esclavage) à la Guadeloupe,” Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire de la Guadeloupe no. 152 (2009). 31–59. https://doi.org/10.7202/1036868arBénot, Yves and Dorigny, Marcel, eds., Rétablissement de l’esclavage dans les colonies françaises. Aux origines de Haïti . Maisonneuve et Larose, 2003.La loi de floréal an 10 désigne le décret rétablissant officiellement la traite et l’esclavage dans les colonies restituées à la France par le traité d’Amiens. Proposée par le Premier Consul Bonaparte et débattue par les assemblées, elle fut adoptée le 20 mai 1802 (30 floréal an 10).Les articles les plus significatifs en sont les suivants :Article 1 : « Dans les colonies restituées à la France en exécution du traité d’Amiens, du 6 germinal an X, l’esclavage sera maintenu conformément aux lois et réglemens antérieurs à 1789. »Article 3 : « La traite des Noirs et leur importation dans lesdites colonies auront lieu, conformément aux lois et réglemens existants avant ladite époque de 1789. »L’abolition de l’esclavage avait été proclamée pour la première fois à Saint-Domingue en 1793 par les commissaires civils Léger-Félicité Sonthonax et Étienne Polverel. Un comité mandaté par la colonie s’était alors rendu en France pour plaider en faveur d’une généralisation de cette mesure. Le 4 février 1794, la Convention nationale décréta l’abolition de l’esclavage dans l’ensemble de la République. Ce décret fut appliqué en Guadeloupe et, plus tard, en Guyane, mais resta sans effet en Martinique, à Sainte-Lucie et à Tobago, alors sous occupation britannique, ainsi que dans les colonies de l’océan Indien, où son application fut délibérément différée.Le traité d’Amiens, signé avec la Grande-Bretagne le 15 mars 1802, permit à la France de récupérer plusieurs colonies où l’esclavage et la traite avaient été maintenus sous administration britannique. La loi du 20 mai 1802 ne rétablissait pas formellement l’esclavage dans l’ensemble des territoires français, mais elle marquait une rupture avec les principes de 1789 en entérinant la légalité de l’esclavage et de la traite dans certaines colonies. Quelques mois plus tard, un arrêté consulaire du 16 juillet 1802 (27 messidor an X) confirma explicitement le rétablissement de l’esclavage en Guadeloupe.Tant l’historiographie contemporaine que la Revue des Colonies entretiennent une certaine confusion quant à la portée exacte du décret du 20 mai. Nombre d’historiens citent à tort cette loi comme l’acte fondateur du rétablissement de l’esclavage dans toutes les colonies françaises. L’affirmation de Cyrille Bissette—« Tout le monde sait que la loi de floréal an 10, qui rétablit l’esclavage dans les colonies, fut le signal de la défection de tous les chefs de Saint-Domingue »—illustre bien que cette lecture erronée existait déjà dans les années 1830. Elle témoigne également du succès de la stratégie de Bonaparte, qui chercha à rétablir l’esclavage de manière discrète, sans déclaration officielle retentissante. Pourtant, Bissette ne se trompe pas sur les effets des politiques du Consulat : les manœuvres pro-esclavagistes de Bonaparte contribuèrent directement à l’acte d’indépendance haïtien, dont la portée fut à la fois anticoloniale et antiesclavagiste.https://memoire-esclavage.org/napoleon-et-le-retablissement-de-lesclavage/lessentiel-dossier-napoleon-et-le-retablissement-dehttps://www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr/documentaires/abolition-de-l-esclavage/l-abolition-de-l-esclavage-a-la-reunion/la-premiere-abolition-de-lesclavage-par-la-france-et-sa-non-application-a-la-reunion/Niort, Jean-François et Richard, Jérémie, “ A propos de la découverte de l’arrêté consulaire du 16 juillet 1802 et du rétablissement de l’ancien ordre colonial (spécialement de l’esclavage) à la Guadeloupe,” Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire de la Guadeloupe no. 152 (2009). 31–59. https://doi.org/10.7202/1036868arBénot, Yves et Dorigny, Marcel, eds., Rétablissement de l’esclavage dans les colonies françaises. Aux origines de Haïti . Maisonneuve et Larose, 2003.Revue ColonialeRevue ColonialeThe Revue Coloniale, was an ephemeral monthly periodical, printed in Paris during the year 1838. Its founder Édouard Bouvet and editor Rosemond Beauvallon conceived of it on the model of many similar, contemporaneous publications reporting on political and economic questions of interest to white colonists while also attending to arts and literature, as attested by the journal’s complete title: Revue Coloniale. intérêts des colons : marine, commerce, littérature, beaux-arts, théâtres, modes. In the December 1838 issue of the Revue des Colonies, Cyrille Bissette acknowledges the Revue Coloniale as both an ideological opponent and a competitor in the print market.Fondée par Édouard Bouvet et dirigée par Rosemond Beauvallon, la Revue Coloniale, sous-titrée intérêts des colons : marine, commerce, littérature, beaux-arts, théâtres, modes, souscrit au modèle des revues destinées aux propriétaires coloniaux, rendant compte de l'actualité politique et économique des colonies tout en ménageant une place aux contenus littéraires, culturels et mondains. Dans le numéro de décembre 1838 de la Revue des Colonies, Cyrille Bissette reconnaît en la Revue Coloniale tant un adversaire idéologique qu'un concurrent dans le paysage médiatique.Le Moniteur universelLe Moniteur universelLe Moniteur universel, often simply referred to as the “Le Moniteur” is one of the most frequently referenced nineteenth-century French newspapers. An important cultural signifier, it was referenced frequently in other publications, in fiction, and likely in contemporary discussions. Its title, derived from the verb monere, meaning to warn or advise, gestures at Enlightenment and Revolutionary ideals of intelligent counsel.Initially, Le Moniteur universel was merely a subtitle of the Gazette Nationale, established in 1789 by Charles-Joseph Panckouke, who also published Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. Only in 1811 that the subtitle officially ascended to title.The Moniteur had become the official voice of the consular government in 1799. Under the Empire, it gained the privilege of publishing government acts and official communications, effectively becoming the Empire's primary propaganda outlet. However, its role was not confined to this function. It survived various political regimes, including the Revolution and the death of Panckouke in 1798. Its longevity can be attributed to its adaptability, with its successive iterations reflecting the political culture of each historical stage, transitioning from an encyclopedic model during the Revolution, to a state propaganda tool during the First Empire, to a collection of political speeches under the constitutional monarchy and the Second Republic, and finally, to a daily opinion newspaper for the general public under Napoleon III.During the print run of the Revue des Colonies, the “Moniteur” was divided into two main sections: the “official” and the “unofficial” part. Government documents and official communications were published in the official section, while other current events and various topics were featured in the unofficial section under a range of headings such as “Domestic,” “International,” “Entertainment,” etc. The texts cited in Revue des Colonies were most often found in the unofficial section, typically under the “Domestic” heading and on the front page.Titles containing the label “Moniteur” followed by a toponym abounded throughout the nineteenth century: local or colonial titles used this formula to emphasize their official status, maintaining the distinction between the official and unofficial sections.Laurence Guellec, « Les journaux officiels », La Civilisation du journal (dir. Dominique Kalifa, Philippe Régnier, Marie-Ève Thérenty, Alain Vaillant), Paris, Nouveau Monde, 2011. https://www.retronews.fr/titre-de-presse/gazette-nationale-ou-le-moniteur-universelhttps://www.retronews.fr/titre-de-presse/gazette-nationale-ou-le-moniteur-universel .Le Moniteur universel, ou « Le Moniteur », est l’un des journaux les plus cités, sous cette forme abrégée et familière, au cours du XIXe siècle : on le retrouve, véritable élément de civilisation, dans la presse, dans les fictions, probablement dans les discussions d’alors. Ce titre, qui renvoie au langage des Lumières et de la Révolution, dérive étymologiquement du verbe monere, signifiant avertir ou conseiller. Il n’est d’abord que le sous-titre de la Gazette nationale, créée en 1789 par Charles-Joseph Panckouke, éditeur entre autres de l’Encyclopédie de Diderot et d’Alembert ; ce n’est qu’en 1811 que le sous-titre, Le Moniteur universel, devient officiellement titre.Lancé en 1789, ce périodique devient en 1799 l’organe officiel du gouvernement consulaire ; il obtient ensuite, sous l’Empire, le privilège de la publication des actes du gouvernement et des communications officielles, passant de fait au statut d’« organe de propagande cardinal de l’Empire ». Il ne se limite pourtant pas à cette fonction, et survit aux différents régimes politiques comme il a survécu à la Révolution et à la mort de Panckouke en 1798. Sa survie est notamment liée à sa capacité à changer : les modèles adoptés par sa rédaction, qu'ils soient choisis ou imposés par le pouvoir en place, reflètent de manière révélatrice la culture politique propre à chaque période marquante de son histoire. Ainsi, comme le souligne Laurence Guellec, il se transforme en une grande encyclopédie pendant la Révolution, devient un instrument de propagande étatique sous le Premier Empire, se mue en recueil des discours des orateurs durant la monarchie constitutionnelle et la Seconde République, puis se positionne en tant que quotidien grand public et journal d'opinion sous le règne de Napoléon III. Ajoutons enfin que les titres constitués du syntagme « Moniteur » suivi d’un toponyme sont nombreux, au cours du siècle, en France : les titres locaux ou coloniaux adoptent cette formule pour mettre en exergue leur ancrage officiel, et respectent la distinction entre partie officielle et non officielle.À l’époque de la Revue des Colonies, Le Moniteur universel est organisé en deux grandes parties : la « partie officielle » et la « partie non officielle ». Les actes du gouvernement et les communications officielles, quand il y en a, sont publiés dans la partie officielle, en une – mais parfois en quelques lignes – et les autres textes, tous d’actualité mais aux thèmes divers, paraissent dans la partie non officielle sous des rubriques elles aussi variées : intérieur, nouvelles extérieures, spectacles, etc. Les textes que cite la Revue des Colonies paraissent dans la partie non officielle, le plus souvent sous la rubrique « Intérieur » et en une.Laurence Guellec, « Les journaux officiels », La Civilisation du journal (dir. Dominique Kalifa, Philippe Régnier, Marie-Ève Thérenty, Alain Vaillant), Paris, Nouveau Monde, 2011. https://www.retronews.fr/titre-de-presse/gazette-nationale-ou-le-moniteur-universelhttps://www.retronews.fr/titre-de-presse/gazette-nationale-ou-le-moniteur-universel .
